Luxury brand upheaval exposes revolving door of high-end fashion

As Gucci unveils its runway collection in Milan this month, the creative designer behind it, Sabato De Sarno, will not be there to take the customary bow.

The Italian parted ways with the fashion house in early February, less than two years after parent company Kering handed him the task of reviving its most prestigious brand.

De Sarno’s exit is the latest in a lightning series of top-level changes at the big houses, who are churning through creative and management talent at the fastest rate in decades.

“I can’t remember a time in the last 20 years where we’ve seen this much change,” said Karen Harvey, founder of Karen Harvey Consulting, who headhunts for luxury brands.

The upheaval underscores the pressure on high-end brands during a significant market downturn, as the pandemic luxury boom recedes and the once-rapacious demand from Chinese consumers for expensive handbags and designer fashions has waned.

But industry experts and analysts warn that such a rapid pace of renewal can confuse strategic goals and deny top talent the time required to make their mark.

“I don’t think [two years] is the appropriate breathing space for a brand,” Erwan Rambourg, global head of consumer and retail equity research at HSBC, said of De Sarno’s tenure, adding it was “way too short”.

Gucci’s split with its creative director did not come as a shock, say industry insiders, even if the abruptness was a surprise, as De Sarno’s designs had been in stores for only a short time. Sales at Kering’s flagship brand fell 21 per cent like for like in 2024 and the group issued several profit warnings.

Indeed, half the brands in Kering’s fashion and leather goods division, including Gucci and Saint Laurent, have changed chief executives in the past 18 months, and three, including Bottega Veneta and Alexander McQueen, have also appointed new designers.

Richemont too has changed its top guard, promoting Nicolas Bos to the role of chief executive alongside new heads for top brands Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels.

Seven of the 16 brands in LVMH’s fashion and leather goods division have also changed their CEO in the past two years — including the two most important, Louis Vuitton and Dior — while another four have new creative directors. The company has also shuffled its executive committee, appointing a new chief financial officer and group managing director, and handing plum jobs to the children of billionaire owner Bernard Arnault.

Further driving the revolving door was the switch by Bottega Veneta’s Matthieu Blazy to become creative director at Chanel — arguably the most coveted design position in the industry. He will take up the post later this year.

While the changes at LVMH have largely been driven by succession planning, with top management posts going to members of the Arnault family or executives a decade younger than their predecessors, analysts say the upheaval at Kering has been led by market pressures.

“Kering is [thinking] more short term than they should . . . because Gucci is going through tough times,” Rambourg said. “It’s a really insecure approach to managing brands.”

Analysts and retailers worry that if the pace of change becomes too fast on the creative side, brands risk confusing customers or botching execution.

While creative directors used to stay in post for a decade, in recent years the standard contract has become what the consultant Harvey called a “three plus two” — an initial three-year contract followed by a two-year extension.

“It’s very difficult in two years, [which is] four seasons — if you even get four,” she said. Sabato’s spell at Gucci was so brief that “there wasn’t time to . . . bake that creative vision”, she added.

Harvey also noted how designers were often held accountable for poor performance, when it was management that failed to create a framework for them in which to succeed.

In an industry driven by inventiveness and fresh ideas, changes in creative leadership tend to come in waves. “These are cycles. The best fashions go out of fashion and must deteriorate. So we must prepare to have creative evolutions,” Kering chief executive Francois-Henri Pinault told reporters after this month’s results.

However, the huge growth of top luxury labels over the past decade has increased the pressure on brands to rejuvenate, even amid a downturn.

LVMH’s Dior quadrupled in size to more than €10 billion (US$10.44 billion; S$14.03 billion) in sales in that period, for example, according to HSBC estimates, but growth has since levelled off.

“The numbers have gotten much bigger,” said the chief commercial officer of a luxury retailer. “Coupled with big economic headwinds and unpredictability it has pushed brands to move.”

But bigger size means top labels are less inclined to take a risk on new, untested talent — often poaching the creative directors of other houses rather than investing in the next generation.

“Luxury and fashion thrive on newness and creativity . . . so churning the same big names around the big brands is not necessarily very exciting or good for business,” the person added. 

The slowdown in the luxury industry following a period of high growth has been exacerbated by issues such as the effect of inflation on middle-class households, as well as problems in China’s housing market and its declining stock market.

The sector has lost about 50 million luxury consumers over the past two years, according to Bain, many of them young shoppers who no longer see value in luxury products.

“I think it’s quite easy for the main luxury portfolio group to become a bit complacent when times are good,” said Harvey. “If you think about the last decade, it seemed, on the surface, that luxury was impenetrable. It’s not.”

Amid the whirlwind of top-level changes, the focus now shifts to execution and the tricky balance between revealing a new vision for a brand without losing its way.

“It depends how the transition is handled. If the brand has got really strong DNA, you see little or no change,” said the head of a large department store. “It’s where people deviate from the DNA that they run into trouble.” 

Lauren Indvik in London and Adrienne Klasa in Paris © 2025 The Financial Times.

This article originally appeared in The Financial Times.