Finally, after months of rumors, it is official: on Monday, LVMH announced that Jonathan Anderson, the designer who transformed Loewe from a small Spanish Leartry -house house into a cultural Lodestar and one of the Boeziest names in the LVMH Stable, a favorite of Daniel Craig, was the brand.
“What he contributed to Loewe goes beyond creativity,” said Sidney Toledano, the Chief Executive of the LVMH Fashion Group, about Mr Anderson in the press release. “He has built a rich and eclectic world with a strong base in the vessel, so that the house can thrive long after his departure.”
Where Mr. Anderson goes next time, and who takes his place, was not revealed. Cliffhanger!
Not really.
Planned designer movements have been leaking like a sieve since last fall. Things can always change, but it is generally accepted that Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, the American founders of Proenza Schouler, who were dropped out of their label in January, will take the place of Mr Anderson in Loewe. Mr Anderson is expected to move to Dior, where he will most likely take the reins of both women and men’s clothing, the first designer to unite the two halves of the house within decades.
The mystery is not so much what happens next. The mystery is the reason why it takes so long and so publicly deprived. Even in a doge world where shooting the daily news is, even in a world where designer has started change on the norm, this has been a painfully long-term procedure.
It is easy to forget, in the pleasure of playing the fashion equivalent of Fantasy Football, that the designers involved are people instead of chess pieces, with teams of more people for whom they are responsible. Dior has a women’s clothing designer, Maria Grazia Chiuri, who has been walking around for months with what a phantom guillotine seems to be over her head.
Mrs. Chiuri, 61, was the first woman who led Dior in his approximately 80 years and one of the few women at the head of a megaluxury brand. In her nine years as artistic director of women’s clothing, she helped bring the brand of an estimated 2 billion euros in income to around 9 billion euros. She was also responsible for injecting a feminist note in his story and supportive collectives and artists all over the world, especially in India. Whatever someone thinks about the work of Mrs. Chiuri – and it could give up on the banal – or her politics (idem), there is no doubt about her contribution to the company, her work ethics or her place in the history of Dior.
But according to the word on the street, Mr. Anderson, 40, not only finished his Loewe -Term, but also worked on a Shadow Dior collection, even while Mrs. Chiuri continues to work alone. When Mikey Madison wore a remake of a Dior dress from 1956 for the Oscars instead of a can from the current collection, it seemed like a fever. The rumors were so unbridled that they helped Kim Jones, the Dior Men’s designer since 2018, to resign after his last show instead of existing in a state of further uncertainty. (His position is not filled in, which gives credibility to the idea that Mr Anderson will take over both sides of the company.)
And the rumors threw a pall about not only the couture of Mrs. Chiuri in January and her ready-made show this month, but also Mr Anderson’s Loewe presentation. “Was it the last or not?” Was just as well part of the reactions to the show as the designs themselves. It is difficult to commit to the vision of a designer – to buy in it – when it is unclear whether there is a dedication to, or the designer himself.
It is of course possible that the extensive ambiguity is partly that Mrs. Chiuri does. It is possible that she is in the middle of a long -term contract negotiation on what form exactly her departure will take and that no one is relevant by law to tackle the situation. It is generally assumed that her cruiseshow in May, which will be held in Rome, her hometown, will be her farewell. LVMH refused to comment on why the transition lasted so long or why the news was released in pieces. Sometimes refusing to tackle rumors is the best way to make them disappear.
But not this time. This time the rumors just became the accepted state of affairs. That makes it difficult not to wonder why all those involved did not easily recognize the truth, even if it came to the fore in an uncomfortable time, the better to move forward. That would have thrown the last Dior collections of Mrs. Chiuri and the last of Mr Anderson at Loewe as collective objects instead of question marks. It would have made the changes exciting instead of anti-climactic.
If fashion reveals something, it is after all that closure, as well as transparency, has its own kind of chic.
