The fast pace of churn in top jobs isn’t helped by the quick-tempo fashion calendar — which even the most established designers have tried to kick back against — and the industry’s short attention span, exacerbated by social media. “You’re only ever as good as your last trick and everyone always wants to know what’s next,” says KidSuper founder Colm Dillane, who was selected by Louis Vuitton to co-create its first menswear collection after Virgil Abloh’s passing. “You can’t be a one-hit wonder in fashion. People are really quick to forget and move on. You don’t get a tonne of credit for what you’ve done.”
“The biggest gift as a creative is having the time to carve out your identity and direction and not feeling rushed,” says Astrid Andersen, who shuttered her namesake label in 2021 and took a three-year hiatus to start a family. She recently launched her new brand, Stel, at Copenhagen Fashion Week.
Decentring the star designer
The industry’s glorification of the star designer sets unrealistic expectations for students and aspiring designers while overlooking the contributions of others in the supply chain. The dream of becoming a star fashion designer persists, so fashion schools are oversubscribed on design courses and under-resourced on technical and operational programmes.
This is where the industry’s obsession with design talent becomes part of the problem. “The reality is that we don’t have the operational workforce we need to support creative talent,” says Gill. “We lack the partner, the skill set that supports creative talent to scale up. We don’t have the management and operational expertise to turn designers’ creativity into viable businesses.”
At New York’s Parsons School of Design, educators are working to dethrone the star designer by lifting up other roles, says Ben Barry, dean of the School of Fashion. “One common misconception fashion students have is the continued glorification of the lone creative director and the runway show as the ultimate achievement in the industry,” he explains. “While fashion design attracts a large number of students, it’s important to note that our programmes offer a variety of inflections.” Undergraduate fashion students, for example, can choose from four pathways — collections, materiality, systems and society, or fashion products — depending on their interests and aspirations.
It’s time to shift the emphasis from star designers to master collaborators, suggests recruiter Harvey. As it’s ultimately the infrastructure around designers that secures long-term success. “There are very high expectations when a new creative director comes into these roles. The hardest part of the job is leadership and bringing the teams along. While you don’t want to sacrifice your vision, you also don’t want to alienate your teams.”
Moving past fashion’s fixation on the star designer would open up a whole world of potential, says Kuryshchuk of 1 Granary. “Brands are missing out on additional communication and community-building. This narrative [of the star designer] stagnates talent development because people working in-house are excluded from designing other categories, meaning they end up with such a narrow vision.”
A team-building philosophy that takes on board sustainable values would be a start, says upcycling designer and author Orsola de Castro. “When we talk about fashion as an art form, we turn designers into heroes, which they absolutely do not deserve, and we often disregard the people making and selling fashion. Sustainability changes everything because it introduces the question of product. We have all these designers, but do we need more product? It’s much easier to have conversations about humility and teamwork with designers who have sustainability at heart,” she says.
When the star designer steps away from centre stage, there is space for an ensemble to come forward. Being part of that ensemble should become aspirational, says de Castro. “I can’t stress enough the importance of worshipping at a completely different altar.”
Read ‘Debunking the Dream: Part One’ — last year’s series on achieving success and avoiding burnout — here.
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