Designers Switching Houses & Moving to New Brands | Page 168 | the Fashion Spot

Designers Switching Houses & Moving to New Brands

Chavarria aesthetic couldn’t be further than what I associated with the fun and opulence of Fendi.

Can one of the grandchildren inherit the brand the way Silvia inherited it from her mother? It really makes me sad when all these outside voices just come in and totally disregard and diluted the original vision that the Fendi sisters and Karl worked for decades to build.

I don’t want Fendi to become the next Kenzo of the group.
 
What is going on with this industry?? Does he even design womenswear
Does menswear presented on the occasional female model on the runway count?

Jokes aside, this rumour has a "Matthew Williams at Givenchy" stench all over it: a unconvential, radical gesture to make LVMH appear cool and down with the kids, while the usual luxury audience of women in their 30s and 40s avoid the brand like the plague.
 
Because Silvia is a real Fendi, LVMH will never let her run the show entirely. A dick move but it’s ruthless business at the end of the day.
Not really. The only family member who caused issues at LVMH was the Pucci heiress, particularly during the Peter Dundas era. From what was said during that time, she wasn’t as discreet as she should have been when issues over development were raised. And in retrospect, Pucci by Dundas, with it commercial success could have been bigger.

Silvia gets along well with the Arnault. First of all, her family (and Karl) became even more rich and she is literally responsible for the commercial success of Fendi. Her daughter is in the jewelry and a lot of people of the family are involved in the company. And she is in Rome. There’s no Power war over there.

I think she thinks about her comfort. However, if they are hiring a designer, I think she should be the one choosing the talent,

Clearly, she has an eclectic style under all her bourgeoisie. Kim Jones was imposed to her.

What I don’t understand is why Marco de Vicenzo is making the accessories at Fendi while being the creative director of Etro, when he could just work in tandem with Silvia at Fendi for all the lines!?
 
As O
Not really. The only family member who caused issues at LVMH was the Pucci heiress, particularly during the Peter Dundas era. From what was said during that time, she wasn’t as discreet as she should have been when issues over development were raised. And in retrospect, Pucci by Dundas, with it commercial success could have been bigger.

Silvia gets along well with the Arnault. First of all, her family (and Karl) became even more rich and she is literally responsible for the commercial success of Fendi. Her daughter is in the jewelry and a lot of people of the family are involved in the company. And she is in Rome. There’s no Power war over there.

I think she thinks about her comfort. However, if they are hiring a designer, I think she should be the one choosing the talent,

Clearly, she has an eclectic style under all her bourgeoisie. Kim Jones was imposed to her.

What I don’t understand is why Marco de Vicenzo is making the accessories at Fendi while being the creative director of Etro, when he could just work in tandem with Silvia at Fendi for all the lines!?
As I was reporting in the latest Etro thread, Vogue Runway says that the latest Etro man collection was not designed by Marco but from the design team … maybe he’s leaving the brand? For me he is one of the fews who could work with Silvia and understand the brand!
 

The Chavarria-Fendi Rumor Mill​

With the right design team in place, Fendi has the potential to do around $5 billion a year in sales a decade from now. American designer Willy Chavarria, rumored to be in talks about a potential gig, could be the missing piece.
Willy Chavarria

How real are the talks between Willy Chavarria and Fendi? Non-Italians have designed Fendi, and Chavarria may reflect part of LVMH’s recent American kick. Photo: Carl Timpone/BFA.com
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Lauren Sherman
June 24, 2025
Yesterday, WWD ran an intriguing report that the American designer has been speaking with Fendi about a potential gig. The reporters noted that the talks were “preliminary,” and that there were plenty of other candidate names swirling, including ex-Marni designer Francesco Risso.
Upon further investigation, I was able to confirm that some conversations had indeed occurred. A friend and I subsequently debated why this information had leaked: Was LVMH trying to test the market response to the potential appointment? Was it some sort of insidious gesture to cajole another candidate into making a decision? Or were people on either side just chatting too much?
Regardless, will it actually manifest? Fendi, now a century old, is a very large brand—far exceeding a billion dollars in annual sales. With the right design team in place, the brand has the potential to do around $5 billion a year in sales in a decade—precisely the sort of business profile that LVMH is looking to cultivate within its portfolio. Right now, Silvia Venturini Fendi is still the menswear lead, and she’s doing a fine job managing womenswear while the company sorts out the next phase. Meanwhile, I’ve always assumed that she will retire at the end of this year, making room for a new person to oversee men’s and women’s and do a complete overhaul. (At least that’s what should happen.)
The two people who seem most suited for that gig are Maria Grazia Chiuri, who just returned to Rome after a stint at Dior, and Risso. Both are Italian and would bring their own flavor of strangeness to the delightfully strange brand. (I still think Alessandro Michele would have been the best choice… but alas.) Of course, non-Italians have designed Fendi, and Willy Chavarria may reflect part of LVMH’s recent American kick. But the difference is that Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez had been in conversations with LVMH for literally decades before landing at Loewe, and Michael Rider had worked at LVMH for years, and been considered as a replacement for Phoebe Philo at Celine before they did the deal with Hedi Slimane, before eventually getting the Celine gig in the fall.
Anyway, there’s no doubt that LVMH needs to replenish its stream of emerging design talent (where is the Jonathan Anderson of this next generation?). But I’m not sure that Bernard Arnault’s still-new right-hand, Stéphane Bianchi, a longtime Arthur Andersen consultant tasked with calibrating the group’s strategy, would advise on giving Chavarria the keys to the Fendi kingdom.
 
The CD of Fendi should be Italian.
Karl was a happy accident that only happens once in a lifetime. He loved Italy, he spoke Italian, he was immersed in the Italian culture and despite his ego, his work was always at the service.

Fendi is not an intellectual brand. It’s an eccentric brand. It’s a subtilité that wouldn’t work with someone who comes with ego and agenda and narratives that are self serving. American designers today are all about culture and representation for lackluster fashion.

Francesco Risso should just go back to Prada.
 
This would be an absolute disaster, I don't care about his fake woke agenda, let LVMH fund his own label where he designs dirty jockstraps and Adidas sneakers. I do not want that man ever near the legendary Fendi, Silvia has proven with last season that she can very much design on her own and does not need anybody else to make Fendi successful.
 
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Just compare the last collections that were presented at Fendi under Silvia and Willy Chavarria’s label, on the one hand a sophisticated, intriguing outing at Fendi, that demonstrates a high level of taste and refinement and on the other chol0-couture made for Brooklyn denizens looking to cosplay as what they think “Latinxs” dress like, all sustained off the back of “dirty but clean” briefs which are just a pretext to get a ton of models half-naked on the runway and campaigns so they generate buzz.

Poor Willy boy has no talent, this is gonna end up the same way Wang at Balenciaga ended because it’s basically the same scenario: pseudo-designer from NYC who got a few pretentious folks “buzzing” about his poorly constructed clothes and alternative cred ends up in above his head at a real fashion house in a real fashion city. What are we to expect of this appointment (if there’s any meat to it and it’s not only a self-spread rumour like those around Jacquemus)? Fur jockstraps and checked oversized shirts made out of fur intarsia?
 
I think Willy makes Alexander wang look like a couturier. To me this person is completely irrelevant as a fashion designer. And his skills as creative director are narrow. LVMH is out of their minds. And I’m not saying this because of close mindedness, but there is a level of artisanship at fendi and a history in fur, and then to have a stylist with some cultural angle that has nothing to do with fendi is an insult. Get someone who can make this very specific Roman eclectic atmosphere interesting for a global audience.
 
The CD of Fendi should be Italian.
Karl was a happy accident that only happens once in a lifetime. He loved Italy, he spoke Italian, he was immersed in the Italian culture and despite his ego, his work was always at the service.

Fendi is not an intellectual brand. It’s an eccentric brand. It’s a subtilité that wouldn’t work with someone who comes with ego and agenda and narratives that are self serving. American designers today are all about culture and representation for lackluster fashion.

Francesco Risso should just go back to Prada.
I get your point but nowadays it's so difficult to be economically sustainable (as per LVMH / any conglomerate expectations) by doing maximalism / bourgeois instead of logo / intellectualism and in general releasing a toned down approach to fashion.
Take a look at the latest Silvia FW25 show: beautifully crafted, luxurious and eccentric, very Karl mid 2000's coded but kind of detached to reality in terms of proposition and feeling...passè and demodè. Even the fashion show felt a bit too much overwhelming and "heavy" with that specific casting, the runway venue and the coreography. That collection would cater only to middle aged "sciura milanese" women.
They definitely need someone to counterbalance the dusty approach from Silvia and make the collections a little bit more fresher otherwise it's not gonna work imo. I'm fine with doing roman high octane glamour and luxury experimentation for couture (e.g., FW19 couture), but for RTW you need a different approach to be relevant and get a decent turnover and not make Delphine pissed...
Unfortunately, not every brand can afford to do a LV x NG stunt and afford not to compromise your creative vision.
 
I get your point but nowadays it's so difficult to be economically sustainable (as per LVMH / any conglomerate expectations) by doing maximalism / bourgeois instead of logo / intellectualism and in general releasing a toned down approach to fashion.
Take a look at the latest Silvia FW25 show: beautifully crafted, luxurious and eccentric, very Karl mid 2000's coded but kind of detached to reality in terms of proposition and feeling...passè and demodè. Even the fashion show felt a bit too much overwhelming and "heavy" with that specific casting, the runway venue and the coreography. That collection would cater only to middle aged "sciura milanese" women.
They definitely need someone to counterbalance the dusty approach from Silvia and make the collections a little bit more fresher otherwise it's not gonna work imo. I'm fine with doing roman high octane glamour and luxury experimentation for couture (e.g., FW19 couture), but for RTW you need a different approach to be relevant and get a decent turnover and not make Delphine pissed...
Unfortunately, not every brand can afford to do a LV x NG stunt and afford not to compromise your creative vision.

Fashion would do well not to overrate Gen Z as the target group all marketing and product developments are being centered around - Especially at a time when most societies are rapidly aging and people enjoy longer life expectancy. 'Best agers' are the customers with the largest brand loyality and spending power, and all too often did brands think they can throw clothes at them their children or grandchildren would wear, thinking it would also speak to an older clientele.
 

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