Anderson to join Dior, freeing Chiuri to revamp Gucci
By Astrid Wendlandt The QUEEN :-) misstweed
4 October 2024
Anna Wintour may not have it her way in the end. The powerful Vogue editor, who has been lobbying LVMH boss Bernard Arnault for months to take back John Galliano for Dior, as Miss Tweed reported in July, ultimately could not convince him. It's Jonathan Anderson, the Northern Irish designer who has turned Loewe into a huge success, who's going to get the job, several senior industry sources said.
Anderson has been talking openly about his move to Dior at dinner parties, several sources said. For months, he has been telling friends that he planned to move on from Loewe, they said, but to where? For LVMH, and in particular for Delphine Arnault, Bernard Arnault's daughter, giving Dior to Anderson is the best way to keep him.
Delphine, who became CEO of Dior in January, is a huge Anderson fan. She was the one who hired him for Loewe in 2013 and got LVMH to take a minority stake in his eponymous brand JW Anderson. LVMH continues to finance the brand's losses to this day.
If Anderson joined Dior, it would mean that Maria Grazia Chiuri, who came from Valentino in 2016, becomes free to inject her talent and vision into another megabrand. The smartest move for her would be to replace Sabato De Sarno at Kering's Gucci. It would make a lot of sense. After a year and a half in the job, it's become clear that De Sarno has not won over the crowds with his "quiet luxury" version of Gucci. It's become so quiet that shoppers stopped paying attention to the brand and sales have been sharply declining, particularly in China.
Chiuri is a genius when it comes to marketing and designing products people want to buy. She helped more than triple Dior's turnover and greatly improved the brand's desirability. "If Chiuri joined Gucci, I think investors would welcome the news and would be willing to be patient and wait for her magic touch to work," one senior industry source told Miss Tweed.
The merry-go-round of designers comes as the fashion and luxury industry is going through its worst downturn in recent history. The performance of Dior, LVMH's second-biggest brand after Louis Vuitton, has markedly declined in the past year. If LVMH confirms that Anderson is to join Dior, he would give the French brand a formidable creative boost. Anderson turned Loewe into the world's most popular brand in the second quarter, according to the Lyst index, which does a ranking of products and brands every quarter based on online searches and social media mentions, activity and engagement worldwide.
Miss Tweed will publish more details on these major appointments on Sunday.
