Are they? Because Sarah Burton was pretty much the definition of safe — at least as far as Alexander McQueen went — and yet they finally escorted her to the Kering corporate catapult and sent over the wall. (And LVMH thanks you very much.)
The more I see out of McGRRR, the more I’m starting the think they’re looking for people who will make silk purses out of sows’ ears. There’s a clear shift down in quality all around from the Burton régime: No more complicated embroidery and spangling, no more exacting tailoring, no more of the time-consuming, labor-intensive details that made Alexander McQueen’s clothes so desirable and desired. Once Kering got a hit of the kind of profit high to be had from, say, Balenciaga’s cheap Chinese t-shirts they could buy for pennies, silkscreen in Italy, and sell for $500, they wanted that kind of return from every brand. Costs must be slashed, and they want creative directors more concerned with bottom lines than hemlines. A dewy-eyed fawn like McGRRR knows he can be shipped back to obscurity at any moment and won’t say no to cutting corners wherever the corporate brass demand it.