Seán McGirr - Designer, Creative Director of Alexander McQueen

[Thefrenchy]

^ Touché

 

[Lola701]

I don't even think Kering knows the word empathy.

They had for Demna and Vaccarello ahahah

 

[PDFSD]

They had for Demna and Vaccarello ahahah

because they made money almost instantly :-) thats the kering way instant noodle or out

 

[hamburgers]

Could This Be the End of McQueen’s Reign at Kering?​

by Lauren Sherman

Last week’s news that Kering-owned McQueen was undergoing a strategic business review, likely resulting in a 20 percent staff reduction at its London headquarters, got a lot of people talking. Is Kering C.E.O. Luca de Meo preparing the brand for a sale? After all, the guy has barely been in charge for a month and he’s already effectively sold off the beauty business to L’Oréal in a $4.7 billion deal. Meanwhile, during a recent earnings call, then-deputy C.E.O. Jean-Marc Duplaix acknowledged McQueen’s challenges. (Duplaix also noted that there were no plans to sell, but that was before de Meo took charge.)

Kering has owned a majority stake in the business since 2001, but has yet to scale it meaningfully. Over the years, McQueen has had real commercial hits—including that famous sneaker—but has never managed to maintain the momentum. For what it’s worth, I liked Seán McGirr’s latest collection, and can imagine the customer base with the right merchandising strategy. Alexander McQueen, the house’s late namesake, also remains a public fascination—he’s one of the few designers normal people care about. But de Meo may have his hands full reorganizing Gucci, Saint Laurent, and Bottega Veneta, and perhaps there is a better owner out there.

If they sell McQueen, I don’t see Kering offloading it to a licensing company—the playbook deployed by LVMH in its sale of Marc Jacobs to ABG, which I reported last week. McQueen can sell designer clothes, and the best owner would be a company in that space, like OTB or Richemont. Or maybe private equity. Or maybe they’ll keep it. This is what strategic reviews are for!

Puck

 

[Lola701]

The problem with Lauren, (and I can’t fault her for that because it’s the reality of the American system) is that she always see things with the prism of « it sells », « it could sell », « merchandising ».
You have to create a desire first to think about merchandising!

We are talking about fashion, High Fashion. We are not just talking about selling clothes and merchandising. You liking a collection doesn’t mean anything.

What does McQueen stands for today? Nothing.
That was the same problem with Ancora. Yes it was clothes, yes on paper it was all merchandising gold. But what Gucci stands for? Nothing.
If there’s no POV attached to a brand in the HF space, whether people like it or not, you won’t survive in the HF space.

Questions around merchandising and the push for the brand by the executives comes into place when there’s already that structure.

It’s the problem at McQueen, the same at Marc Jacobs and even if I love his work, at Moschino.

The first mistake was to change the logo. The second was to choose a more juvenile image to align with the brand.
A brand selling clothes cannot in one season faire volte-face unless you get a CD with a real POV. It may be divisive but at least you know that you may get a new clientele.

So yes, I’m not surprised that De Meo is considering selling it. I also think he should sell one or two jewelry brand or rethink totally their development. The same for their lifestyle brand Gnori.

 

[fruitdots]

There's a bit of a crisis of British fashion at the moment, no? McQueen, Westwood, Burberry—all in the dumps, mismanaged, kept on life support, etc. JWA and Phoebe are the most significant UK voices at the moment, and both have retreated from fashion week in favour of e-commerce, quiet luxury, and lifestyle branding. Obviously that's not the determinate factor in this situation, but it's hard to see the legacy brands succeeding again without some sort of shift in public perception. And where would that come from at this point? British culture isn't in a great place in general—there's no buoying counter-culture, and the venerable traditions aren't doing so well (instead of weddings, the royals are grappling with a pedophilia scandal). On top of that, there hasn't really been a major English model/muse since Cara Delevingne. You can only trot out Naomi Campbell or Kate Moss so many times before it's old hat.