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.

 

[Olaffo]

So the process begun. Interesting who’s gonna buy it…

 

[PDFSD]

So the process begun. Interesting who’s gonna buy it…

hope no one....and they just shut it down and leave his name at peace ........ because its clear quality of bigger brands with strong dna´s are already struggling to reset, let alone Lee´s house.

 

[Thefrenchy]

Having been in multiple meetings with both BCG and Bain, these people understand the industry as much as your next door neighbor. Paid hundreds of thousands to give the most obvious (at best) or lamest advice you'll get to hear, all of this because they're CEO catnip. They're very often the "we have no effin clue so let's get Bain to justify the mess we're about to do" type of solution. As always, Kering reacts only after the problem has happened instead of trying to prevent it. Good luck, and I hope whoever buys McQueen will KNOW what McQueen stands for in order for it to succeed again.

 

[PDFSD]

www.modaes.com​

Kering’s Pragmatic Pivot: Is De Meo Setting the Stage for a Brand Sale?​

Guided by Luca De Meo, the French group is undergoing a comprehensive portfolio review. Leading the charge is Alexander McQueen, marking Kering’s pivot towards streamlined operations after offloading its beauty unit to L’Oréal.​

Campaign starring Kate Moss in 2014.

by Triana Alonso​

Alexander McQueen never put up with cages. Neither those of power, nor those of protocol, nor those of French luxury. The Parisian scene of the nineties was forced to accept him for his unprecedented genius, but he never belonged to its select club. The Briton did not speak French, the quintessential language of Haute Couture, and never showed the slightest interest in learning it because he believed that his garments spoke better than he did of his artistic vision. In the capital, they couldn’t stand his thick cockney accent, his punk clothing or his physical appearance, a combination of features that made him uncomfortable with luxury, making him look like an irreverent boy from London’s working class. During the years he directed Givenchy, his talent coexisted with rejection as he felt an intruder in a system that adored refinement, but feared subversion.



His vision, made of beauty and brutality, clashed with Bernard Arnault’s hierarchical order and the stifling pressure of the LVMH group. In Paris he was asked for discretion, refinement and sales results (in addition to a mediatic confrontation with the star of the time, the Gibraltarian John Galliano, at the head of Dior, also controlled by LVMH). McQueen, for his part, responded with risky designs, revolutionary stagings and excesses. For the designer, of extreme sensitivity, fashion was always more an art than a business and Arnault’s demands had become a poisoned candy that destroyed his mental health.



When the duo of Texan designer Tom Ford and Italian lawyer Domenico De Sole offered him to join the Gucci Group, McQueen didn’t hesitate. The Londoner had always been clear that, during his lifetime, he would never sell his eponymous brand to the all-powerful Bernard Arnault, who had made him offers on more than one occasion. McQueen’s will, after having dedicated his creative talent to the conglomerate’s wishes for Givenchy, was to keep his own brand in London, as a last stronghold of artistic freedom that truly represented him.



It was a time of open warfare between the two great luxury conglomerates. LVMH had used its wiles to take over Gucci, in an operation similar to the attempted purchase of Hermès. The Italian company, for its part, countered by buying talent. In December 2000, the group acquired 51% of Alexander McQueen for around ten million pounds, a modest sum that nevertheless changed history. The designer, then barely turning over five million dollars a year, found a haven. “For the first time I can create without asking permission,“ he said at the time.





Kering (formerly Gucci Group) acquired Alexander McQueen in December 2020





For the first few years, the alliance worked. McQueen could afford radicalism and the group found in him a symbol of freedom. After his hasty death in 2010, the creative who was his disciple and right-hand woman, Sarah Burton, maintained that essence, with emotional couture, rooted in British craftsmanship and unhurried. Although the brand was gradually forced to respond to commercial logics that would finance the artistic nature of the fashion shows, with the launch of the second McQueen line or the promotion of mass-market categories such as sneakers, Kering always respected the irreverent and underground character of that rare pearl born from the talent of a Savile Row apprentice.



Today, the time for indulgence is over. Twenty-five years after that agreement, the Alexander McQueen house has become the first laboratory of a new policy that prioritizes margins over poetry. Kering, the heir to the Gucci Group, has announced a 30% cut in the workforce at its London headquarters and a strategic review to prioritize the profitability of one of its smaller brands.



The change of tone is more than circumstantial. With Luca De Meo at the helm since September, the group has entered a phase of deep surgery. The Milanese executive, trained at Bocconi and forged in the automobile industry, is a textbook reformer with strategies adapted to assert himself on the trading floor. He relaunched the Fiat 500, created Cupra within Seat and returned Renault to profit after a decade of losses. In 2024, the French automaker closed with €56.2 billion in revenues and an operating margin of 7.6%. In an industry accustomed to speed, De Meo learned to combine design and discipline, two virtues he now wants to transfer to luxury.





Alexander McQueen is expected to reach a turnover of 820 million in 2022, according to market estimates





Kering, which in the last two years has lost more than half of its stock market value and accumulated a net debt of 10.5 billion euros, seemed to need such a figure. François-Henri Pinault, chairman of the group, presented it to shareholders in September as “the turning point of a new era”. De Meo himself was explicit: “we must reduce debt and costs; this will force us to rationalize, reorganize and reposition some of our brands”.



The figures explain the urgency. In the third quarter of 2025, group sales fell by 10% to €3,415 million, although the market welcomed this as a relief. The day after the results presentation, the stock rose 9% on the Paris Stock Exchange. Reuters spoke of “a rebound driven by confidence in the new CEO”. Deutsche Bank pointed to positive signs at Gucci; while Citi, more cautious, described the rebound as a stock market rally driven more by enthusiasm and impatience than by real changes in the business. Since his appointment was announced, the stock has doubled in value.



The markets are celebrating what within the group, however, is causing concern. In a matter of weeks, De Meo has closed the sale of the beauty and fragrance business to L’Oréal for €4 billion, appointed Philippine de Schonen, a former head of investor relations at Renault, as the new head of financial communications, and initiated a policy of divesting assets, both brands and real estate. Between 2022 and 2024, Kering has divested several flagship buildings in New York and Milan, for an estimated total of €1.3 billion. The group, traditionally prudent with its assets, has turned bricks into cash.



Likewise, behind the sale to L’Oréal there is a change of philosophy based on reducing exposure to secondary businesses and concentrating capital in core businesses. This is the same pattern it has followed in the past. In 2015, Kering sold the Italian brand Sergio Rossi to the Investindustrial fund; three years later, it sold its 50% stake in Stella McCartney to the designer of the same name, who had distanced herself from the group due to strategic disagreements. Already in 2022, it divested itself of Sowind Group (parent company of Girard-Perregaux and Ulysse Nardin) after selling it to its management team. The message was always the same: prioritize brands with capacity for scale.



The same logic can now be applied to Alexander McQueen, Balenciaga or Brioni. Morgan Stanley analysts estimated McQueen’s sales at 830 million euros in 2022, compared to 758 million a year earlier; while Balenciaga, according to Bloomberg, exceeded 2 billion in 2021 before the reputational crisis of 2022 and stands today at 1.6 billion. In 2024, Kering’s other maisons, which include these brands along with Brioni and jewelry, contributed 3.2 billion euros, with an operating margin of 14%.





The company’s fashion divestment would come after the sale of its beauty business.





Now the consulting firms Bain & Company and Boston Consulting Group are putting the portfolio under the microscope. According to French media La Lettre, both have been hired by De Meo to evaluate the group’s brands and the market speculates about possible exits in 2026. Contacted by Modaes, Kering has not commented on these reports. But the decision to commission such an extensive review can only be understood in terms of optimization and possible partial or total sales.



It would make sense for Kering to start its fashion divestments with Alexander McQueen. Not only because of its size, but also because of its symbolic position within the group: a globally recognized brand, with a strong emotional charge and a structure small enough to divest without destabilizing the whole. The firm’s scale is insufficient to compete with giants such as Saint Laurent or Bottega Veneta and requires constant investment in marketing and retail to sustain its brand value. In addition, McQueen operates from London, which places it outside the Franco-Italian operational axis that today concentrates the group’s power. For Luca De Meo, divesting McQueen would be strategic, as it would free up capital, reduce complexity and send a signal to the market that his optimization mandate is not rhetorical.



The range of potential buyers is not limited. They could be investment funds specializing in luxury and heritage brands, such as Advent International or Permira, or U.S. groups seeking to reposition themselves in European fashion. In this respect, the analogy with Marc Jacobs is revealing, with its possible sale pending. According to industry rumors, LVMH is on the verge of selling the iconic American brand to Authentic Brands Group, which would open the door to a new phase of licensing and monetization, sacrificing some creative independence in exchange for growth and profitability. A similar deal with McQueen could attract American conglomerates with an appetite for prestige assets and commercial potential.





LVMH, for its part, is reportedly in talks to divest US-based Marc Jacobs



If the sale of McQueen is confirmed, it could be just the beginning. Within Kering’s portfolio, other small brands such as Brioni, with limited presence and reduced margins, fit the profile of expendable assets. The Italian house, focused on luxury men’s tailoring, has for years failed to reach the critical scale necessary to make a significant contribution to the group.



Within the group, the balance of power is also being redefined. Francesca Bellettini, the executive who increased Saint Laurent’s size sixfold in a decade, has been named CEO of Gucci, the most important and most pressured brand. Until now, Bellettini had been the guardian of the balance between creativity and management, close to François-Henri Pinault and an advocate of the equality and sustainability policies that made Kering the most progressive conglomerate in the sector. De Meo, on the other hand, represents the power of efficiency. Their symbolic relationship sums up the clash of two cultures that for years seemed complementary and today seem opposed: that of luxury as time and that of luxury as return.



Bellettini comes to the position with an objective that transcends profitability. De Meo has set the executive the challenge of making Gucci a desired brand once again. Under her leadership, Saint Laurent went from being a firm in crisis to becoming a profit engine that brought in €3 billion a year with margins of more than 30%. Now he will have to repeat the miracle in a house that invoices 50% of the group’s sales, but has lost the creative and commercial momentum of Alessandro Michele’s era, if he hopes to avoid being elegantly escorted to the exit door. His first decision has been to bet on Demna, the designer who revived Balenciaga, to rebuild the language of Gucci.



The problem is that the luxury market is no longer guided by patience. LVMH has just closed another record year; Hermès maintains margins of 35%. Kering, which was a pioneer in sustainability and diversity policies, now competes on a board where investors demand returns and consumers no longer buy for militancy. The group that once offered McQueen refuge in the name of creative freedom has entered a stage where that freedom is measured in margin points.



The new Kering is less romantic, but more predictable. De Meo has brought the language of industry to a world that lived by intuition. His challenge will be to ensure that this efficiency does not devour desire. Because, as McQueen argued, beauty without risk is just another form of obedience.