Virginie Viard - Designer

[tourbillions]

this thread has become just like her collections. very dark and sad with 0 fun.

 

[tomtakesphotos]

Being "iconic" doesn't mean that it was a) good or b) beyond criticism.

look how long the life of that idea has lasted

verus anything we get these days

its so rare, if u don't see that i feel bad for you

 

[gallianostan]

both male and female designers are responsible for sinking fashion into the stygian abyss it has found itself in

 

[AVC]

Virginie’s Chanel was dismal. Giving Anne Taylor Loft and Talbots, an embarrassment.

 

[Deleted member 116957]

Oh please... Anne Taylor Loft has better designs than Virginie's Chanel.

 

[Frederic01]

I know fashion’s your passion and anything out of ‘Chanel-Virginie-Chanel-Virginie’ will go over your head but the most simplified, watered-down explanation is that it was the type of commentary when a female designer unequivocally or debatably fails. Not that she’s a woman, or that she’s talented or that men suffer, or that men do not receive criticism.

I'm sorry but the "type of commentary" that emerged in the announcement of Viard's departure was completely reasonable, fair and unbiased. Not once did I read anything minutely resembling a personal attack on her character, gender, work ethic, or who she is as a person. The fact that so many people disliked the work and felt passionate enough to express those sentiments of disappointment and distaste is their freedom of expression.

The work was universally appreciated as being terrible and people responded proportionately. They criticised the clothes and the clothes only. Just as they respond negatively and with such might to designers like Sabato de Sarno and Demna Gvasalia's collections.

Again, it is because Chanel has such an important legacy and history. Society at large is invested in its image creation and brand integrity in a way that they aren't towards other less important brands. Add to that, Viard had all the resources in the world at her disposal, and access to Chanel historic archives, and people that knew Gabrielle Chanel herself. The expectations were naturally high.

The next person to design at Chanel will receive the exact same amount of scrutiny and criticism, and if Hedi does indeed sign on, he will torn apart in a much worse way than what Viard was. There are voices on the internet that are trying to imply salacious things because of his Celine advertising campaigns and his focus on youth, even those 90% of high-fashion brands, Chanel included, is equally as youth obsessed and dedicates an equal amount of brand creation and advertising efforts to the pursuit of eternal youthfulness.

 

[Deleted member 116957]

look how long the life of that idea has lasted

verus anything we get these days

its so rare, if u don't see that i feel bad for you

This is so weird... why can't it be criticized? What? You think I'm calling current designs BETTER than that?

It's so stupid that so many in the fashion industry shriek all day about it being art, art, art (not Karl, I know)... and the second it receives any criticism. Harsh criticism. That's on the level literature, film, music, painting, etc. would get... well, it has a tantrum. Just like the video game industry lol. Wants to be called art without the nitty gritty.

 

[Deleted member 7575]

You know, I remember the good old days when

Oh please... Anne Taylor Loft has better designs than Virginie's Chanel.

One of my oldest friends is the head of design for Loft. He's actually an amazing designer with really exceptional taste

 

[Deleted member 116957]

One of my oldest friends is the head of design for Loft. He's actually an amazing designer with really exceptional taste

(Well, tell him that I was sad when Loft shut down its stores in Canada... they had some cute things, that I still wear... 😭)

Don't banish me... I used to work with elementary-school aged kids, you think you can get more fancy than Loft and not be punished for it by paint, glue, etc. Nah. One day a kid spilled my entire mocha on me. I know we're all wearing Margiela and Commes des Garçons all time here, I know, I know!!!

 

[Creative]

No creative director is above criticism and I don't know why the Virginie Army Defense is NOW coming to her defense.. But it's really simple if, you design something that's of poor taste you'll receive a whole different reaction from what the people around you are saying and this is what sucks about designers or fashion as a whole, Yes Men are killing creativity.

Indeed! I don't get the fuss. I think Virginie is a charming person but she has zero talent to be a CD. Same as MCG, she is terrible doing clothes (she has other talents business-related though). Same with SdS. It's also true that Dior and Chanel are maybe the most famous fashion brands in the world, so of course there will be more opinions and will be more passionated than the ones Matthew's Givenchy received.

The thing is that now fashion is an entertainment industry and with social media people can be vocal. The snobby part of me hates (I mean HATES) when people who think fashion is what Chiara Ferragni wears or who just like going shopping at Zara have an opinion on the MET Gala or on a HF collection, but this is the world we live in and nothing can stop that.

 

[Deleted member 116957]

If the ~fashion elite~ didn’t want the unwashed masses to have opinions about the Met Gala or HC collections… why is it so public? I mean… these things used to be more private. Just because I’m not going to buy haute couture has zero bearing on me having an opinion on it, besides it all trickles down anyway. Zara produces better collections than some of the fashion houses we’re supposed to admire.

 

[Kanzai]

The fashion industry itself is pretentious as f*ck, irdgaf about Chanel Dior etc, not to mention i'm a Marxist. I wish I could eliminate all motivation to learn about fashion and focus on more interesting topics in life. I don't know why I fell in love with this sh*tty hobby in the first place, would rather watch soccer matches and play World of Warcraft. 🥹 Tho TFS is a lovely place

 

[Creative]

If the ~fashion elite~ didn’t want the unwashed masses to have opinions about the Met Gala or HC collections… why is it so public? I mean… these things used to be more private. Just because I’m not going to buy haute couture has zero bearing on me having an opinion on it, besides it all trickles down anyway. Zara produces better collections than some of the fashion houses we’re supposed to admire.

Exactly, when you are so public, you are obviously more exposed and you have the risk of having the sort of comments VV got in her Marseille show or the ones SDS gets after every collection… At the end of the day, the brands also benefit from the buzz when it’s positive (even if it’s just for a lipstick).

So the “crowds shouldn’t talk about designers negatively” doesn’t make much sense to me. When you accept a role like that you become a public figure, for the good and for the not so good. And, tbh, criticism in fashion is quite light. I’ve never read something too out of place tbh.

The worst for me is when someone says, while watching the MET gala: she’s out of theme 💀 and they didn’t even understand the theme in the first place. But that’s part of fashion in 2024.

 

[PDFSD]

The Fashion System Is Creaking. Will It Collapse?​

The current formulaic, corporatised, anodyne approach to fashion is not working. The industry needs to find its courage to be creative again, writes Imran Amed.

The sheer scale of these businesses means there is a lot more at stake.(BoF Team)

By

• IMRAN AMED

14 June 2024
BoF PROFESSIONAL

LONDON — Lately, something has not been feeling quite right in luxury fashion. First Kering, and now LVMH and Chanel, seem to be creeping into crisis management mode.
As has been well documented, Sabato De Sarno’s creative directorship at all-important Gucci has not yet ignited industry interest. Meanwhile, customers haven’t had the opportunity to see much new product in store, hobbling Kering’s post-Covid performance. None of the other Kering brands are registering meaningful growth that can make up for this, leaving the group with a very complex multi-faceted turnaround to execute.
Over at LVMH, things are getting more challenging too. According to market sources, sales at Dior are flagging, which perhaps explains why the house’s March 23 men’s show in Hong Kong was “indefinitely postponed” just a few weeks before it was due to take place. Meanwhile, Fendi and Givenchy seem to be in stasis mode, while reports that Hedi Slimane is about to leave Celine following “thorny contract negotiations”with his bosses at LVMH further complicates matters.
And then just last week, Chanel suddenly lost its creative director, Virginie Viard, and in a not very Chanel way, especially for someone who had dedicated 30 years to the house. The fact that Viard’s exit happened so quickly with no succession plan in place makes it clear that neither side had planned for this to happen now. Chanel’s creative conundrum comes amid market reports that sales are down in almost every market this year.


But it’s not just these designers and these houses that are troubled. Burberry’s mooted elevation strategy is not yet delivering results and Lanvin, which has been without a creative director for more than a year, seems to be languishing even if CEO Siddartha Shukla is working hard to keep the brand relevant. After John Galliano wiped his Instagram account, the rumour mill started whirring that he would be leaving his creative directorship at Maison Margiela.
Meanwhile, a number of talented designers remain without big jobs. Pierpoalo Piccioli suddenly exited Valentino in March and Sarah Burton announced last autumn that she was leaving Alexander McQueen. Both designers had worked with their respective houses for more than 20 years and haven’t popped up anywhere else, in spite of their talent.Neither have Riccardo Tisci or Claire Waight Keller who left Burberry and Givenchy several years ago.

What explains this pattern of events? There are a variety of forces at work, but I think it has something to do with a gradual breakdown of the social contract between creatives and their corporate bosses, who are not championing creativity in the way they once did.
Once upon a time, people like Bernard Arnault and Francois-Henri Pinault were willing to take creative risks to boost the fortunes of small-ish fashion brands. When Arnault appointed Marc Jacobs to become the first creative director of Louis Vuitton in 1997, the brand had no ready-to-wear collection. Arnault knew Vuitton could benefit from an injection of creative energy, just as he did with John Galliano at Dior that same year.
Now, the sheer scale of these businesses means there is a lot more at stake. And as luxury brands brace themselves for an extended ‘normalisation’ period, it seems the mantra is to take the safe route — even if that means appointing no creative director at all. Chanel is unlikely to have a new creative director for sometime, and LVMH-owned Berluti has been operating without a creative director for several years.

Loewe Autumn/Winter 2024 (Spotlight/Launchmetrics)

There are exceptions to this fashion monotony, of course. Jonathan Anderson’s Loewe manages to both surprise creatively and create commercial impact. Prada and Miu Miu are also creative highlights that are driving commercial success. Both Anderson and Miuccia Prada have a proven ability to push things forward, while also finding ways to ensure the business is still growing. These brands may soon face a different challenge. They need to carefully balance growth with over-exposure, as if growth happens too quickly, it may not be sustainable over the long-term.
Most of the brands that compete with Prada and Loewe for attention have backed away from high-risk, high-reward fashion driven by creativity. Now the approach is more formulaic, akin to selling luxury merch in an overpriced supermarket. Karl Lagerfeld may have predicted with his Autumn/Winter 2015 Chanel show.
This is a world where one brand’s $1,000 hoodie is indistinguishable from another’s. Where it is easier to copy the shape of a box bag with gold logo hardware that is working at another brand, than coming up with a unique shape of your own. Customers have cottoned onto this, and would rather spend their money on one-of-a-kind experiences or hard-to-find vintage pieces than have the same thing as everyone else.

Karl Lagerfeld at Chanel's Fall/Winter 2014-2015 show. (Getty Images)

But the lack of creativity and magic does not end there. The fashion system has also been buffeted by the sudden collapse of Matches and Farfetch, and the slow but steady decline of the once-dominant luxury e-commerce behemoth Yoox Net-a-Porter, which is a shell of its former self. The experience and assortment at Farfetch was not so different from Matches which was not so different from Net-a-Porter. This is in part because the people who bought or invested in these companies had no real. understanding of the creativity and taste required to create world-class retail. (Some of them did not understand how to manage technology either, but that’s a whole other analytical exercise.)
This meant the only way to compete was on price, which led to a downward spiral of discounting, training customers to wait for discounts, making profitability almost impossible to achieve. Sadly, the collateral damage has been independent fashion businesses that dependend on these platforms in the early stage of growth. Independent brands on both sides of the Atlantic are now on the brink, further diluting the creative lifeblood of fashion.

The result of all this is a fashion industry that fails to inspire customers, and not even ourselves. The current formulaic, corporatised, anodyne approach to fashion is clearly not working. This leaves me with the sinking feeling that things are about to break down. Maybe that’s what fashion needs to find its courage to be creative again.

 

[gallianostan]

The Fashion System Is Creaking. Will It Collapse?​

The current formulaic, corporatised, anodyne approach to fashion is not working. The industry needs to find its courage to be creative again, writes Imran Amed.

The sheer scale of these businesses means there is a lot more at stake.(BoF Team)

By

• IMRAN AMED

14 June 2024
BoF PROFESSIONAL

LONDON — Lately, something has not been feeling quite right in luxury fashion. First Kering, and now LVMH and Chanel, seem to be creeping into crisis management mode.
As has been well documented, Sabato De Sarno’s creative directorship at all-important Gucci has not yet ignited industry interest. Meanwhile, customers haven’t had the opportunity to see much new product in store, hobbling Kering’s post-Covid performance. None of the other Kering brands are registering meaningful growth that can make up for this, leaving the group with a very complex multi-faceted turnaround to execute.
Over at LVMH, things are getting more challenging too. According to market sources, sales at Dior are flagging, which perhaps explains why the house’s March 23 men’s show in Hong Kong was “indefinitely postponed” just a few weeks before it was due to take place. Meanwhile, Fendi and Givenchy seem to be in stasis mode, while reports that Hedi Slimane is about to leave Celine following “thorny contract negotiations”with his bosses at LVMH further complicates matters.
And then just last week, Chanel suddenly lost its creative director, Virginie Viard, and in a not very Chanel way, especially for someone who had dedicated 30 years to the house. The fact that Viard’s exit happened so quickly with no succession plan in place makes it clear that neither side had planned for this to happen now. Chanel’s creative conundrum comes amid market reports that sales are down in almost every market this year.


But it’s not just these designers and these houses that are troubled. Burberry’s mooted elevation strategy is not yet delivering results and Lanvin, which has been without a creative director for more than a year, seems to be languishing even if CEO Siddartha Shukla is working hard to keep the brand relevant. After John Galliano wiped his Instagram account, the rumour mill started whirring that he would be leaving his creative directorship at Maison Margiela.
Meanwhile, a number of talented designers remain without big jobs. Pierpoalo Piccioli suddenly exited Valentino in March and Sarah Burton announced last autumn that she was leaving Alexander McQueen. Both designers had worked with their respective houses for more than 20 years and haven’t popped up anywhere else, in spite of their talent.Neither have Riccardo Tisci or Claire Waight Keller who left Burberry and Givenchy several years ago.

What explains this pattern of events? There are a variety of forces at work, but I think it has something to do with a gradual breakdown of the social contract between creatives and their corporate bosses, who are not championing creativity in the way they once did.
Once upon a time, people like Bernard Arnault and Francois-Henri Pinault were willing to take creative risks to boost the fortunes of small-ish fashion brands. When Arnault appointed Marc Jacobs to become the first creative director of Louis Vuitton in 1997, the brand had no ready-to-wear collection. Arnault knew Vuitton could benefit from an injection of creative energy, just as he did with John Galliano at Dior that same year.
Now, the sheer scale of these businesses means there is a lot more at stake. And as luxury brands brace themselves for an extended ‘normalisation’ period, it seems the mantra is to take the safe route — even if that means appointing no creative director at all. Chanel is unlikely to have a new creative director for sometime, and LVMH-owned Berluti has been operating without a creative director for several years.

Loewe Autumn/Winter 2024 (Spotlight/Launchmetrics)

There are exceptions to this fashion monotony, of course. Jonathan Anderson’s Loewe manages to both surprise creatively and create commercial impact. Prada and Miu Miu are also creative highlights that are driving commercial success. Both Anderson and Miuccia Prada have a proven ability to push things forward, while also finding ways to ensure the business is still growing. These brands may soon face a different challenge. They need to carefully balance growth with over-exposure, as if growth happens too quickly, it may not be sustainable over the long-term.
Most of the brands that compete with Prada and Loewe for attention have backed away from high-risk, high-reward fashion driven by creativity. Now the approach is more formulaic, akin to selling luxury merch in an overpriced supermarket. Karl Lagerfeld may have predicted with his Autumn/Winter 2015 Chanel show.
This is a world where one brand’s $1,000 hoodie is indistinguishable from another’s. Where it is easier to copy the shape of a box bag with gold logo hardware that is working at another brand, than coming up with a unique shape of your own. Customers have cottoned onto this, and would rather spend their money on one-of-a-kind experiences or hard-to-find vintage pieces than have the same thing as everyone else.

Karl Lagerfeld at Chanel's Fall/Winter 2014-2015 show. (Getty Images)

But the lack of creativity and magic does not end there. The fashion system has also been buffeted by the sudden collapse of Matches and Farfetch, and the slow but steady decline of the once-dominant luxury e-commerce behemoth Yoox Net-a-Porter, which is a shell of its former self. The experience and assortment at Farfetch was not so different from Matches which was not so different from Net-a-Porter. This is in part because the people who bought or invested in these companies had no real. understanding of the creativity and taste required to create world-class retail. (Some of them did not understand how to manage technology either, but that’s a whole other analytical exercise.)
This meant the only way to compete was on price, which led to a downward spiral of discounting, training customers to wait for discounts, making profitability almost impossible to achieve. Sadly, the collateral damage has been independent fashion businesses that dependend on these platforms in the early stage of growth. Independent brands on both sides of the Atlantic are now on the brink, further diluting the creative lifeblood of fashion.

The result of all this is a fashion industry that fails to inspire customers, and not even ourselves. The current formulaic, corporatised, anodyne approach to fashion is clearly not working. This leaves me with the sinking feeling that things are about to break down. Maybe that’s what fashion needs to find its courage to be creative again.

why is john even in that picture? he's literally still employed. why are people trying to make him happen at other houses so badly? jfc

also why do these articles keep spreading the total lie that john only recently wiped his ig? it's been empty since LAST YEAR. trust a f*cking moron like imran ahmed to get his facts wrong. high school level journalism.

 

[susseinmcswanny]

I really shud just use the brain power to read that but I feel like I've seen articles about the exact same thing from 10 years ago, 20 years ago... we're just moving forward people! Someone needs to d*tonate the vest already.

 

[jeanclaude]

Marketing killed the fashion star...

 

[Cocteau Stone]

I feel like journalists have been churning the same rhetoric since the late 80s when it comes to the collapse of system. Literally during every season in the 90s had some kind of puff piece about regarding trends of supermodels, grunge, heroin chic, logomania, corporate growth, y2k etc. etc. Find something else to do or write about.

 

[tourbillions]

for a while i thought burton is replacing mary gracy at dior. and mary grace goes to gucci. that would be quite the turn of events.

 

[tomtakesphotos]

Great BOF article

noting it doesn't speculate that galliano wiped his instagram because he would leave margiela/go somewhere new it only says that people talked about this when he did that, so, to the above user u can calm down maybe, because indeed people (here) did talk

i feel like it misses the bigger financial picture, private equity stripping everything down the bones and selling off the parts just generally in our society, housing affordability, overall declining sense of dressing nice, declining quality of clothes, quality of art, music etc. it just all feels like a big decline, and yet, at the same time things are less affordable-- they are made in basically sweatshops yet they're more expensive than ever, housing went from something like 30% of avg person's salary to 50% but guess what it's all less beautiful and more chaotic as well.. nothing has gotten better, so of course, the shareholders are deciding to take all these brands built by true artists and turn them into 1k hoodie factories for the new wealthy chinese.. until that stops working.. it's all ruined