Fashion’s Groupthink Problem

It has been a nutso year in designer churn. Last month, three new creative directors made their debuts during Milan Fashion Week: Sabato De Sarno at Gucci, Peter Hawkings at Tom Ford and Simone Bellotti at Bally. The day after Paris Fashion Week ended, Seán McGirr was named designer at Alexander McQueen, replacing Sarah Burton after more than a decade. Less than a week later, Chloé announced its new creative director, Chemena Kamali. Any day now, Moschino is expected to unveil its new designer.

And yet, despite all the changes — the kind of switcheroos that once would have signaled New Looks and Wardrobe Upheaval and all the stuff that makes what happens inside these brands affect the people who actually wear the products the brands produce — the result has been largely status quo. In the worst way.

Much has been made of the fact that Mr. McGirr’s appointment at Alexander McQueen means that now all six of the fashion brands owned by Kering, the second-largest fashion group in the industry, are run by white male designers — and not just white male designers, but white male designers with practically the same haircuts, approach to facial hair and résumés. That is not a good look, as the various reactions on social media to the headshots of the group’s creative directors made clear.

Designers are, after all, the most visible representations of a brand, or its ownership group. Whatever happens behind that facade — whatever the makeup of the teams or company board; whatever the diversity initiatives inside — the designers’ faces are the ones the public sees. In this case it looks as if the public reckoning with fashion’s history of racism that occurred in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement never happened. The message those images send is homogeneity at a time when the population they should serve is broader and more varied than ever.

“So many people feel they actually don’t belong in this industry, which is supposed to be for everyone, because it dresses everyone, but then its reflection is so opposite to its function,” said Thebe Magugu, the young South African designer with a namesake line who won the LVMH prize for young designers in 2019.