Columns - Surface
by Sabrina Ciofi
by Sabrina Ciofi
Matthieu Blazy at Chanel, Pier Paolo Piccioli at Balenciaga, Demna Gvasalia at Gucci, Jonathan Anderson at Dior, Louise Trotter at Bottega Veneta, Simone Bellotti at Jil Sander, Glenn Martens at Maison Margiela, Meryll Rogge at Marni, Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough at Loewe, Duran Lantik at Jean Paul Gaultier, Michael Rider at Celine, Miguel Castro Freitas at Mugler, Dario Vitale at Versace, Rachel Scott at Proenza Schouler, Mark Thomas at Carven: these are all the new creative directors who debuted between July and September 2025.
The end of Donatella Versace’s creative leadership coincided with the acquisition of the Versace brand by the Prada Group. 2024 was a year of sharp contraction in fashion consumption, especially in the luxury sector. Over the last two years, the value of Kering’s shares has fallen by 60 percent, while LVMH’s shares have recorded a 25 percent loss in value since the beginning of 2025. Last September, Luca De Meo, former CEO of Renault, was appointed the new CEO of the Kering Group, replacing François-Henri Pinault, who had held the position for twenty years. Since 2023, more than six thousand fashion stores have closed in Italy alone. On September 4 in Milan, Giorgio Armani died.
If fashion were a human being and relied on the support of a psychologist, it would be suggested that a possible way out of its complex problem (the loss of coolness and, therefore, of economic value) lies in reading organic events—linked to succession—and systemic ones—economic crises—from a new perspective. Remaining faithful to one’s origins means preserving values, not the methodology, which instead must change and adapt to the present, to the moment. Fashion is pleasure, extravagance, individual expression, fun. A treatment for facing daily life with confidence and lightness. The needs of the financial system have flattened it, have plunged it into cynicism.
It has been roughly forty years since the marriage between fashion and finance, and the scenario—the analysis of the facts—tells us that the union is on the verge of failure: nonexistent creativity, flattening of the product, flattening of the image, flattening of communication content. Harsh and destructive criticism from that demos which embodied the ethos of the transition toward the financial world and democratic luxury.
Origins—who you are and where you come from—have nothing to do with the aestheticization of romanticism or nostalgia: they are a mirror that, with clarity, brings you back to the essence.
Fashion will not look into that mirror, and its destiny will be to exist as a language of the elites, of wealth, and of power—just as in its origins, before youth subcultures transformed it into a spectacular instrument of self-representation. Its aesthetics and the complexity of its language will be replaced by the logo and the brand, consecrating it as a luxury consumer good, on par with Ferrari, Maserati, or Cartier, but without the character of exclusivity and the exceptional quality of craftsmanship.