Finally, after months of rumors, it’s official: On Monday, LVMH announced that Jonathan Anderson, the designer who transformed Loewe from a minor Spanish leathergoods house into a cultural lodestar and is one of the buzziest names in the LVMH stable, a favorite of Daniel Craig, Greta Lee and Josh O’Connor, was leaving the brand.
“What he has contributed to Loewe goes beyond creativity,” Sidney Toledano, the chief executive of the LVMH Fashion group, said of Mr. Anderson in the news release. “He has built a rich and eclectic world with strong foundations in craft which will enable the House to thrive long after his departure.”
Where Mr. Anderson goes next, and who takes his place, was not revealed. Cliffhanger!
Not really.
Planned designer moves have been leaking like a sieve since last fall. Things could always change, but it is widely accepted that Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, the American founders of Proenza Schouler who stepped down from their label in January, will be taking Mr. Anderson’s place at Loewe. Mr. Anderson is expected to move to Dior, where he will most likely take the reins of both women’s and men’s wear, the first designer to unite the two halves of the house in decades.
The mystery is not so much what happens next. The mystery is why it is taking so long, and unfurling so publicly. Even in a DOGE world where firings seem like everyday news, even in a world where designer change has begun to seem like the norm, this has been a painfully drawn-out procedure.
It’s easy to forget, in the fun of playing the fashion equivalent of fantasy football, that the designers involved are human beings rather than chess pieces, with teams of more human beings for whom they are responsible. As a result, Dior has a women’s wear designer, Maria Grazia Chiuri, who has been walking around for months with what seems to be a phantom guillotine hanging over her head.
Ms. Chiuri, 61, was the first woman to lead Dior in its approximately 80 years — and one of the few women at the head of a mega-luxury brand. In her nine years as artistic director of women’s wear, she helped take the brand from an estimated 2 billion euros in revenue to about 9 billion euros. She was also responsible for injecting a feminist note into its narrative and supporting female-led collectives and artists around the world, especially in India. Whatever anyone thinks of Ms. Chiuri’s work — and it could verge on the banal — or her politics (ditto), there’s no doubting her contribution to the business, her work ethic or her place in Dior’s history.
Yet according to the word on the street, Mr. Anderson, 40, has not only been finishing up his Loewe term but has also been working on a shadow Dior collection, even as Ms. Chiuri continues to work on her own. When Mikey Madison wore a remake of a 1956 Dior gown to the Oscars rather than a look from the current collection, it seemed like a portent. The rumors became so rampant that they helped prompt Kim Jones, the Dior men’s designer since 2018, to resign after his last show rather than exist in a state of further insecurity. (His position has not been filled, giving credence to the idea Mr. Anderson will take over both sides of the business.)
And the rumors cast a pall over not only Ms. Chiuri’s couture in January and her ready-to-wear show last month, but also Mr. Anderson’s Loewe presentation. “Was it the last or wasn’t it?” was as much a part of the reactions to the show as the designs themselves. It’s hard to commit to a designer’s vision — to buy into it — when it’s unclear if there’s a commitment to, or from, the designer himself.
It is possible, of course, that the extended ambiguity is partly Ms. Chiuri’s doing. It’s possible that she is in the middle of a protracted contract negotiation about exactly what shape her departure will take and that no one involved is legally free to address the situation. It is generally believed that her cruise show in May, which will be held in Rome, her hometown, will be her farewell. LVMH declined to comment on why the transition was taking so long or why the news was being released in piecemeal fashion. Sometimes, refusing to address rumors is the best way to make them go away.
Not this time, however. This time, the rumors simply became the accepted state of affairs. Which makes it hard not to wonder why everyone involved did not simply acknowledge the truth, even if it emerged at an inconvenient time, the better to move forward. That would have cast Ms. Chiuri’s final Dior collections and Mr. Anderson’s last at Loewe as collectibles rather than question marks. It would have made the changes exciting rather than anti-climactic.
After all, if fashion reveals anything, it is that closure, as well as transparency, has its own kind of chic.
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