In-house designers on the biggest challenges inside luxury brands
"When ██████ added their couture line, the team didn’t expand. The work grew, but the team stayed the same."
Behind-the-scenes content is increasingly popular in fashion, communicating the PR-approved musings of this week’s creative director (gone the next). But what we really need is honest information about the inner workings of the top brands and conglomerates.
1 Granary has interviewed in-house designers at the height of their careers – the stalwarts who have been researching, conceptualising, designing, and producing every collection for the past three decades. Over the next few weeks, we will release a series of newsletters devoted to a different thematic area that emerged from our conversations: money, power dynamics, motherhood, equality, ageism and much more.
Following our conversations about salaries, power dynamics, and ageing, in this edition we’ll be discussing the power dynamics inside the often old-fashioned, hierarchical luxury brands of Paris, Milan, London and New York.
When I started, there were no pre-collections. There was no fax, we were on a telex machine, there were no emails. So there was always a delay between the designer coming to see you and you doing your research with the factories. The rhythm was very different. Now, everything is instant. The deadline is always yesterday.
The pressure is phenomenal in the major houses. And it cascades all the way down. In luxury houses, you have this constant pressure for innovation. We have a responsibility to lead the way, of finding sustainable solutions and dealing with these mental health issues. Because everyone we work with deals with the consequences. Nobody really wants to deal with it yet.
We’re in an industry of very creative people. When you get to the apogee of your industry, you deal with people who have egos. So you need to learn to deal with people and get them to work together around the idea of a collection. These highly creative, passionate people are very sensitive to this sense of urgency. Creativity is not on command, it’s spontaneous. This means you need time to discuss things.
████████, Senior Knitwear Developer at ██████
The fashion industry is an ecosystem on its own, it’s a village. The essence of Paris is gossip. Think about café culture. Cafés were built in Paris with terrasses so you could walk up and down the street and observe or be seen. It’s still like that.
Inside that you have the fashion industry, which is like a mini-Versailles. You have all of the maisons, and you have all of the designers moving around those maisons.
There are chief whips inside Paris fashion, like inside a government party, that can round up the troops and make something happen. For instance, you have head hunters who are very connected to the maisons, who are very connected to the press, and they place the right people inside the right brands, and that’s a society within Paris. Each designer is known for their specific skill, they are brands on their own.
██████, Head of Design at ████
It all comes down to trust. That is the core value. Trust has the ability to move a community, to set positive attitudes. But if there’s mistrust, there’s insecurity. It’s all about catching that vibe, being on the same wavelength when making decisions. You’re together 12 to 14 hours a day, you’re in very close contact with big personalities, and decisions are made based on feelings… So you really need to trust that people can do things the way you want them to, and in a way that will propel you as a creative leader. In order to inspire and lead, it takes a lot of skills to manage that.
Once you can cultivate loyalty, you can get a team to do anything. It’s like an army serving a general. When you’re inspired by a leader, it propels you to be hopeful. There is something so untouchable about this force. Sometimes you’re so inspired by someone’s point of view that you put up with a negative working environment.
Good product has less to do with the structure in a design studio and more with the culture and the energy. It can be brought up when there is a sense of camaraderie, or brought down when there is too much competition.
The most pressing issue within design studios is poor people management. It’s rarely thought through. It’s reactionary. There is no strategy, no idea of how things should work. It’s always based on feelings. The way the work is distributed isn’t always done in a respectful manner – it’s very much based on emotions. I’ve seen people come in, do brilliant design work, and then be let go six months later with no explanation, no warning. This culture really breeds mistrust.
████████, Senior VIP Designer at ████