Power, credit and control: what working under creative directors really feels like
The hidden hierarchies that determine who gets visibility inside luxury studios
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. We decided it was time to ask the experts who are never asked.
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 internal politics, 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.
We all have NDAs in our contracts. I heard of a couple of people who got into trouble for breaching them, and it’s usually when the company wants to use the legal leverage over the employee for another problem that occurs. It’s a legal tool that can be used. Very often, companies will work hard to find a reason to fire someone. An NDA comes in handy there.
Companies want to protect themselves at all costs. It’s more and more prominent with the rise of conglomerates. There are three or four that control everything. This had a massive impact on the industry, because they want to stay as safe as possible.
████████, Head of Design Pre-Collection at ████
We are now in the era of the young creative director. I understand the frustration of people my age, but keep in mind that those kids were not even given the time to prove themselves. In most cases, they were out after two years. They received very high expectations, but we gave Hedi five years before he had to start selling.
██████, Senior Eyewear Designer ██████
As a talent acquisition expert, this is the core of my job: the people in the shadows. It’s the part of the industry no one ever talks about. The focus is always on designers, but there are countless important positions in design houses, and they are never mentioned. They are creative too – to be a product developer, for example, you need incredible creativity. There is this idea that only a handful of people have the flair to have a successful career, but so many people have spectacular careers, make half a million a year, and are never talked about.