Why Not Lead Chanel?

Creative Director's Role

[Intro]

Last December, Chanel finally appointed a new Creative Director (CD). Matthieu Blazy. Blazy is a designer who has worked at Raf Simons and Maison Margiela, and in 2014 he also served as a senior designer at Céline under Phoebe Philo. He became widely recognized as a Creative Director when he succeeded Daniel Lee at Bottega Veneta—and was praised for preserving Bottega’s craftsmanship while successfully injecting the brand with a younger energy.

Matthieu Blazy

Chanel’s Creative Director seat sat vacant for roughly six months, and the question of who would take over was watched obsessively. If you read fashion magazines and prominent editors’ columns from that period, you’d think the industry’s top headhunters were “meeting every designer on Earth”—which suggests just how carefully Chanel was weighing its decision.

So why is it such a huge deal—big enough to dominate headlines in fashion media—when a single house’s Creative Director steps down or is replaced? Let’s dig into it.

[The Role of a Creative Director]

The term “Creative Director” originally comes from advertising, and it first entered the fashion industry in the 1990s. Before that, a similar role existed under the title of Artistic Director (AD). Most ADs were fashion designers by training, and their main job centered on product design and show direction.

Over time, however, the responsibilities of an AD expanded dramatically. Not only product planning and design, but also communication style—and even decisions like selecting models or brand ambassadors—started to fall under the role. In other words, the person became responsible for everything visual about the fashion house.

That’s why today’s Creative Director at a fashion house is not simply a head designer who creates garments. A CD is someone who conceives the brand’s distinctive sensibility, builds a cohesive world around it, and takes responsibility for translating that sensibility into products and cultural presence.

[Famous Creative Directors]

One of the figures most often credited with establishing the modern blueprint for the Creative Director role is Tom Ford, widely regarded as one of the most successful fashion designers of all time.

When Ford became director at Gucci in 1994, he didn’t just design clothes. He personally shot imagery for magazine editorials, and he directed everything from store visuals to advertising. At the time, Gucci was seen as an old-fashioned Italian brand—one that was, frankly, fading. Ford successfully redefined it as a brand that was youthful, targeted, and undeniably sexy. His logic was blunt: “Eroticism sells to Gen X.” He pushed a sex-coded aesthetic to the front and, over the next ten years, increased Gucci’s sales more than thirteenfold. He broke the stereotype that luxury must always be elegant and refined, repositioning Gucci as provocative, sensual, trendy, and modern.

One of Tom Ford’s relatively “milder” Gucci ad campaigns.

From 2006 to 2014, Frida Giannini served as CD and led Gucci with a more “feminine” image, but sales growth remained sluggish. Then Alessandro Michele took the reins in 2016, and Gucci’s revenue—once stuck around the KRW 4–5 trillion range—surged to as high as KRW 13 trillion. It’s an interesting contrast: if Tom Ford targeted Gen X, Michele targeted the MZ generation and expanded the brand once again in a different direction.

Another Creative Director frequently cited as one of the hottest names today is Daniel Lee. Originally a designer under Phoebe Philo, he became Bottega Veneta’s Creative Director in 2018. He is credited with modernizing a brand built on craftsmanship and heritage by proposing “Bottega Green” and boldly enlarging the iconic intrecciato weave pattern.

“Bottega Green” and the enlarged Intrecciato weave

In 2021, he was appointed Creative Director of Burberry, but there’s a sense he may be repeating himself. Where it was intrecciato at Bottega, it’s the Burberry check here; where it was Bottega Green, it’s Knight Blue front and center. Perhaps because of that, his performance at Burberry has so far been underwhelming.

“Knight Blue” and an amplified check pattern

[Why Chanel’s Creative Director Role Stayed Vacant for So Long]

① From the hirer’s perspective: Chanel hasn’t “changed CDs” in forty years.

By now, we’ve established that the Creative Director role can be crucial enough to determine whether a fashion house survives. So let’s return to Chanel.

Since Karl Lagerfeld, Chanel has not hired a new designer into the very top tier of authority for roughly forty years. Then what about Virginie Viard, who served as CD from Karl’s death until last June? In many ways, her position felt more like an acting role. Karl died suddenly, and Viard—his longtime right hand—stepped in immediately. Many people see it as five years of acting leadership followed by what was effectively a dismissal.

From 2019 to 2023, Chanel’s revenue reportedly grew from around KRW 14 trillion to KRW 20 trillion, so if you look purely at financial performance, you might wonder why she was removed. The precise reason hasn’t been publicly clarified, but Chanel seems to have wanted someone capable of innovating the house with a longer-term perspective.

Viard spent most of her career as Karl’s right hand, supporting his sketches and ideas, rather than building an independent reputation as a visionary in her own right. She was often criticized for lacking originality.

In short: Chanel let Viard go, but because the house hasn’t truly hired a new top-level Creative Director in forty years, it likely proceeded with extreme caution—cautious enough to stage two shows with the CD role still vacant.

Karl Lagerfeld, who led Chanel for decades

② From the candidate’s perspective: Chanel’s legacy and scale are intimidating.

The fact that Chanel continued to run shows without a Creative Director also hints at why hiring was difficult. Chanel is the world’s second-largest fashion brand after Louis Vuitton, and it is a deeply legacy-driven house—one that can, to some extent, keep the machine running even without a single visionary figure at the top.

Karl Lagerfeld once said something along these lines: “Designing Chanel is like decorating a Christmas tree. You just rearrange the signature tweeds, double Cs, and pearls every season.” In other words, Chanel has signatures and silhouettes that you are not supposed to break away from. And yet Karl managed to show newness through creative variation for forty years. Finding someone who can protect the legacy while still creating something meaningfully new is not easy.

On top of that, Chanel’s scale is enormous. Because it isn’t a public company, it does not disclose detailed financials in the same way, but estimates often place revenue above KRW 20 trillion—making it the world’s second-largest fashion brand after Louis Vuitton. For these reasons, there were even rumors that some designers declined the position.

With a house that tradition-heavy and that large, there are simply too many stakeholders. A young designer might reasonably conclude that Chanel is not the kind of place where one can fully unleash their creative instincts.

Chanel signatures: tweed, chain straps, and pearls

[Outro]

In the public imagination, Karl Lagerfeld felt almost like the “owner” of Chanel. But in reality, Chanel has joint owners—Alain Wertheimer and Gérard Wertheimer—and day-to-day business operations are run under a structure where Bruno Pavlovsky plays a central role.

The person who left the strongest impression on me is Pavlovsky, the president of Chanel’s fashion division. He has worked at Chanel since 1990 and has held the role of president of the fashion division since 2000—essentially a “Chanel king.”

Suddenly I find myself thinking: how exhausting must his job have been? Keeping the Wertheimer brothers satisfied, negotiating the demands of a sharp-edged creative like Karl Lagerfeld, and still driving Chanel’s performance upward—what a life. (I tend to empathize a little too easily with salaried workers.)

Anyway, I hope Mr. Bruno Pavlovsky doesn’t get scolded—or worse—by the Wertheimer brothers, and that Matthieu opens a new paradigm for Chanel.