However, Ramirez claims that Villaseñor was not afforded the luxury of sufficient time to reinvigorate Bally. “A year to turnaround a brand that has already been dead is very little time. I don’t think it’s fair enough to just rely on a creative director to do that,” told Ramirez to Complex. Continuing she says, “Within the year they brought this designer, they brought Bally back to the runway and some celebrities got behind it, but very little. That hype doesn’t instantly happen overnight. It does take a little bit of time and especially when you’ve lost an audience for a long time.”
Unfortunately, this profit-driven approach often results in relatively safe, but boring collections. Luxury houses no longer seem to be the boundary-pushing, agenda-setting agents in the fashion world. According to Atlanta de Cadenet Taylor, digital content creator, influencer, and the cofounder of consultancy papergirl, financial accountability is to blame. “When you have shareholders to respond to, it’s harder to be creative and risk-taking,” says de Cadenet Taylor, speaking to SSENSE. “Edgy stuff that some legacy brands do didn’t move the needle commercially, and they quickly went back [to less risky creative choices].”
Among these less risky creative choices is a reliance on brand archives to inspire present and future collections. Langer laments this, decrying what he refers to as the “endless variations of what was created decades ago with little to no inspiration for audiences of today.”
It is also interesting to note that many of these short-lived creative tenures were held by individuals with their own labels. One can argue that the overarching sameness in luxury fashion is not only based on profits, but partially a result of creative burnout. These young creative directors, thanks to their stellar work with their own labels, have caught the eyes of floundering stalwart luxury houses. However, the struggle to maintain their own brands and to revitalize failing ones with long histories could prove to be too much for them to manage.
