Over her 20-plus-year career as one of fashion’s foremost voices, Vanessa Friedman has redefined what it means to be a critic. As The New York Times’ fashion director and chief critic, she has witnessed the profession shift from gatekeeping to interpretation – from describing what happens on the runway to explaining what it means, how it connects to identity, and how fashion reflects the world around it.

Friedman sees her role as translating fashion’s codes for a wide public audience while holding the industry to account. ‘Whether or not you’re going to buy it, you’re going to see it,’ she says. ‘My job is to help you understand what you’re looking at – and to remind designers how their work will be seen.’ Her approach is both pragmatic and philosophical: she considers herself a journalist first, focused on clarity, honesty and accessibility, yet she writes about clothes as a language of values, desire and human behaviour. That balance between cultural meaning and commercial reality mirrors the industry itself. For Friedman, the critic’s task isn’t to sit in judgement from afar but to trace the connections between art, commerce and everyday life. ‘Fashion is about choice,’ she says. ‘And those choices reveal how people want to be in the world.’

Her reflections on this season suggest a wider shift in fashion’s priorities. The old fixation on ‘codes’ – the idea that designers must endlessly reinterpret house signatures – is giving way to something looser and more instinctive. The newest generation of designers, she argues, are less beholden to the archive and more concerned with spirit: what a brand represents emotionally, socially or culturally. ‘If I hear one more person talk about brand DNA,’ she laughs, ‘I’ll bash my head against a wall.’

System sat down with Friedman on the final day of Paris Fashion Week to discuss this landmark season. For Friedman, the most exciting change is its renewed focus on clothes themselves: not spectacle, not image, but garments made to be worn and lived in. As the industry wrestles with questions of identity, sustainability and risk, her perspective remains refreshingly clear.

Jonathan Wingfield: What influence do you think the fashion critic has today?
Vanessa Friedman: I think there are different dimensions to how I think about being a critic today. There’s the pure industry dimension – the shows and everything that happens at the highest levels. Then there’s what clothes mean, which isn’t limited to the shows or even to product. It’s how people use clothes, how identity connects to wardrobes. I think that’s all part of my job: helping people understand the choices they make about who they are through their clothing. The designer is saying something about how they think women or men want to be in the world with their clothes. That’s the purpose of a collection: to provide the tools of identity to its customers. Consumers are making those choices whether they’re aware of it or not. They’re influenced by a lot of things, including who they see wearing something – an influencer, a celebrity, or the President of the United States.

When you begin writing a review, especially during show season, who are you writing for? Are you writing for New Yorkers? For your peers in the industry? For Bernard Arnault? For housewives in the Midwest?
I’m writing for our readers. I’m trying to explain what I’m seeing, and what it has to do with them. Whether or not they’re going to buy it, they’re going to see it. So I try to explain what’s going on, why it’s happening, what it means. How to think about it, and, to a certain extent, to help designers understand how their work will be seen by consumers. When you’re so inside something, it’s hard to see it for what it is. Because of social media, fashion is now consumed by millions who will never buy it but will see it, talk about it and form opinions. As a designer, you have to keep that in mind.

Do you ever expect to have a dialogue with the house?
I’m not privy to internal conversations. I generally don’t hear much from brands, although if I’ve been particularly critical of something, I’ll sometimes be asked to come and talk to a designer or someone from the brand, which I always do. It’s your responsibility; you have to stand behind your words. It’s usually a cordial dialogue. I had very mixed reactions to [Alessandro] Michele’s Gucci collections. I appreciated the shift he caused and the courage it took to do that, but they always felt incredibly unedited and repetitive. I remember Marco Bizzarri, when he was CEO of Gucci, gave an interview to Corriere della Sera that was sent to me in translation. He said, ‘You write about me, I can talk about you too.’ They asked him about critics and he said, ‘Vanessa Friedman really drives me crazy. She never says anything good without saying something bad.’ But then he added that after he calms down, he realises, ‘She’s usually right.’ I told him I’d put that on my gravestone.

You’ve mentioned that we might be entering a new stage in fashion – one where designers seem less beholden to the strict ‘codes’ of their houses and more focused on making clothes that feel relevant and real. Do you think that shift has only just begun to surface?
Yes. It felt this season at Dior, Chanel and Gucci that the almost religious adherence to codes was falling away, and the clothes were easier to wear. They’re all making clothes – collections full of product. With Celine, you saw it and thought, ‘Well, you could put that on and be Parisian, walking around the Palais-Royal.’ That’s a shift we weren’t seeing before. When you look at something like Saint Laurent, which a lot of people loved, to me it felt a bit old – like it belonged to a different way of presenting fashion. It was much more about grand productions made for Instagram. The flower setup in the middle – hundreds of hydrangeas that, from above, formed the YSL logo – looked from the side like just a lot of hydrangeas. There were essentially three silhouettes that will make amazing editorial pictures, but it didn’t say anything new about how women should be.

Is it increasingly important for these designers to present themselves as ‘personalities’, or can they just get on with the work of designing clothes?
I think there’s room for both. Some designers will be less well-known than others. There’s a real desire to know the person behind the clothing, because clothes are intimate objects – you put them on your skin. But designers can be messy, fallible. We’ve seen pictures this season of Jonathan Anderson looking like he’s about to keel over from stress before the show. Designers once felt a need to be polished, to represent their brands’ grandeur. Now, maybe because of social media, they’re more willing to let the outtakes show – that’s appealing.

I was thinking about those Peter Marino-designed Dior flagships around the world. That’s going to be an interesting conversation betweem him and Jonathan Anderson, because you sense Jonathan’s best when he’s able to get into everything – when he can be radical, progressive, free. But there’s a structure at Dior, at all of these houses, and real risk involved financially. Bearing that in mind, what do you think the appetite for risk actually is?
Look at Gucci. It shifted under Sabato De Sarno, and last year sales went down 25 percent. That’s a lot. Classically, LVMH hasn’t embraced that much risk. At Dior, Vuitton and Fendi, they’ve traditionally split men’s and women’s lines between designers. They have different beauty people, different jewellery designers. The stores are designed completely separately. As you say, Peter Marino is responsible for them. So in the past they’ve really hedged their bets: if one element doesn’t work, it’s fine, because the others aren’t under that person’s control. What’s interesting about Jonathan is that he’s consolidated a lot of that. And it’s not just him. Silvia Fendi recently announced that she’s stepping up to become honorary president of the brand rather than creative director of accessories and menswear. Kim Jones has left Fendi [Maria Grazia ­Chiuri has now been appointed chief creative officer]. LVMH seems to be shifting strategy – that leaves Vuitton as the only split house in the group. It suggests they’re ready to do something more dramatic, potentially riskier, because this is such a crunch time for luxury.

Chanel is a house that’s always been engaged in presenting and selling big concepts – black and white, tweed, Karl’s spaceship, the supermarket show. I was just thinking: was this collection and this show big enough?
If you looked at what was on the runway, that was a big change. A lot of people couldn’t see the little chains at the hems of shirts – such a good touch, but hard to spot from afar.

Ironically, you actually got a better sense of that watching online.
That was one of the problems with Glenn Martens’ Margiela show. The ideas he was playing with, you just couldn’t see from where you were seated. He used tape to control volume, big slip dresses taped and backed by tulle or something. He was using tape to reshape pieces and cutting away lapels or collars so they could be reattached – hidden or used decoratively.

Do you get to go to many re-sees or showrooms, where you can actually see the clothes up close, and feel them?
No. I sometimes do previews, so I see things before the show, but I’m usually reviewing right after. Giorgio Armani used to get mad at me for criticising what was on his runway. He’d say, ‘But I have lots of things in the showroom!’ And I’d say, ‘I’m not reviewing your showroom.’

Were you frustrated not being able to see the pieces up close?
The Margiela stuff? I’d seen it before, so I knew what was going on. But I think one reason people felt deflated after that show – why it wasn’t well received –
was because you couldn’t really see the details. It looked flat.

Do you think customers seeing those clothes in stores will be wowed?
I think it’ll feel consistent with what they expect from Margiela – what they’re looking for. I don’t know if they’ll be blown away by it as a new statement, the way we were during couture, when it felt like this powerful blast.

The headline for your Chanel review was ‘Not Your Grandmother’s Chanel’. For someone who hasn’t read it, what was your take?
I feel like Matthieu brought the house back to life. It’s been frozen for a long time, even before Virginie Viard, who was really just a caretaker for Karl’s vision. The thing to remember about Chanel and Dior, which we all forget, is that these brands started as revolutions. Dior created the New Look and people freaked out. Now it’s the ultimate bourgeois symbol – Melania Trump’s favourite cosplay First Lady outfit. So Jonathan produced all this different stuff, and people were asking, ‘What’s the old Dior customer going to say?’ But that’s how those houses were born. Chanel offended people right and left when she started putting them in black, chopping sweaters in half to make jackets, wearing menswear when women didn’t. That’s what Matthieu’s done. It’s what Karl did when he got hold of Chanel – you know that famous, incredibly offensive quote about treating an institution like a whore? He was completely irreverent about fashion piety. And Matthieu’s doing the same thing in his own way.

In a softer way, right?
It’s a little more experimental, less aggressive, and some of the shapes were awkward. Those jackets – I thought, ‘Wow, that’s a big sleeve.’ Big shoulders, maybe not the most flattering shape. But the fact that he produced all this tweed and none of it was bouclé was really interesting. He made flowers, but they didn’t look like the old camellias – they were spiky and strange. He used pearls that looked like they’d been crushed up and worked into sweaters. He spoke the language of Chanel, but in a completely different way. The clothes looked easy to wear. And I just loved the number of pockets.

Why?
There are never enough pockets in women’s clothing! An evening look that’s a giant ball skirt with pockets and a silk T-shirt is so appealingly easy. Chanel was about making things easy, we just forgot that. That’s what I mean about the spirit of the house.

He’s someone who has been lauded for using design to express newness, rather than image. Now feels like the moment for the industry, and hopefully customers, to fall back in love with clothes.
I think it’s ridiculous to say, ‘What’s so great about this is that he made clothes.’

I made a note of something you wrote in your Chanel review for The New York Times – that Blazy had made ‘clothes you could wear, not clothes just for maximum smartphone impact.’ That the most shocking thing about clothes may simply be making great ones. It’s hiding in plain sight sometimes. When I think about someone like Demna, with his first couture collection at Balenciaga, it was explosive. But what do you think of when you think of Gucci now?
I think Demna is bringing it back to what that spirit probably is.

What do you think that is?
Hot and rich. That’s what people want from Gucci. It’s what Tom [Ford] did so well, and what Frida [Giannini] did, at least she did at the beginning. Less so [Alessandro] Michele. The problem with Sabato De Sarno, which I don’t think was his fault, is that he was hired to do the wrong thing for Gucci. It’s what management wanted. But no one wants Gucci to be Hermès.

Do you think the pressure on the designer as an individual comes from critics like yourself? People saying, ‘The fortune of the Kering group rests on this one person’s shoulders’?
We may think so, because the designer is the one they hang out to dry – or praise when it works. But it’s about merchandising, marketing, stores, production, management. You saw it with Valentino under Pierpaolo [Piccioli]. People would say, ‘It’s so beautiful, so wonderful,’ but then you’d walk into stores and see only Rockstud shoes. You’d wonder, ‘Where’s the beauty, where’s the magic?’ They blamed him, but clearly it wasn’t just him.

How would you define what Demna brings to a brand?
He’s very smart. He’s good at looking at a brand and translating it. He’s plugged in; he pays attention to culture, politics, young people, communication, anxieties, joys. He’s aware.

Do you think that kind of awareness – being plugged into different aspects of society – is what’s required at Gucci?
Or is it more about distilling those things into ‘hot and rich’?
I actually stole that line from the film Spike Jonze and Halina Reijn made for Demna’s Gucci. It wasn’t mine – it was Alex Consani’s line. Her character says, ‘I’m a hot, rich bitch.’ And I thought, yep, that sums it up.

Demna delivered archetypes as his first ‘collection’. Would you say the lexicon of fashion design has been largely defined and now it’s more a case of what designers do with that language, how they mix and match or rework it?
There are always new ways of seeing and understanding clothing’s possibilities. That’s what designers bring. That’s what Demna brought when he challenged the hierarchy of luxury – asking why a puffer jacket or sweatshirt couldn’t be on a pedestal. It’s what [Coco] Chanel did when she chopped up a sweater in order to make a jacket, took the stays out of women’s clothes, and said, ‘Why shouldn’t someone be free to move?’
At its best, that’s what fashion does.

Everything we’ve discussed so far has been in Paris or Milan. Michael Rider delivered a solid collection for Celine, and Jack [McCollough] and Lazaro [Hernandez] did a good job at Loewe. I thought both delivered collections which were upbeat and wearable.Why aren’t these American designers doing that for American brands now?
Well, I think there’s still a lot that’s exciting in New York. But not at scale. American fashion isn’t really about heritage houses.

But it’s certainly about scale.
It’s only been about scale since Calvin, Ralph and Donna – and even then, it was just those three. It’s a different tradition: people making it themselves. There are exciting brands coming out of America. It’s producing the most political fashion, and the most exciting ‘outsider’ fashion, of any country. Brands like Telfar barely participate in the system – they don’t care about that, yet they’re thriving. They have a specific community they understand deeply and speak directly to. That’s exciting.

Fashion is currently operating against the broader backdrop of geopolitical and economic uncertainty. Would you say that was reflected on the runways of Milan and Paris?
The two most disappointing things this season were, first, some of the odd statements designers made about women: the trapped arms at Alaïa, the aprons at Miu Miu. I still have conflicted feelings about that. Second, the lack of engagement with the world’s reality. There was a retreat from politics everywhere except Valentino, where Alessandro Michele quoted Pasolini from World War II and made it part of his show. The rest just felt lame. The number of designers who told me their show was about optimism because people needed something to be happy about – really? That’s all you’ve got? ‘Optimism’?

It was present by its absence, wasn’t it?
That’s partly why there’s been such a positive reaction to designers who make clothes. Clothes you can actually wear give you the agency to move through the world and get things done. And right now, that’s what people want. The world feels complicated and scary, so you want clothes that let you get on with it – not garments that bind you, make you take tiny steps, or constantly need adjusting.

Just to go back to what you were saying about statements about women. In decades past, someone like Rudi Gernreich was showing fashion as an expression of radical or progressive shifts in society. I didn’t see much of that this season. It was more about grabbing attention.
I felt that way about Duran Lantink’s Gaultier show. He’s talented, but it’s not enough to say your inspiration is raving because ‘it’s fun’. If it’s about catharsis, a release from stress and darkness, fine, I can get behind that. But to do it just for a shocking picture? That’s not enough. At Alaïa, there were beautiful things – Pieter [Mulier] makes incredible coats and those cotton shirt dresses were gorgeously done – but I couldn’t get past the arm binding.

What does this season’s womenswear say about women today?
Designers aren’t thinking about women, which means they’ve lost the plot. It’s the first and last thing they should consider: how will this be worn and received? It speaks to a broader lack of concern for women. There’s a movement in the US toward the ‘tradwife’; a strange tension between what people say and how they live. You’ve got the first female prime minister in Japan, the first female Archbishop of Canterbury, yet there’s a conservative swing toward old-fashioned gender roles.

In fashion, there are female designers, but only a handful.
That was shocking. Out of 14 debuts this season, only one was by a woman.

Louise Trotter at Bottega Veneta.
Yes, and we get two more next season [Rachel Scott at Proenza Schouler and Meryll Rogge at Marni; since this interview, Maria Grazia Chiuri has been announced as chief creative officer at Fendi], so that’s something. I was talking to someone about the designer’s bow – when they come out at the end. The men all wear the same thing: jeans, shirt over a T-shirt, baseball cap. And you think, ‘A lot of you make menswear, so wear your product!’ One thing I’ve always admired about Miuccia Prada is how she wears her own clothes. She puts them together in such an interesting way. She looks great, and you think, ‘OK, I could be that person.’

Obviously, we’re in a season where Prada isn’t part of the newness, yet her presence is always felt. That Miu Miu show yesterday, what were your first thoughts as you were leaving?
Miu Miu is Miuccia’s laboratory for exploring historical ideas about women. She takes clichéd archetypes and transforms them. In doing so, she empowers women. Last season’s bullet bras took a conservative 1950s idea of femininity and weaponised it – you could poke someone with that. The aprons this time followed that logic but didn’t quite achieve the same transformation. They still felt too much like aprons, the kind worn by women who are service workers and can’t afford Miu Miu. She talked about that afterwards, but it’s a tricky tension.

Is it important for you to speak to designers after the shows?
If there’s something I really want to know, yes. But if it’s not communicated on the runway, it probably didn’t work. You should get it from the clothes – that’s how consumers experience them. Once clothes are in the world, the designer has no control over interpretation. Thom Browne told me about his aliens coming to Earth, and I asked, ‘Is this a comment on immigration?’ He said, ‘No, I just thought it was fun.’ But most American audiences will read it that way. He can’t control that. Often, whatever a designer says, I don’t quote them – my job isn’t to be their mouthpiece.

Before we move on, I just wanted to talk about London.
I didn’t go to London.

Have you been recently?
About a year ago.

Do you think London has come to terms with being an incubator for creative talent that then moves elsewhere? Rather than a city synonymous with any kind of scale beyond Burberry.
It would be great for London if brands like Alexander McQueen, Stella McCartney and Victoria Beckham – all mid-to-small fish in the big Paris pond – went back and supported younger designers. It would make London Fashion Week more of a magnet. There are reasons people don’t go – mainly economics. It’s expensive to cover shows. Historically, London has been the one that gives way because it’s smaller.

Is that push and pull between commerciality and the avant-garde something you saw this season?
That’s what Thom Browne does. His collections are completely split between the concept pieces and the clothes that people will buy and wear.

I was also thinking about your comment on Duran Lantink’s Gaultier collection, where there were seemingly very few wearable clothes. But is that even the role of the runway these days? Isn’t it more about grabbing attention, while behind the scenes the wearable pieces inspired by the runway looks are being made?
This comes up a lot. It’s complicated because a brand like Gaultier hasn’t sold clothes in a long time – they sell perfume. They haven’t had a ready-to-wear line for years. So what’s the purpose of the runway? Maybe it’s just marketing. A long time ago I interviewed Tom Murry, then CEO of Calvin Klein. He said, ‘The runway is a marketing expense.’ Literally, that’s what it was to them. Which is why it sometimes feels odd to review clothes you know no one will ever see. Louis Vuitton produces only very small amounts of clothing; it really sells accessories. And yet Nicolas [Ghesquière]’s collections still create an image for the brand.
Yet his collections for Balenciaga are some of the most coveted on the resale market. People continue to really want those clothes. And the bags. So yes, it can feel strange to review clothes that most people will never see in a store.

Have you acknowledged that to your readership?
Every once in a while, but you can’t do it every season. I can’t just write, in parentheses, ‘These are not really produced.’

You mentioned earlier the pragmatism of clothes – what they mean and what they do. But if these pieces aren’t destined to be worn, they become something else. Is there a sense that Gaultier might produce wearable versions of those runway looks?
I don’t see why not, but that’s a question for Puig – how much they want to invest.

Looking at that show, I was reminded of the influence that Instagram and – more within the industry – Vogue Runway may be having on fashion design, given the way so much runway imagery is presented only in 2D, front-facing.
Nothing drives me crazier than wanting to write about the back of a garment but having no pictures to actually show it.

That was my takeaway – there’s a whole story in the back of the clothes which rarely gets shown. You could see people’s visceral reaction at the shows, but it’s never presented in photos.
Daniel Roseberry at Schiaparelli said something interesting when I asked about all the backs in his collection. He said, ‘It’s the most analogue thing you can do, because it’s the part you don’t see. You don’t see it on Zoom, you don’t see it on video, you don’t see it in pictures. That makes it special.’ I thought that was a fascinating way to put it.

In terms of show presentation and Instagram, do you watch shows online, the ones you don’t attend?
My biggest takeaway during Covid, when we were all watching shows online, was how easy it was to stop watching them. I’d think, ‘I can go get a coffee now.’ I usually watch on YouTube rather than Instagram – maybe because of all the camera angles they add to make it look fancy.

Are there shows when the spectacle influences how you read a collection?
It absolutely can. But I feel strongly that, in the end, it rises or falls on the clothes. Being dragged out to a park or a castle because the venue is special – that’s fine, but you’re still judging the clothes. I think designers sometimes forget that. Still, Haider Ackermann’s show was incredible – dark, moody, full of smoglike smoke – and Matthieu’s galaxy was spectacular.

What about someone like Yohji? His shows are always quiet.
It’s a vibe. I loved his Armani tribute.

Someone like Phoebe Philo has so far eschewed the runway or done much beyond releasing photographs and e-comm drops. Do you find that frustrating or refreshing? Can you still analyse those clothes in the same way?
I can, because I’ve seen the clothes, talked to her about them, and understand how they’re made. I don’t think she needs a show; a lot of brands could skip one. It would be nice if her clothes were more accessible so people could touch and try them on, but she’s thinking long-term, and that’s laudable. What was exciting about Demna’s Gucci thing was that it happened during fashion week – you could write about it, there were clothes to see, but it wasn’t a show. There’s more room for that kind of experimentation.
There’s also an enormous municipal imperative to keep fashion week alive – it’s a huge windfall for all the surrounding industries: hotels, florists, electricians, drivers, set builders, restaurants. But there are other ways to do it. I remember when Diane von Furstenberg relaunched in the early 2000s, she held presentations at her Little West 12th Street HQ. You could drop in anytime, and she staged vignettes of people living in her clothes – having picnics, on swings, drinking champagne. It was brilliant because it showed you what to do in her clothes. Once she moved on to runway shows, the expectations ballooned and the message got lost.

Do you think the runway has fully consolidated its influence as the format that’s expected for a designer to present their collections?
There’s so much fashion done ‘because that’s how we do it’. And no one seems to stop to ask why.

Post-Covid’s return to the runway felt like the new lessons had been forgotten.
Exactly. It was so frustrating. Some of what designers did during Covid was genuinely exciting, and then it all just disappeared.

What struck me about Jonathan Anderson’s Dior show was the whole fanfare beyond the collection on the runway itself. The scale of frenzy outside, Paris at a total standstill, the celebrities presented in sequence online, going from fittings, to their cars, to arriving at the show, to being sat front row…
If you have a celebrity who really loves your brand, you could make a whole series of films or moments with them and reach the same audience.

And that Adam Curtis film was…
I really loved that film. I love a good horror movie.

It was a rather violent way to start at a house.
But that was what made it brilliant. It captured the moment – fashion feels violent. Getting into that show felt violent, with crowds pushing and bodyguards shoving you aside. It was relevant and funny, because it’s true.

Was there something you saw this season that felt particularly new or memorable?
Maybe not entirely new, but the twisting of the codes at Chanel was very clever. I loved the shoes – pumps like little slippers, dipped at the toe rather than cut off. Smart. And Versace was completely unexpected. Taking that glamazon figure off the pedestal and putting her in the back of a car was brave and brilliant. It had real momentum.

I thought that small-town sexiness of Versace was interesting, anarchic even. It was Miami, but not Miami. Italy, but not the Italy we’re sold. It wasn’t ‘luxury’ in the generic sense, and that felt luxurious. Maybe a palate cleanser, maybe a new direction. It’s almost the antithesis of ‘hot and rich’.
I agree, though the ‘hot and rich’ thing in the Spike Jonze film for Gucci also had humour – it was both in on the joke and of the joke, which is key. Tom Ford’s Gucci had that too. One of the things, I think, which was an issue with Frida Giannini’s take on Gucci was that it became just ‘hot and rich’. Nothing else. And that balance of glamour and wit is what makes it irresistible.

Was there a conversation you had this season that really stayed with you?
What stood out were the debates around certain shows, like Versace, which people either loved or hated. Or Alaïa, where I had a very different reaction to most. Those differences are what keep fashion interesting.

What do you want to see more of at fashion month?
Fashion, particularly luxury fashion, still clings to the idea that it must be perfect. That’s why they only ever let the designer speak and never show the people making the clothes. If you ask for runway pictures, it takes days – everything must be approved, retouched, colour-corrected. I’d love to see more willingness to be messy, to experiment in public, even from the big houses that have historically done everything they can to avoid that.
The Adam Curtis film at Dior was a good expression of that. A bit deranged, but expressive nonetheless, and it brought value to the show experience.
Exactly. And I think the reason people are talking about Versace, Dior, Chanel, Celine is because they all have this sense of energy and reality that feels relevant. The highly stylised, Instagram-perfect shows feel like they belong to another era.

By the same logic, what would you like to see less of at fashion month?
Shoes people can’t walk in. Clothes that bind. There should never be a hobble skirt on a runway. Women should never look like they’re in pain. I’m glad there were fewer corsets this season – the return to corsetry was not a positive development. This is not a time to bind or constrict women. There’s already enough suffering in life; we don’t need it in our closets. No designer should be sending out the message that you must suffer for fashion.

What does success look like for a luxury house today?
I wish it looked like profit instead of sales. So many quarterly reports focus on revenue rather than profit, which has nothing to do with sustainability. You can grow sales while losing money. That obsession drives overproduction: too many stores, too much churn, too much new. Brands should want customers to invest long-term. The backlash against constant price increases shows they’ve eroded people’s sense of value.

We haven’t touched on sustainability, fashion’s great paradox.
Make less stuff! Right now, the rule in manufacturing is: make three things to sell one. That’s absurd. No other industry would operate like that. The waste extends to fashion week itself – you sit for 20 minutes waiting for a 15-minute show. Multiply that by the salaries of everyone in the room and imagine presenting that as a business plan. Any other industry would be horrified.

All this newness has also played out against unprecedented profit losses.
Except at Hermès, Brunello Cucinelli and Loro Piana.

Do you have any thoughts on that, and on where things might be heading?
It’s part of a dramatic pivot. But I hope the industry recalibrates. Double-digit growth every quarter is unsustainable. Anything less is now seen as failure when, in reality, it’s normalisation. Nine or 10 percent growth used to be great. There’s a geometry problem here – if we live on a sphere, you can’t keep expecting profits to rise forever. If it means fewer big brands, that’s fine. It’s Darwinian. And there are other ways to make money: beauty, perfume, or entirely new kinds of aesthetic and community-based experiences.

You mean immaterial things?
Exactly. You can generate value from many places. The key is to think creatively – which, supposedly, is what this industry does best.