The founder's dilemma: evolving luxury brands beyond their creators

The luxury fashion landscape is in constant flux, with the departure of founding designers presenting a formidable challenge, particularly for younger brands. As Tom Ford navigates a pivotal transition following Peter Hawkings' brief tenure as creative director, it joins the ranks of houses like Helmut Lang, Martin Margiela and Jil Sander in grappling with the complexities of maintaining creative momentum in a post-founder era.

This struggle stands in contrast to the relative stability exhibited by established houses such as Chanel, Balenciaga, and Givenchy, which have long since weathered similar transitions. The divergence in these experiences underscores a critical question facing the industry: how can younger luxury brands successfully evolve beyond their founding visionaries while preserving their essential DNA?

Preserving fashion’s DNA

This problem can be attributed to a complex interplay of factors, chief among them the concept of brand legacy. The older houses have had the benefit of time, allowing their identities to mature and solidify over decades, often outliving their founders by generations, as in the cases of Dior, Chanel, and Louis Vuitton. This longevity has afforded them the opportunity to develop a brand DNA that transcends any single creative vision, enabling smoother transitions between artistic directors. With Chanel now also in the midst of appointing a new creative lead after parting ways with Virginie Viard, it is a safe bet that the house will be less prone to fluctuations than Tom Ford.

Benefit of time

Conversely, younger brands like Tom Ford find themselves in a more precarious position. With their founders' departures and legacy still fresh in the collective memory of both the consumer and fashion world, the (new) owners must navigate the delicate balance between honoring their heritage and forging a path forward.

Consumer expectations play a crucial role in this dynamic. For newer brands, customers often harbor very specific expectations based on the founder's recent work, making any deviation a potential point of contention.

The corporate landscape further complicates matters. While luxury houses Balenciaga and Fendi have long been integrated into larger luxury conglomerates with well-oiled systems for managing designer transitions, younger brands are often experiencing their first major leadership changes under new corporate ownership. This can lead to conflicts between expectations and commercial imperatives, further destabilising the transition process.

Moreover, the fashion industry itself has undergone seismic shifts. The transitions of older houses occurred in an era of less intense media scrutiny and slower fashion cycles. Today's brands must navigate their evolutions under the unforgiving glare of social media and in a market that demands constant innovation. Not to mention shareholder profits.

Established brands typically boast diverse product portfolios and multiple revenue streams, providing a buffer against the turbulence of creative transitions. Younger brands, often still heavily reliant on signature products or aesthetics closely associated with their founders, face greater financial risk during periods of creative flux.

As the industry watches Tom Ford navigate this challenging terrain, the broader question looms: can these younger houses successfully transition from founder-led creativity to enduring institutional brands? The answer likely lies in their ability to distill the essence of their founding visions into a set of core brand values that can withstand and adapt to changing creative leadership. Helmut Lang, for example, never reached the pinnacles of success under its various owners as it did when Mr. Lang was designing. It also took Jil Sander multiple creative iterations, which saw Milan Vukmirovic, Raf Simons, Rodolfo Paglialunga, a brief return of founder Jil Sander and now Lucie and Luke Meier lead creative direction. The latter being generally well-received.

For Tom Ford, Estée Lauder paid a high price and cannot afford to see sales and relevance decline. Under Mr. Ford's creative direction, all aspects from marketing, store design, advertising campaigns, runway shows, and product collections were honed under one vision, that of Mr. Ford. Even if in latter seasons the ready-to-wear became less cool, perhaps even lost momentum, it was always unified and integral to a multifaceted business. But if sales of beauty and fragrances slip, the financial buoy of the house, then Estée Lauder will need a contingency plan if Mr. Ford's longtime employee and first successor, Peter Hawkings, someone who intrinsically understood the brand and its values, could not sustain the transition.