Constant Burnout’s Guide to the SS26 Fashion Month Creative Director Debuts
By @constantburnout , September 17 2025
Luxury fashion just had its biggest creative direction shake up in the post-pandemic period since Bernard Arnold’s purchasing rampage of luxury fashion houses in late 80s to 90s. From century-old legacy houses to newer Avant-Garde houses, over a dozen newly appointed creative directors will showcase their new visions of their respective houses, making the upcoming SS26 fashion month one of the most anticipated in recent memory. The significance of the appointment of Pierpaolo Piccioli for Balenciaga, Matthieu Blazy for Chanel, Luise Trotter for Bottega Veneta, Miguel Castro Freitas for Mugler, Duran Lantink for Jean Paul Gaultier, Jack McCollough & Lazaro Hernandez for Loewe, Jonathan Anderson for Dior, and Glenn Marten for Maison Margiela cannot be understated. Despite the flurry of appointments, the faces themselves are largely familiar. Nearly all are white men, with Luise Trotter the sole woman in the line up. While the political problem of fashion’s homogeneity is perhaps a topic deserving its own separate discourse, the question for now is whether these RTW debuts can cut through a slowing luxury market and articulate fresh, convincing visions for how we should dress today.
Pierpaolo Piccioli for Balenciaga
October 4th
October 4th
Pierpaolo’s understanding of luxury dressing is in stark contrast to Demna’s (Balenciaga’s previous creative director) aesthetic universe, which was much more subversive to the luxury fashion space, inspired by post-Cold War Eastern European streetwear, and extreme oversized silhouettes. During Demna’s peak at Balenciaga (from the SS20 Parliament Show to the bondage bears and child abuse papers controversy), he produced theatrical, borderline prophetic shows that responded to global contemporary issues and created viral products season after season, completely changing the public perception of Balenciaga and making the brand one of the most searched terms on the Lyst Index1.
As Balenciaga’s upcoming and former creative director’s visions are so distinct from each other, this transition is one of the most anticipated on the SS26 calendar. On Pierpaolo and Kering’s (Balenciaga’s parent company) announcement of the appointment, Pierpaolo stated that being the creative director of Balenciaga is one of his earliest dreams, as his first Instagram post was Cristobal Balenciaga’s 1967 white single seam wedding gown. Pierpaolo has stated that he has great respect for Demna’s tenure, and that he paid homage to Cristobal in his own way. Most people are expecting Pierpaolo to bring back the uncompromising sophistication and elegance of Cristobal. Others are curious to see whether he could continue building on some of the Demna codes and merging with his own couture aesthetic from Valentino.
1 Since its debut in 2017, the quarterly Lyst Index has turned fashion’s shifting trends into a kind of competitive sport. The press loves it, brands celebrate it when they reach the top, and insiders often treat it as a reliable market thermometer.
Matthieu Blazy for Chanel
October 6th
October 6th
Virginie Viard was the right-hand woman of Karl Lagrafeld at Chanel before she was appointed the role of Creative director herself in 2019. She worked closely with Lagerfeld on all 10 collections that Chanel produces each year. Karl was never a hands-on designer, as Azzedine Alaïa had famously said “Karl Lagerfeld never touched a pair of scissors in his life”. Virginie was really the force behind to make sure the sketches would turn into real clothes by the day of the show. But it is always sad to see the student not being able to reach the mastery of their teacher, as Virginie’s collections were truly unimaginative, often littered with looks that were extremely unflattering, and she quietly left the house in June last year.
Matthieu Blazy in many ways is the perfect candidate for Chanel. He has an artistic and cultural background like Karl, referencing the Unique Forms of Continuity in Space by Umberto Boccioni (1913) for his FW22 Bettega debut. Despite his youthful looks, he is a very seasoned and experienced designer, as he had worked under Raf Simon’s Calvin Klein, Phoebe Philo’s Celine, and was the secret artistic director of Maison Margiela (discovered and outed by fashion critic Suzy Menkes, who famously gave Blazy the praise “you can’t keep such a talent under wraps”), after the leave of the brand’s founder Martin Margiela. Without a doubt that the appointment of Blazy at Chanel would not only be an artistic one but also a commercially successful one, as he has created so many “it products” for Bottega, such as the Andiamo bag, the Parachute bag, the Hop bag, the Sardine bag, the Orbit sneaker, the Trompe-l'œil printed leather flannels, the Drop earring, and the list goes on and on. He is also brilliant at interpreting and reinventing house codes such as the Intrecciato leather weaving technique of Bottega, where he has introduced the Foulard Intrecciato leather in the Kalimero Città bag.
The Intrecciato leather is to Bottega Veneta as tweed is to Chanel; and tweed was not always understood as the go to fabric for an elegant woman’s wardrobe. Gabrielle Chanel used tweed because she was inspired by her lover, Duke of Westminster’s Scottish country clothing to free women from the restrictive silhouette of the 1920s. When she put women into tweed, a traditional fabric for menswear for womenswear, she was a revolutionary in the context of womenswear of the 20s. The question is, how can Matthieu Blazy as the 4th EVER creative director of the house, bring in the new revolution to Chanel, to engage the Chanel Tweed into a new lexicon of fashion? With all this talent and potential packaged in such a handsome face, how could one not root for the success of Matthieu Blazy’s Chanel?
Luise Trotter for Bottega Veneta
September 27th
September 27th
British Designer Luise Trotter studied fashion at the Northumbria University of Newcastle. After graduation, she held numerous positions at known brands such as Calvin Klein, Gap, Tommy Hilfiger, and Carven. She is most known for her tenure at the French sportswear label Lacoste, where she revamped the brand’s iconic logo and brought a playful, colourful, joyful energy to the brand’s aesthetic. Some are surprised by this appointment because Bottega will be her first experience at a true heritage luxury fashion house appointment. But male creative directors are hired based on their potential instead of accreditation all the time, most recently Sabato De Sarno at Gucci, who was both an artistic and a commercial failure.
However, I do not doubt her potential to unleash her own outstanding era of Bottega. As she has already soft-launched several custom Luise Trotter for Bottega Veneta looks at Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, and they are very promising. Trotter first dressed Julianne Moore for the premier red carpet of The Phoenician Scheme. Where Moore emerged in a simple and sleek one-shoulder black backless gown, the one shoulder strap revealed to be a flowing leather tassel, anchored by a knot at the collarbone. The leather strap took inspiration from the handle of Blazy’s Kalimero Città bag.
Luise Trotter has said in interviews with Highsnobiety on her design influences as being quite masculine, no matter the gender she is designing for, citing that she is very into sportswear and grew up playing tennis and watching football. And you can easily see these masculine and sportswear influences in these Cannes custom looks. Additionally, Trotter is signalling that she is very capable in interpreting the house codes, and textile experimentation will remain at the forefront of her tenure at Bottega Veneta. As Bottega is Kering’s most steady growing brand in the face of the “luxury slowdown”, the pressure on Trotter is disproportionately high. But if these early signals are any indication, Trotter’s ‘new-new-new Bottega’ may emerge not through spectacle or virality, but through a subtle reframing of the house codes, one defined by aerodynamic lines, masculine sportswear influences, and material innovation.
Miguel Castro Freitas for Mugler
October 2nd
October 2nd
Mugler has never hired any big names after its founder Manfred Thierry Mugler. Nicola Formichetti, David Koma, Casey Cadwallader were all relatively small names when they joined the brand, and all had strong debuts at the iconic fashion house. Nicola Formichetti’s FW11 debut made major waves, where models strutted down the runway with slick back high ponytails, deep black smoking eyeshadow, bold shoulders, daring sheer panels and cutouts, and latex galore, with Vlada Roslyakova esc walks, under a gothic colonnade cat walk. The show also featured top models like Coco Rocha and surprise appearances like Rick Genest, AKA Zombie Boy, and Lady Gaga appearing in the shadows of the columns smoking a cigarette, feeling herself on the runway to a mashup of her own smash hits Government Hooker and Born This Way. The energy was so hyped up you could tell that it was a snow storm backstage. But despite this energetic debut, Nicola quietly parted ways with the brand after two and a half years under “mutual agreement.”
Similarly, Casey Cadwallader went instantly viral when Bella Hadid opened his SS20 show with a slow, restrained yet fierce walk in a black cropped blazer with strong shoulders and long sleeves. Underneath, a sheer black catsuit with corset boning, high cut brief and sheer black tights with elongating vertical seam. The look is caped off with strappy stilettos and chainmail ponytail. This look unleashed a period of exponential growth for the house, hailing the inclusivity of all genders and body types, revamping the Mugler woman. As exciting as this revitalisation of the brand at first was, the aesthetic never evolved from the catsuits and the spiral jeans, and the mugler trend short of faded away after SS24.
As experienced as Miguel Castro Freitas is as a designer, there is no doubt that he is capable of creating a strong debut and bringing Mugler into the conversation once again. But the question remains whether he can sustain the momentum. Would it be a lasting impactful tenure or would it fade into the background after the virality loses its sparkle?
Duran Lantink for Jean Paul Gaultier
October 5th
October 5th
Lantik’s most recent stunt was at the FW25 PFW catwalk, where he opened and closed his runway with model Mica Argañaraz and Chandler Frye, who wore latex bare torso pieces that has the anatomy of the opposite sex of the model, paired with the same wide legged black trousers. Where Mica wore the male muscular torso and Chandler in the female, large bouncy breasts. The opening and closing looks became instantaneously the point of controversy, and the two looks also dawned on the cover issue 27 of the Berlin based Dust Magazine, this time with Chandler Frye once again in the female torso paired with a shoulder length brunette wig with bangs and super model Alex Cosani wearing the male anatomy torso with a blonde version of the same style of hair. The play on anatomy to exaggerate the body to extreme shapes that rejects convention of beauty and gender has been a core of the brand identity, but many thought the closing look was making a mockery of women’s bodies, others thought perhaps both of the looks were a joke on trans bodies. Lantik actually defended his look in his most recent I-D magazine interview, saying that it was just drag. Stating that if Chandler was in a wig, makeup, and skirt, the look would've been understood as a drag look, but his drag look is the drag reduced to its most natural, short hair, pants, and a pair of boobs. He asks why is this look even shocking?
Regardless of critic’s opinion of the breast latex top, and Lantik’s ability to direct the Avant-Garde maison, the appointment of Duran Lantik at Jean Paul Gaultier is still very significant as the label is restarting their RTW collection with this Lantik’s appointment after a decade of only focusing on Couture, and will mark the end of rotating designers format after the brand founder, Gaultier’s retirement announcement. Which came to me as disappointing news as it was so refreshing to see different designers interpret the hose codes, and to see a new imagination for the brands every season. Additionally, Gultier was an amazing platform to mentor young designers in couture, and spotlighting a new generation of talents. And the rotating designers created some of the best couture presentations in the post-pandemic period, Glenn Martens, Olivier Rousteing, Simone Rocha, and Ludovic de Saint Sernin, each injected their own aesthetic into Gaultier’s house codes, creating universes of fantasy and imagination in the space of a single collection. In my view, any of these designers could have offered a more assured path for the maison’s next chapter.
Jack McCollough & Lazaro Hernandez for Loewe
October 3rd
October 3rd
Loewe, the Spanish house, now based in Paris, has had an explosive rise in popularity and artistic accreditation, quadrupled in revenue in the decade under Jonathan Anderson’s stewardship. His tenure was an explosion of creativity, imagination, and playful surrealism, and the current Loewe customer is hungry for fashion that doesn’t condescend to them by catering to their familiar tastes. Proenza Schouler has always been quieter, it is subtle, minimal, subdued. The Proenza woman whispers her coolness and intellect rather than flaunting it, in stark contrast to Anderson’s playful, surreal Loewe.
It remains unclear whether Jack and Lazaro will pivot Loewe toward their signature minimal elegance, gradually transition between aesthetics, or retain the playful quirkiness of their predecessor, as they have kept their direction for the debut collection very secretive. More importantly, will the Loewe customer buy into the minimal, intellectual, frigid aesthetic? Most recently, another Legacy house under the Kering umbrella, Gucci, has tested the transition from maximalism/eclecticism to minimalism to its customer and was proven to be a terrible business strategy. (Although I do judge Prorenza's Minimalism much better than Sabato de Sarno’s Minimalism), Jonathan Anderson’s Loewe is widely considered to be a legendary tenure on equal footing with Raf’s Jill Sander or Heidi’s Dior. The new debut will be heavily anticipated and criticised by the industry and consumers worldwide. No matter their talent, it is difficult to imagine Jack and Lazaro surpassing a tenure already etched into fashion history.
Jonathan Anderson for Dior Women’s RTW
October 1st
October 1st
Although he has presented his menswear debut this June, his womenswear debut is still heavily anticipated. Uniting menswear and womenswear under a singular aesthetic universe will mark a dramatic shift from his predecessor Maria Grazia Chiuri. Additionally, womenswear and accessories are the main stream of revenue for the house, it is crucial for the womenswear to capture the Dior costumers attention, and their American Express Centurion Card. With a brand already as far reaching as Dior, after an insanely commercially successful tenure from Chiuri, in the current environment of consumer fatigue, there aren't many commercial milestones left for Anderson to chase after. The key assessment of the success of his debut will be the artistic credibility and critical reception for the collection, which he has certainly achieved already in his menswear debut.
What both Maria and Kim did at Dior to give the brand artistic credibility was through artist collaborations. Maria with feminist artists like Judy Chicago for the runway scenography and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for her infamous “We Should All Be Feminist” slogan tee. And Kim Jones with artists such as Peter Doig and Amoako Boafo, where Kim reinterprets the characters in the paintings as knits, embroideries, beading, appliqués and prints. There’s no doubt in anyone's mind that these artist collaboration garments are made from the highest quality that the house is able to produce, but what is actually the intellectual and artistic value in these tee-shirts and sweaters? Fundamentally, what’s conceptually the difference between these clothes and the Uniqlo UT collaboration with the MoMA, beside the added craftsmanship?
But Jonanthan Anderson’s Dior menswear debut actually felt intellectual, infusing collegiate and oxford styles with 18th and 19th-Century French court dressing, drawing styling influences from how Jean-Michele Basquiat actually dressed as when he was working in the studio, and reinterpreting Monsieur Dior’s archival womenswear pieces such as the Delft dress into men's cargo shorts. The Jonanthan Andeson Dior man is the artist, the critic, the student, the philosopher, the poet, and the romanticist.
As for his womenswear debut, similar to Louise Trotter for Bottega, he gave out several glimpses of his vision for Womenswear and Couture at Venice Film Festival and Toronto International Film Festival, showing flashes of brilliance alongside more tentative experiments that perhaps did not land the way they thought it would. First, the Italian actress-director Alba Rohrwacher stepped out in a navy satin Dior Haute Couture dress, with a draped navy bodice with three quarters sleeve and a structured bustle that amplified the silhouette. This should be the continuation of the 18th, 19th century court dress influences, but the two distinct sphere shapes on the bustle is truly unflattering and has led many people dubbing it the BBL dress. Silhouette experimentation aside, the dress simply reads very matronly and conservative, the worst of all might be the execution of the look, on the red carpet, creases littered across the skirt, with pleats that felt unconsidered and uneven. The surface of the satin looked like it was stuffed with some sort of newspaper stuffing, and the hem was wet, the whole look was disturbing. On the other extreme Anya Taylor-Joy stunned on The Sacrifice Toronto Film Festival Premiere in a baby blue satin sleeveless bodice with a high neckline, fitted smoothly to the torso that transitions into a voluminous skirt ending just below the knees. The skirt is really the star here, it’s constructed from interwoven satin ribbons, forming a lattice-like, basket-weave texture that gives the dress both structure and movement. The surreal large weaving effect has been a motif explored by Anderson many times before at his namesake label for both SS24 and SS25, here it is being realised in its most sophisticated version. The look feels contemporary yet romantic, it is also able to resonate emotionally, a modern interpretation of the Cinderella dress.
If the “Cinderella” dress offers a glimpse of what is to come, Anderson’s Dior womenswear may well match the critical acclaim of his menswear debut. Yet his challenge extends beyond any single collection. With the unprecedented responsibility of commanding every facet of Dior’s creative output, he faces perhaps the most demanding role in fashion today. Whether he can sustain such intensity while restoring the house’s artistic credibility, a quality not seen since the days of Monsieur Dior and John Galliano, will define not only his tenure but also the next chapter of Dior itself. The pressure is on Jonathan to deliver yet another legendary tenure that will be remembered in fashion history after his already career and culture defining 11 years stewardship at Loewe.
Glenn Marten for Maison Margiela Co-Ed RTW
October 4th
October 4th
Martin at his name sake label, under two decades of creation, he single handedly swayed the pendulum of fashion from beauty to coolness, influencing some of the best contemporary designers like Demna, Raf Simons, Jonathan Anderson, Patric DiCaprio and Bryn Taubensee of Vaquera, Marine Serre, Kiko Kostadinov, Junya Watanabe, and Marc Jacobs etc. At his six year tenure at Hermès, he completely revamped the house DNA of Hermès and reshaped people's understanding of quality and luxury, Launching what is known today as the “quiet luxury” aesthetic, influencing a lineage of designers such as Phoebe Philo, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen of The Row, Daniel Lee, Mathiew Blazy, Michael Rider of Celine, Peter Do, etc. From the most deconstructed and experiential deconstruction to the most sophisticated craftsmanship, the versatility of Martin Margiela is absolutely singular.
Galliano during his decade at Margiela, injected his theatrical sensibilities, narrative driven aesthetic into the house's deconstructive codes, developing new couture techniques in the same ethos as Martin like the Décortiqué technique (stripping garments to reveal the structure and bare essential of the garment), Bourgeois Cutting (way of capturing in cutting or styling the blasé movements and signals associated with a mid-century bourgeois fashion), Fabric Sequins (cutting out holes in a fabric in different rhythms, but never completely cut out), Reclica (a take on upcycling and recycling), Seamlace (garments constructed entirely from encrusted fragments of lace or other material decoupaged together, resulting in a completely seamless form), Stripe-tease ( technique of ‘closing’ the negative lines of a striped material to form a colour-blocked entity,enabled by the sculpted form on which the garment is created). His final show for Maison Margiela Artisanal Collection 2024 was a master class. Set underneath the Alexandre III bridge in Paris and a cinematic setting reminiscent of the cafés of the late 19th century, and under the drizzle and the light of the first full moon of the year. Opening with the Galliano Margiela all time muse Leon Dame in a bare chested in an extreme tightly laced corset, tailored degrade wet effect trousers. The setting, the weather, the mood, Leon’s mysterious yet magnetic walk instantaneously brought the audience into a different universe seemingly in the distant past. All of Galliano's genius crystallised in this show, still reaching his peak after 4 decades long career. Conjuring an unforgettable fashion show reminiscent of the ones in the golden age of haute couture.
Glen’s Margiriela Artisanal debut was very strong, as he is one of the most talented and forward designers right now, a master in construction and fabric manipulation in his own right. Although beautiful, and an interesting interpretation of the Margiela Artisanal DNA, his debut collection did leave me wanting more, and I will list the three big problems I had with his Margiela Artisanal debut. For the setting of the presentation, Martin and his team plastered the walls with wrinkled paper to give a moldy vintage wall paper that is peeling off the walls look. Although interesting in concept, and is derived from the house codes, together with the very bright and even lighting throughout the cat walk made these paper plasters a distraction from the clothes rather than setting the mood.
Many, more than half of the looks, looked very stiff, where it seemed that the models were struggling to get to the end of the runway, taking very small and constricted steps. Not in a way where they looked as if they were walking slowly intentionally so the viewers can really catch all the details, but rather seemed that the looks were getting into the ways of the model’s movement. As Martin Margiela himself famously stated: “With a silhouette, the most important details are the shoulder and the shoe. Everything in between I fill up. The shoulder gives you a certain attitude and the shoes, of course, give you a certain movement. And when the silhouette moves in a certain way, I’m very happy.” The silhouette must move, which just did not happen at the show; the presentation felt like a slew of action figures sliding down the runway rather than models inhabiting the garment.
Martin himself, famously was an early pioneer of street casting, casting women of various looks and ages. Some of his most celebrated artisanal creations such as the broken plate waist coat, or the duvet coat, transformed found objects in the domestic setting that are also commonly associated with women at the time, to elevate them into symbols of creativity and avant garde aesthetics. Martin, despite his avant garde designs, still always centered his womenswear on real women. Which was not what Glen had achieved with his extreme thin casting. Additionally, the corset he introduced for his debut, was so extreme that the top and bottom edge and the corset was physically digging into the already extremely thin models lower rib cage and hip bone. It is hard to imagine that a corset such as this one was not extremely painful. Of course the Galliano Margiela Corset was also painful, but they were placed on both genders, male and female, on different body sizes, and were used to replicate an aesthetic of a different century, most importantly, it still allowed the beautiful and fluid movements in the model. In the case of Glen, the corset did deliver a stranger and ethereal silhouette, but same silhouette manipulation was not done on the menswear looks that he showed and it was not done with any body diversity either, which made the show felt less egalitarian, and made it hard to imagine that these looks were designed around the philosophy of designing for real women.
Of course I remained positive for the rest of Glen’s tenure at Margiela, but all hopes remaining instantaneously shattered when the maison announced that singer Miley Cyrus was going to become the new FACE of Margiela, with a photoshoot announcement shot by Pablo Roversi. In the statement, Miley said: “Standing naked for a fashion campaign felt major, all I wore was body paint and the signature painted Tabi boots, at that moment, Margiela and I became one.” No one could argue that the images of the campaign were not beautiful in every way, but since the brand’s inception, Maison Martin Margiela has operated within strict codes of anonymity. With models walking down the runway with FACE COVERING, so the attendees of the show could only focus on the clothes instead of who’s wearing it. A defiance move against the dawn of the supermodels and celebrity culture. With the brand never having any known names walking their runway or staring in their campaigns. Martin intentionally eschewed interviews, with all press interactions conducted via fax or telephone. Even when Martin departed in 2009, the maison was led by an anonymous design team (it was actually led by Matthieu Blazy), echoing Margiela’s belief that the brand’s designs were a collective creative effort and not the work of a single person. This reveal of the celebrity ambassador was a blast of gamma rays on the brand DNA, and assault of the founding principles of the Maison.
Or perhaps this was not Glen’s decision to have a celebrity ambassador, rather the board members' pressure to expand the brand's income and media value. Either the fault of the creative director or not, the debut of Glen Marten’s RTW at Margiela will certainly not be bad, but it might not be the Margiela we used to know, and perhaps he is showing us a future of the brand that we have yet to understand. Although he might never exceed his predecessor creatively during his tenure, he perhaps only needs to be half as brilliant compared to them to continue the brand’s relevance both in culture and in capital in the rest of the decade.