How the Role of Creative Director Will Evolve in the Next 10 Years

In the months that followed the Spring/Summer 2026 season, we have seen a series of new hires in the communications, marketing and design departments of all major houses. Our new series ‘Fashion’s Real Reset Starts Now’ looks at all these changes and how they will redefine the fashion industry in the years to come.

The year 2025 marked a major creative reset, ushering in new creative directors at a dozen fashion houses, most of them millennials, and all characterized by a collaborative spirit. Their appointments carry big expectations.

As the industry emerges from a two-year slowdown, designers are more than ever seen as key drivers of brand turnarounds. “Maintaining an artistic direction at the helm of a brand — or choosing to change it — is one of the most important governance issues for a CEO, a board of directors, or a shareholder,” says Floriane de Saint Pierre, founder of the advisory firm for major luxury brands Floriane de Saint Pierre & Associés, whose expertise includes organization and talent strategy as well as artistic director executive search.

Determining the scope of the role is also an important governance decision for the CEO or the owner of the business. “You need to fully understand the stakes of social media communication, including the whole celebrity component. You are expected to know what will sell, how it will sell, and to be able to work effectively with the commercial, merchandising, marketing and image teams, to have a vision for scenography, for retail, for customer experience. You also have to handle the relationships with a CEO and executive committee,” says Alice Bouleau, founder of The Arrow, a talent agency representing designers including Collina Strada’s Hillary Taymour, Serge Ruffieux and Louis-Gabriel Nouchi.

She continues: “The role becomes almost that of a managing director, even though most creative directors come from fairly traditional design backgrounds. Yet, even with such a broad scope, your level of autonomy is more limited in big organizations due to the numerous stakeholders.”

Creative directors are also navigating a shift in positioning as the “star designer” era comes to an end. Many brands came to feel overly dependent on individual designers, prompting the pendulum to swing the other way: the house now comes first. Recent appointments and customer demand also show that the product remains king. “You can be a great marketer, but at the end of the rainbow, there has to be a great product,” says Lanvin deputy CEO Siddhartha Shukla. What’s important for designers is to be able to create a product with outstanding quality and meaningful design.

But creatives can’t only be heads-down in product — in a celebrity-driven era, it’s also important that they bring their existing relationships and cultivate new ones with culturally influential actors, directors, musicians, and athletes, while maintaining their own public personas in the spotlight.

“Today, the industry is seeking designers who feel more relatable, in contrast to the distant mega-divas of the past,” says Bouleau.

They are being asked to perform a balancing act: court celebrities but don’t supersede the brand, be across everything but focus on product, be highly innovative and creative but enjoy less autonomy; they’re the ones held responsible if results aren’t there. Only exceptionally smart, nimble, and talented people can overcome these contradictory expectations.

Caution and integrity

Macroeconomic challenges and geopolitical uncertainty have led to a reality check for fashion. Whether the times and the market have changed, or they have seen some of their elders get their wings burned and it served as a cautionary tale, designers need to appear somewhat more down to earth — even when posting to millions of followers.