Fashion should be for women, not against them

Paris Fashion Week should have been dominated by the news that Sarah Burton was showing her final collection for Alexander McQueen after 27 years at the house, 13 as its creative director. Sure enough, it did dominate the news – just not in the way anyone expected. 

Hours after the show, parent company Kering announced Burton’s replacement, JW Anderson’s head of menswear, Sean McGirr. Hours after that, the Instagram account @1granary posted six photographs of Kering’s existing creative directors. All white, all male. 

It was the perfect example of a PR disaster that had reared its head from nowhere, spreading through social media like wildfire. The post touched a nerve, and was promptly reposted by key industry figures, attracting savage comments every time. The gist of which were: why, when fashion is worn by women, made by women (most garment workers are women) and modelled by women, are men still given the top jobs?

For a company that supposedly champions women (in 2015, Kering launched its Women In Motion program to highlight inequalities in culture and the arts), the optics don’t look good. Nor are they much better at any other luxury conglomerates: with the exception of Dior’s Maria Grazia Chiuri, the top jobs at LVMH are held by men, too. 

No-one is arguing for a tokenistic female appointment: if McGirr is the best person for the McQueen job, so be it. But those in power should be asking not simply why men are rising so high, but what more could be done to raise up women. Fashion should be for women, not against them. No wonder everyone is waiting for 30th October (when Phoebe Philo finally reveals her hand) with baited breath.