The announcement that designer Raf Simons is leaving his post as creative director of Christian Dior was dispatched without warning, without the usual swirl of rumors that typically precede the departure of a star designer from a major label — in this case, France’s most venerated house. There was no tortured speculation about Simons’s degree of contentment in his role. No fretting about how the clothes were playing among consumers. In fact, revenue at the house was up.
Still, it doesn’t seem that surprising. Fashion moves so quickly now. Who, besides perhaps Karl Lagerfeld at Chanel, settles in and retires from a house anymore?
Who settles in and retires from any job anymore?
In a statement, Simons explained his departure as a personal decision, one rooted in “my desire to focus on other interests in my life, including my own brand, and the passions that drive me outside of my work.” Simons also had warm words for Bernard Arnault, who owns Dior, and for Sidney Toledano, its chief executive. They, in turn, spoke highly of him.
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The spring 2016 ready-to-wear collection that Simons showed earlier this month turned out to be his last for the house. He presented that collection in a multistory space seemingly carved from a mountain of flowers in the courtyard of the Louvre. It was not a collection that paid homage to the history of Dior. And it was not the work of an indulgent designer. It was a nod toward the future — a questioning of it. Is there a place for restrained, calm and simple beauty?
In many ways, the setting echoed that of Simons’ debut show for the house, the haute couture collection he presented in July 2012. The preparation for that show was chronicled in the documentary “Dior and I,” which explored his dazzling decision to line each room of a grand mansion with walls of fresh flowers. The aroma of the flowers was intoxicating. The experience was transporting. The clothes signaled an auspicious beginning.
Simons, 47, has been at Dior for 3½ years. He arrived after the brand’s former designer John Galliano was fired for making anti-Semitic comments in a Paris bistro. (Galliano is now the creative director at Maison Margiela.) Before Dior, Simons had refined his creative eye at Jil Sander, where he brought energy and inventiveness to the minimalist label. He also maintains an eponymous menswear label that is regularly cited by a younger generation of menswear designers as deeply influential in helping them blend streetwear with the rigors of technically astute construction and the ease of luxury fabrics.
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Simons was celebrated for his restrained aesthetic before he landed at Dior in 2012 — a house rooted in femininity and romance. But he proved to be a designer with a wide-ranging sensibility. He embraced the curvy, lush signatures of Dior — the New Look, the Bar jacket — and made it his mission to translate them for a contemporary, time-strapped woman.
That transformation is by no means complete, but Simons had begun to broaden the Dior vocabulary. And the brand was duly attracting celebrities such as Jennifer Lawrence and Rihanna, who attended the spring 2016 show.
As a designer, Simons is inspired by the visual arts and rather esoteric films. He is not flashy. But he is, of course, on Instagram, as one must be. His feed is typically comprised of images of his work and his inspiration rather than selfies with famous friends. In the meantime, he was also helming one of the great couture ateliers, with its long-serving seamstresses and tailors and their obsession with detail. That’s the tension that gives fashion, particularly for a brand like Dior, such a high degree of difficulty. A designer is constantly rushing, even as he is supposed to be honoring the exquisite meticulousness of history.
Fashion moves along at a whiplash-inducing clip, and a creative director must juggle store openings around the world, media, licensees, advertising, celebrities, couture clients and, oh yes, actually design more than a half-dozen collections a year. Some of those demands are directly related to the frocks and others are not, but they all are part of the job requirement.
Still, don’t cry for these corporate designers and their over-scheduled lives. They are very well-compensated. But as fashion has moved from the realm of family-owned businesses into publicly traded behemoths, the same rat-race angst that bedevils cubicle workers, techies and boardroom titans is felt in the atelier.
So when Simons says that he wanted to be able to spend more time on things that are unrelated to work, it seems perfectly reasonable. Frankly, it makes one wonder how anyone stays at these houses — houses that they do not own — more than three or four years. Surely the experience can be exciting, invigorating and lucrative, but how long can designers keep up that pace? And why should they have to?
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If there is anything that the new workplace has taught a younger generation of employees, it is that the work-life balance is not just about figuring out how to drop off a toddler at day care and still get to a conference call on time. It has become a broader conversation about personal time, satisfaction, room to create and a desire to feel invested.
The allure of the big, prestigious brand — and all the pressures that come with it — may be dimming. Alexander Wang, 31, for instance, seemed not in the least bit sad or conflicted about his recent departure from Balenciaga after only about three years. Simons’s departure from Dior simply reminds us that fashion is not isolated from the culture at large.
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