Pop Quiz: Are You Ready for Luxury Fashion's Class of 2026?
Could Balenciaga maven Demna turn Gucci into Balenciaga 2.0? Will Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez’s LOEWE retain any of that Jonathan Anderson whimsy? And for god’s sake, who even is Micheal Rider? A heap of unanswered questions remain in the aftermath of fashion’s incessant creative director shake-ups.
The firing and hiring of creative directors is happening at a rapid rate never seen before — or at least since the last round. Things are indeed getting wild, though: Creative director tenures are the shortest they’ve ever been and luxury fashion is in the midst of a particularly perilous financial downturn.
So, as part of a bid to save their skins, the industry’s power brokers have okayed a series of major personnel switch-ups that will effectively reshape fashion. Again. Let's meet the class of 2026.
The Spring/Summer 2026 season kicks off with a round of menswear presentations in June followed by their womenswear counterparts in September, packed with a particularly salient set of designer debuts bound to reshape everything you ever knew about some of the industry’s biggest names.
Jonathan Anderson’s first collection at the helm of Dior Homme is guaranteed to be one of the year’s biggest moments. The news of Anderson’s appointment was broken by reliable industry rumblings sometime around mid-2024 but the official declaration was still received like a bolt of lightning. This will be a huge deal, especially for parent company LVMH — it’s looking for a hardcore Dior turnaround.
Anderson’s impressive track record, which includes quadrupling LOEWE’s revenue within a decade and two subsequent Designer of the Year prizes from the UK Fashion Awards, earned him a spot atop one of LVMH’s most profitable fashion houses and it promises, if nothing else, some exciting Dior menswear (will he be taking over womenswear, BTW).
LVMH’s biggest rival, Kering, has similarly switched things up at the most well-renowned brand in its stable. Demna, the man behind modern-day Balenciaga, has taken the reins at Gucci for a debut collection in September. His grungy streetwear-leaning vision brought huge profits to the Spanish house but Investors aren’t convinced that he can again bottle lightning.
More optimistically, Glenn Martens, having renovated the houses of Y/Project and Diesel, has been tasked with reimagining Maison Margiela. It's a natural fit since the deconstruction and upcycling found in Martens work align neatly with the Margiela philosophy. He's the only one without a clear debut date.
Jil Sander, meanwhile, is now led by the little-known Simone Bellotti, who toiled away at Bottega Veneta and Gucci before stepping to the forefront with a well-received four-season stint as the creative head of Bally. Expect more crisp and quiet opulence at the house that Jil built, though Bellotti will likely take a different tact to the same destination as former overseers Luke and Lucie Meier.
Jil Sander isn’t the only brand plucking bright young talent from near obscurity. Dario Vitale, previously Miu Miu’s undersung design director, was crowned the first Versace creative director not to have come from the Versace family. Miguel Castro Freitas, whose impressive CV includes working at Dior under both John Galliano and Raf Simons plus stints at Dries Van Noten and Sportmax, takes the helm of Mugler. What to expect when they debut in September? Expect Miu Miu’s prep by way of Versace glitz (something '90s for sure) and, well, whatever Freitas is known for. Probably an elegant approach to Mugler sauciness.
As for Ralph Lauren alumni Micheal Rider, who's now at CELINE, and the duo behind buzzy New York label Proenza Schouler, following in the footsteps of Jonathan Anderson at LOEWE? The best bet is at least a season or two of upholding their forebears visions before departing for fresher pastures.
Meanwhile, everyone knows that Duran Lantink, fresh from a Woolmark prize win and viral Fall/Winter 2025 show, will certainly make a spectacle of the first Jean Paul Gaultier ready-to-wear collection in over a decade.
And then there’s the big stuff that’s been in the works since the end of last year.
Matthieu Blazy is the first non-Lagerfeld (or Lagerfeld disciple) to helm the $20-billion house of Chanel since Coco herself. Only three years ago, when he was hired from within to lead Bottega, Matthieu Blazy was an utter enigma. But his approach to the sumptuously wearable statement wardrobe swiftly earned critical and commercial acclaim, and the famous fans followed. A$AP Rocky, Jacob Elordi, Dua Lipa, Lil Yachty, and Kendall Jenner all repped Blazy’s work on the street, both voluntarily and in brilliant stealth paparazzo campaigns.
Will Blazy bring some of that celebrity-infused marketing genius to Chanel? Well, it doesn't hurt that Kendrick Lamar is now an ambassador. And word on the street is that Chanel menswear is finally on the table.
So now, after reinvigorating stints at Lacoste and Carven, Louise Trotter has big leather boots to fill as Bottega’s new creative director. However, her tasteful stealth-wealth work for Carven and ambitious Lacoste-as-luxury direction foretell a natural alignment with a fashion house defined by artisanal leathercraft.
Trotter is one of the rare examples of a woman designer being hired to oversee a major luxury label and indeed is the sole non-dude in fashion's class of 2026. As much potential as there is at hand, there's also that old, unfortunate truism. Even amidst a huge reshuffling of creative talent, when things are at their wildest and most unpredictable, you can still rely on luxury labels to uniformly hire designers who're predominantly white and predominantly male.
