Because De Meo will do what no one dares to do (cut off the dead branches, in the McQueen case)

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Since we pride ourselves on sensing the current situation early, last June, in a long article for the Saturday culture pages, we wrote how incongruous, or rather convenient and hypocritical, was the claim of the fashion system , tenaciously clinging to its small privileges, to preserve ad aeternum the system itself and therefore also those brands that have had their day and that it is time to put away in the closet of fashion history, despite what marketing and sales directors tell themselves because you want to live on a small capital of fame, even if old and frayed, instead of starting all over again, which is very hard, expensive, and above all a career risk . Sorry for the self-quotation, which is unfortunate, but here's what we wrote: "A few weeks ago, I was discussing the McQueen case with one of the most popular strategic consultants; he said he was convinced that Sean McGirr, the creative prodigy appointed to head the brand's style, still needed a few seasons to get into the founder's spirit.

I asked him why, since McGirr was so good, he was not entitled to open an atelier in his name, without being forced to replicate, obviously unsuccessfully, the ghosts of a London boy of great genius and terrible anguish who committed suicide fifteen years ago. He replied that the brand's "community" is still quite strong, to which I replied that I should try going out on the street and asking a twenty-year-old who Lee Alexander McQueen was, and the conversation ended with many promises to meet for coffee in the coming months. In those weeks, when it was already very clear that the great fashion tree, in order to continue to exist, needed a good shake of its branches and even for some to be cut , Luca De Meo had not yet been appointed CEO of Kering although, from the speed with which he has been acting since the beginning of September, it is very, very likely that he had already begun to tackle the dossier of the Pinault family group and the incredible amount of debt accumulated, 9.5 billion euros, at a time of difficulty for the market for many reasons of economics, positioning and keeping the promises we have been writing about for a good two years.

A few weeks ago, after renegotiating the purchase of Valentino, De Meo sold Creed and the entire beauty segment to L'Oréal for 4 billion , including a lucrative contract that will bring royalties for half a century, and shocked the market by declaring the exact opposite of what fashionistas expected after the richest season of creative debuts in the last twenty years: that is, that, given the current market situation, perhaps the time has really come to rebalance, or rather to reduce the weight of creative directors to a minimum so that a fashion collection can be called such and not a sample , and to halve production times. Beyond the offended bewilderment that greeted it, the statement reveals something obvious, namely that small leather goods, caps, T-shirts, tracksuits when they exist, and in short, the entire entry-level segment of brands must be easy to approach, stylish, and affordable. This is something that has always been done but that no one explicitly states, because telling the story of the creative director who also oversees the design of the keychain is too beautiful to interrupt the emotion.

Regarding the shortening of production times, dictated as it should be by the need to avoid leaving too much room for fast fashion to transform that twenty percent of free creativity that is considered good and proper into new pastures for their fashion—which, incidentally, is no longer even copied because names like Zara and Cos can afford to pay their top creative directors—a few nights ago, at a dinner in Milan, the CEO of the Florence Attila Kiss group , whom we asked for his opinion, expressed complete agreement with De Meo . The problem of the twelve months officially required to transform an idea into a piece on display could easily be shortened if the various stages of cutting, sewing, embroidery, and so on were not divided among different subcontractors (we imagine that, for these purposes, the specific features of the certified supply chain group he manages will be very useful, so best of luck). While the fashion world is watching every move of this alien from the world of four wheels who has the audacity to treat fashion for what it has become, that is, mass industry, and not for what the communications offices continue to tell it is, that is, a network of small tailors and artisans bent over their desks every day to produce wonders that are rightly paid four times their value raised to the third power, another piece of news has arrived in the chatter around Kering, namely that there are several redundancies at the Alexander McQueen brand, starting with the employees. Therefore, after having officially announced the upcoming elimination of fifty-five jobs at the London headquarters, equal to twenty percent of the headquarters' workforce, and the desire to bring "the brand back to sustainable profitability within three years", the other obvious thing we wrote about last spring has started to circulate, namely that if Sean McGirr is as good as everyone says regardless of the fashion shows he stages, the time has come to bet on his line and proceed with the only choice. It is possible now that we of Generation X were the last to have witnessed the founder's fashion shows and that we wrote mournful articles on the day of his death: to close McQueen while he can still enjoy the last glimmers of a glory that, season after season, is losing its luster and meaning.

McQueen's fashion without McQueen, his demons, his obsessions, his meticulous tailoring, even without his right-hand woman, Sarah Burton, who a year ago went to run Givenchy, is a long sequence of boned jackets and balloon skirts and trousers . It's a fashion without imagery, because heritage doesn't mean copying the archive, as young marketing directors believe, but grafting contemporary thinking onto a strong and still valid past. And that past is no longer. McQueen's world is over , like John Galliano's, and we write this with a sense of profound and painful awareness, because Galliano was the greatest creator of the last half century. But just as no one stages his highly cultured, unsettling, and lavish fashion shows anymore, very few find it fun to dress like they did in the years when Russian Fashion Week interacted with Milan Fashion Week and luxury boutiques opened on the Straight Road of Damascus. That world is over, sometimes even physically destroyed, a fair number of its protagonists have disappeared, when people spend money they prefer to do it to travel or to make themselves beautiful, slim, toned, not to mention that showing off fluorescent clothes in the squares where every day people demonstrate for something truly "relevant" - we steal the most misused adverb this year - risks certifying you as an idiot.

The only acceptable and acceptable expenses are those that even our grandmothers would have approved of , that is, of the highest quality, designed to last, although even in Japan they are sounding the alarm over the progressive reduction in orders for those precious kimonos that were passed down from mother to daughter. The rest, eighty percent of the market or what will remain, can simply be fun, have an acceptable price, not be too brash, and if produced locally, even better, because you'll have noticed that no one talks about the sustainability agenda anymore . In his agreement with L'Oréal, it's worth pointing out, De Meo included the creation of a joint venture for the study and development of longevity techniques. We don't believe he meant those of fashion brands, and his example will be followed by many. Even by the very top brass of the Kering group who, before his arrival, chuckled at Parisian dinners wondering who would have the courage to rethink prices and production methods. Well, him.

The Heritage Convicts. McQueen's Last Show, Designed by Sean McGirr

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