Chanel's New Creative Director Should Be Anyone but Karl Lagerfeld

Fingerless gloves. High collars. Black sunglasses.

Is the image filling itself out? You’re probably either imagining a supervillain or one of the most remembered creative directors in fashion history (if there’s much of a difference between the two). Karl Lagerfeld is a name that reverberates through any room in the fashion industry. The man had a whole Met Gala themed after his work. His wedding dresses are crystallized in history. Lagerfeld, despite the atrocity of his personal life, was a designer that changed fashion. He made Chanel revolutionary. It seems to have been so revolutionary that for the past five years, they have felt no need to change the designs at all.

Karl Lagerfeld at Fendi Store Opening

Image Credit: Christopher William Adach from Wikipedia Commons

Right now Chanel is at a fork in the road. The most recent creative director Virginie Viard, who was in the position for five years, has just announced her departure from the brand as of this month. In the coming weeks, the brand will decide its future by picking a new ring leader to replace Viard.

Viard was by no means bad for business, however, the question of her contribution to fashion lingers in an awkward silence. Chanel went from an innovator in fashion to a quiet and modest brand. Although Lagarfeld’s designs were at the time revolutionary, the repetition of the same five silhouettes is boring the new guard of fashion.

Chanel would be digging its own grave if they put in another white Lagerfeld protege as creative director. The brand needs a reinvigoration. In order to have that, they need a change in perspective.

In today’s world of diversity, fashion seems to have found a way to avoid it. There is a total of three people of color in the role of creative directors out of the top 30 luxury brands, and only one of those is a woman (a moment of appreciation for Sandra Choi of Jimmy Choo). As a result, we are left with emptiness behind the thousands of dresses we have seen in the past few seasons.

By ridding these luxury brands of people of color, specifically women of color, we are not only damaging the diversity of the industry but we are damaging the diversity of art. We are at a time of dramatic upheavals and changes in society—fashion cannot escape that. Chanel can definitely not escape that. They need a person of color as their director.

Designers like Martine Rose with her twists (literally and figuratively) on classic silhouettes or Rei Kawakubo with her chaotic and rebellious dresses are deeply inspired by their roots in the way they run businesses but also in the way they create.

In a Vogue interview in 2021, Rose talked about how her experience has affected the marriage between “wonkiness” and “togetherness” that her brand exemplifies. “...I just grew up with this sense of togetherness, that bringing people together was the most important thing you could do,” Rose explained when talking about her Jamaican-British background.

However, for Rose, it doesn’t stop at the past. In the same Vogue interview, she said “...We want to live way in the past or way in the future. The now is too real. I’m very much into what’s happening now.”

Martine Rose’s heritage influences the way she sees the world and therefore fashion. Chanel needs the vision of someone like her. They need someone who is so acutely aware of the context of her work that her work reflects the culture and context itself.

Dresses by Rei Kawakubo on display in the exhibition Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons Art of the In-Between at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2017

Image Credits: Metropolitan Museum of Art, Sarah Stierch from Wikipedia Commons

While Rose and Kawkubo are building their own brands and craft, there are hundreds of new designers coming into the industry. The next designer of revolution is pricking their fingers somewhere within the walls of 227 West 27 Street, also known as the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT). Yawen Chen is a class of 2022 graduate from FIT whose senior thesis won the Future of Fashion Critic Award. Her designs explore the same femininity of Chanel while embracing modernity in structure but romanticism in colors. Chen’s creative visions could be the start of a brand new type of elegance and beauty for Chanel. With incredible pieces now, you can imagine the brilliance that would come from her with Chanel's budget.

Whether it’s Chen or another new designer, Chanel needs to stop pulling from the bucket of Chanel’s already existing team. The new creative director should be anyone but Karl Lagerfeld. Anyone but people with the exact same visions.

Anyone but people with the exact same life experiences. Opening Chanel up to the imagination of BIPOC creative directors will change the lethargy of Chanel. Opening Chanel up to the experiences of BIPOC creative directors will change the monotony of Chanel.

Fashion is storytelling. Fashion is history. Fashion is reality.

The stagnation of the last few Chanel seasons is falling behind as the rest of the industry changes and grows. They need a change. They don’t need to completely reimagine the elegance and simple luxury of Chanel, but why not elevate elegance?

The next creative director of Chanel doesn’t have to be Martine Rose or Rei Kawkubo. In fact, it should be someone new. A diamond in the rough is what Chanel needs.

A diamond in the rough that grew up with spices. Let’s leave the litany of only white creative directors behind. Chanel does not have to be white to be Chanel, and it most definitely does not have to have Lagerfeld to be Chanel.