Cruel Summer 2025: On Friendship, The Sultans of Swing (ers) and... Will Pietro Beccari Join Kering?
Prada and the Cultural Appropriation, and the next Extra Newsletter! and the Masterclass!
“You are not lucky, you are aligned” - Anonymous
Dear DeLuxers,
How are you? It’s hot everywhere, and it’s not just the weather…
I spent the first half of the week in Milan for business meetings and projects follow up but also for a wonderful dinner in a magic place with some of you and an inspiring lunch with one of you who supported me since day 1, when everybody just thought I was getting crazy, I still remember our meeting on a freezing day in January during Pitti Uomo at La Menagère. It’s so empowering to feel part of such a community of like minded super professionals. It’s so beautiful to see how much we grew supporting each other as much as we can, and to find time between trips and jobs in Paris and New York, to match our agendas and to meet in cozy Milanese places. Lots of inspiring chats on the future of the industry and our personal lives.
The second part of the week saw me in a stunning place, in the heart of Tuscia (the northern area of Lazio) in a tenuta of a beloved former boss of mine with a group of extraordinary, unexpected people, surrounded by wheat fields, olive and oak trees and, naturally, dogs (a red Spinone hound, Oreste and a salt and pepper cattle dog, Freddy, two amazing rascals sleeping on my feet) and a herd of free horses.
I truly needed to stop for a while and recharge in a stunning, so well curated but also effortless place. Slowing down and taking care of myself, skipping habits and routine as well as self imposed limits or agendas while listening to what my body really says is a great achievement for me, as I have always been guided by my mind mainly in my life and now I am discovering more and more the power of intuition and the body messages. I am not there yet, but on the right path.
It’s incredible how old work connections turn into personal alignment. It’s unbelievable how we all have evolved so much in the past 20 years and we came back to find us again talking about who’s doing what at breakfast under a majestic oak tree. We lived the dolce vita of fashion, between private jets, parties in the privés of the coolest places of the world, global celebrities, Anna visiting the night before the shows, shootings at the Spring Studios in Chelsea, tough budget discussions with the Board, very, very early morning breakfasts at Le Pain Quotidien on the 55th, stays at the Ritz with the golden swans and a Visconti image of Amanda Harlech on the stairs wearing a full length fur, great designers and family businesses as well as the top luxury places in the world and how, now, we happily don’t give the so-called f@#k about all of this. Olivia worked with the greatest of them all, including David Lynch. The greatest ones? Fashion brands founders, designers, photographers, movie directors, renown talents, you name them, she worked with them, as peers.
And now we live happily and peaceful in places of our hearts. Don't get me wrong, our happy places are constantly welcoming industry figures visiting and meeting us, we are not hermits, the contrary. You know the concept "attract, do not chase?"… since I realized this, my life has changed radically.
I feel blessed to be surrounded by such great and brilliant minds and hearts and spirits.
We also gathered an enormous experience, knowledge and network of people and we are making the best out of it, in very different ways.
Once again, the horses are guiding me through my path.
A friend sent me a snapshot a few days ago saying “You are not lucky, you are aligned”. It could not be more true.
All this intense experience helped me a lot taking the distance from the madness I see everyday in this industry. But also it helped me to realize that the industry lost its luster and luck and, most of all, it has become misaligned with what its true purpose was.
For the industry we could say “It’s not bad luck, it’s misalignment”.
The trend now is all about “hectic change”. We reached the paradox that renown entities collaborating with brands since 20 years and contributing to their disgrace, now pontificate on the importance of brand management. Exactly the opposite of what they did so far and now they are just selling another mantra they don’t know anything about. But…
"What's done can't be undone." - William Shakespeare
The pressure is high, financial expectations very unlikely to be met for the long term, conflicts are raising within the brands top managers and ownerships and unmet forecasts are putting executives and designers in front of their impostor syndrome, which in too many cases is not a syndrome at all, it’s rather a reality.
Q2 25 and H1 25 will be very worrying, and 2026 will not be better.
The key mantras of the industry today:
Creative Directors: if you have been successful (for unspecified reasons that cannot be analyzed in order to avoid to discover the grey reality) in the brand X you must be successful in the brand Y. While they are rigid and stubborn and unable to have immersive experiences in the brands and let them help evolve their views. JW Anderson is the latest example, even if he seems “just a good boy”. The partnership with Luca Guadagnino is an example of how things could derail quickly if Bialobos doesn’t keep the reins tight. Blazy will be the same at Chanel. And Demna at Gucci (without the “good boy”). And Alessandro Michele who seems to be in his way out at Valentino (it will take some time). Recruiters never take into consideration soft skills for this key role. They continue to pick full of oneself designers hiding behind a following of cheerleaders clapping at them on the social media, only waiting for free gifts and trips.
CEOs: the most important thing now is to pass the buck to somebody else, so that they can just survive and take bonuses until they can. They know the system is doomed. They themselves have undermined it at its foundations. So the fault of the imminent disaster will have to officially be on somebody else shoulders. They created hierarchies in companies based on this assumption, not to make them work.