When designer Peter Do presented his debut Helmut Lang collection in New York for Spring 2024, The Cut‘s Cathy Horyn deemed it lackluster. “Do is going to have to find his own point of contact with Lang and then express that spirit in a contemporary way, without respect for his legacy. Otherwise, we might as well go to Uniqlo,” she wrote in her review.
WWD‘s Booth Moore offered a more forgiving take, writing that, while there’s more room for experimentation, Do successfully delivered “a cool urban uniform with emotion behind it.” Then there’s what the internet had to say: Online users gave Do props for tying in House references and keeping the collection wearable, but they, too, agreed he could’ve pushed the creativity. (Do stepped down from the brand in November 2024.)
Three seasons earlier in Milan, Matthieu Blazy made his debut at Bottega Veneta; Harper’s Bazaar praised the collection for defying “an algorithmic life,” while W Magazine heralded it as “understated” but “profound.” Fashionista also gave the debut its flowers, while noting there were “perhaps one too many ideas present.”
All this to say, while it’s obvious that critics pay close attention to a new creative director’s first collection for a label, what they look for when assessing it is less well-known. So, what elements do newly appointed designers need in their debut to get the press’s stamp of approval?
Photo: Cindy Ord/Getty Images
For José Criales-Unzueta, Vogue Runway’s fashion news editor, it boils down to having a clear point of view. “You want a defined point of view on dressing,” they tell Fashionista. “You want something that feels forward-looking as in an idea of the way people should look or dress or want [to] aspire to be in the future.”
They offer Chemena Kamali’s Chloé debut as an example: While she was not a popular name at the time of her appointment, industry insiders knew she worked at the French Maison twice — once under Phoebe Philo, and another under Clare Waight Keller. Still, it was difficult to speculate what she would present. So when Chloé’s Fall 2025 lineup of airy ruffles, gold-scripted belts, chiffon shorts, flouncy, floor-grazing sleeves and little babydoll dresses paired with textured cape coats walked the runway, critics couldn’t help but praise Kamali for reviving the familiar Chloé girl and bringing her into a modern era.
“Her debut at Chloé was very successful because it […] was a combination of what we as the industry expect from Chloé and what we would’ve liked to see,” Criales-Unzueta explains — the latter being “a fresh point of view on that familiar [boho] aesthetic.”
Luke Meagher, the fashion content creator behind HauteLeMode, measures the strength of a debut based on world-building. “You need to breathe life into a house [and] build out a world that people understand in a modern age,” he says. “You need to give it a little bit of zhuzhing, a little bit of excitement — something that a modern audience can feel as their own.” He remembers Alessandro Michele’s Gucci debut and Virgil Abloh’s Louis Vuitton debut as noteworthy examples.
“Michele’s Gucci debut was such a shock to the system. I don’t think anybody was expecting it,” Meagher shares of the former. “It did play on kitschy elements of Gucci, but at the same time, it was so different from what Frida Giannini had done, that that near-complete 180 made it so fantastic.”
Photo: Yanshan Zhang/Getty Images
Of course, the press also considers a newly-appointed creative director’s experience level. How long have they been in the industry? Have they helmed a brand before? What brands have they worked at, and how established were those labels? Plus, how well-resourced is the brand? Rachel Tashjian, The Washington Post‘s fashion critic, also looks at how much time a designer had to compile the collection.
Sabato de Sarno, for example, was hired nearly eight months before his Gucci debut at Milan Fashion Week in September 2023. By the time his show came, “I felt like he knew exactly what he wanted to say and how he wanted to say it,” Tashjian shares. Compare that to McQueen’s Seán McGirr, who, following his appointment in December 2023, had roughly three months to complete his Fall 2024 debut.
“You’re thinking about these different sorts of considerations when you’re forming your opinion of the collection,” Tashjian says. “At the same time, it’s interesting, because once you get to know someone, […] you also get a sense of who that person is, what their familiarity is with the world of fashion and how big of a statement and what kind of statement they want to make.”
A common sore spot is when debuts lean too heavily into House codes: It’s understandable (arguably, obligatory) that designers reference the archives or pull in well-known design details during a first run. There should be a familiarity in a debut, but by proposing remakes, a designer can strip away their own unique standpoint.
Rian Phin, TikTok commentator and fashion theorist, sees debuts that rely on past references as unoriginal. “There should be harmony between distinct brand vision and respecting and having reverence for the codes,” she says. “There are ways to enhance the brand while maintaining your vision, and I think refusing to do that and just rehashing things for one-to-one, like social media fodder, it’s so unnecessary.”
Photo: Yanshan Zhang/Getty Images
The idea of carrying forward House codes is “bewildering,” says Tashjian. “I’m not really even sure what that means a lot of the time.”
“I think sometimes we remain too chained to the canon of fashion or to the ideas that came before the current designer,” she explains. “As a result, it can be stultifying to a newer designer because I think the most important thing for a fashion designer is to make something that feels relevant to the world we live in.”
An exception to this is if designers can play on House codes in an exciting way, according to Meagher. “I think that if nothing feels different, then you’re doing something wrong,” he says. But, sometimes, there are so many past references that are forgotten, that it allows a unique opportunity for a designer to reintroduce these ideas in an exciting fashion.
The consensus, though, is clear: Imitation is not impressive. “It’s less about a specific reference and more so about an alignment,” says Criales-Unzueta. That’s not to say a critic’s review shouldn’t consider the context of creative directors who came before. In Criales-Unzueta’s view, it’s nearly impossible to avoid.
“In the words of Kamala Harris, ‘You exist in the context of everything that came before you,'” they say. Part of understanding a designer’s debut means acknowledging where it fits in the larger storytelling of the brand. “It is hard to not look at a debut in the context of the designer before it or the founder,” they continue. “It’s always better when you look at all of that together […] to try to understand what it’s doing or what it can do for the brand to make it forward.”
In a perfect world, every collection — whether or not it’s a designer’s first — exceeds the one before it. In reality, that’s a futile undertaking, and shouldn’t be the expectation. “Critics and the audience have to have an understanding of the fact that fashion is supposed to move up and down and not be some consistent stream of extremely strong, overwhelming collections,” Phin says. “Even if the director stays, they have ebbs and flows because that tells a better story over time.”
Photo: Catwalking/Getty Images
The pressure of a debut has always been high — lately, it’s gotten even higher. Today, creative directors are often expected to achieve immediate commercial success, despite having little time to fully flesh out their ideas. (In the words of GloRilla, “Let her cook.”)
“I think having to find that hero product is a tough thing,” Meagher says. “You have to understand that customer. You have to figure out what they’ve been buying, and what they haven’t and make something in a quick turnaround time to really be the hot thing that they’ll purchase.” Usually, that wisdom comes with time — time designers are not necessarily given.
Investors and shareholders look at products from a numbers perspective, not an artistic one. It leaves designers in a tricky spot balancing newness and a palatable assortment. Not to mention, not all Houses are as well-resourced as commercial giants like Louis Vuitton or Chanel. “It feels like all of the pressure is on the creative director instead of the entire team because we exalt the creative director as these representations of the House,” Phin points out. “It’s not meaningfully considered that they have to have synergy between the entire brand and they’re given one collection and then we completely discard them.”
But when a collection does show commercial promise, critics can’t help but take that into account. It doesn’t necessarily mean the more sellable a debut is, the more it will impress reviewers. After all, it still needs to feel innovative. But, the topic does offer an interesting “read on what a [high-selling debut] says about culture,” Criales-Unzueta says. “What does that say about fashion or luxury or consumer culture as a whole? That is a different conversation.”
Photo: Victor Virgile/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images
Tashjian adds, “I think that commercial appeal is its own kind of artistry in fashion, but what’s important is that a designer knows where they’re coming from.”
For example, during Hedi Slimane’s tenure at Celine, the designer had a rocky relationship with the press, but successfully doubled the brand’s sales and made it the third-most profitable House under LVMH. Meanwhile, Miuccia Prada, beloved by most critics, serves as a shining example of how to straddle commerciality and artistry.
“I want designs to proliferate. I think people deserve great clothes,” Tashjian says. “To me, that’s always going to be a mark of success. And if a designer says, ‘I want to design for everybody,’ or ‘I want to make super commercial clothes,’ I would champion that idea.”
Nowadays, it’s not only traditional critics that new creative directors hope to impress — social media, too, haunts the minds of designers. It’s obvious, based on the various runway stunts and virality pursuits, when a creative director is trying to gain the internet’s favor. While it’s amusing to witness, it rarely changes how the press feels about a collection.
The premise of virality or quick online takes is rooted in removing nuance and context — which are both crucial to fashion critics’ assessments of collections. Tashjian sees this as an opportunity to offer the very background that’s missing: “I love social media because you don’t have to explain why anything is interesting anymore. The audience is already there with you, they just want to know and understand more.”
More often than not, it’s the scene-setting elements (casting, venue, front row, etc) that pander most to social media anyway. That, too, hardly skews the press’s opinion. Elements such as casting, the venue and the soundtrack assist in articulating a designer’s point of view, but overall they speak more to world-building. Front row and VIP guests better illustrate a designer’s fame and marketing budget than a House’s artistic future. (Throwback to Beyoncé and Zendaya at Pharrell Williams’ Louis Vuitton debut.)
Photo: Peter White/Getty Images
So, what debuts are industry critics looking forward to in 2025? Sarah Burton at Givenchy leads as a favorite, followed by Veronica Leoni at Calvin Klein Collection and Tom Ford’s Haider Ackermann. Julian Klausner already soft launched his Dries Van Noten debut, unveiling its Fall 2025 menswear collection during Paris Fashion Week Men’s, and he’ll make his womenswear debut in March. Peter Copping just made his Lanvin debut, which The New York Times‘ Vanessa Friedman described as successful in saving the House from its “near-total irrelevance.”
“I begin every season with a sense of openness, excitement and a willingness to have my mind changed or opened,” Tashjian says ahead of the February fashion month circuit. Of course, every critic has their own approach. “It’s funny, I always talk to all the critics at the shows about what we thought of different things, and Cathy Horyn and Tim Blanks have told me that they always go easy on a designer’s debut. I thought that was really interesting because I don’t necessarily feel that way. You are not just writing for the designer, and I really rarely think about the designer when I’m writing criticism. I think mostly about our readers and […] what is it that would get them to feel this brand is interesting and has something to say?”
Source: Fashionista.com
