What to Watch: Designer Debuts Will Spice Up Fashion Scene

Marquee talents and prominent second-in-command designers continue to win fashion’s top design jobs, and the first half of 2022 promises a host of intriguing debuts.

Emilio Pucci

Camille Miceli, most recently accessories creative director at Louis Vuitton, is to show her first designs at Emilio Pucci for spring 2022.

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A seasoned creative who started her career in public relations, Miceli went on to work in the studio with some of the most acclaimed fashion designers in the world, including Karl Lagerfeld, Azzedine Alaïa, Marc Jacobs and Nicolas Ghesquière. “I’ve been very lucky to be surrounded by these great talents, and to learn from them,” she told WWD in an interview last year.

Miceli wishes to express the joyful side of the Florentine house as it pivots to become a resort-focused brand. “It’s more about lifestyle, a way of living that inspires me the most,” said the Parisian, who is half Italian and speaks the language fluently.

Controlled by LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton since 2000, Pucci has experimented with a variety of permanent designers over the years, including Julio Espada, Christian Lacroix, Matthew Williamson, Peter Dundas and MSGM’s Massimo Giorgetti, and also studio configurations. The brand had recently experimented with guest designers, including Christelle Kocher of France and Japan’s Tomo Koizumi. Last year, it dropped a surprise collaboration with buzzy skate brand Supreme.

Kenzo

Another brand controlled by LVMH, Kenzo picked Nigo, a streetwear pioneer and passionate collector of fashions by Kenzo’s late founder Kenzo Takada. He is to unveil his first collection for women and men during Paris Fashion Week later this month.

The designer, whose full name is Tomoaki Nagao, is best known as the founder of A Bathing Ape, though he seemed destined for the plum Paris post. He was born in 1970, the year Takada opened his first store in Paris; the two men graduated from the same fashion school in Tokyo, Bunka Fashion College, and Nigo started his fashion career the same year the Kenzo maison became part of LVMH.

A prominent guru of streetwear Nigo is sure to bring buzz and cultural currency to Kenzo.

He arrived in tandem with a new CEO for Kenzo: Sylvain Blanc, who was most recently CEO of Undiz, a division of Etam Group. Nigo succeeded Felipe Oliveira Baptista, who parted ways with Kenzo last April after a two-year collaboration.

Bottega Veneta

A French designer who has worked behind the scenes at a number of prominent brands, Matthieu Blazy was among those who bolted for the exit at Bottega Veneta due to the toxic work environment that led to the ouster of creative director Daniel Lee last November.

Blazy was lured back to succeed Lee, and is to show his first collection next month in Milan. He had initially joined Bottega Veneta in June 2020 as ready-to-wear design director from Calvin Klein 205W39NYC, where he was design director under Raf Simons. He has also worked in the studio of Celine under then-creative director Phoebe Philo, and for four years at Maison Margiela, ultimately becoming responsible for its couture line, dubbed Artisanal.

Blazy is said to share a similar sense of style with Lee, whose industrial-tinged minimalism has helped fuel Bottega Veneta’s sales and increase its reach around the world, especially with accessories like the Pouch bag to the Lido sandals.

Born in Paris in 1984, Blazy is a graduate of La Cambre in Brussels, and he started his fashion career as men’s designer for Raf Simons.

Phoebe Philo

One of her generation’s most revered and bankable designers, Phoebe Philo revealed last July that she would return to fashion after a long pause and establish an independent, namesake fashion house, with LVMH as a minority investor.

The British designer, as discrete as she is acclaimed, has said very little about her new project, saying only that she would create clothing and accessories “rooted in exceptional quality and design.” She is expected to divulge more details about her new brand this spring.

To be sure, she has kept a low profile since exiting Celine at the end of 2017.

A graduate of London’s Central Saint Martins fashion school, Philo was classmates with Stella McCartney and worked with her when McCartney launched her own collection after graduation. Philo followed McCartney to Chloé in 1997 and took the top job in 2001 when McCartney left to set up her own fashion house in a joint venture with Gucci Group.

She spent five years at the Richemont-owned house, heated up its fashion credentials and catapulted it into the high-margin leather goods business. She resigned from Chloé in 2006 for personal reasons, returning three years later to take the helm of Celine, where she exceeded all revenue expectations and won wide acclaim, despite her reticence about e-commerce and an arm’s-length policy with the press.

Trussardi

Serhat Işık and Benjamin A. Huseby, the duo behind the edgy Berlin-based GmbH, are the new creative directors of Trussardi and will show their first effort for 2022, while continuing to design the GmbH label, founded in 2016.

Trussardi touted the designers’ commitment to inclusivity and their “socially engaged perspective.”

Işık is a first-generation German of Turkish descent and Huseby, of Norwegian-Pakistani heritage, grew up in Norway.

SEE ALSO:

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Phoebe Philo Is Launching Her Own Fashion House

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