What Fashion Designers Need to Know Today

Discover the most relevant industry news and insights for fashion designers, updated each month to enable you to excel in job interviews, promotion conversations or perform better in the workplace by increasing your market awareness and emulating market leaders.

BoF Careers distils business intelligence from across the breadth of our content — editorial briefings, newsletters, case studies, podcasts and events — to deliver key takeaways and learnings tailored to your job function, listed alongside a selection of the most exciting live jobs advertised by BoF Careers partners.

Key articles and need-to-know insights for fashion designers today:

1. Why Chanel Chose Matthieu Blazy

Matthieu Blazy joins Chanel as artistic director of fashion collections, following a three-year stint at Kering’s Bottega Veneta. Blazy’s vision of fashion isn’t about “changing just to change,” Chanel’s fashion president Bruno Pavlovsky told BoF in an interview ahead of the announcement. “There is a real depth to what Matthieu does, from the shows to the products, to his way of talking about them.”

With nearly $20 billion in annual revenue, fashion’s second-biggest brand doesn’t need a “revolution” so to speak, according to Pavlovsky. But Chanel is nonetheless positioning the hire as a historic, transformative move for the company. “We didn’t choose Matthieu to just ‘do Chanel,’ we chose him so he could push the boundaries of what Chanel is, for the future,” Pavlovsky said. “He will bring his modernity, his way of working — Chanel is ready to let itself be transported.” Blazy is set to join Chanel by April 2025, ahead of a debut collection slated for next September.

Related Jobs:

Designer, Broken Planet — London, United Kingdom

Design Intern, Hugo Boss — Metzingen, Germany

Senior Print Designer, Coach — New York, United States

2. John Galliano to Exit Maison Margiela

Star designer John Galliano is set to exit Maison Margiela after 10 years leading the OTB-owned brand. The designer confirmed the news with a lengthy statement on Instagram. “Today is the day I saw goodbye to Maison Margiela… I am forever grateful for this safe space to create and build a new family that supports me with courage and dignity,” he wrote, thanking his atelier and Renzo Rosso, chairman of OTB.

Margiela’s business steadily climbed in recent years as Galliano infused its collections with campy, theatrical innovations, deconstructed designs and a gender-fluid sensibility as well as pushing the craftsmanship and creative impact of its “Artisanal” line to new heights. Sales rose 22 percent in 2023 even as the wider luxury market slowed. Galliano did not elaborate on his future plans, but sources familiar with the matter say his former employer LVMH, which owns Dior, has sought a rapprochement with the designer in recent months as it reshuffles its creative ranks.

Related Jobs:

Associate Footwear Designer, Tory Burch — New York, United States

Design Assistant, Dôen — Los Angeles, United States

Womenswear Designer, Aeron — Hybrid

3. How Polène Is Growing French DTC Handbags Into an International Success

Polène, which was founded by three siblings in 2016, has experienced “significant growth” in 2024 after growing sales to 142 million euros ($153 million) last year, Polène CEO and co-founder Antoine Mothay said in an interview at the brand’s Paris headquarters. Now the brand has set up shop in London for the first time: inaugurating a two-story, 415 square-metre space near Piccadilly Circus earlier this month. Next cities on the list are Munich, Miami and Dubai. “We’d like to open five to eight stores a year, to have a store in every big city,” said Mothay.

Alongside the likes of Sézane and Rouje, Polène is part of a wave of young French direct-to-consumer brands who have thrived in recent years as many of their American counterparts struggled to cope with rising interest rates, high customer acquisition costs and a post-pandemic comeback for brick-and-mortar shopping. “The key to our success are our stores,” said Mothay. “People see us as a very digital brand, but we opened our first store, which was just 26 square metres, the same day I launched the website.” The company has been profitable since its first year, Mothay added.

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Design Manager, Broken Planet — London, United Kingdom

Design Intern, Vetements — Zurich, Switzerland

Assistant Handbag Designer, Tommy Hilfiger — New York, United States

4. Company Insider Succeeds Dries Van Noten

After Dries Van Noten waved goodbye last June with a men’s show that was his own special blend of emotion, intelligence and extravagance, his studio designed the women’s collection shown in October, which is usually the stop-gap that precedes the announcement of a successor. Now, Julian Klausner — who has worked at the company since 2018, eventually becoming head of womenswear — will succeed Van Noten as creative director of the Puig-owned label. He’ll issue a lookbook for men’s in January, and make his runway debut during the women’s collections in March.

Something that Van Noten valued about his young cohort was that they helped him assess his own past through new eyes. Klausner represents an empathetic connection between past and future. “The most important quality to convey is the balance between creativity and emotional connection,” he added. “While Dries can be cerebral and pragmatic, his work consistently seeks new beauty and provokes emotion. This creative and poetic dimension of the brand is where my heart truly lies.”

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Garment Technician, Erdem — London, United Kingdom

Innovation Concept Design Senior Lead, On — Zurich, Switzerland

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5. Can Vans Recapture Its Cool?

Vans has reworked several of its staple models under the brand’s new premium label, OTW by Vans, which launched in February. While it’s just a fraction of Vans’ total business, selling only at select retailers and through limited-edition drops online, it has become the most forward-facing expression of Vans’ head-down focus on product innovation as the brand looks to recapture its cool with consumers and restart sales growth.

“We’re re-thinking what products from Vans are,” said OTW’s vice president and creative director Ian Ginoza. Now the company is fighting hard to change that with an emphasis on remixing its signature models and introducing new styles. In a high-profile move earlier this year, Vans hired Sun Choe, Lululemon’s long-time chief product officer, to be its new global brand president.

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Product Developer, Fred Perry — London, United Kingdom

Head of Atelier, Iris Van Herpen — Amsterdam, The Netherlands

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6. The Rise of the Indigenous Model

While not the first Indigenous model to be featured in a cover shoot or walk in a high-profile show, Quannah ChasingHorse — whose heritage is of Hän Gwich’in from Eagle Village, Alaska and Oglala Lakota from Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota — is widely credited with bringing authentic representation to fashion’s biggest stages in new ways, having featured on the cover of Vogue Mexico and Vogue Japan and walked in shows for Chanel and Gucci. She’s used her platform to advocate for hiring Native models, and for the industry to respect Indigenous aesthetics, including long, natural hair, tattoos and septum piercings.

ChasingHorse’s ascent helped touch off a deluge of Native talent in the modelling world. Between 2020 and 2024, nearly two dozen fresh Indigenous models clinched contracts with luxury brands like Bottega Veneta and Chloé, and while signing with agencies such as Society Management, and IMG. Among them were Valentine Alvarez who debuted for Marc Jacobs in 2021, and Denali White Elk (Oglala Lakota) who walked for Gucci, Kylie Van Arsdale, a Diné model recently appeared on a billboard for Ice magazine. This marks a pivotal moment for Indigenous representation, though the road remains uneven.

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Senior Womenswear Product Developer, Studio Nicholson — London, United Kingdom

Seamstress/Prototypist, Prada Group — Milan, Italy

Product Development Project Manager, Tiffany & Co. — New York, United States

7. Textile Recycling: Big Opportunity or Risky Business?

Textile-to-textile recycling pioneer Renewcell declared bankruptcy in February, as sales of its recycled cellulosic pulp lagged expectations. And despite big brands’ sustainability pledges, recycled polyester’s market share has remained more or less static since before the pandemic. But deep-pocketed and far-sighted investors are still betting that the market will shift. Renewcell’s remaining assets were bought out of administration by private equity firm Altor in June. H&M Group and green industry investor Vargas Holding have raised close to $200 million to get Syre, a polyester recycler they launched earlier in the year, to commercial production in 2025.

Meanwhile, companies from Gap Inc. to Sri Lankan manufacturing giant MAS have penned agreements with innovators to buy new recycled materials once they come to market. Critics warn recycling should not be seen as a silver bullet solution. The process carries its own environmental impact and, whether recycled or virgin, plastic products still shed micro-scale particles that pollute waterways and food systems. Recyclers argue they’re looking to improve markets too entrenched to ever really go away.

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Menswear Designer, Hugo Boss — Metzingen, Germany

Embroideries R&D Specialist, Prada Group — Milan, Italy

Footwear & Accessories Coordinator, Dôen — Los Angeles, United States

8. Puma Is Bringing AI-Generated Design to the Football Pitch

Puma is using AI to bring Manchester City fans closer to the game. Earlier this month, the company launched a platform that allows the football club’s followers to use generative AI to design a new uniform for the team. One of those designs, to be selected through a contest, will become Manchester City’s third kit, typically worn in around 10 to 12 matches, for the 2026 season. For its platform, Puma partnered with the AI studio Deep Objects, founded by the creative agency FTR, which has worked with Puma on a number of prior projects, including the brand’s runway shows in recent years.

“We want to really break down those barriers and make it easy for anybody to come in and design,” Ivan Dashkov, Puma’s head of emerging marketing technology said. “Literally, you can make a kit in under two minutes, which I think is very exciting.” Puma joins a host of companies seizing on generative AI’s design abilities. Brands including Norma Kamali, Collina Strada and Mango are embracing the technology to create their own collections, while a number of start-ups are using it to power fashion design platforms.

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Raw Material Developer Assistant, Toteme — Stockholm, Sweden

Senior Technical Designer, White House Black Market — Fort Myers, United States

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