It was on 10 April 2020 that Clare Waight Keller announced she was leaving Givenchy after serving the Maison for three years. Waight Keller was Givenchy's first-ever female creative director, and while that seemed to be the headlining achievement (partriachy, everybody), her time at the Maison was a creative breath of fresh air while paying homage to founder Hubert de Givenchy. Her designs—across womenswear, menswear, and haute couture—paid due reverence to the heritage of Givenchy while making them relevant in the modern context. Under Waight Keller, men's haute couture too became a more prominent pillar for the Maison.
For four years, Stefano Pilati served as head of design of Ermenegildo Zegna Couture (now simply rebranded as Zegna) where he made full use of the brand's mastery in fabrics to create menswear collections that would certainly qualify as "quiet luxury" in today's context. Pilati's creations were undoubtedly luxurious both in aesthetic as well as feel with designs that pushed Ermenegildo Zegna beyond the confines of traditional menswear.
Both Waight Keller and Pilati—albeit different in styles—share a similarity in that they both followed the traditional path of cutting their teeth at several fashion houses before eventually holding creative reins. Waight Keller started out as part of the design team at Calvin Klein before moving on to Ralph Lauren and then Gucci, while Pilati took on design roles at Giorgio Armani, Prada, Miu Miu, and Yves Saint Laurent. And of course, they're both celebrated fashion designers in their own right.
It's curious then that with the kind of experience and design excellence they both possess, Waight Keller and Pilati weren't snapped up by another big-named fashion house.
Then last year, Waight Keller announced her first solo venture: a new partnership with Uniqlo called Uniqlo : C. The brand—like most under Uniqlo's LifeWear umbrella—focuses on building a capsule wardrobe of staple pieces seen through her designer lens. It was launched with womenswear before introducing menswear in its third season this month. And then two weeks later, Uniqlo announced that Waight Keller's involvement has expanded to not only be the creative behind Uniqlo : C, but also as its creative director for the entirety of the Uniqlo mainline collection beginning from the Autumn/Winter 2024 season.
Pilati launched his own brand Random Identities in 2017 through Instagram. Inspired by Berlin's club scene and the ongoing shift of gendered clothing, Random Identities is stocked on SSENSE.com, Dover Street Market and a number of other select stockists. Much like Waight Keller with Uniqlo, Random Identities is also a departure from the luxury pricing of Pilati's former creations. The brand is certainly more affordable yet still with a design point-of-view. Pilati is doubling down on affordable fashion by recently embarking on a capsule collection with Zara slated for an October 2024 release.
Designer collaborations are rife in fashion, especially the likes that have been pushed by fast-fashion brands such as H&M and Zara. Uniqlo, in fact, has turned its collaborations into longstanding partnerships with Christophe Lemaire, Jonathan Anderson as well as Inès de la Fressange. And quite like with Waight Keller, Lemaire eventually became the creative director of the design-forward Uniqlo U line.
But designers moving out of luxury to more affordable fashion brands as their solo ventures is something that's quite uncommon.
In a 2023 interview with W Magazine, Waight Keller highlighted that the jump from working in a couture house to a brand like Uniqlo was challenging but only in achieving certain techniques at the latter's usual price point. "The brand was so open to understanding new techniques of finishing. I showed them examples of, this is how the spaghetti string that runs through the dresses should look; this is how it should balance. A lot of the things I did on a constant basis whilst I was in Paris are techniques that I was able to distribute through the collection as well. It’s just an innate way of working, or what I’ve absorbed over the years," she said. According to WWD, Pilati expressed similar sentiments about his time working with Zara, especially with the brand's capability of producing at standards above its price point.
It remains to be seen how Waight Keller's Uniqlo and Pilati's co-ed collection for Zara will each shape up to be, and whether the latter could inspire Zara to hire Pilati as its creative director. But what's certain is that there is still hope out there for honed skill and talent of real fashion designers in the fashion space. It may not be at the big fashion houses, but in the bigger scheme of things, they're helping to elevate the designs of pieces for the everyday and for everyone.
