Miuccia Prada is one of those rare greats who marches to their own beat. Upon entering the family business—after training and performing as a mime artist for five years, mind you—Mrs Prada upended the industry when she premiered the brand’s now-classic nylon backpack in 1984, introduced womenswear in 1989 and menswear in 1995 to a business that up till then was only manufacturing leather bags, and of course, branched out to create Miu Miu in 1992.
Little need to be said of Prada’s enduring legacy in fashion since. Mrs Prada’s offbeat designs known for challenging one’s perception of what’s beautiful, continue to be referenced by both established and up-and-coming designers alike. It’s often said within the fashion circle that a Prada piece never really goes out of style and that Mrs Prada’s ever-evolving vocabulary of prints can easily be matched with pieces across different seasons to create one’s own unique combination of the brand’s aesthetic.
It came as a surprise then that after almost 40 years of helming sole creative direction of Prada, it was announced that Mrs Prada will have Raf Simons come in as a co-creative director in 2020. There’s a sort of humility in the decision; that after decades and being considered a fashion force, Mrs Prada has no qualms sharing creative custody of a brand she’s effectively built.
While fashion collaborations have become de rigueur in the past decade or so, the existence of co-creative directors isn’t as common.
Since time immemorial, a partnership in fashion has typically been between the “business” and the “creative”—the money and the vision, so to speak. The late Yves Saint Laurent founded his eponymous fashion house with the business mind of Pierre Bergé, entrepreneur Marcel Boussac was the financial backer behind Christian Dior, Marc Jacobs co-founded his own brand with businessman Robert Duffy, Gianni Versace grew and expanded Versace under the guidance of older brother and CEO Santo Versace, and countless others. The separation between the business and the creative side of things makes sense for a more focused organisation, with each side working together to ensure that the vision and the output can be financially successful. Or at the very least, keep a business afloat.
The rigours of an evolved fashion landscape however, can make a one-man (or one-woman) show rather exhausting. The modern fashion calendar unfortunately demands relentless creativity with four, sometimes six collections a year, endless collaborations with other designers as well as brands, various marketing campaigns, and creations beyond fashion alone. Today’s creative directors aren’t solely designing clothes; they’re running empires to feed into the growing fantasy that is fashion. And empires cannot be run alone.
“I’ll only do it with Lucie,” Luke Meier told Jil Sander’s then-CEO Alessandra Bettariher when he was first approached to take over the creative reins of the brand. In a 2023 interview with Business of Fashion, Luke recalled the rationale of that decision. “I’m sure they probably had the idea that if I would do it, then she’s coming along because she had the chops in terms of high level European womenswear. I had no experience whatsoever in that world,” Luke said. The husband-and-wife duo have been co-creative directors of Jil Sander for close to a decade now and each offers different perspectives and expertise to the table. Luke’s largely streetwear-centric background working for Supreme as well as his own OAMC brand (he stepped down as creative director in June 2024) is a juxtaposition to Lucie’s more haute couture experience that was honed at Louis Vuitton, Balenciaga and Christian Dior, where she was the interim creative director after Simons left the post.
For Luke and Lucie, the partnership is almost mutualistic in nature. “The way we work is we really do everything together—everything is kind of merging. Luke definitely has his eyes on the womenswear and I have my eyes on the men’s and, for sure, we add a different element,” Lucie said in the same interview. And it has clearly worked. Not since Simons’ tenure have we seen such creative and visual stability at Jil Sander. One would be able to tell where exactly Luke’s and Lucie’s individual imprints are on a collection, but even then, they’re cohesive—a delicate dance of the organic and the precise.
The same can be said of the growing success of Lemaire. Founded by Christophe Lemaire in 1990, the brand was on hiatus for nearly a decade as Christophe focused on his role as artistic director of Lacoste in 2001, and then relaunching it in 2010 (while simultaneously working on womenswear for Hermès) together with Sarah-Linh Tran as co-creative director. What was initially an if-you-know-you-know cult fashion label, has now grown both in operations as well as profitability. Lemaire’s sales in 2024 reached over USD100 million, a 10-fold growth as compared to 2019’s figures. There’s no doubt that the growth is a result of a number of factors, including a consumer shift to more affordable luxury fashion as well as a large minority investment by Fast Retailing, Uniqlo’s parent company, of which both Christophe and Tran are co-artistic directors of its Uniqlo U line and R&D centre in Paris. But it’s also Tran’s injection of a softer nuance to Lemaire’s designs that have helped make it more appealing to an audience that clamour for comfortable and timeless day-to-night fashion.
Like in any relationship, a co-creative directorship is only as strong as the communication between the two individuals. The obvious brilliance of having two creative leads is the fact that each brings in a distinct perspective. The beauty lies in a tension between the two ideals—a push and pull that could very well spark innovation. Take for example, former co-creative directors Carol Lim and Humberto Leon, whose combined vision reinvigorated Kenzo in 2011 in ways that were modern and relevant at the time. And who could forget the Pierpaolo Piccioli and Maria Grazia Chiuri era of Valentino where the House’s signature codes were strengthened and recontextualised for both new and existing clientele.
Not all creative partnerships, however, serve to be a united voice—it all boils down to a brand’s vision. Co-creative directorships may be rare occurrences, but installing a creative director for each facet of a fashion business is fairly common. Louis Vuitton’s current creative directors Nicolas Ghesquière and Pharrell Williams work on the womenswear and menswear universes respectively, each distinct in their own ways and hardly ever interweaving ideas and aesthetics. The same goes for brands like Dior, Fendi (before Kim Jones recently exited from its womenswear line), and Hermès. There are certain parameters that each designer would have to work within to stay true to the overarching aesthetic and ethos of a brand, but how they’re interpreted in hopes of relating to either the women’s or the men’s portion of the business is somewhat up to their own creative input.
For decades, the industry mythos thrived on the image of the lone creative genius. Fashion designers such as Yves Saint Laurent, Karl Lagerfeld and Alexander McQueen didn’t just design; they dominated. Their names became synonymous with their brands, their visions untouchable, and their control seemingly absolute. But things are different now, and the fashion system is much harsher than before.
That’s not to say, however, that solo creative directors work alone. There is always a team that works under them, with a leading figure for the different departments under their jurisdiction.
“We believe so much in teamwork. It’s a kind of constant dialect. For us, this is why the ‘designer-as-genius’ mythology is a bit absurd, because if you don’t have a good pattern maker, good assistant, good team and good capacity of communicating, it doesn’t go anywhere. The same idea won’t become the same object at the end, because the root and the process, and the quality of the communication, sometimes the tension of that communication, is part of the creation,” explained Christophe in a 2019 interview with SSENSE.com.
Are two heads better than one? Prada’s new arrangement seems to be proving so. Stalwart followers of the brand may say that Mrs Prada never needed a second hand to begin with. But with Prada being the fashion disruptor that it continues to be, you could say that having someone as equally prolific as Simons—and one who respects and is a fan of the brand and woman behind it—has brought out a sense of newness for Prada. And fashion lovers are all the better for it.
