Where Are All the Female Creative Directors?

Maria Grazia Chiuri at Fendi. Grace Wales Bonner at Hermès menswear. Chemena Kamali at Chloé. Sarah Burton at Givenchy. Louise Trotter at Bottega Veneta. 

It sounds promising and even celebratory, until you realize that this roll call, impressive as it is, could fit comfortably on one hand. In the meantime, in a game of luxury musical chairs, JW Anderson moves to Dior, Demna to Gucci, Pierpaolo Piccioli to Balenciaga, Haider Ackermann to Tom Ford, Matthieu Blazy to Chanel, Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez to Loewe, Dario Vitale to Versace, Alessandro Michele to Valentino, and the list goes on. And on. And on. 

So, the question practically asks itself: What happened to all the female creative directors, especially in an industry built on designing for women?  

The optics of progress 

Every appointment of a woman to a major fashion house is treated like a small revolution, a victory press-release. When Dior named Maria Grazia Chiuri its first female creative director in 2016, it was positioned as a milestone moment, an emblem of change. And in a way, it was. Chiuri’s feminist-inflected runway statements, from “We Should All Be Feminists” T-shirts to her unapologetically intellectual collections and shows featuring female artists, reframed what a luxury brand could stand for. 

But here we are, nearly a decade later, and the gender hands on the clock haven’t moved much. The number of women running creative departments in the upper echelons of fashion is still dramatically outnumbered by men. For every Chemena Kamali at Chloé and Louise Trotter at Bottega, there’s a carousel of male appointments spinning twice as fast elsewhere. 

Fashion, after all, is an industry that markets empowerment, yet still struggles to practice it. The irony is that when a woman lands a top role, it becomes newsworthy, as if parity were a novelty. Her appointment is treated as a triumph when it should be taken for granted. Until we start normalizing women’s success, equality in fashion will remain a headline, not a habit.  

A system designed by men for men  

Here’s the irony: fashion is one of the few global industries with a deep pipeline of female talent. Design schools are filled with women. Women dominate the editorial, communications, and merchandising sides of fashion. They even dominate consumer spending. Yet somehow, when the shortlist for creative director shortlist emerges, it looks almost entirely male. It’s not that women designers aren’t there. It’s that they’re not getting the breaks. 

The problem is cultural. Patriarchy is stitched into the fabric of fashion just as tightly as it is in politics, finance, entertainment, or tech. You can’t dismantle a hierarchy that’s been designed to protect itself. The system recycles men but, most importantly, it is built on the assumption that men know better, lead better, and create better value than women. 

That belief is based on the myth of the visionary male genius, the auteur whose ego is mistaken for brilliance. When a man pushes boundaries, he’s a visionary. Women, by contrast, are expected to prove they deserve the right to lead, and then to lead softly, diplomatically, without disrupting too much or complaining too loudly—otherwise, they are deemed “challenging” or “difficult.”   

If we are honest, the numbers tell the story: global luxury remains dominated by male CEOs and chairmen. For all the talk of “representation,” the balance of power hasn’t budged. Women may inspire collections, fuel marketing narratives, and drive the majority of consumer spending, yet they remain absent from the rooms where creative and financial decisions are made. 

Fashion loves to call women its muse. Maybe it’s time it started trusting them as its makers.  

A shift worth watching 

The recent appointments of female creative directors suggest glimmers of change. Not seismic, but meaningful. Grace Wales Bonner’s appointment at Hermès menswear is both bold and overdue: a recognition of a designer who has consistently married intellect and craft without compromise. Louise Trotter’s move to Bottega Veneta signals a willingness to look beyond the usual suspects, and her debut collection more than vindicated that risk, with a refined yet forward-thinking showcase of innovation and quiet confidence that reminded everyone what fresh perspective can look like. And Maria Grazia Chiuri’s return to Fendi feels almost poetic; a woman reclaiming her own design history, and perhaps rewriting part of fashion’s. 

These are signs of a slow recalibration. That the conversation is, at the very least, shifting from if to why not more.  

Fashion’s unfinished revolution 

The truth is that the gender gap in creative leadership is not a numbers issue; it’s a narrative issue. As long as fashion continues to treat female talent as rare exceptions, the industry will remain stuck in its own contradiction: selling empowerment to women while reserving power for men. 

Maybe the next big luxury revolution won’t be about digital transformation or sustainability or AI, but about who gets to create, to decide, to lead. 

Until then, the same question will keep resurfacing, with every reshuffle, every press release, every triumphant appointment followed by ten predictable ones: Where are all the female creative directors?