FASHION KNOWS ITS DISEASE, BUT KEEPS CHOOSING THE WRONG CURE

IF LUXURY IS SUFFERING, WHY DOES IT KEEP HURTING ITSELF?

The diagnoses exist. The problem? Many maisons keep choosing cures that worsen the disease. Unsuitable creatives. Managers without vision. Archives used as crutches. DNA violated instead of respected. Fashion is playing a dangerous game. It’s not just the war. It’s not just inflation. It’s not just China slowing down or customers buying less. The real issue is this: while the industry shows clear signs of fatigue, many maisons seem determined to make things worse. They’re turning an already complex crisis into a full-blown massacre.

The archive isn’t the problem. The archive is memory, code, heritage. But it becomes dangerous when it turns into a crutch. When it replaces vision. When it’s used to cover the absence of a real creative direction. The best creative directors never destroyed a maison’s DNA. They understood it. Updated it. Transformed it. Made it relevant for the times. People often mention Tom Ford. He didn’t save Gucci by copying Gucci. He brought a new vision. Radical. Desirable. He didn’t restore the brand. He reignited it—without suffocating its history.

Today, too many houses seem to choose the opposite path. They depersonalize. Confuse. Chase effects. Seek noise. They hand historic identities to hands that don’t seem to grasp their deep value. As if demolishing the myth were more interesting than reimagining it. Meanwhile, managers arrive—hired more to restructure than to dream. Finance guys. Industrial plans. Reassuring words. But what is a maison? A declining steel mill? An automotive brand that just needs to reorganize production?

Sure, efficiency matters. Time and motion analysis. More modern, digital management of production phases—especially in the supply chain’s small and medium enterprises. But that’s not the heart of the problem. Here’s the disturbing truth: without product, without desire, without identity, no plan can truly save this industry. And with it, the entire ecosystem—small satellites, artisans, workshops, suppliers, and expertise that orbit around fashion companies.

Fashion can’t expect new results while making the same mistakes. If a brand is fragile, you don’t strengthen it by violating its code. If customers have lost interest, you don’t win them back by confusing them. If investors are nervous, you don’t calm them with yet another soulless move. This is basic. Yet it seems impossibly hard to apply.

And if some brands keep growing, maybe it’s precisely because they haven’t lost their DNA. They innovate without erasing themselves. They update their identity instead of disguising it. The future of fashion doesn’t come from nostalgia or destruction. It comes from something rarer: the ability to understand who you are—and to make it necessary and attractive again.

Because a maison can survive a bad season. But it rarely survives losing its roots.