Fashion’s year of transition continues. As a slew of creative directors – including new hires at Chanel, Versace, Bottega Veneta, Loewe and Jil Sander – prepare to make their runway debuts in Milan and Paris this September, the executive reshuffling continues behind the scenes. Communications experts have been moving from one marketing department to the next and there are now several newly installed chief marketing officers (CMOs) across the luxury sector, each tasked with restrategising, bringing fresh branding ideas and helping to reignite sales growth. 
 
“I want to create a media brand,” one CMO told The Monocle Minute during a recent visit to Milan. He isn’t alone. As fashion brands face a challenging macroeconomic landscape and consumer fatigue, many are calling on the power of storytelling through podcasts, films, books and newsletter platforms such as Substack.

This is not the right way forward. I believe in the power of a good story as much as any journalist – but it’s important to also consider who is telling the story. When you’re narrating your own journey, there’s an inherent bias, a lack of objectivity and often a tendency to gloss over critical details. So, as tempting as it is for brands to leverage their vast resources and maintain full control of the narrative, the key to achieving cultural relevance might actually lie in doing the opposite: refocusing on the core business of making clothes, taking more creative risks and allowing others to reach their own conclusions. 
 
We’ve seen all this before: in the early days of social media, many luxury houses decided to start acting like media brands. They pressed pause on many of the conversations that they were having with journalists and shifted their focus to livestream shows, Instagram campaigns and shoppable stories on their e-commerce websites. This all served to devalue much of journalism into mere content. Soon after, they realised that making “content” is an expensive, highly complex process and began slowing their media ambitions down. 
 
Now, rather than repeating the cycle, marketers would be better off thinking of new ways to bring designers’ work to life – be it unexpected runway formats, events to remember or out-of-home campaigns that make you stop and look twice. And for those with an inkling to share their worlds and tell more complex stories, why not collaborate with experts, be they filmmakers, writers or curators? Miu Miu is a great example: for its ongoing Women’s Tales film series, the brand commissions filmmakers, including Ava DuVernay, Joanna Hogg and, most recently, French filmmaker Alice Diop, to shoot short films with creative carte blanche. “It’s a unique commission – there’s no brief, it’s completely open to the filmmaker and what they want to do,” Hogg told The Monocle Minute during the debut of her film Autobiografia di una Borsetta earlier this year. 
 
While most luxury houses understand the value in hiring seasoned creative directors who have spent decades honing their craft, rather than up-and-comers or celebrity stylists, they should also recognise the value of the critic, the curator and the independent storyteller. Experience always pays off.      
 
Natalie Theodosi is Monocle’s fashion director. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.

This story originally appeared in The Monocle Minute

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