The Monocle Minute

There has never been a busier year for fashion’s HR departments. In the past 12 months labels including Jil Sander, Gucci, Balenciaga, Loewe, Dior and Calvin Klein have all been on the hunt for their next creative director. The latest to leave their position? Irish-born designer Jonathan Anderson, who transformed the LVMH-owned Loewe into a nearly €2bn business.

This wave of change has resulted in an ongoing fantasy football-style game and countless sessions of salacious gossip. But it also poses a far more serious question: what does it even take to make it as a creative director today? In the 1990s, getting into London’s Central Saint Martins art school was considered the golden ticket: graduates including Phoebe Philo, Alexander McQueen and John Galliano went on to lead Paris’s most important heritage houses for the following decade. In the 2010s, the rise of e-commerce and social media made room for a new generation of creative directors who had little to no technical training. Instead, they enjoyed a certain degree of online fame and possessed a knack for viral imagery – and befriending celebrities.

Clearly, this was a strategy that could only work in the short term. But what’s next? There’s a renewed appreciation for designers with years of experience on their CVs. This is why Julian Klausner, who trained under Dries Van Noten for decades, was able to step into his former boss’s shoes so gracefully. I don’t remember seeing so many fashion editors smiling as they did during his debut show, held at the Palais Garnier this month.

There’s another much-needed shift taking place that’s key to understanding the fashion industry’s current turnover rate. In the past, creative directors were put on a pedestal and given carte blanche to design according to their own – often far-fetched – fantasies. But today the stakes are higher, as most of these houses now trade publicly. Creativity will always remain the key ingredient to any brand’s success but the new wave of creative directors might need to put their egos to one side, acknowledge their customer base and find beauty in the everyday. In doing so, they’ll reach new audiences and, if successful, they’ll change the way we dress.

Natalie Theodosi is Monocle’s fashion director. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.

The arrest of Istanbul’s mayor, Ekrem İmamoğlu, has seemed inevitable ever since he began campaigning to become the opposition’s next presidential candidate (writes Hannah Lucinda Smith). President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has dominated Turkish politics for 23 years and can no longer win democratic elections, even on the skewed playing field he has built. Now İmamoğlu is being investigated for both corruption and support of Kurdish terror groups, a charge not unfamiliar to the dozens of opposition mayors who have been ousted in recent years.

The current wave of arrests – which includes journalists, artists, businessmen and politicians – began in late 2024. İmamoğlu, however, was always the ultimate target. Since his initial local election win in Istanbul in 2019, which displaced Erdoğan’s party for the first time in 25 years, İmamoğlu has transformed the city’s municipality, reinvigorated its cultural offerings and expanded its transport network. Reflecting his ambitions to turn his city into a global cultural powerhouse, İmamoğlu was a keynote speaker at Monocle’s Istanbul Quality of Life Conference in October. He has also worked hard to build links with other opposition mayors in authoritarian states across Europe, raising his international profile in the process.

Such successes pose an existential threat to Erdoğan, who for the past decade has used his control of Turkey’s media and state institutions to swing tight elections his way without attracting international condemnation. But such methods are no longer enough. Turkey’s economy has been in crisis for years and Erdoğan, 71, is no longer the bombastic leader he once was (often having to take offstage breaks when he appears at his signature mass rallies). Meanwhile, the 53-year-old İmamoğlu appears energetic and motivated – an echo of what Erdoğan represented when he was Istanbul mayor in the 1990s.

In the system of competitive authoritarianism that Erdoğan has constructed, there’s no room for a truly strong challenger. İmamoğlu’s arrest is a turning point. Turkey’s authoritarianism is no longer competitive.

William Eggleston captured the character of 20th-century American life through the lens of his Leica (writes Rory Jones). And an auction of his work in New York suggests that there is a particularly high demand for his iconic imagery now. The 43 dye-transfer prints at Tuesday’s white-glove sale, overseen by Phillips Auction House, sold at a staggering combined total of $5.6m (€5.1m). Six of the lots, including “Untitled (Peaches!)” and the 101-print collection Los Alamos, fetched their highest ever prices at auction.

Eggleston chronicled the rural South through unpretentious, everyday portraits of friends, shopfronts and the intimate details of his surroundings. His work helped to push colour photography into the public sphere and a solo exhibition at Moma in 1976 was a turning point in the perception of photography as art. This week’s astonishing sale prices suggest that Eggleston’s work still has something to say about the present. His nostalgic images have never been more desired.

William Eggleston was featured in Monocleissue 101, subscribenow to read the full article.

What if designers and architects were to favour the sonic over the visual? Ahead of the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale in May, Konfekt’s editor, Sophie Grove, sits down with four innovative creatives who are in tune with this year’s theme, “Intelligens”. Here, an architect and the curators and artists behind several national pavilions discuss their forthcoming work for the show, active listening in design and the importance of multidisciplinary connection.

1.
Marie Aigner
Architect, designer and artist

“Bad acoustics are like pollution; they harm your health and your work. We love these very hard surfaces in a room – huge windows, hard floors – but they create reflections, sound waves that can’t be controlled. They decrease your excellence at work. Therefore, it’s a good investment to look carefully at what kinds of materials we use.”

2.
Alice Loumeau
Co-curator of the Luxembourg pavilion

“At big gatherings like the biennale, we have a space of experimentation where we can be bold, innovate, reflect and try something. It doesn’t matter if we fail. It’s just an experiment. It’s not necessarily about giving solutions because solutions are part of the problem.”

3.
Michelle Delea
Poet for the Irish pavilion

“We’re working with the composer and sound artist David Stalling, who has collected field recordings from around Ireland. The title and theme of our project is “Assembly”. We’ve been pulling this apart, reflecting on the act of congregation and construction. It has been important for us to reduce visual overstimulation for the visitors to the pavilion and provide plenty of space to sit, reflect and converse.”

4.
Axelle Stiefel
Member of the curatorial team for the Swiss pavilion

“The four architects behind the idea for the [Swiss] pavilion, the group Annexe, have drawn their inspiration from the Kunsthalle by architect Lisbeth Sachs, which was created for the 1958 Schweizerische Ausstellung für Frauenarbeit [Saffa] exhibition for women’s work in Zürich. The walls are distributed radially around three circles. So, from wherever you are, you have a view to somewhere else. This connects with sound or a way of being that is in tune with your environment.”

To read more, pick up issue 18 of ‘Konfekt’, which is out now.

From the pavement to the pool, we meet the founders of two brands moving the needle in the fitness world. Oliver Powe talks about the philosophy that underscores Acid Running’s approach to design. Then: the innovation and development behind Zygo, the world’s first underwater-streaming headset.