Who Will Replace Frida Giannini at Gucci?

While fashion’s attentions were trained on Tokyo for Dior’s Pre-Fall show and New York for Valentino’s bonus haute couture collection this week, Page Six dropped a bomb. The New York Post column reported that Gucci CEO Patrizio di Marco and his partner, Frida Giannini, are out at the Kering-owned brand. Kering confirmed the duo will be stepping down via press release this morning, naming Marco Bizzarri, CEO of Kering’s luxury couture and leather goods division, as Di Marco’s replacement. The creative director announcement will apparently come later. Giannini will depart after showing her next womenswear ready-to-wear collection in February. So who will take her place?

Giannini took on the Gucci creative director position for Spring 2006 after making a name for herself in the label’s accessories division. She replaced Alessandra Facchinetti, who spent two seasons in the creative director role as Tom Ford’s star-crossed successor. Giannini has had a better time of it than her short-lived predecessor, but neither woman has ever quite managed to recapture the sex quotient and subsequent buzz factor that made Ford a star. He was always going to be a tough act to follow.

Ford breathed new life into a failed brand; harder or not, Giannini’s job was to keep its heart beating. Early on she was criticized by the fashion press for the commercialism of her collections. The Post alluded to Gucci’s overexpansion in China and disappointing recent quarterly results. Lately the brand has been signaling its intention to move away from a logo-centric offering to a more high-end, exclusive product. I don’t know enough about the business side of things to weigh in, but from a fashion perspective, the problem with Giannini’s style, if there was one, was the unpredictability of her collections—1920s Art Deco one season, followed by Arthur Rimbaud-influenced decadence the next, and after that Marella Agnelli’s 1960s chic. Though less radical, Giannini belongs to the Marc Jacobs school of design, one in which newness counts for more than consistency.

Along the way, Giannini produced some bona fide hit collections. The thing is, fashion is moving in a different direction at the moment. Dependability, as unsexy as it sounds, is trending, and incremental change now trumps the 180. See Hedi Slimane’s Saint Laurent and Nicolas Ghesquière’s Louis Vuitton, two of the hottest brands around, for proof. As Giannini moved from one influence to another, it got harder to decipher what Gucci stood for on the runway. That said, she had been on an upswing. Her last two runway collections tapped into her ’60s/’70s sweet spot.

But it doesn’t appear to have been enough to keep the Kering executives happy. So, who’s right for Gucci, the famous Florentine maker of leather goods-turned-global purveyor of luxury products? Givenchy’s Riccardo Tisci has long been rumored to be a front-runner, but it’s hard to tell how easily he could be lured from the LVMH-owned label, and he recently stated his desire to build Givenchy into a fully fledged lifestyle brand. Christopher Kane and Joseph Altuzarra, both of whose businesses Kering has recently invested in, are talented but seem unlikely choices given their lack of significant accessories offerings.

It certainly would be nice to see a woman replace Giannini; there are few enough female designers heading up high-fashion brands as it is. So we’re going to go out on a limb here and pitch Mansur Gavriel’s Rachel Mansur and Floriana Gavriel. They single-handedly created the current vogue for bucket bags with the streamlined version they designed a little over a year ago, and lots of attention has been paid to everything they’ve done since. Sure, they’re a super long shot without ready-to-wear experience, but so was Giannini nine years ago. Another interesting candidate: stylist-turned-shoemaker success story Tabitha Simmons. Having worked with Dolce & Gabbana and Tory Burch for years, she’s had her hands on a lot of clothes; she knows what works. And she’s well connected, which counts.

More likely, given Gucci’s status as the company’s powerhouse, Kering executives are looking for a name. Someone like Céline’s Phoebe Philo is presumably unavailable, and though his name still comes up every time a situation like this surfaces, Helmut Lang has never publicly expressed any desire to return from early retirement. So, Christophe Lemaire? He brought excitement to Hermès during his recent stint there. Fashion people will surely like the idea of a more exclusive Gucci. The Hermès of Italy has a nice ring to it.