After design chief Sabato de Sarno’s departure from Gucci, the fashion rumour mill is churning out a list of possible replacements. Online, the most popular contender is Hedi Slimane, who previously headed up Dior, Saint Laurent, and Celine.
His appointment at Gucci, however, is made unlikely by his thorny history at Kering, Gucci and Saint Laurent’s parent company. After Slimane made tracks from Saint Laurent in 2016 (where he controversially dropped the Yves), he filed a lawsuit against Kering in French labour court claiming that the umbrella company failed to observe his non-compete clause, which said the brand would pay him $13 million when he left. (A non-compete is a contract in which an employee agrees not to work for a competing company for a certain amount of time after their departure, usually incentivised by a fee.) Slimane won the case, and the court ordered Kering to pay Slimane the $13 million.
But the smooth waters didn’t last. Later that year, Slimane launched a second lawsuit against the French company, claiming it ignored the clause in his contract guaranteeing he would be paid (post-tax) 11.5 million dollars a year due to the stake he had in YSL. In 2018, the court once again sided with Slimane. At the time, a spokesman for Kering said the company planned to appeal the court’s decision, but over six years on, it seems that motive was placed on the back burner.
But there's a but. Over the past few years, sales have been down at Gucci (in part due to the luxury slowdown), which accounts for two-thirds of Kering’s profit—they were down 25 per cent in Q3. And although his creative direction and exit at YSL were controversial, Slimane did make bread — even breaking the company’s $1-billion-per-year revenue mark. “What Yves Saint Laurent has achieved over the past four years represents a unique chapter in the history of the house. I am very grateful to Hedi Slimane," said Kering’s CEO François-Henri Pinault of Slimane’s tenure. Further, Slimane has never been the type to shy away from controversy. "Fashion without controversy probably feels like nonsense", he told Dirk Standen in 2021.
The question is—will Pinault—who’s still at Kering’s helm—put aside his legal beef for profit?
Image via Getty
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