Thursday, October 15 was an expensive afternoon for business cards. Calvin Klein announced that Veronica Leoni is stepping down as creative director of Calvin Klein Collection. Less than an hour later, Alexander McQueen announced that Sean McGirr is leaving as its creative director. Neither house named a successor. Two of the most watched chairs in fashion came vacant on the same afternoon, three days after Kim Jones announced he would fill the equivalent chair at a house named after himself.
Start in London. McGirr, born in Dublin, joined McQueen in October 2023 from JW Anderson, succeeding Sarah Burton, who had spent 26 years at the house, 13 of them as creative director. His runway debut came with the Fall 2024 collection, and he rebuilt the house codes around sharp tailoring and an eerie romanticism, restoring the skull scarf along the way. What nobody knew in September was that his Spring 2027 collection was his last. Shown on September 20 in the Undercroft of Lincoln's Inn Chapel, it returned McQueen to London Fashion Week after years of showing in Paris, mixing womenswear and menswear in one cast.
The collection reads differently as a farewell. Its palette came from religious portraiture, set against washed neon from the city's rave years; smoked tulle and floral motifs shared the runway with leather harnesses and strict tailoring. Three bespoke menswear silhouettes were made with Huntsman of Savile Row in heritage British wools, and jeweller Shaun Leane returned with precious metal body adornment. Kering chief executive Luca de Meo thanked McGirr and set the brief for whoever follows: a bold new direction built on the house's heritage of tailoring, creativity and rebellion. McQueen president Gianfranco D'Attis, who took charge in June, credited McGirr with reconnecting the house to London.
The exit is part of a turnaround, not just a taste change. Kering is working to restore profitability at McQueen, and the plan includes halving the store estate by the end of 2026 compared with the end of 2025, with 20 stores already closed in the first half of the year. McGirr is also the second Kering creative director to leave in a week: on October 9, Saint Laurent parted ways with Anthony Vaccarello after a decade, and that chair is still empty too. Fashionista, keeping the week's tally, placed both departures in a longer list of recent exits that includes Ib Kamara at Off-White and Julien Dossena at Rabanne.
In New York, the Leoni chapter was shorter and, on paper, historic. She became creative director of Calvin Klein Collection in May 2024, the first woman to hold the role, after working at Jil Sander, Celine, Moncler and The Row and founding her own label, Quira. Her debut, Fall 2025 at New York Fashion Week, returned the house to the runway for the first time since Raf Simons left in 2018. She showed four collections in all; the fourth, for Spring 2027, was presented in September and is now her last. Her brief covered men's and women's ready-to-wear, and the work leaned on the house's pared-back codes and red carpet placements.
Calvin Klein's global brand president, David Savman, thanked Leoni for her creative vision and partnership, and called the reintroduction of Collection a significant milestone for the brand, insisting Collection remains an important part of it. The commercial verdict was cooler. The Business of Fashion reported that Collection had yet to make a major commercial difference to the overall Calvin Klein business, and that brand sales fell 7 percent in its latest reported quarter. A runway line can be a halo rather than a sales engine, but a halo still has to be seen to work, and four seasons is now the length of the experiment.
Then there is the designer who left nobody. Kim Jones announced his eponymous label, KIM JONES, on October 12. The first collection is for Fall/Winter 2027, made predominantly in Japan, with leather goods produced in Italy, at what the label calls a considered price point, and designed as a versatile wardrobe that does not divide itself into traditional menswear and womenswear categories. It launches on the label's own website in mid-2027. The first store follows in October 2027 at Central Yards in Hong Kong, with further stores across Asia and selected retail partners planned. It is not his first attempt at his own name: his original label ran from 2003 until 2008, when he closed it to become creative director of Dunhill.
What he brings to it is two decades of other people's houses: men's artistic director at Louis Vuitton from 2011 to 2018, artistic director of Dior Men from 2018 to 2025, and, alongside that, artistic director of Fendi womenswear and couture from 2020 to 2024. Jones said, "After many years working with incredible houses and collaborators, it feels like the right moment to do something under my own name again." Read the week whole and it describes the job market of the modern creative director in one frame: two houses searching for a name, one name no longer waiting to be searched for.
