🇬🇧 The creative director as a “cultural platform” – Cool Haunted by nss magazine
Creative freedom wanted
The Design Week 2026 is looming over Milan with all its branded pop-ups, but among the highest-profile events on the calendar, two in particular best illustrate the current state of fashion and its protagonists. The events we are referring to are the debut of Kris Van Assche at the Fuorisalone, with the series “Nectar Vessels Bronzes” and the new “Rosamar” ceramic collection for Serax, and the group exhibition INSIEME curated by Sabato De Sarno for Vanity Fair at Piscina Cozzi, which aims to tell the story of Italian craftsmanship through twelve projects created specifically for the show.
Neither exhibition is strictly about fashion, yet both speak directly to its audience given the importance the two creatives previously held as creative directors — a role both Van Assche and De Sarno have stepped away from in order to pursue broader cultural vocations. Their fame in the fashion world has allowed these projects to break out of their relatively niche spheres, while the credibility of their names has cemented the importance of the respective initiatives. This correspondence is no coincidence: theirs is simply the most extreme example of the evolution that the classic role of creative director is undergoing today.
In fashion, there is no shortage of cases where creative directors eventually become creatives, period. The most illustrious examples are Martin Margiela and Helmut Lang, who fully transitioned into artists after bidding farewell to fashion. We can also mention Jean Charles de Castelbajac, Miguel Adrover, Oliver Theyskens, and Hedi Slimane. The curatorial role of the modern creative director is already expressed at the brand level, as seen in the exhibitions Jonathan Anderson curated during his time at Loewe or the fixed cast of celebrities assembled around Alessandro Michele during his Gucci years, which ultimately came to define the brand’s personality.
But during Design Week, several designers will take on the role of curators for their brands’ initiatives: Demna will bring a retrospective exhibition on Gucci’s archives, Antonio Marras a multi-collaborative space intertwining fashion, design, and gastronomy, and Margherita Maccapani Missoni will open a pop-up store featuring artisanal objects, her own designs, and a collaborative capsule with The Luxury Collection. Just as brands have evolved from clothing manufacturers to narrators of a lifestyle — and thus of a culture — their creative directors have shifted from authors to curators through constant, cross-disciplinary dialogue with specialists from different fields.
Van Assche and De Sarno have taken the fundamental “quantum leap,” abandoning the role of interpreters within large maisons to exercise it personally — moving, in other words, from actors to cultural operators. In this transition, the two designers no longer simply sign collections for others but become the very center of the identity they construct. Freed from the mandate of a maison and its industrial logic, creatives can finally align their personal vision, aesthetic research, and narrative without compromise, defining their own rules, rhythms, and cultural references.
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The great “authors” of fashion have always created and curated a multifaceted image across various media: from Yves Saint Laurent’s dialogues with artists like Mondrian and Maria Callas, to the connections between fashion and pop music explored by Gianni Versace or Ann Demeulemeester, the reference collages of Jun Takahashi, and the many projects Lee McQueen (already a great serial connector of artists like Philip Treacy and Shaun Leane) created with Nick Knight.
But in the modern era, it was the revolutionary Virgil Abloh who legitimized the cross-sectoral and multidisciplinary nature of the creative director role — perhaps the most important updater of the concept of contemporary creative director. With him was born the idea of a creative who produces an all-encompassing culture in which the wearable product is only the visible tip, but whose true weight is the sum of dialogues with music, product design, interiors, modern art, and publishing.
Of course others had preceded him (think of the long collaboration between Prada and Rem Koolhaas), but Abloh made that role the industry standard. After him, it became impossible to think of a fashion creator as a single isolated author, and brands themselves understood they could leverage the relevance and credibility of their collaborators while also achieving commercial returns — whether through Saint Laurent’s films and sushi restaurant or the Zara Home furnishings signed by Vincent Van Duysen.
An indirect revolution brought by Virgil Abloh to the concept of creative director was the reinvention of authorship itself. In the world of mass-produced fashion sold globally, no one can still believe that the creative director personally designs every single product that ends up in stores. This is why the figure of the “author” stylist has been replaced by that of the “coordinator” creative: pure sartorial skills have given way to taste and pure vision.
Authorship is replaced by the authority to choose, connect, elevate, and educate. The brand is no longer just a name but an aesthetic sensibility. That sensibility is both personal and applicable to every imaginable sphere of human creativity. The next step was short. With the creative director’s role now expanded beyond clothing to other areas of design, the person in that position finds themselves at the center of a dense network of connections in which clothes are ultimately the most earthly and commercial aspect, while the cultural dimension can expand to unforeseen scales and heights.
Considering the cynical commercial side of fashion, the inhuman production rhythms, the unrealistic expectations of investors, and the often philistine tastes of the public, it is easy to understand why a creative director might prefer to become a creative tout court. Which leads us to a new reflection: could the desire for emancipation we are seeing among fashion designers — even at Design Week — stem from the search for a more significant cultural impact than the sales percentages of a bag or a pair of shoes?