In the months following the Spring/Summer 2026 season, major fashion houses have seen a wave of new hires across communications, marketing, and design. Our series, “Fashion’s Real Reset Starts Now,” examines these shifts and how they will reshape the industry in the coming years.
Over the past two years, Lubomila Jordanova has noticed a troubling trend in how luxury brands balance profitability, creativity, and sustainability. She points to supply chain issues, climate disruptions, geopolitical tensions, tariffs, and a broader slowdown in spending, which have led many brands to tighten their budgets. According to Jordanova, a growing “KPI fixation” is squeezing out creativity and sustainability in favor of short-term profits. The recent wave of creative director changes has only sped this up.
“This year we’ve seen the most significant and complex reshuffling in the dynamic between CEOs, boards, and creative directors,” says Jordanova, co-founder and CEO of sustainability software firm Plan A and a member of Chloé’s sustainability advisory board. “Suddenly, the drive for profitability is eating into the space once reserved for creativity.”
Rather than expanding a brand’s creative vision and selling a dream, she adds, creative directors are increasingly asked to fit brand codes into best-selling “consumables” like bag charms and small leather goods, which now drive much of the revenue. To meet this profit-focused mandate, sustainability boards are being dissolved, sustainability teams are excluded from design meetings, and eco-friendly materials are being swapped for cheaper options—a shift already highlighted in last May’s Vogue Business Sustainability Leaders Survey. “Now, the main question is whether something makes money.”
At the brand level, a new creative director can mean major change for sustainability teams. A committed director can boost progress, while an indifferent or hostile one can easily stall it. Faced with this uncertainty, what can sustainability teams and their supply chain partners do to stay on course? We asked experts for their strategies.
Find Common Ground
Getting a creative director, CEO, and sustainability team aligned is challenging but essential for real progress. “If sustainability is treated as purely technical—focused on materials, footprints, and suppliers—it won’t feel connected to the brand or business. That’s why winning over the creative director is seen as the holy grail for sustainability teams,” explains Elisa Niemtzow, vice president of consumer sectors at Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) and co-founder of the sustainability platform Racine.
With the creative director’s support, sustainability teams can more easily link their work to the brand’s core values, creating emotional connections with consumers and shifting behaviors in the process. “Unfortunately, this is still rare. Sustainability usually isn’t a priority in the early months of a new creative director’s tenure,” she says.
Jordanova has heard from several sustainability teams about meetings with creative directors being postponed or canceled. “Some teams are thrilled if they get to speak to the creative director just once a year,” Niemtzow adds. But there’s still hope. “Even if creative directors are hard to reach, their teams are often doing much of the day-to-day work.”
Sometimes, a simple informal chat over coffee can help sustainability teams understand what motivates a creative director and which aspects of sustainability naturally resonate with them, Niemtzow notes.“Making that emotional connection is key to getting their buy-in and helping them feel like an active participant driving change, rather than it being pushed on them,” she says. “Maybe they eat organic food, maybe they try to make sustainable travel choices, or maybe they care more about animal rights. To avoid polarizing sustainability any further, we need to make it easier to understand and break it down into simple things people have a hard time arguing with.”
Hardwire Progress as Much as Possible
Sustainability teams will quickly see where a new creative director’s priorities lie and whether there is potential for them to become a sustainability changemaker.
In some cases, an incoming creative director wants to break with existing frameworks and rewrite the brand’s aesthetic, even if they start slowly with a transitional collection inspired by the brand’s archive. In the process, they might be tempted to cast aside existing materials and designs, Jordanova says. It might take three or four seasons to see what works and what doesn’t, and for production to become less wasteful.
“For a creative director to come into a maison and drive sustainability, there needs to be a KPI framework that embeds sustainability into the design process and basically classifies different materials as good, bad, or worse,” she says. “Sustainability also needs to be considered at the board level — by the time something is in production, sustainability teams have lost the possibility to influence things.”
As much as possible, sustainability teams should try to “hardwire” progress, says Niemtzow. “A lot of brands already have commitments, as well as a system for how they rate and purchase materials, programs to decarbonize their supply chains, and a way of integrating sustainability into procurement, logistics, and so on. It’s tough for a creative director to come in and change this.”
If a creative director isn’t invested in sustainability, there are always other routes to progress, adds Jordanova. “Creative directors are the gods of this industry. They’re the ones defining the vision for the future,” she says. “But it’s not their job to become an expert in Life Cycle Assessments or product carbon footprints. They need to have experts in their teams who can source alternatives and push solutions.” And those teams hold plenty of potential changemakers lower down the ladder.
Sustainability teams can also focus their attention on the parts of production that lie beyond a creative director’s remit, adds Jordanova. “A simple example would be distribution: is the product traveling by land, sea, or plane to reach the customer? That’s an operational calculation that doesn’t touch the creative side.”
Work with the Supply Chain for a Smooth Transition
Sustainability requires close collaboration with the supply chain, and this is often where the shock of a creative director change is felt first.
Changes in creative direction often mean “a big, big mess” for suppliers, says Ettore Piacenza, general director of family-run Italian supplier Piacenza 1733, which supplies fleece and fabrics to the tailoring and haute couture sectors. “You might have been working on a sample for three months, but then someone new steps into the role and all of a sudden everything gets thrown in the bin and you have to restart.”
This is especially problematic when suppliers are working with brands on long-term sustainability programs, which can sometimes take years to perfect. “Say we’re working on tracing wool back to the farm level; if that program gets abandoned, we risk having all this wool in stock with no other outcome,” Piacenza says. “We are an industry, we have a factory — so we need to plan ahead. When these changes happen, we can’t plan anything. Everything starts from scratch. We have no history.”
For luxury suppliers like Piacenza 1733, changes in creative direction can be particularly disruptive.Frequent changes in creative leadership can create uncertainty and slow down sustainability initiatives.
Even when brands continue working with their existing suppliers, they often reduce order volumes while a new creative director finds their footing. “Orders were very limited this season due to the transition in creative directors,” says Piacenza. “We hope the new ones will stay for a long time.”
Sustainability programs typically operate on timelines far longer than a creative director’s tenure. “We’re working toward 2030 goals, so the first challenge is this misalignment in timelines,” explains Andrés Bragagnini of the Apparel Impact Institute. “Suppliers often worry about investing in long-term programs, only for brands to later switch to alternative partners. That fear can create resistance against investments, such as in decarbonization. Suppliers need confidence in consistent order volumes to justify these long-term investments.”
Not all designers involve themselves deeply with the supply chain, notes another luxury supplier who preferred to remain anonymous. Some bring established partnerships into a new role, while others delegate production decisions to their teams. Similarly, some brands have a stronger, more defined identity than others, leaving varying room for creative reinterpretation. For heritage houses like Chanel and Hermès, craftsmanship is so integral to the brand that key supplier relationships are firmly entrenched and not subject to change by incoming creative directors.
Part of navigating these transitions could involve demonstrating to creative directors the immense value of long-term suppliers—not only for sustainability but also for design insight, says Jordanova. While many new directors delve into brand archives for inspiration ahead of their debut, few consult supplier archives, which are often more extensive than those of the brands themselves. Suppliers can also provide valuable data on past production volumes, revealing which designs resonated with consumers. “We need to learn from the past,” Jordanova notes. “You can understand a great deal about a fashion house and its customers by looking at what sold and what didn’t.”
Frequently Asked Questions
FAQs How Sustainability Teams Can Harness the Creative Reset
Basics Definitions
What exactly is the Creative Reset
The Creative Reset is a mindset and strategic shift that encourages teams to pause step back from routine tasks and use creative thinking to reimagine sustainability challenges and solutions Its about breaking out of business as usual to find innovative approaches
Why should a sustainability team care about creativity Werent we hired for data and compliance
Absolutely data and compliance are core But creativity is the engine that turns that data into breakthrough strategies engages stakeholders in new ways and solves complex interconnected problems that standard approaches cant fix
Is this just another term for a brainstorming session
Its more than that While brainstorming is a tool the Creative Reset is a broader intentional process It involves creating space for reflection challenging core assumptions and fostering a culture where novel ideas are systematically explored and tested
Benefits Motivation
What are the main benefits of adopting this approach
Key benefits include discovering unexpected solutions to stubborn problems increasing team morale and engagement building stronger crossdepartmental alliances enhancing your sustainability narrative and futureproofing your strategy against evolving challenges
Were already overwhelmed with reporting and targets How does this help with our actual workload
It helps by making your work more effective and efficient A Creative Reset can reveal ways to streamline processes align projects for greater impact and find synergies that reduce duplication of effort ultimately saving time and resources in the long run
Can this really help us get more buyin from leadership or other departments
Yes Creative approaches often generate more compelling stories and tangible prototypes that resonate with leaders focused on innovation and risk management It moves the conversation from cost center to value and opportunity creator
Common Problems Challenges
Our team is small and resourceconstrained How can we possibly make time for this
Start very small Dedicate just 30 minutes of a weekly meeting to one what if question Use lowcost tools like digital whiteboards Frame it as an investment to prevent burnout and find smarter ways to use your limited resources
What if our ideas are too out there and get immediately shot down by leadership
This is common The key is to translate creative ideas into business language Pair a bold idea with a smallscale