Women Dressing Women: The 37 Female Designers Changing the Way We See Fashion Now

Should there be more women creative directors at fashion’s top heritage houses? Absolutely. As Donatella Versace put it, when the question was asked of her: “It’s vital to have women in all senior positions within all industries—the world is a better place when you have diverse perspectives.” Or consider this from Maria Grazia Chiuri, who has rallied collaborators around her at Dior since day one. “From the beginning, the idea was to show how much fashion is a big community.” As of now, though, there just isn’t enough diversity in the fashion industry’s upper ranks—neither gender diversity nor racial diversity, for which the statistics are even worse.

The reasons for this are many, though much of it comes down to the prejudicial treatment of women of childbearing age, who are often sidelined or passed over for promotions in favor of their male counterparts. Tory Burch’s own $2.25 billion business was founded not long after the birth of her third son, “out of the necessity of having a place to work that had flexibility and understood the challenges that women faced in managing being a mom and having a career,” she told me. On that note, congratulations are in order for Chloé’s incoming creative director, Chemena Kamali, the lone woman appointed to a heritage brand since a string of male appointments got this conversation started last year.

As this portfolio of designers reveals, there’s no shortage of women leaders in fashion, many of whom are launching their own labels and writing their own rules. There’s Phoebe Philo, who has adamantly refused to join the fashion show circuit with her new eponymous label, but whose debut collection sold out in mere minutes. There’s Aurora James, whose 15% Pledge has, in just three years, enabled 625 Black-owned businesses to thrive (it’s also set a target of driving $1.4 trillion of wealth generation to Black entrepreneurs by 2030). There’s Anna October, the Ukrainian designer forging on with production of her burgeoning brand in Kyiv despite the Russian invasion, with a J.Crew collaboration already under her belt. And, of course, there is our March cover star Miuccia Prada, who, at 74, presides over the top two labels of the Lyst Index’s hottest brand ranking: Prada and Miu Miu.

Is there another legend in the making in this group of comers, which extends from Diotima’s Rachel Scott and The Frankie Shop’s Gaëlle Drevet in New York to Martine Rose, Grace Wales Bonner, and Supriya Lele in London, and beyond to Lagos’s Lisa Foliweyu and the Chinese-born Caroline Hu? If they use their perceived weaknesses as the strengths they are—let their autobiographies lead, in other words—then, yes: You could be looking at the leaders of the heritage brands of the 22nd century.