Strong in rebounding numbers, the fashion sector is in turmoil, impatient to face the challenges posed by new technologies, geopolitical scenarios in the making and uncertainties about the trend of energy costs and raw materials in the right way. And to do it with the right people. The desire to push on the accelerator riding the wave of recovery or to change course, therefore, is also reflected in the numerous changes at the top and in the strategic positions of the companies.
Today Prada announced that Roberto Massardi will be the group’s new chief development officer. The manager comes from Stone Island (a company that was taken over by Moncler at the end of 2020) where he held the position of general manager since 2005, but his previous experience – between 1996 and 2005 – had been in the Prada group, which in the meantime has changed its face and size .
Yesterday Eraldo Poletto was nominated as global CEO of Diesel: since last January the manager has held the position of CEO in North America of the company of the Otb group and from 1 July he will take the place that Massimo Piombini had occupied since January 2020. Poletto has thirty years of experience behind him at the head of brands of the caliber Furla and Salvatore Ferragamo, with a focus on evolution. At the end of May, however, the Venetian group Slowear (Incotex, Zanone, Glanshirt and Montedoro) had announced the appointment as CEO of Marco Bernardini – former CFO of the group since 2015. The manager took over from Slowear’s founder and CEO, Roberto Compagno, who passed away in September 2021.
2022 had already opened with a series of chair turns at the top of the fashion system’s big players: at the end of March Emmanuel Gintzburger, former CEO of Alexander McQueenwas appointed to the top of Versace, a company headed by Capri Holdings. In turn, the brand founded by the British designer who died in 2010 and which today orbits in the Kering galaxy, has chosen the Italian Gianfilippo Testa as CEO. The waltz of the appointments, on closer inspection, began in the second half of 2021 with Jonathan Akeroyd (formerly Versace) from Burberry (who actually took on the role starting from April 2022). Paolo De Cesare from Matchesfashion.com, Fabrizio Cardinali from Etro and, in June 2021, Marco Gobbetti from Salvatore Ferragamo, where another leadership change took place, that between Ferruccio and Leonardo Ferragamo as presidency.