In late October it was a report. On Friday, Kering made it official: Martine Rose is Balenciaga's creative director. Welcome to Fashion Business Daily. After the Balenciaga news we've got two retailers closing stores: a German womenswear chain in insolvency proceedings, and South Africa's TFG shutting dozens more doors. Tap follow so the next episode finds you.
Straight from Kering's announcement:
Kering and Balenciaga are pleased to announce the appointment of Martine Rose as Creative Director, marking a new chapter in the House's creative evolution. Based in Paris, she will take up her role on November 16, 2026. Martine Rose brings a deep understanding of the House’s creative identity to her own singular vision of contemporary culture.
Let's sort out what's confirmed. When we covered Rose for Balenciaga in late October, it was sourced reporting. Now the group has put its name on it, in a release dated Friday, November 6. Vogue Ukraine reports she replaces Pierpaolo Piccioli, who left on Thursday, November 5, after just three seasons. So the gap between his exit and her appointment was a single day. Finally. And she knows the building. Vogue Ukraine says she was a menswear consultant there from 2015 to 2018, helping Demna shape the new look, in the years when those voluminous silhouettes became Balenciaga's signature. Kering is hiring someone who helped build the version of Balenciaga that sold. I'll be more cautious. Her name is on a men's label, and Vogue Ukraine says she'll now be responsible for all the collections. Luca de Meo calls her vision fresh, fearless and deeply contemporary, but that tells us nothing about sales. A house this size runs on its bags and womenswear, so the test is how her product does there. And the turnover worries me. Piccioli got three seasons. If Kering wants this to work, Rose needs a lot more runway than he got. You can't judge a new creative direction off one collection, never mind fix a bag business that fast. One more fact worth noting: Vogue Ukraine says she's the first woman to hold the creative director job in Balenciaga's 109 years. And naming her within a day suggests Kering had her lined up. Whether she gets the patience to match is the open question.
From Take to News, on a German womenswear chain:
Operating under the popular retail moniker Liberty Woman, the enterprise maintains an extensive footprint comprising a total of 115 brick-and-mortar branches. Of these retail locations, 109 are situated across Germany, while an additional six stores serve customers in neighboring Austria.
Here's the process. Trade paper TextilWirtschaft reported on Friday that Liberty Damenmoden, based in Lübbecke, filed for insolvency in self-administration, which the Germans call Eigenverwaltung. Management stays in charge while it restructures. The company says the Bielefeld local court approved it, and the court named Hans-Joachim Berner of KösterBerner as provisional administrator. All stores stay open. The reason they gave stood out to me: weak demand for autumn and winter fashion, which they call seasonal and mainly weather-driven, plus a tough market and fewer shoppers. Blaming the weather when the coats don't sell? Sure. But a chain that turns out over twenty-two collections a year should be able to react faster than the forecast. To be fair, they cite more than weather. FashionUnited reports early steps to rework assortment and merchandise planning, to price at what it calls market level, and to align the collection more closely with what customers want. From here they'll review the store network, processes and cost structure, so I'd expect closures, though none are announced. The stated goal is to strengthen its boutique concept and the link between its stores and online. Merkur notes the company controls its whole value chain itself, so this restructuring reaches product as well as store leases. And the people. TextilWirtschaft puts the staff at six hundred, and the company's own site says five hundred. FashionUnited says employees get three months of insolvency pay from the federal employment agency. This is a fifty-year-old business that started with one shop in Herford in 1976. I hope those jobs survive the restructuring.
Nqobile Dludla, reporting for Reuters from Johannesburg:
The retailer estimates around 20% of sales from closed stores shift to nearby sister stores or its Bash online platform, helping reduce occupancy costs while increasing productivity across the remaining store network.
TFG, owner of Foschini, Sportscene, Markham and Jet, reported its first half to September 30 on Friday. It closed 120 stores in its Africa business and plans another 60 to 80 in the second half. Company-reported headline earnings per share fell 6.8 percent, and group retail sales slipped 0.4 percent. So about a fifth of the sales follow you to the next store or online, and the other eighty percent? Gone. That's a lot of revenue to give up for lower rent. That's the trade-off, and TFG thinks it pays. CEO Anthony Thunstrom told analysts nearly half the closed stores were in distressed central business districts, where shoppers have moved to malls and convenience centers. The closures released 190 million rand of working capital, and he says the full savings program runs to 850 million rand a year, with a profit benefit of around 543 million. Those are targets, not results yet. The international side is where it gets ugly. In Britain they're shrinking Phase Eight because department store sales are falling, which ties right back to the David Jones situation. In Australia, menswear chain Tarocash is one of their worst performers and is being repositioned after leadership changes. And the Australian cuts aren't small. Over the past year TFG has closed about 6.5 to 7 percent of its stores there and taken out roughly 10 percent of head-office costs. Phase Eight is the one I'd watch: simplify the range, resize the business, move customers to its own stores and online. That's the playbook for a brand that's lost its department store wholesale channel. A smaller range can work if what's left is actually good. If it's just fewer versions of the same dress, shoppers will notice. Investors liked the plan for now. The shares rose 6.5 percent on Friday, though they're still down 34 percent this year. Thunstrom told Reuters he's starting to see some signs of improvement. I want to see that in second-half sales, not only in a smaller cost base.
Is there a deal, a closure or a creative-director move you think we missed? Tell us at fashionbusinessdaily at lantern podcasts dot com. We read everything that comes in.
That's the Monday rundown. Fashion Business Daily is a Lantern Podcast, and we'll be back tomorrow with the next round of fashion business news.