Fashion doesn't want designers anymore, it wants relevance

Some would say that it started with Rihanna. Off stage, off the charts, she broke the mould for lingerie brands and revitalised NYFW with her Savage X Fenty debut: a lingerie line that undeniably shattered Victoria’s Secret’s glossy fantasy and replaced it with inclusivity, body positivity, and unapologetic sex appeal. Then came Pharrell’s announcement for menswear at Louis Vuitton, where he went on to reinterpret classics like the Speedy bag and the Damier iconography. Next was expert worldbuilder A$AP Rocky at Puma. And now Jaden Smith, fronting Christian Louboutin menswear. Spot the pattern? Fashion isn’t just hiring designers anymore– it’s chasing cultural architects.

In today’s landscape, the most powerful appointment a brand can make isn’t the designer with the sharpest sketchbook, but the tastemaker with the loudest cultural voice, and yes, relevance. Rihanna didn’t just launch lingerie, she staged a cultural revolution. The Savage X Fenty shows were global conversations, streaming on Prime Video with a cast that actually looked like the world: diverse in body type, race, and gender. That shift was seismic. Suddenly, lingerie became about community, inclusivity, and cultural belonging.

Pharrell’s 2023 ascension to Louis Vuitton menswear only solidified the trend. On paper, he wasn’t the logical successor to Virgil Abloh. But logic was never the point. Pharrell’s genius isn’t sketching silhouettes; it’s synthesising music, art, streetwear, and luxury into one cultural current. His debut on Paris’ Pont Neuf transformed the longstanding maison into a global stage, weaving together spectacle, celebrity, and heritage. The message was clear: Louis Vuitton wanted to be about occupying the centre of cultural gravity.

A$AP Rocky embodies a similar magnetism. Long before Puma tapped him, he’d already redefined what it meant to be a rapper in fashion. He made “fashion killa” his persona, a brand in motion. Every street-style sighting, red-carpet risk, and Instagram drop pushes boundaries faster than seasonal lookbooks can keep up. For Puma, attaching itself to Rocky was about attaching itself to a cultural frequency. And perhaps that’s exactly what Ray Ban sought when it appointed Rocky as their creative director earlier this year. 

This week we saw Jaden Smith named as the artistic director of Christian Louboutin's menswear. Smith built his public identity around challenging conventions, with gender-fluid dressing, sustainability, and philosophical musings. For a luxury house like Louboutin, the move signals something deeper: the product is ideology, a way of aligning with the conversations shaping a generation. The maison revealed that Smith was the only name considered for the role, which reinforces that it was less about tapping a “celebrity” and more about finding someone who can match their vision, style, and culture. 

This shift reveals fashion’s new obsession: cultural capital. In an era where trends are born and buried in the space of a TikTok cycle, cultural relevance is worth more than technical expertise. Heritage and craftsmanship still matter, but they’re no longer enough. Consumers, especially Gen Z, are in the market for belonging. They want to participate in movements, in identities, and in communities. Brands, in turn, want figures who can translate clothing into this very culture. Of course, celebrity involvement in fashion isn’t new. Madonna in Jean Paul Gaultier’s cone bra was a cultural moment. Kanye West turned Yeezy into a phenomenon that rivalled legacy houses in influence. But what’s changed is the degree of authorship. Today’s celebrities are no longer muses or ambassadors—they’re creative directors, business leaders, and sometimes they are the entire brand identity. 

The upside is undeniable. Celebrity-driven projects pull fashion into mainstream conversation in ways that traditional campaigns rarely achieve. Beyoncé’s Ivy Park collaboration with Adidas, and her Renaissance-inspired partnership with Balmain were heralded as cultural events. The success was measured in units sold, sure, but also in how loudly they reverberated across the landscape. The risk, however, is dilution. When celebrity eclipses craftsmanship, fashion risks becoming pure marketing theatre. Does a showstopper performance at Pont Neuf guarantee that the clothes themselves endure? Perhaps that’s the wrong question. As Virgil Abloh once said, his role was to “represent a generation.” The genius of today’s cultural appointments isn’t in stitching seams but in stitching together worlds: music, art, politics, and thereby identity.

Still, balance is critical. The future of fashion can’t survive on celebrity alone. Emerging designers, artisans, and innovators remain the backbone of craft. The sweet spot lies in their co-existence: cultural powerhouses who can spark the conversation, grounded by design teams who can execute at the highest level. Rihanna may have disrupted lingerie, but behind her was a team of designers and business strategists who translated her vision into a global empire. Pharrell works hand-in-hand with Louis Vuitton’s atelier, or “beehive” as he likes to call it. Cultural capital might set the stage, but craftsmanship is what keeps the performance alive.

Ultimately, this pivot to cultural capital reveals a longstanding truth: that clothes are never just clothes. They are language, identity, code, rebellion. And in a hyperconnected world, the figures best placed to shape those codes aren’t necessarily traditional designers—they’re the cultural voices shaping how we live, speak, and dream right now. So yes, the new culture curator might just be your favourite rapper, pop star, or actor. But what they’re curating is belonging. And in 2025, that might just be the most valuable thing.

 

Lead image: Getty

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