• Super Admin
• 06 Mar, 2026

For over a decade, men have dominated Designer of the Year at the Fashion Awards and held most of the industry's top roles. Fashion is beginning to feel like a boy's club. They say you never forget your first love; mine was the arts. The memory is distant and familiar. As a kid, I would watch shows like "America's Next Top Model" and "Project Runway" religiously. I looked forward to the Sunday papers, not because I wanted to know what was in the news, but because they often had fashion magazines within. They told fashion tales of the present and those that came before. They bridged gaps that the TV rarely did, answering questions on who the popular Nigerian designers are, back when "Made in Nigeria" was widely overlooked. It was also so refreshing, and the more I learned, the more I wanted to know. Who made that? Who owns that? What brands are next in line for the fashion succession line? Slowly, the answers came, and they all ended in men. Why is fashion, an industry heavily synonymous with women, still so stubbornly male at the top? Walk into any design studio, and you'll find everywhere: sketching, stitching, styling, steaming, and most importantly, a lot of women. Women dominate fashion schools. Women drive consumer spending, with Not Just A Label reporting that, "women spend 226% more than their male counterparts." According to the British Fashion Council, senior leadership in fashion remains largely male-dominated. Women account for around 40% of executive committee roles, while people from ethnic minority backgrounds hold only about 10% of those positions. On runways, women are the muse, the "bride", the market, and the mood board. However, when the curtain calls at fashion week, there's a large chance it is a man taking the final bow. Read also: Celebrating the iconic women leading global fashion houses and inspiring a new era of style What does the fashion industry look like today? Lately, the gender gap seems to be widening. Since 2015, the Designer of the Year award at The Fashion Awards has predominantly gone to men. Before then, the recognition shifted more evenly between male and female designers. Consider these powerhouses: At LVMH -- the conglomerate behind Louis Vuitton and Dior -- leadership has historically been male at the highest executive levels. At Kering, which owns Gucci and Saint Laurent, the pattern has been similar. Even brands built around the female body and psyche have so often been filtered through a male lens. For decades, these large houses had only a handful of female creative directors, including Maria Grazia Chiuri at Dior, Virginie Viard at Chanel, Donatella Versace at Versace, and Sarah Burton at Alexander McQueen. Designers like Chiuri and Viard often faced public criticism, with CHANEL's revenue notably declining by $1 billion in 2024. But they both "oversaw an unprecedented expansion of these megabrands post-COVID." Nevertheless, when the great "creative director swap" of the 2020s came, where we watched some of our beloved, like Jonathan Anderson for LOEWE, change -- to put it in the words of Business of Fashion (BoF), "Fashion's musical chairs end with men in almost every seat." One can count how many women hold the leading positions at the top fashion houses: Wales Bonner (Hermès), Sarah Burton (Givenchy), Chemena Kamali (Chloé), Louise Trotter (Bottega Veneta), Maria Grazia Chiuri (Fendi) and a handful more. Quite frankly, in 2023, the Guardian reported that, "Of the top 30 luxury brands in the Vogue Business Index, women currently hold eight out of 33 creative director roles ." The paradox is striking; fashion might carry a feminine code, but men heavily control it. One could argue that the imbalance is accidental, as many of these male designers undoubtedly possess great talent. I do have a Jonathan Anderson bias for his Taylor Russell looks, but there might be a culture that encourages it. The myth of the male genius At the dawn of the 2020s, Gen Z introduced a style of music that often includes nursery-rhythmic beats with gotcha packed lyrics. The most famous is by Grammy-nominated artist Gayle's "Abcdefu". But it was a kind of virus in itself. One of these was "Victoria's Secret" by Jax, where she sings about knowing "Victoria" and her secret is that a dude made her up. The track is not a personal favourite, but with the leaks from the "Epstein files", including businessmen who played vital roles in fashion, many have begun to question "who" decides what is beautiful to women. Fashion, for all its chiffon and fantasy, is big business -- a trillion-dollar global machine. Historically, men have received the majority of capital; even if a woman founded a brand, she most likely needed a man on board. Investors have felt more comfortable backing men, as Harvard Business School published a study in 2014 that showed "investors prefer pitches from male entrepreneurs over those from female entrepreneurs, even when the content of the pitches is identical." The study also highlights that the attractiveness of a man could increase his chances. This is a familiar sentiment, especially in Nigeria. We've watched brands like Shekudo, Maki Oh, Ré Lagos, By Wuzzy, and Shako Lagos -- founded or led by women -- shutter, most due to structural challenges. These brands held a level of industry and critical validation that most labels, home and abroad, spend a lifetime chasing. Shekudo was on every international publication's fashion "hot list", Maki Oh had been co-signed by Michelle Obama (while she was First Lady), and By Wuzzy had workshops at the Victoria & Albert museum in England. When the final days of Shekudo, a handcrafted footwear brand, came, I attended every closing sale at the Gather House, and the universe rewarded me with a meeting with Akudo Iheakanwa, founder of Shekudo. On the final day, she stood observing the shoppers; every piece was as dear to her as it was to them, as it was to me. She was the busiest person at the concept house, yet she was the happiest. For her, this was long coming, but for us, it was a surprise closure. "We could not find investors," Iheakanwa simply says when asked why. "It is strange because the number of sales we pull in dollars is impressive, very impressive. However, we are not taken quite seriously, it [the meetings] is always like, 'Aww, a cute young woman makes pretty shoes.'" Iheakanwa understands that misogyny bridges the condescension, and this problem exists beyond the Nigerian fashion space. In 2021, the Statesman expressed, "while over 85% of graduating majors from top fashion schools... only around 14% of the top 50 major fashion brands are run by women." Boards have trusted male CEOs with expansion plans. Creative genius, when embodied by a man, is often mythologised. Look at the canon. Karl Lagerfeld at CHANEL. Alexander McQueen at Givenchy before founding his own label. Yves Saint Laurent is reshaping women's tailoring. John Galliano dramatising the runway at Dior. These men were, and are, undeniably talented. But their dominance also created a narrative: that the auteur of women's fashion is most powerful when he is male, or as the kids now say, "You can tell when a designer loves women through his design." No such saying for women, if anything, they have to fight "misogynist" claims because some designs are not feminist enough. An example is the reactions to the first glimpse of Maria Grazia Chiuri's Fendi, which is, ironically, a recreation of a picture by Jo Ann Callis, a prominent feminist artist shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. But even before the collection was seen or her intentions read, the assumption was anti-women. We don't even know the average male designer's stance on feminism, but they must love women if they make beautiful gowns. There is also the enduring authority of the, and I hate this term, "male gaze." But fashion has long existed in a space where designing for women means interpreting them. The culture celebrates the man who "understands women" as though women could not possibly understand themselves. Society frames women who built empires differently. The industry treated Coco Chanel as an anomaly. It described Miuccia Prada as intellectual before she was described as a designer. Rei Kawakubo is labelled avant-garde -- a subtle distancing term. The language reveals the bias. The men are geniuses, and the women are exceptions. Read also: This Women's History Month, we remember and honour Black women who reshaped the fashion industry Power, profit, and the future of fashion Change, however, needs to prove it is profitable. Maria Grazia Chiuri and Virginie Viard don't have the best numbers post-pandemic, but who really did? Not to excuse either women but brands like Gucci also saw a fall in revenue. According to Business of Fashion, Gucci revenue fell "by 23 per cent in 2024 to €7.7 billion ($8.8 billion), down from €9.9 billion in 2023." Brands led by women often show a different fluency, with attempts at body diversity and emotional nuance. When Maria Grazia Chiuri took the helm at Dior, she sent models down the runway in now-viral T-shirts echoing Chimamanda Adichie's "We Should All Be Feminists," pulling feminist discourse into luxury's gilded halls. It was commercial, political, turned into a meme, but most importantly, it sold. For African designers, a change would reflect in the boardrooms. Given these stats, we must take their career choices seriously as legitimate business ventures. The future of fashion will belong to those who accurately reflect the world as it truly is -- not as it was mythologised in the boys' club ateliers of Paris. It is great to have a new wave of womenswear designers. But that shouldn't create a space where we forget that no one truly loves and understands women like women. In fashion, women are its archivists, stylists, publicists, and editors. They are the reason the industry exists at all. The question is no longer whether women belong at the top of fashion. The question is why we doubt that they do. Read more: Theresia Kyalo on catching Beyoncé's eye and taking African jewellery to a global stage Author Chinazam Ikechi-Uko Chinazam is the Fashion & Beauty Editor at Marie Claire Nigeria. A dedicated lover of the arts, beauty, fashion, philosophy, literature, katanas... all the good things in life. Chinazam believes everything is connected to fashion, and in five minutes, she'll make you think so too. She gained the moniker, Fashion Shazam, for her knowledge on global fashion and its history. She loves a good laugh and insists everyone should have a Hamilton costume. View all posts React to this post! Love 0 Kisses 0 Haha 0 Star 0 Weary 0 Previous Article Sex Confessions: "I shamed a Lagos man into giving me an orgasm" No Newer Articles Source: https://marieclaire.ng/why-is-womenswear-so-male-dominated/