Twenty-five years in the trade

He began his career at Printemps in 2001, joining as a buyer for luxury. Over the following years he moved through the organisation, becoming General Merchandise Manager and subsequently Deputy Director of the buying office.

A department store is the only place in the industry where every major house is judged on the same floor, in the same week, by the same customer. A buyer sees which brands convert attention into sales and which do not; which categories carry a season; where a price ladder loses its footing. The role also carries genuine consequence — a buy is a financial commitment made months ahead on the strength of a judgement about taste.

Rising from buyer to general merchandise manager and then deputy director of the buying office meant taking on the whole picture rather than a single category: the balance of the offer, the negotiation with brands, and the relationship between what the store promises and what it can actually deliver on the shop floor.

In 2009 he was appointed Deputy Chief Executive of Emilio Pucci, then part of the LVMH group, and relocated to Italy.

The change is more substantial than a job title suggests. Moving from a retailer to a maison means moving from selecting product to originating it — from a position that judges a house's output to one that is answerable for it. It also meant working inside the Italian ready-to-wear and manufacturing system, where a large share of European luxury is designed into being: the mills, the façonniers, the sample rooms and the production calendars that decide what is actually achievable.

Pucci is a house defined by an unusually specific visual signature — a print archive so recognisable that it functions almost as a logo. Managing a brand of that kind sharpens a particular question: how much of an identity is an asset, and at what point does it become a constraint on what the house can credibly do next.

He joined Kering in 2012, arriving at Saint Laurent in Paris as Product Strategy Director. His responsibilities widened over the following years — merchandising first, and then the role of Executive Vice President covering product, retail merchandising and communication.

Those four years placed him at the centre of the house's commercial architecture during a period of significant change for the brand. Product strategy sits between the studio and the store: it determines how a creative direction is translated into a range with a spine — the pieces that carry the season, the categories that build volume, the proportion of the assortment that must be recognisable at fifty paces.

The later remit is the more telling one. Bringing product, retail merchandising and communication under a single executive is a structural choice. It says that what the house makes, how it is presented in stores and how it is talked about should be decided in the same room rather than negotiated between three of them.

In November 2016 Kering appointed him President and Chief Executive Officer of Balenciaga. He arrived a year after Demna had taken up the creative direction of the house, and remained in the role for eight years — an unusually long tenure in an industry where chief executives and creative directors both change frequently.

With effect from 1 July 2019 he became a member of the Group Executive Committee of Kering, joining the small body that sits above the individual houses. Running a maison while sitting on a group executive committee is a dual accountability: to the brand's own trajectory, and to its position within a portfolio where capital, talent and attention are allocated across several houses at once.

In July 2021, during his tenure, Balenciaga presented a haute couture collection for the first time in fifty-three years — the house's first since the closure of the founder's atelier in 1968. The collection was designed under Demna's creative direction. Re-opening a couture atelier is a commitment of a particular kind: it requires ateliers, trained hands and a calendar position, and it is justified less by its own economics than by what it does for the standing of everything else the house makes.

His tenure at Balenciaga ran until the leadership change took effect on 2 January 2025, when Gianfranco Gianangeli succeeded him as Chief Executive Officer of the house.

On 18 November 2024 Kering announced two appointments taking effect on 2 January 2025: Cédric Charbit as Chief Executive Officer of Saint Laurent, succeeding Francesca Bellettini, and Gianfranco Gianangeli as Chief Executive Officer of Balenciaga. Both report to Francesca Bellettini in her role as Kering Deputy CEO in charge of Brand Development.

He therefore returns to a house he already knows from the inside, having spent four years there on the product side before Balenciaga — though he returns to a different organisation, at a different scale, in a different market. He works alongside Anthony Vaccarello, Saint Laurent's creative director since 2016.

Kering reported Saint Laurent revenue of €2.64 billion for 2025, down 8% as reported and 6% on a comparable basis, with recurring operating income of €529 million and a recurring operating margin held at 20.0%. Fourth-quarter sales were stable on a comparable basis, with growth in North America and a return to positive territory in Western Europe.

In 2026 the leadership team around him was strengthened with the appointment of Anouck Duranteau-Loeper as Deputy Chief Executive Officer in charge of product, effective 1 July 2026, with a remit spanning studios, collection development, merchandising and product operations.