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Back in November, Nicolas Ghesquière shocked the entire fashion community when he announced that he would be leaving Balenciaga as creative director. Because of the gap in leadership between Ghesquière and the brand’s new creative director Alexander Wang, it seemed his departure even shocked Balenciaga. 

There was widespread coverage of Ghesquière’s departure, but little to no explanation as to why…until now.

In a recent interview with System Magazine, Ghesquière broke his silence and it sounds like he was just fed all the way up!

There is nothing worse than being the mastermind behind an entire brand and feeling like you weren’t getting any support from the corporate side. As Ghesquière says…

It was really that lack of culture which bothered me in the end. The strongest pieces that we made for the catwalk got ignored by the business people. They forgot that in order to get to that easily sellable biker jacket, it had to go via a technically mastered piece that had been shown on the catwalk. I started to become unhappy when I realized that there was no esteem, interest, or recognition for the research that I’d done; they only cared about what the merchandisable result would look like. This accelerated desire meant they ignored the fact that all the pieces that remain the most popular today are from collections we made ten years ago. They have become classics and will carry on being so. Although the catwalk was extremely rich in ideas and products, there was no follow-up merchandising. With just one jacket we could have triggered whole commercial strategies. It’s what I wanted to do, but I couldn’t do everything. I was switching between the designs for the catwalk and the merchandisable pieces – I became Mr Merchandiser. There was never a merchandiser at Balenciaga, which I regret terribly.

Nicolas also spoke in depth about when he realized that he needed to be more than just a creative at Balenciaga, but a businessman in his own right: 

[I realized] straight away. It’s part of being a creative because the vision you have ends up in the stores. It actually makes me smile today when I think about it because it was me who had to invent the concept of being commercial at Balenciaga. Right from the start I wanted it to be commercial, but the first group who owned the house didn’t have the first notion of commerce; there was no production team. There was nothing.

Read the rest of Nicolas Ghesquière’s interview with System Magazine by clicking here.