Bally Creative Director Rhuigi Villaseñor leaves after just one and a half years in the job

The fashion industry is highly competitive and brands are leaving their creative directors with less and less patience and space.

According to Fashion Business Express, Swiss luxury brand Bally suddenly announced on Tuesday the departure of its creative director Rhuigi Villaseñor, who took over in January 2022, only 17 months ago. The Bally design studio will continue to be responsible for the creative aspects of the collection until a new creative team is in place.

Filipino-American Rhuigi Villaseñor, who founded the trendy brand Rhude in 2015, has gained widespread popularity in the market and joins Bally as his first foray into women’s wear. At the time, some industry insiders considered Bally’s decision to hand over the creative reins of the more than 170-year-old brand to 90-year-old Rhuigi Villaseñor to be a bold breakthrough.

Founded in 1851 by Swiss gentleman Carl Bally, Bally is a Swiss luxury brand that started as a shoe manufacturer and grew into a highly credible luxury brand with its rigorous craftsmanship and exquisite designs. However, as consumers continue to iterate, the brand fell out of favor with young people for a while, and the addition of Rhuigi Villaseñor would clearly be a breath of fresh blood.

During his time at Bally, Rhuigi Villaseñor produced two collections, launched a new logo logo, and initiated several product category expansions that not only brought the brand back to the fashion week stage, but also solidified Bally’s high-end positioning as a century-old luxury brand.

Although Bally emphasized in a statement that this was a mutual decision, Rhuigi Villaseñor hinted in a follow-up post that his departure was related to a disagreement between the two parties’ values. In the post, he wrote, “Never compromise your values or culture for anything.”

Given that some fashion critics have previously pointed out that Bally under Rhuigi Villaseñor is a powerful rebuttal to the rising wave of “understated luxury,” analysis predicts that Bally may return to classic and simple luxury in the future.

Earlier this year, Bally collaborated with Oscar-winning actor and artist Adrien Braudy to create a new capsule collection of ready-to-wear, shoes, handbags and accessories, which will be available at the end of this year.

Last June, Bally created a special Chief Digital Officer position headed by Nathalie Sisouk, who has more than 20 years of experience in digital transformation, having previously been in charge of digital strategy at L’Oréal Paris, as well as positions at LVMH, Smartbox, PTC, Decathlon and Groupe PSA.

In terms of maintaining and developing its luxury heritage, Bally is expanding the brand’s value dimension through its Swiss heritage and its deep connection to the Alps. 2020 will see the creation of the Bally Peak Vision Foundation to help protect the global alpine environment and support communities around the mountains.

According to Nicolas Girotto, Bally has sponsored countless treacherous alpine expeditions in its early years, such as the famous Everest climb by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953, who summited Everest wearing Bally reindeer boots.

To continue this alpine connection, Bally has launched a comprehensive plan to clean up Everest from camp to summit since its return in 2019, and has also committed to the “8 X 8000m” alpine expedition, which will clean up climbing camps on eight 8000m peaks in the Himalayas.

According to other industry sources, Rhuigi Villaseñor is likely to continue to focus on his personal brand Rhude and his side line R.H.U., which he launched with Zara, after leaving Bally.

It is worth noting that the fashion industry has seen more than 20 creative director changes since this year. And in the modern fashion business system of the last decade, creative directors have often taken on more pressure and responsibility than is reasonable. A popular myth is that the creative director decides everything.

But the truth is that creative directors may not perform well, but they never ruin a brand, much less bankrupt it, only the wrong business strategy does. Creative directors are purely constructive, while business and capital can both grow and destroy.

There is also the idea that creative directors can be easily replaced. With the social media spin, the identity of the creative director of a luxury brand seems to be getting more and more scenic, but in fact their status is dropping again and again.

Ten years ago, the mass market rarely evaluated brands’ decisions to appoint creative directors, but nowadays, when there is a controversy, consumers call on brands to replace creative directors.

If such a creative director system does not change, then in the long run, the creative director is just a tool to change once every five years to achieve business goals, and who is the next creative director will no longer matter after the star aura of creativity is gone.

Up to now, Bally has not responded to the news.