Another creative regime change—and an at least partial change in ownership—at Emanuel Ungaro. After being appointed as “global CEO” and acquiring a stake in the house last year, Roy Luwolt (who, in 2014, cofounded and is now sole chief at Malone Souliers, the shoe brand) chose to dispense with creative director Marco Colagrossi shortly after last season’s actually quite hopeful presentation. Colagrossi has since bagged a new gig at a house whose fortunes currently lie at the precise opposite spot on the scale—Ungaro’s have, in recent years, plummeted. So that’s one happy ending, at least. Back at Ungaro, Luwolt now leads the line: He said he controls both the womenswear and footwear output of the brand, while the rest is entangled in a mesh of licenses he plans to wait out.
Luwolt said, “Since I took over the business . . . we decided the first thing we were going to look at was: What has happened over the last 10 years versus the first 40? And the last 10 years, of course, has been where it became a little bit sullied and spoiled.” Oh, Lindsay. The new man at Ungaro made all the right noises about the heritage of the founder and said his first products bearing the Ungaro stamp—a shoe line on sale since last December—broke the Malone Souliers sales. He also discussed his new white shirt line, Absence of Paper, which he described as “oddly enough, the world’s only luxury shirt brand for women.” Anne Fontaine might disagree with that, but it’s true that her brand now sells much more than the white shirts that first made it famous in the 1990s.
It felt like there was at least as much left unsaid as was said in the conversation, but Luwolt seemed driven and dedicated and set on building a portfolio of brands of which Ungaro is (for now) the chief jewel—if not in revenue then in reputation. He showed a small Ungaro collection of mostly wanly colored but interestingly fabricated pieces that complemented the shoes on prominent display. Most notable included a Time magazine Trump “Welcome to America”–stitched trenchcoat and some attractive tailoring. This collection seemed not the real story here today, however, but more a symptom of it.
