What Happens When a Luxury Brand Loses Its Iconic Founder?

Luxury houses are especially vulnerable in these moments because their identity is bound up not just in products but in the founder’s own personality and vision.

“Luxury brands are based on a particular creative vision,” says Gregory Carpenter, a professor of marketing at the Kellogg School and an expert in luxury brands.

Armani exemplified that dependence, owning 99.9 percent of the company and continuing to insist, even near his death at 91, “As long as I am here, I am the boss.”

Carpenter describes the challenges of succession in luxury brands.

Why founders matter so much

Unlike mass-market companies, such as carmakers Ford or General Motors, which are built around consumer insights, luxury brands start with a founder’s creative vision. That vision becomes the essence of the brand itself.

“Luxury’s the other way around. It’s like art—I create something that, when you see it, you say, ‘oh, that’s very cool, I never thought about that before,’” says Carpenter.

This deep entanglement between creator and brand makes succession uniquely difficult. Chanel struggled for more than a decade after the death of founder Coco Chanel in 1971, only regaining its high-end status when Karl Lagerfeld became creative director in 1983 and reinvigorated the line.

But luxury rests on more than a designer’s creative vision. It also depends on the buyers who adopt and reinforce the brand’s identity. In this sense, Armani excelled at fostering both a definitive look and celebrity status.

“Every luxury brand is defined by its community,” Carpenter says. “Armani, in particular, was the cultivator of the community. If you Google Armani, most of the time you’ll see him standing with a celebrity on the red carpet.”

Other luxury houses have taken a similar approach. In the early 1960s, Enzo Ferrari’s most celebrated model—the 250 GTO—was produced in a run of just 36 cars. Buyers reportedly had to be personally approved by Ferrari himself, creating an exclusive circle that reinforced the brand’s aura of scarcity and status.

Armani’s innovation was to do something comparable in fashion by popularizing the red-carpet moment as a stage for his clothes, making Hollywood celebrities part of his community and, in turn, his brand.

The gamble of succession

Armani may have laid out a clear plan for ownership in his will, naming preferred buyers such as LVMH, L’Oréal, or Luxottica, depending on the executors’ decision to sell. LVMH describes itself as a “house of brands,” including Louis Vuitton, Tiffany, and Marc Jacobs. Bernard Arnault, its long-time chief executive, has emphasised the importance of giving designers creative freedom—an approach Carpenter sees as central to the group’s success.

But that’s also contingent on the future creative direction the label chooses. Whoever inherits the role of shaping the brand’s identity will need to evolve Armani’s legacy without betraying it.

“It’s a huge gamble…. One of the biggest problems for luxury brands is managing the evolution of their brand,” Carpenter says.

Past transitions show just how difficult this can be. Ferrari thrived long after Enzo’s death, with successors able to capture what it meant to own a Ferrari while still modernizing the cars. Rolls-Royce, by contrast, has struggled to make its newer luxury vehicles feel like natural extensions of its heritage.

When a founder departs, luxury houses usually face two temptations. One is to pursue growth by broadening the appeal—a move that can dilute exclusivity. Another is to hold fast to the familiar, repeating the same formulas until the brand feels frozen in time.

“Most sort of run out of gas,” says Carpenter. “And therefore, they can’t come up with the next version of themselves. They become like a tribute band of their own.”

A third, often more-successful path is reinvention—finding a new creative concept that pushes the brand forward while staying true to its identity.

Gucci has experienced all three outcomes. Tom Ford revived the label in the 1990s, while later directors struggled to sustain momentum. Alessandro Michele delivered a surge of growth with his flamboyant style, but sales slowed before his departure in 2022. His successor, Sabato De Sarno, lasted just two years — a reminder of how hard it is to sustain creative momentum.

Passing craft down the line

Some luxury houses endure by embedding their philosophy or craft so deeply into the organization that it can be passed on like an heirloom. In these cases, continuity does not hinge on a single founder but on a shared vision and a set of practices transmitted across generations.

“It takes a year and a half to learn to make the stitch to sew a Birkin bag,” says Carpenter, referring to Hermès’s training program for artisans. The Birkin, one of the world’s most coveted handbags, can sell for tens of thousands of dollars.

This kind of apprenticeship model is not unique. As Carpenter notes, some famous London tailors have trained artisans for more than a century, ensuring that the craft of making a suit remains essentially unchanged. By institutionalizing tradition, these brands have preserved their identity long after the founders themselves have disappeared.

But Armani’s special touch may be easier to carry forward than that of some of his peers. As Carpenter argues, what distinguished him was that he built his brand less around radical design than around community—pioneering the red-carpet moment and weaving celebrity associations into the fabric of Armani’s identity.

“Armani’s great genius was to understand the power of celebrity,” Carpenter says.

That focus on association rather than product alone offers clues for succession. Carpenter points to Rolex’s strategy of symbolic association rather than flamboyant design as a model for luxury brands. Rolex has long touted Chuck Yeager’s 1947 supersonic flight, where the pilot is documented as wearing a Rolex Oyster, as a moment that helped tie the brand to human achievement.

For Armani, the lesson is similar. Carpenter says what may make succession easier for the brand is that Georgio Armani’s heirs need only continue cultivating that community, rather than inventing a bold new vision for the brand’s clothes.

That question points to a larger dilemma for every founder-led house: Can a brand outlast its creator without losing its soul?

“The problem for Armani is, how do you find somebody who understands the brand and can create the future for that brand? That’s really hard,” says Carpenter.