The Perfect Package: What It Takes to Be a Fashion Leader in 2026

When Tory Burch chief executive Pierre-Yves Roussel made his most recent batch of leadership appointments, he wasn’t looking for a classic operator or a creative guru.

He wanted candidates who could do both.

The executive, who has led Tory Burch since 2019 and previously spent 15 years running LVMH’s fashion group, believes the industry can no longer rely on single-minded talent — the operational executor or the marketing savant — to navigate fashion’s increasingly complex landscape.

“The scale has changed,” he said. “There’s a complexity also – multi-channel, multi-countries, multi-categories, multi-customer … and for that, you don’t just need a good operator or good people that execute … they also have to have strategic agility.”

Fashion still needs its specialists — Roussel himself is the operator to his wife Tory Burch’s creative prowess. But when it comes to senior leadership appointments, many companies are looking to combine more of that mix in a single executive. At Tory Burch, Roussel recently tapped two industry veterans for key roles: retail and McKinsey alum Joëlle Grunberg as president of North America, and Thibault Villet, a former beauty executive who joined the brand in 2020, whose remit was expanded as president and international director overseeing the business outside the Americas.

That marks a break from the industry’s recent conventional wisdom. During the digital-first era of the 2010s, brands from startups to Nike cast themselves as tech companies and hired accordingly. The DTC boom elevated youthful, personality-driven founders who often hadn’t come up in fashion, while merchant kings and queens — once shoo-ins for the top job after tours at Macy’s or Gap — fell out of favour.

Today’s operating environment is less forgiving of untested approaches. Consumer demand is uneven, costs are rising and geopolitical volatility regularly disrupts sourcing and planning. At the same time, brands are modernising their organisations to incorporate artificial intelligence without the margin cushion that once allowed for experimentation.

Recruiters say boards are now gravitating toward leaders who blend operational discipline, digital fluency, broad experience and high emotional intelligence — executives who can run the business, shape culture and still see around corners. Across retail and fashion, a wave of new top-brass appointments — from Valentino to Walmart and Kohl’s — underscores just how much turnover and recalibration is under way.

“It’s people who have managed crises before, because this industry is in a crisis,” said Ginger Puglia, a former retail executive and founder of the talent agency Ginger Finds. “People who know how to navigate that, manage it and motivate.”

The Whole Package

The point is not to abandon the new leadership models and skills the industry embraced a few years ago, but to view those skills as an add-on, rather than a replacement.

That’s what Karen Harvey, founder of executive search consultancy Karen Harvey Consulting Group, calls a “hybrid leader.” It’s a profile she’s been urging her clients (which includes brands like Aritzia, Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren) to prioritise heading into 2026: someone who can “take advantage of new technology, AI, e-commerce,” but also serve as “that visionary to light a brand and business on fire and [inspire] teams to follow a compelling vision.”

At executive search firm Kirk Palmer Associates, chief executive MaryJeanne Scott said demand is booming for what the company has come to describe as the “commercially-oriented executive.” They’re leaders whose brains operate fluidly across “merchandising, marketing and customer experience,” and who bring high emotional intelligence alongside an authentic, human touch, she said.

“The other piece that’s very new is that they’re serving generations of [customers],” Scott said. “CEOs are having to really navigate and understand and deeply respect all of that inside their stores because people know when it’s not authentic.”

That same expectation applies internally. With teams grappling with both the efficiency gains and anxieties brought on by AI, today’s leaders must be culture builders as much as operators, experts say.

“When it comes to managing people under uncertainty and stress, culture is very critical,” Roussel said. “It’s so easy, especially during challenging times, to forget about that.”

Building the Resumé

Although the emerging talent profile amounts to a tall order, recruiters say a surprising number of today’s rising executives are already being groomed to meet it.

Relative to their predecessors, navigating crises “is part of the DNA” of many of the best-positioned executives, Scott said. What will separate those contenders from the rest, however, is not just range, but proof: the ability to translate experience into results.

“Think about the environment that they’ve grown up in [if they now have] 20 to 25 years of experience,” Scott said. “Executives have had to navigate a staggering amount of things, 9/11, the dotcom bust, quickly followed by a 2008 financial crisis, then a pandemic and geopolitical dynamics and onto tariffs … and now AI.”

Tory Burch’s December announcement of Grunberg’s appointment described her as a “seasoned strategist” who has held multiple executive roles across fashion and luxury. What helped clinch the decision, said Roussel, was Grunberg’s ability to operate as both “right brain and left brain,” or someone who combines analytical discipline with creative sensibility.

Critically, while diversity of experience is key to landing and excelling in top jobs, that must not be confused with job hopping or a lack of commitment to each leadership stint, Roussel said. He pointed to his own experience, across multiple regions, inside global groups and small startups and some time in consulting early in his career — a mix he says gives him both an insider’s understanding of the industry and the ability to step back and see it with an outsider’s clarity.

“When I see people jumping from one job to another every 18 months, I can tell you, [they] don’t learn anything,” he said. “It takes time to see the impact of what you do.”

Contenders should also “lean into the aspects of brand management,” Harvey said. “That’s 360 degrees of all the pillars of what it takes to run a business, from marketing to operations to retail.”

Curiosity and transparency around artificial intelligence and other emerging tech tools are now as critical as the old-school merchant principle of being customer-obsessed, experts say.

“You really have to know your audience,” Puglia said. “It’s inherently looking at leaders and finding that heart and soul that understands consumers and understands people and gets them moving and rallying.”