Séverine Merle named president of French men’s fashion chamber

The men’s division of the French governing body for fashion, the Chambre Syndicale de la Mode Masculine, has a new female head. The organisation’s general assembly elected its new board at a meeting on April 17, 2019, at the headquarters of the Fédération de haute couture et de la mode (FHCM, the Federation of haute couture and fashion) in Paris. The board is composed of six members from fashion houses Margiela, Lanvin, Celine, Paul Smith, Hermès and LVMH Fashion Group, as well as its new president Séverine Merle, who has been CEO of Celine since February 2017.

The newly constituted board also elected Maison Margiela’s Riccardo Bellini as vice-president of the menswear chamber. The other board members are Lanvin CEO Jean-Philippe Hecquet, Paul Smith’s general manager Isabel Ribeiro; Guillaume de Seynes, executive vice president manufacturing division & equity investments at Hermès and Sidney Toledano, CEO of LVMH Fashion Group.

Toledano was the former president of the menswear division of the chamber. The former Christian Dior CEO, who now heads the new LVMH division which includes all the LVMH fashion labels apart from Dior and Louis Vuitton: Loewe, Celine, Kenzo, Marc Jacobs and Emilio Pucci, is stepping down at the end of two terms. Likewise, Bellini succeeds Ribeiro, who was elected vice-president for the first time in 2014 and for a second time in 2017.

The Federation also announced in the press release that labels Etudes Studio and Officine Générale had been elected as members, and that Japan’s Undercover had been elected an associate member, a membership category reserved for foreign labels. With the addition of these three names, the number of members in the menswear chamber has risen from 37 to 40.

Séverine Merle named president of French men’s fashion chamber

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