Fashion designers and their business partners: Juggling creativity and commerce

Abstract

Abstract Dual and complementary leadership is common in certain parts of the cultural and creative industries, such as in theatres or architecture firms. It is also surfacing now and then in the international designer fashion sector. Formerly hidden behind the branded glamour of a creative leader, the collaboration between a designer and a managerial/commercial leader has recently become more visible. In some countries, studies even claim that dual leadership is a sustainable managerial model for designer fashion entrepreneurship. What does this kind of leadership entail and how can its dynamics be understood? Theoretically, dual leadership can be seen as a particular form of the ambidextrous top management team (TMT). In order to succeed, a fashion designer and his business partner must juggle quantifiable and efficiency-driven processes as well as intangible and creativity-driven ones. How do they do this? To map the empirical field, this article turns to the practices of designer/business partner ‘pairs’ in Dutch small- and medium-sized fashion companies (SMEs). In this context, characteristics and collaborative practices are surfacing which are subsequently compared to TMT research. Results suggest a collectivist perspective on creative leadership and allow for some recommendations for Dutch designer fashion businesses and for research in other fashion geographies.

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