Another departure, one more. In the grand couture transfer market, where artistic directors are traded like tired number tens, Guillaume Henry leaves Patou after a seven-year term. Today, that already counts as a presidential-length career.

The house thanks him, the group salutes him, and the man from Toledo in his Casablanca blesses him. Everyone is happy, which means something must be wrong, because in contemporary fashion, when press releases are too polite and the vocabulary always the same, it feels like an amicable divorce between very well-dressed people who have already hired lawyers.

Guillaume Henry arrived at Jean Patou in 2018, a house that had been asleep for thirty years. He woke it up and put the brand back on the fashion calendar. Sport-chic, French elegance, clean silhouettes: he did exactly what was asked of him. Too well, perhaps. In luxury, success is sometimes the gravest mistake: once you’ve done the job, no one knows what to do with you anymore, especially if you don’t have an Instagram account overflowing with fake followers.

Because the couture transfer market does not reward loyalty. It rewards movement: you must leave before you bore, arrive before you are desired, leave again before you are understood. The house is “exploring a new path.” Translation: we’re changing the face to restart the excitement. As if creation were a Netflix series that needs rebooting every three years to avoid declining ratings.

The most ironic part is that Patou had regained an identity. A real one. Legible. Worn. Loved. But in today’s luxury world, a stable identity is unsettling. It gives the impression that everything could simply continue. Yet the system does not live on continuity, it lives on suspense. Who will be next? Who arrives? Who leaves? The garment moves to the background; casting becomes the spectacle.

Guillaume Henry is also leaving LVMH, a tentacular and elegant group that never likes the same voice in the same room for too long. Nothing personal, it’s the game. A game in which we talk about craftsmanship, vision, heritage, while timing patience with a stopwatch.

This is how the couture market works. Designers are celebrated as builders, but treated like genius temps. They resurrect sleeping houses, make them desirable, then must step aside so the machine can keep turning. Fashion adores rebirths, far less duration, and the lord himself hopes to be reborn once Moderna injects him with its new vaccine against ageing.

And meanwhile, we wonder why luxury has lost its gravity. Perhaps because, by constantly changing chefs, the kitchen no longer has time to simmer. So here goes “Henry Potter,” disappearing mysteriously like a real wizard.