Kenzo Has A Portuguese Card In Its Deck: Meet Felipe Oliveira Baptista ♦ Portuguese fashion designer Felipe Oliveira Baptista will be the new creative director of the French luxury brand Kenzo, belonging to the LVMH group. The news comes after the recent announcement of the departure of the duo Carol Lim and Humberto Leon, who presented their last collection on June 23. Secrets From Portugal is here to tell you about this amazing news, keep reading and see the amazing work of the Portuguese designers, Felipe Oliveira Baptista.
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Felipe Oliveira Baptista is the new creative director of the French luxury brand Kenzo, belonging to the LVMH group, the company said in a statement Monday. The Portuguese fashion designer spent eight years at the helm of Lacoste, where he left in 2018.
Baptista was born in the Azores and graduated from Kingston University in London collaborated with Cerruti and Christophe Lemaire, launched his homonymous brand in 2003, but it was his eight years at the head of Lacoste that made him world-renowned. According to the Business of Fashion, it was under the creative leadership of Felipe Baptista that Lacoste surpassed the house of two billion euros in revenue.
“Kenzo is contagious freedom and movement,” says Filipe Oliveira Baptista, in a statement released earlier this week by the French group. Women’s Wear Daily (WWD) quoted by the Business of Fashion says that the “constant celebration of nature and cultural diversity has always been and remains at the heart of the brand.” “These two themes never seemed more relevant and convincing to me than they are today and will be instrumental in Kenzo’s future.”
The president of the Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy (LVMH) group, Sidney Toledano, for his part, said that “Felipe Oliveira’s talent as a designer, his mastery of clothing and his personal roots, originating in very different cultures” “real assets to give a new creative energy to Casa Kenzo,” the group said in the same communique released this morning.
Felipe Oliveira Baptista will assume “immediately” the position previously occupied since 2011 by the duo Carol Lim and Humberto Leon, the French group said. The Portuguese designer will “write a new page in the history of the house founded in 1970”, guarantees the group. Kenzo’s executive director, Sylvie Colin, praised in Felipe Oliveira Baptista “the innovative and modern creative vision, and her very complete artistic approach,” which she said “will allow [the brand] to continue to demonstrate its potential, respecting their inheritance. “
The American duo Carol Lim and Humberto Leon presented their last collection by Kenzo for the spring/summer of 2020 on 23rd in Paris. The invitation to join the LVMH group comes a year after Felipe Oliveira Baptista left Lacoste, where he was the creative director for eight years.
The Kenzo brand was founded in 1970 in Paris by fashion designer Kenzo Takada of Japan and was acquired in 1993 by the international group LVMH, currently employing 525 workers. The luxury brand group LVMH integrates other brands such as Givenchy, Fendi, Marc Jacobs, Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior and Loewe.
