Piccioli Balenciaga Exit Comes 16 Months In, as Sales Slip an Estimated €180 Million

The Piccioli Balenciaga exit is now official. Kering announced on Thursday that Pierpaolo Piccioli is stepping down as creative director of the house, ending a tenure of roughly 16 months counted from his July 2025 start date. A successor, the company said, will be named “shortly.”

The departure brings to an end one of the most closely watched appointments of the last fashion reshuffle. Piccioli arrived after a quarter-century at Valentino, and he took over a house that his predecessor, Demna, had spent a decade turning into a streetwear-adjacent giant. Measured against that history, three or so seasons was never much time to prove a new vision.

What the announcement says

The statements from Kering and Balenciaga were warm. Kering CEO Luca de Meo called Piccioli “an exceptional couturier and creative talent” and said the group wants to build on Balenciaga’s “avant-garde spirit.” Balenciaga CEO Gianfranco Gianangeli credited him with reaffirming the house’s couture origins through his approach to craftsmanship and construction. Neither statement gave a reason for the split. Piccioli himself offered no comment, according to British GQ.

The news did not land out of nowhere. Rumours about his future began circulating on social media in September, and Kering’s chief financial officer declined to comment on them when asked during the group’s third-quarter update, British Vogue reported.

A mixed creative report card

Piccioli was named in May 2025 and began that July, after Demna’s final couture show. His first ready-to-wear collection, shown in Paris last October, reworked Cristóbal Balenciaga’s sack dress. It paired bright gowns and sculptural skirts with leather jackets, chinos and T-shirts, a deliberate attempt to nod to both the founder and the streetwear audience Demna cultivated. Meghan Markle attended in a custom ivory look, and the reception was described as measured praise.

His second show, in March, drew a more mixed response. Vogue Runway’s Sarah Mower said his famous colour sense and sense of joy had not shown up in a darker collection. His couture debut in July put the atelier front and centre, and Mower noted his mastery of colour was evident there. Reviewing his spring/summer 2027 show in October, she observed that he was having to work out, in real time, where he stood between Cristóbal’s couture legacy and Demna’s satirical street-style legacy. Harper’s Bazaar described that spring 2027 lineup as elevated, voluminous takes on familiar pieces like a T-shirt and jeans.

Celebrities embraced the work. Ariana Grande, Rosalía and Demi Moore all wore his designs on red carpets, and Tessa Thompson was among his fans.

The business backdrop to the Piccioli Balenciaga exit

The commercial picture is harder to read. Kering does not break out sales for individual brands apart from Gucci, so the figures here are estimates. Morgan Stanley put Balenciaga’s 2025 sales at €1.47 billion, down from €1.65 billion a year earlier. Under Demna, the house had grown from about €360 million in 2015.

Kering’s own commentary tracked a cooling. The first quarter of 2026 showed growth, driven by leather goods. The second quarter was called “more challenging,” and the third was described as challenging too. CFO Armelle Poulou said leather goods were performing very well, citing the City and Rodeo bags and the newly launched Hourglass Avenue, while ready-to-wear and shoes were suffering and needed new lines and products.

That matters because de Meo, who became Kering CEO about two months after Piccioli’s appointment, has set ambitious targets. At the group’s April 2026 Capital Markets Day, he said Balenciaga understands “the vibes of the new generation,” and goals include doubling women’s ready-to-wear, accelerating leather goods and doubling business in the Americas, all by 2030. None of the sources link Piccioli’s departure directly to these numbers, but the timing makes the strategic questions hard to ignore.

Kering’s growing list of vacancies

Balenciaga is not Kering’s only open seat. Saint Laurent and McQueen have yet to name creative directors following the exits of Anthony Vaccarello and Seán McGirr. Demna, meanwhile, has moved on to Gucci, where his high-profile debut included a New York show earlier this year.

Harper’s Bazaar framed Piccioli’s brief tenure as symptomatic of an industry in which creative-director shake-ups have become routine, and in which the pressure to deliver an identity almost instantly is intense. Whether his successor gets more runway, literally and figuratively, may depend on how Kering answers a question this exit leaves open: whether Balenciaga should lean into its couture heritage or its more provocative, youth-driven recent past. Piccioli’s next move has not been announced.