Why Did Rhuigi Villaseñor’s Time at Bally End Early?

Image via Getty/Marco Mantovani

While many may categorize Villaseñor and his label Rhude as luxury streetwear, Villaseñor has grown as a designer since launching Rhude with a graphic T-shirt in 2012. Rhude’s recent menswear presentations in Paris stepped away from the graphic streetwear apparel that popularized the brand. Instead, Villaseñor honed in on elevated tailoring and even dabbled in womenswear. Despite his growth as a designer, Villaseñor’s graphic offerings have remained popular with Rhude’s core consumers. Jessica Ramirez, a senior research analyst at Jane Hali and Associates, believes Bally was following a play exhibited by other luxury labels: hiring a young trendy menswear designer to lead the house. By tapping Villaseñor, Bally also hoped captured the attention of a young audience and Villaseñor’s own niche following. 

But instead of leaning into the styles that Rhude is popular for, Villaseñor envisioned building up Bally more on the womenswear end. “Menswear has gotten a bit crowded over the past, I would say, ten years,” he told Harper’s Bazaar before his first Bally show in September. “I truly think to really sell luxury, women are the ones to take the lead on it. Womenswear has the bandwidth to create something fluid. Something that can reinvigorate the brand, you know?” 

Villaseñor’s drive to re-energize Bally as a luxury womenswear label was ambitious, but Ramirez believes Villaseñor needed to stick to what his audience was already familiar with.

“He wanted to reach a sophisticated and sexy customer with Bally so he went into womenswear, I do think his lines were good and were in line with what’s in trend. But it’s different from what he designs for Rhude itself,” says Ramirez “There’s not a strong logo, it’s not completely streetwear. While it highlights his ability to be versatile as a designer, which I think is a plus for him, there’s a lot of other moving parts the brand needs to be in order to have really made a bigger name for itself.”

By veering too far away from the aesthetic he’s known for, it likely made it difficult for Villaseñor’s fanbase to find an easy entry point into Bally—a brand that didn’t have much of an identity or presence to begin with. Instead of honing in on womenswear Ramirez believes Bally and Villaseñor should have focused more on speaking to the audience Villaseñor already had. While this was addressed to some degree by having Bally distributed through retail channels that lean toward a young men’s demographic, such as Kith and SSENSE, Ramirez felt more needed to be done to address them.  

“You need to also tap into what your home base is and get the momentum behind that, Bally has very few followers on social media compared to all the other luxury [menswear] competitors,” says Ramirez. “It’s not like you can bring in a hot young [menswear] designer and it’s gonna fix all you need. You need marketing, you need social media, and you need retail strategy.”—Lei Takanashi

Because Bally is mostly known for accessories and not apparel, Villaseñor was essentially working from a clean slate. Previous Bally creative directors like Pablo Coppola and design duo Graeme Fidler and Michael Herz tried to refresh the house and make it a true lifestyle brand, but none of their efforts shook up the market or imbued Bally with any dominant signatures. This was an opportunity for Villaseñor to do that. It’s clear Villaseñor is well-versed in all things luxury. He studies it and has created a life for himself that reflects it—go peruse his IG account. But his efforts for Bally felt bogged down in other designers’ interpretations of luxury and not his own. He looked to designers like Tom Ford, who transformed Gucci from a sleepy accessories brand to a provocative fashion house, and Ralph Lauren, who has helped create a blueprint for American fashion. It’s not surprising he was inspired by their work, many designers are, but we didn’t get Villaseñor in the pieces. Being referential is commonplace in fashion. There are a slew of designers still eating off the aesthetic that Phoebe Philo pushed at Céline or the all over logo apparel that Dapper Dan created in the ‘80s. Also from a consumer standpoint, offering what feels familiar sells. But it becomes a problem when the design references aren’t tweaked and therefore the clothes aren’t in conversation with what’s current or modern. Maybe Villaseñor felt most comfortable doing what’s been successful for others, or he hadn’t fully fleshed out his vision (in his defense, he wasn’t given much time), but most brands bring in a splashy creative director to develop new codes, not to push old ones. He’s done that with Rhude and I presume the Bally execs expected the same with his efforts at the Swiss brand.—Aria Hughes

Another potential reason why Villaseñor and Bally’s relationship expired early could likely be due to the luxury sector tapping widely-recognized celebrities to engage their audiences rather than fashion designers. LVMH has definitely leaned into that direction by tapping Pharrell to become the next creative director of Louis Vuitton rather than fashion designers who are less recognized within the mainstream, such as Martine Rose. In May, Versace announced that it would release a womenswear collection co-designed by Dua Lipa. Villaseñor is a recognizable name within the American fashion industry and has tons of celebrity co-signs, but he’s arguably not as recognizable amongst the masses as the Oscar-winning actor Adrien Brody. In March, Bally announced that Brody would make his debut as a fashion designer through a series of capsule collections. 

“I think that makes sense because he’s in the moment, “ says Ramirez about Brody’s partnership. “I feel like [celebrity partnerships] have always been a thing but it has definitely blown up in recent years because of social media. I do think there needs to be a happy balance with some of it so you don’t bore the customer, but I do think that they play a key role in growth and in creating momentum and buzz around a brand.”

While luxury conglomerates like Kering are still elevating talent within the industry, LVMH’s recent decision to make Pharrell the first celebrity to ever lead a luxury fashion house certainly sets a precedent other luxury brands may follow.—Lei Takanashi

Villaseñor is far from being the first fashion designer to leave a major fashion label or luxury house as quickly as he entered. In fact, research conducted by WWD revealed that the tenure for creative directors at major labels has become shorter (usually less than five years). But when Villaseñor came to Bally, the Swiss luxury label hadn’t hired a creative director in five years and its last runway show was nearly two decades before. Ramirez believes the label needed more time with Villaseñor.

“A year to turnaround a brand that has already been dead is very little time. I don’t think it’s fair enough to just rely on a creative director to do that,” says Ramirez. “Within the year they brought this designer, they brought Bally back to the runway and some celebrities got behind it, but very little. That hype doesn’t instantly happen overnight. It does take a little bit of time and especially when you’ve lost an audience for a long time.” 

While similar critiques about Villaseñor and Bally could be made about Matthew M. Williams and his work at Givenchy, time has certainly been in Williams favor. It also helps that Givenchy has previously had a popular run with creative directors like Riccardo Tisci. Ramirez feels that Bally doesn’t necessarily have that past to lean on.

“Givenchy has had its name and I think it’s a great example of a brand that’s hot and sometimes it’s not. So some of these names have had their ups and downs,” says Ramirez. “Bally, to be fair, I don’t know if they even know who their customer is. I feel like they’re starting from scratch.”