Fashion & Lifestyle Executive Search.
From luxury and premium fashion to high street, footwear, accessories and lifestyle, we place the leaders who build desirable brands and profitable businesses. Two decades of relationships across the sector, and every search led personally by a partner.
The brands we partner with.
From luxury houses and global footwear brands to high street retailers and founder-led labels, we are trusted to find the leaders who move them forward.
What we cover.
We partner with fashion and lifestyle businesses at every stage of growth and every market position, from global brand groups and listed retailers to investor-backed scale-ups and founder-led independents.
Luxury & Premium Fashion.
Luxury houses, premium ready-to-wear and contemporary brands. Leaders who can protect brand equity while driving commercial growth.
High Street & Value Retail.
Multi-site retailers and value operators competing on speed, price and range. Commercial, buying and operational leadership at scale.
Footwear & Accessories.
Performance, lifestyle and fashion footwear, plus bags, leather goods and accessories. A long-standing core strength of the practice.
DTC & Fashion Ecommerce.
Direct-to-consumer brands, marketplaces and fashion ecommerce platforms. Leaders fluent in acquisition, retention and contribution margin.
Activewear & Outdoor.
Activewear, athleisure and outdoor lifestyle brands, where technical product credibility meets fashion desirability.
Lifestyle & Homeware.
Lifestyle brands, homeware and design-led consumer businesses, including PE and VC-backed portfolio companies scaling internationally.
Brands people choose to live in.
Leadership roles we recruit.
We operate exclusively at Director to C-suite level. Across fashion and lifestyle, the roles we are most frequently retained to fill include:
For large-scale leadership build-outs or transformation projects, our Exec-Project service provides a dedicated, scalable search solution. For senior leaders needed on a flexible or interim basis, our Interim & Fractional Leadership practice delivers impact immediately. For hiring below Director level, PW Talent extends the same sector expertise across the full talent spectrum.
Our world of difference.
24/7 AI-sourcing, powered by PW Edge.
Every search is powered by PW Edge, our proprietary talent intelligence platform. Nine intelligence modules, 28+ live data sources, dual-model AI. It gives us the reach of a global firm alongside the focus of a specialist, and it is how we surface leaders relationships alone cannot.
Explore PW Edge →Two decades in fashion.
This practice has been built on more than twenty years of relationships across fashion, footwear and lifestyle. Those relationships are not something a generalist firm can replicate, and they are why our shortlists land first time.
Built for precision. Guaranteed.
Brief to shortlist in 45 days, hit on 95% of mandates. Psychometric profiling via Assessio AI. Every placement guaranteed for 6 months at Director level and 12 months at VP and above. Very few firms in this market will put that in writing.
Retained. Never contingent.
Every search gets dedicated resource, a defined methodology and a named partner who owns the outcome. We do not work multi-agency contingency. 92% of our clients return.
What triggers a leadership search.
The businesses we work with rarely come to us because everything is going smoothly. There is usually a catalyst. The five we see most often are:
Brand repositioning.
Premiumisation, a creative reset or rebuilding brand equity after a period of heavy discounting. All need leaders who can hold brand and commercial in the same hand.
Investment, restructuring and exit.
PE and VC investment, acquisition, administration or preparing for exit. New ownership creates urgency to build a leadership team that can deliver the plan.
The wholesale to DTC shift.
Moving from a wholesale-led model to direct-to-consumer changes the economics of the whole business, and needs commercial leadership that has genuinely made that transition.
International expansion.
Taking a brand from a strong home market into Europe, North America or Asia needs leaders who know the accounts, the distributors and the local consumer.
Category and channel extension.
An apparel brand adding footwear, a footwear brand adding accessories, a wholesale business opening retail. New categories need credible leadership in the category being entered.
The fashion and lifestyle talent landscape.
The leadership these businesses need has changed sharply, and the talent pool has not kept pace.
The high street is consolidating.
Administrations, acquisitions and asset-light licensing models have reshaped UK and European retail. Boards are hiring leaders who can turn a business around, integrate an acquisition or run a brand without the estate that used to come with it.
DTC changed what good looks like.
Leaders now need genuine fluency in customer acquisition, retention, contribution margin and digital product, not just retailer relationships. The commercial minds who can hold wholesale, DTC and marketplace economics at once remain scarce.
Creative leadership carries commercial weight.
Creative director appointments now move share prices and shape turnaround narratives. Businesses need creative leaders who can build a brand and a range plan, which is a genuinely rare combination.
Buying and merchandising talent is the bottleneck.
With margin under pressure from input costs and tighter retailer terms, the people who can build a profitable range and manage full-price sell-through are in high demand and rarely on the market.
Sustainability moved from claim to capability.
Materials, circularity, resale and supply chain transparency have become commercial requirements rather than marketing lines. Leadership teams need people who can deliver on them without inflating cost.
Careers are increasingly international.
Senior fashion leaders move between markets and continents more readily than in most sectors. Reaching them means having relationships in London, Europe, the US and Asia rather than one home market.
We track these shifts through our client work, our network across the sector, and ongoing research through PW Edge. Every search is informed by where the market is heading, not just where it has been.
The leaders behind the labels.
What our clients say.
Frequently asked questions.
Fashion & lifestyle news.
Live headlines from across the fashion industry, including leadership moves, updated automatically.
Let's find your next leader.
Whether you are repositioning a brand, moving into new markets, building a DTC team or preparing for investment, we would welcome a conversation. No commitment, just a genuine view of your market and the leaders in it.
Get in touch