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Oscar de la Renta’s co-creative directors Laura Kim and Fernando Garcia will step down from the role after nine years, creating yet another designer vacancy.

Representatives for Oscar de la Renta and Monse, the ready-to-wear brand founded by Garcia and Kim in 2015, confirmed the departure on Wednesday, after it was first reported by Puck. The designers declined to comment.

Kim and Garcia were appointed co-creative directors of Oscar de la Renta in 2016, two years after the namesake founder’s death, replacing Peter Copping. Both designers spent the beginning of their careers working their way up at Oscar de la Renta before leaving to launch Monse, and spending a short stint at Carolina Herrera. The designer duo will now focus their full attention on Monse, which held a runway show in New York on 14 September. (Oscar de la Renta stopped showing on the official New York Fashion Week calendar in 2022.)

The news comes as a significant season for fashion debuts gets underway. Most of the action has been outside of New York, with first collections from new designers lined up at houses including Chanel and Dior women’s. At New York Fashion Week, Rachel Scott previewed her take on Proenza Schouler, where she was announced as creative director earlier this month after its founders Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough departed for Loewe. Ex-Balenciaga couture designer Nicholas Aburn showed his first collection for Area, while 3.1 Phillip Lim announced the arrival of new head of design Michelle Rhee, who put her first collection out through market appointments.

Designer openings for significant New York fashion houses are more rare than they are in Europe, and eyes will be on who will fill the slot at Oscar de la Renta. The label – founded in 1965 in New York and known for its evening wear and wedding gowns – is headed up by CEO Alex Bolen, who has been at the helm for the past two decades. The search will commence as Kim and Garcia finish their final collections for the brand, expected for pre-fall and Autumn/Winter 2026, according to the Puck report.

As for Monse, the most recent show — in celebration of its 10th anniversary — signalled an expansion of the brand’s leather offering plus workwear-ready pieces, against a backdrop of priceless artwork borrowed from collectors. “There is something about what we do, Laura and I, that is Picasso-like; distorted but familiar,” Garcia told Vogue’s Laia Garcia-Furtado. “Deconstructed and happy is basically us in a nutshell.”

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