What are the professions in the luxury and fashion industries?

Une alternance en marketing du luxe peut être une bonne façon de découvrir les nombreux métiers du luxe et de la mode.
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The context is particularly favorable for those who wish to enter the fashion industry or to follow an internship in luxury marketing. Indeed, the sector is doing well and France is one of the most promising countries in this field. Moreover, luxury represents an extremely diversified market, including haute couture, perfumes, gastronomy and the hotel industry. According to an article in Le Figaro, 5 French companies are among the most recognized brands in the world:

  • Louis Vuitton
  • Chanel
  • Hermes
  • Dior
  • Henessy

A brief overview of the professions in the different luxury sectors.

Luxury and fashion professions: marketing and sales professions

Chargé d’étude luxe

The job of research manager in the luxury industry is a position that is held upstream of a project. Oriented towards Marketing, it analyzes and interprets statistics in order to determine the right positioning to be achieved in relation to the competition. Its goal is to establish an offensive commercial strategy, aiming at a specific target. By collecting a lot of data about future buyers, the research manager enables a company to launch a product on the market.

The job requires good interpersonal and sales skills, as well as a thorough knowledge of marketing fundamentals.

Chef de projet luxe

The position of luxury project manager is a highly responsible job. This consists in controlling all the stages of manufacturing a product, from its conception to its completion. Thus, as soon as a project is developed, its first mission is to write the specifications. It then takes into account the financial, technical and legal aspects necessary to put a new property on the market. It will then be validated by the client before the project starts.

As an intermediary, he must constantly maintain the link between his teams and business partners. He must also organize conferences to harmonize the tasks to be carried out by the members of his team. Finally, it ensures that market research is carried out and that a solid marketing plan is established. This will allow him to present the final product to the customer. Thus, the position allows for a wide range of roles. The luxury project manager works in both the commercial and marketing fields.

Luxury brand manager

The luxury brand manager’s mission is to promote the image of a company to the general public. It thus highlights the spirit of a brand, its values and makes a marketing strategy developed upstream bear fruit. Its role is therefore compartmentalized on specific missions. It must define a policy of establishment on the territory (or internationally), establish a global communication strategy and control each stage of the development of its notoriety. It is therefore the company’s image that is at the heart of the luxury brand manager’s missions. His best tools are negotiation, creativity, innovation and language skills.

 

Luxury and fashion professions: innovation professions

Although based on the transmission of ancient traditions and know-how, fashion and luxury have had to take the turn of modernity to stay in step with the times. Progressive integration of digital technology in the sector, mutation of the professions by the impulse of the technological evolution… the field has seen the emergence of new professions, full of innovation.

Community manager

The role of the community manager is to develop the dynamics around a brand, on most web platforms. As a social network specialist, he is responsible for his employer’s e-reputation and facilitates exchanges between Internet users. It is in a way an ambassadorial role that he carries. Its mission is to disseminate the company’s marketing strategy through various digital content. By collecting opinion trends in the comments or by organizing contests, it promotes loyalty. It participates in the cohesion of a community. In order to anchor themselves in a new technological era and to reach a wider audience, luxury and fashion brands are massively resorting to this type of position within their company. In addition to mastering software and digital language to maintain the adhesion of a group, the community manager may be required to analyze statistics. Finally, he can define strategies and eventually produce image content.

Burberry, le défi digital

Few luxury brands have dared to take the modernity option. Trapped by the straitjacket of tradition, many brands have been afraid to change their image with the public. Burberry was the first brand to enter the digital age and offer unique promotional campaigns on social networks. Thus, the company has mainly invested in this niche. Twitter, Wechat and especially Snapchat have become their main sources of exposure. In order to make the medium unavoidable and increase its impact, Burberry has created exclusive content on the Snapchat platform, such as previews of fashion shows. By investing in this tool, the brand quickly became a leader, increasing its growth against all odds. In its wake, Dior, Chanel or Valentino followed. Both modern and rooted in luxury imagery, the risk-taking initiated by Burberry has been emulated and has established luxury in a new marketing era.

Consultant SEO

Real spearhead of the marketing strategy of a company, the SEO Consultant aims to promote SEO. Thus, its goal is to make the site of a brand appear faster on search engines to increase its audience. He then defines a referencing acquisition strategy, analyses the blocking factors and constantly updates the keywords in order to follow the evolution of the site. This job plays a major role in the digital transformation of major fashion houses. Versatile, SEO Consultants can work as freelancers for various companies or as employees of an agency. Although relative to the size of the company, the SEO Consultant’s remuneration is generally comfortable, especially in the fashion and luxury sectors.

Brand content manager

Always coming from the digital world, the Brand content manager is attached to the marketing department of a company. He is responsible for the image of a brand through its various contents. While ensuring their consistency and quality, he manages their production. Its versatility and its mastery of the various means of distribution make it an essential element in the new communication campaigns of luxury brands, which were previously far from digital networks. There are few training courses entirely dedicated to this recent position. It can nevertheless be considered after studies in communication and media.

Luxury and fashion professions: the creative professions

If there is a field that we immediately associate with fashion, it is the creative one. However, it is probably the sector that recruits the fewest candidates. Whether they are related to crafts, ready-to-wear or leather goods, the creative professions remain, despite everything, the greatest vectors of dreams.

Styliste

Always on the lookout for the latest trends, the designer develops collections for ready-to-wear brands each season. With an almost sociological eye, he studies fashions and social phenomena in order to make a work borrowing from modernity, while sticking to the spirit of the brand. His involvement is not only limited to the technical elaboration of the garments, as he also has an eye on the marketing and commercial aspect. He works closely with the prototype designer and the model mechanic. He can also intervene in the elaboration of control tests during the manufacturing process. However, the creative phase remains quite limited as its missions are numerous and can overflow into marketing or other more technical aspects.

Maroquinier

Specialized in leather, the leatherworker manufactures various goods such as handbags, suitcases, belts and wallets. He determines the materials chosen and their form, thus developing the prototype. He will cut and sort the pieces of leather according to their qualities to integrate them progressively, by privileging the most beautiful pieces on the external parts. In its oldest form, as a true craftsman, he is entirely responsible for his model and thus manages each step of its design, up to the sale. In the industrial sector, the relationship to the product is different and the steps are compartmentalized. Thus, to facilitate the pace, the leather workers specialize in a precise stage to constitute, with their colleagues, a chain of talents working in the same direction. In this way, they can become stitcher-monitors or even cutters. Most leatherworkers take a CAP in leatherwork or a Bac Pro in leatherwork.

Modiste

Specialized in the making of hats for women, the milliner’s mission is to create custom-made or mass-produced headwear of various shapes and inspirations. It is a true craftsman’s work, which calls upon an elaborate know-how. In the service of a design house, the milliner works on the shapes and fabrics in the workshop, before delivering his creation to the customers during a final fitting session. Within a company or as a freelancer, the function of milliner is becoming rarer as the industrialization of the sector has developed. The path to this job can start with a CAP in fashion, specializing in milliner. It is a real passion job that requires a lot of patience and involvement.

Luxury and fashion professions: what courses are offered at ESCE?

In order to facilitate the integration of students in a particularly demanding sector, ESCE has developed a new marketing specialization. This new type of training, focused on the luxury, fashion and communication industries, offers an in-depth look at the history of luxury houses and provides a better understanding of their codes. Historical and sociological education is combined with several innovative disciplines:

  • luxury brand management
  • universe of luxury
  • luxury retail trends
  • brand image and digital communication
  • professional profiles in communication

In order to confront students with concrete and formative situations,ESCE offers a unique opportunity to spend a semester in a high place of luxury and fashion, Baruch College in New York. Thus, at the end of his training, the student will be able to develop relevant marketing strategies that meet the new expectations of the major prestige houses. The opportunities are numerous and cover the new professions of the sector, such as :

  • social media manager
  • visual merchandiser
  • luxury brand manager
  • communication manager

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Updated 19 April 2023