Does fashion hate women in power?

Yet, she says, “Whenever we would decide on the CEO of a smaller brand, Robert would look at the two men (on the executive committee), and he wouldn’t ask us women if we wanted the job.” She confronted him, and says Polet responded with genuine surprise that she might be interested. “Robert wasn’t evil,” Viglezio says. “I think that the image of a CEO was very much the image of a man. It wasn’t in the culture of those middle-aged white men.”

Polet says he doesn’t recall the moment Viglezio confronted him, though he agrees it may have happened. “Different genders, different cultures, different age groups — they all help in making teams better and being more in touch with reality and society at large,” he texted me. “So logical as a point of view, but not always to be taken for granted. There are still a few male dinosaurs around with rather old-fashioned points of view. Time will take care of those.”

Today at Kering’s top five brands — Gucci, Saint Laurent, Balenciaga, Alexander McQueen and Bottega Veneta — of their 10 CEOs and creative directors, one is held by a woman: Francesca Bellettini at Saint Laurent.

LVMH’s top six womenswear brands are male-designed, with the exception of Grazia Chiuri at Dior — a label whose CEO is female, Delphine Arnault, the daughter of LVMH founder and chairman Bernard Arnault.

Tory Burch, the billionaire fashion entrepreneur who launched a non-profit foundation to mentor and promote women entrepreneurs, made the struggles she has faced — and how she overcame them — as a woman both designing and running a fashion enterprise, the centrepoint of her commencement speech this spring at the Parsons School of Design.

“At a business summit, I was introduced not as a CEO but as a ‘female CEO’,” she told the crowd. “At times, it’s tempting to give in to other people’s doubts, but when we do that, our dreams quickly evaporate. You need to thicken your skin. And you need to know yourself and have conviction.”

Some with conviction — Philo, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen at The Row, Jil Sander (now retired), Gabriela Hearst, and Maria Cornejo among them — launched their own successful labels, developing cult-like followings for the way they have woven fashion, power and wearability specifically for women. That’s good for their clients, who want real, elegant, well-made clothing that fits them, but fashion investors should be gnashing their teeth.

Cornejo and her CEO Marysia Woroniecka told me they eschewed jobs at big brands in order to make chic clothes for real women. “I’m a woman designer designing for women’s bodies,” Cornejo says, “because I understand their bodies.”