Clare Waight Keller, Jennifer Hyman & Pierpaolo Piccioli on Time’s 100 most influential people list

Time magazine has featured three fashion professionals on this year’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world. They are Clare Waight Keller, Artistic Director of Givenchy; Jennifer Hyman, Founder and CEO of Rent the Runway; and Pierpaolo Piccioli, Creative Director of Valentino.

Appointed in 2017, Keller is Givenchy’s first female Artistic Director. While she did earn accolades for her previous work at Chloé and Gucci, Keller’s celebrity status reached new heights last year when she was invited to design a wedding dress for the now Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle. Time invited actress Julianne Moore to write about the fashion designer. “We are drawn to Claire’s work because she doesn’t design from the outside in, she designs from the inside out”, wrote Moore, calling Markle’s wedding gown “a reflection of the lovely and modern young woman who just happens to be a 21st century princess”.

Jennifer Hyman’s profile was penned by Diane von Furstenberg, former Chair of the Council of Fashion Designers of America (she’s recently been succeeded by Tom Ford). “In November 2008, a young Harvard Business School student emailed me and asked to meet with me to discuss a business idea. Her boldness inspired me to see her right away. She much later confessed to me that when she saw me, her idea of renting designer clothing online was only three days old”, von Furstenberg recalls. Hyman co-founded Rent the Runway in 2009 alongside Jennifer Fleiss. Today, the company is fashion’s latest unicorn, having received a 1 billion-dollar valuation in March following a capital injection of 125 million. “In our first meeting, I told Jennifer that fast fashion was hurting the designer industry. She ran with that problem and solved so many others along with it”, said VON Furstenberg.

Pierpaolo Piccioli first joined Valentino in 1999 as an accessories designer, working alongside creative partner Maria Grazia Chiuri, whom he met at Fendi’s accessories department. The duo was promoted to oversee the creative direction of the brand in 2008. Eight years later, Chiuri departed to take on the same role at Chanel, while Piccioli remained Valentino’s sole Creative Director.

Piccioli's profile on Time magazine was written by actress Frances McDormand, who made headlines at this year's Academy Awards by pairing a Valentino gown with bespoke Birkenstocks. “A glorious mask of floating feathers. A delicate armor of black and gold lace. A revived 1970s pattern of bold lipsticked mouths. Acid yellow Birkenstocks on my happy feet for the Oscars. Pierpaolo Piccioli escorted me across the threshold from clothes to fashion. Our friendship has been built on our mutual appreciation for the way celebratory costume can be interpreted for a living, breathing human life”, wrote McDormand.

Pictures: Andrew Matthews / POOL / AFP, courtesy of Rent the Runway, courtesy of Valentino - photo by Pablo Arroyo.