Fashion house McQueen to cut 20% of London jobs: Kering

Fashion house Alexander McQueen is cutting 55 jobs at its London headquarters, representing 20% of its staff, as it struggles with falling sales, its French parent company Kering confirmed Thursday.

Women’s Wear Daily first reported the layoffs, part of a strategic review across Kering’s brands with the arrival of its new chief executive Luca de Meo.

Kering, which hired De Meo away from automaker Renault in June to halt a revenue slump and cut debt, posted a 10% drop in overall sales in the third quarter late Wednesday as revenues fell at most of its top brands.

It did not break out sales for McQueen but said its “decline in revenue moderated thanks to higher women’s ready-to-wear sales.”

“When it comes to the portfolio, I want to be very clear, we will review, of course, in a very open manner, as we already always did, the relevance of the assets we have in the portfolio,” Kering’s chief operating officer Jean-Marc Duplaix said in presenting the quarterly results.

In a statement to WWD, McQueen said that “As part of a comprehensive strategic review of our global operations, we are restructuring our UK head office and reducing complexity across our international markets.”

But Kering’s third-quarter sales came in well ahead of analyst expectations, sending its shares up 11% on the Paris stock exchange Thursday afternoon.

“Kering published results even better than expected, and expectations were already high,” Deutsche Bank analyst Adam Cochrane said in a research note.

The company also said this week that it would sell its beauty products division to L’Oreal for 4.6 billion euros ($5.3 billion).