Let’s be so real, there was a time when it felt like every creative and their nan said “I want to be a Creative Director.” It sounded like the dream, didn’t it? Creative control, styling campaigns, maybe a GQ feature, definitely a glass of natural wine at some gallery dinner in Hackney Wick. The ultimate cultural job title.
But in 2025? The dream’s looking... expired. At best, blurry. At worst, a fast track to burnout and therapy. Where it's not even about the clothing or campaigns but also managing you as a personal brand now.
Because somewhere along the way, the role of “Creative Director” became so diluted, so misused, that it also barely means anything anymore. Everyone’s a Creative Director now and of what, exactly? Their personal brand? Their bedroom photoshoots? The latest Depop drop? It’s giving vague. And the brands don’t even help. They hire one 23-year-old to do art direction, brand strategy, social content, styling, casting, AND photography and then call them “the CD” like it’s some badge of honour instead of a polite way of saying underpaid multi-hyphenate with no boundaries or backbone to say enough is enough.
The issue isn’t that we don’t want creative control. We do. But the version of it we inherited was never designed with us in mind. The traditional “Creative Director” model was based on a very white, very male, very luxury-house kind of power. You sat at the top of a pyramid, gave out vibes, signed things off. That’s not how Gen Z works. We collaborate. We jump roles. We work across disciplines. And we’re deeply, deeply tired of being expected to do ten jobs for one paycheck and a byline.
So what’s the alternative?
More and more, it looks like collectives. Studio spaces. Shared infrastructure. Not “I am the Creative Director,” but “we’re building this together.” The power is in the group, not one person at the top. From places like Sorry I’m Late to Sondr, multidisciplinary spaces popping up in major cities like Manchester, Glasgow and London, there’s a shift towards creative economies rather than creative hierarchies.
And that makes sense, especially in a time when no one creative job pays enough to survive. We’re tired of competing for scraps. Studio collectives let you split rent, resources, and responsibility. One person brings photography, another styling, another social and no one’s expected to carry the whole brand narrative on their back just to prove they’re “serious about the work.”
It’s also protection. The burnout levels in creative direction are wild. You’re expected to be both business-minded and artistically inspired 24/7. You’re designing decks for meetings at 9am, styling on set at 4pm, and editing reels by midnight. All while trying to maintain a personal brand, reply to 37 DMs about “potential collaborations,” and not ghost your friends for six weeks straight.
So yeah, maybe the Creative Director dream is dead or at least, it’s evolving. What Gen Z is building instead isn’t about titles. It’s about ecosystems. Skillshares. Mutual aid. Building brands as community hubs, not just marketing machines.
We don’t need to become the next Virgil Abloh. We need to become the first us on our own terms, with our own rules, and ideally, with health insurance. Because if the only way to be a Creative Director is to kill yourself trying to prove it? Perhaps you need to be demoted.