PARIS — “Tailoring is so much more than a suit.”
So said Kerstin Dorst, who joined Hugo Boss as senior vice president of the womenswear business unit in January and is resetting the category starting with its fall 2027 offering.
It was a long-overdue move, given that the Boss brand had “lost the creativity of what we can do with a wardrobe, and that’s obviously what the consumer wants and needs,” she told WWD in an interview at the brand’s Paris headquarters.
Potential is there, given womenswear accounts for around 10 percent of the business — steady but without a breakthrough, according to the company.
This is the opportunity Dorst intends to tap with a lineup rife with handsome jackets and coats, but also came with smartly cut dresses, knitwear and plenty of interesting details that prevented the ensemble from feeling buttoned-up.
Rather than a target share of sales, the ambition is to reinstall the brand in the minds of women, as part of the “better before bigger” leitmotiv of the Claim 5 Touchdown turnaround strategy unveiled in December by the German company, which has since come under control of British conglomerate Frasers Group on Oct. 23.
Dorst’s arrival came as part of a new organizational structure, described by the company as “designed to ensure gender-specific expertise across all brand and product areas, unlock synergies, and drive efficiency and collaboration” between the Boss and Hugo brands. She oversees the creative direction for womenswear collections, working closely with Hugo Boss creative director Marco Falcioni.
Kerstin Dorst
Courtesy of Hugo Boss
Resetting Boss’ womenswear was an overhaul done from the ground up. “We’re not just relaunching the design part; we really reshaped and reconstructed the product from sizing to fit,” she said.
The brand now follows the French scale and goes from 30 to 50, and product development took a classic and hands-on approach based on draping to assess how clothes sit and move on the body. “Sometimes you need to feel the fabric,” she added.
Having at once deep expertise in patternmaking, which she deemed a “dying art” and its own factories on its campus in Germany had Dorst convinced of the huge potential at hand. “We have all that playing field; we just need the vision,” she said.
When the board asked Dorst what hers is, she said she wanted to “create a more feminine collection,” she recalled. “We need to dress women that you actually want to date or you want to be married to — it’s as simple as that — because I don’t think you would want to be a woman or date a woman who isn’t fully herself.”
With a track record that included over a decade at Tory Burch in New York where she played a key role in the brand’s main collection and sportswear, and more than five years at Adidas contributing to the launch of its Slvr premium sportswear line, Dorst’s women’s-only background and international perspective also made her a fit.
For Boss womenswear, she follows the idea that women of today lead multifaceted lives, and “don’t have too much time to figure out what to wear,” she said. “We want to love the pieces we wear, and we want to have a wardrobe that kind of evolves with us.”
Cue an approach where designs need to be wearable, easy and “something that everybody just puts on and feels super confident in [through] the whole day,” she continued.
It was put into practice in the fall 2027 collection that spans around 200 styles, all “feminine tailoring, from beautifully cut dresses and blazers to coats, complemented by knitwear, blouses and sophisticated layering pieces,” as Dorst summed up the lineup.
Prices have been kept at “core foundation price points while extending the upper range selectively,” she noted.
“We have simplified the collection and created a much sharper core, representing around 20 percent [of the collection],” she said. “But core doesn’t mean basic. We have rethought those products entirely, with much greater attention to silhouette, fit, fabrication and detail.”
A one-shoulder dress from the Boss fall 2027 collection.
Courtesy of Boss
These included a roomy jacket zhuzhed up with tone-on-tone thread embroidery; skirts constructed from long raw-edged panels that created a trompe-l’œil pleating effect; and a poplin shirt that had a sequin-embellished silk collar, which turned out to be a removable element. Dorst said she wanted to play with such details without making a garment difficult to wear or care for.
Creating easy-to-style combinations also went through the color palette, owing to Dorst’s belief that texture and tone are an inseparable pair. “The moment you just go with Pantones and put knitwear, leather and everything in the same color, [it] normally never works,” she said. “[Color] lives through the fabric, not the other way around.” Workhorse blues, burgundies, whites and neutrals come paired with luminous reds, delicate yellows, nubbly marled wools and spot-on denim washes.
One idea she was quick to nip in the bud was the notion that womenswear with roots in men’s tailoring would be all about smaller or merely adjusted versions of male styles.
Her constructions are rife with hourglass seams that make coats conform to, rather than constrict, the body’s curves, or panels under the arm to enhance range of movement. No-brainer options included handsome denims with a curving leg and neo-suiting playing on mixing rather than matching sets.
Likewise, bags are about the practical needs of a customer who might carry a tote for a computer during the day and keep a clutch inside for evening. Clothes and accessories should make it easier to move between different moments of the day, she added.
Plus, items such as cummerbunds nod to the brand’s menswear heritage but with a “modern female interpretation,” Dorst said, holding an embellished one against mid-wash jeans. “All of a sudden we [realized] it’s kind of cool with denim, so it’s taking things we did back in the day and giving [them] a different life.”
