Hi, and welcome to Year 2 of Line Sheet—yes, it’s my Puckaversary! We did it. I can’t believe it’s been that long. I’m so happy. There is (actually) more to come. What else do you want, though? No really, tell me. Are there storylines I’ve dropped that you’re not over yet? Are there storylines I’ve ignored that you’re not under yet? Do you need my help getting a prescription for Ozempic? (I’m not a doctor, but I know people…)

Other than resolving to walk an average of 10,000 steps a day over the next year—it’s tough in Los Angeles, man—my only wish is to keep delivering fashion industry scoops and analysis you can’t get anywhere else, because there is nowhere else like Puck. Remember, if you have questions, complaints, or existential thoughts, please hit reply to this email and I will respond 9 times out of 10. Luckily, I also have a dream partner, beauty industry expert Rachel Strugatz, coming at you every Wednesday, so feel free to bother her at [email protected] about Estée.

Today, in classic Line Sheet fashion, I’m tracking the Kering and LVMH talent wars, solving a fashion magazine mystery, stroking P.R. people, and of course, delivering an incremental report from inside Condé. (Sometimes, my friends, you don’t chase the story, the story just happens to chase you.) And remember, if you haven’t signed up for Puck yet… Shaking. My. Head. (Yes, I’m committed to the bit.)

Mentioned in this issue: Alessandro Michele, Valentino, Mayhoola, Pierpaolo Piccioli, Karl Lagerfeld, Delphine Arnault, Louis Vuitton, Nicolas Ghesquière, Beyoncé, W magazine, Karlie Kloss, Sara Moonves, Condé Nast, Anna Wintour, Lisa Frank, Jesse Derris, Jonathan Rosen, Rachid Mohamed Rachid, McQueen, Richard Baker, Pierre Touitou, Waxahatchee, Sydney Sweeney, and more.

• Why was the W mag Beyoncé cover digital only?: Beyoncé is one of the biggest pop stars in the world, if not the biggest, and luxury advertisers still love print. But it’s my understanding that Beyoncé wanted the cover release to line up with the release of her new album, Cowboy Carter, and therefore it had to be a digital cover. (The shoot, which had been in the works for some time, did happen about 10 days before the cover was released.)

  For W, I’m not sure it really matters—its advertising unit, run through a joint venture with Bustle Digital Group, is known for being flexible when it comes to letting brands allocate their dollars. (Legacy publishers often require advertisers to commit a certain amount of money to print if they want to advertise online, too.) This was also the magazine’s first digital-only cover, another selling point. Most important for everyone is that it spreads widely across the internet. W, after all, is sort of a non-economic play at this point—Karlie Kloss is a noble patron, editor Sara Moonves is a rare millennial who understands the brand’s codes, and BDG C.E.O. Bryan Goldberg benefits from the value that the association confers on his lesser brands, which he hypes endlessly, but recognizes are inferior.

• Feeding the beast (that is me): Condé Nast management locked the infamous laid-off list members out of their email and Google Docs on Friday morning … only to subsequently retreat, saying it was a mistake. Too funny. By the way, yes, C.E.O. Roger Lynch did indeed show up to Anna’s fundraiser for Biden at Radio City Music Hall last Thursday. You can read more about the whole shebang in my partner Tara Palmeri’s dispatch. Surprisingly, Roger was not the most notable person in attendance, so he didn’t make it into any coverage I scanned. Boo.
• A colloquial correction: Public relations executive Vanessa Von Bismarck reached out on Friday to let me know that her and Carrie Phillips’ company is officially called BPCM, not Bismarck Phillips, as I called it Thursday in my agency-M&A story. (The name was officially changed many years ago.)
• More P.R.: Lisa Frank, who has been running the day-to-day operations at Derris for years, is now the company’s C.E.O., reports BoF. Namesake and founder Jesse Derris has been kicked upstairs (j.k., it’s a real job) to become the chief strategy officer at Orchestra, its parent company, which acquired Derris in 2022 under its previous name, BerlinRosen Holdings. Jesse is working across the company on growth, M&A, and other important things.

  I’ve known Lisa since she was on the Target account at LaForce & Stevens and I would annoyingly leak details of their top-secret designer collaborations. Since Derris’s inception in 2013, we have worked together on dozens of stories. (Lisa, remember when we went to Vancouver for Lululemon and I got those Céline pants for less than $300 at Nordstrom?) Jesse once told me that he met with something like 20 people when he was looking for a consumer-side partner, and it took eight meetings with Lisa to convince her to join him.

  Anyway, she’s really good at her job, and a big reason that Derris—which became the go-to firm for consumer product strategy over the past decade, with clients including Everlane, Glossier, Rhode, and Skims—was able to exit so successfully. A big problem for P.R. agencies is that they don’t sell when they are at their peak of power, and then they don’t have the resources to proliferate. I guess that’s a universal issue, no matter the industry. But it helps to explain why so many other P.R. firms are jealous of Derris. Congrats to Lisa (and to Jesse for making the right choice all those years ago).

For instance, an Italian insider suggested that Valentino should have stuck with creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli, just as Chanel did with Karl Lagerfeld, who designed the brand until he died. Piccioli, after 25 years on the job, was as much a part of Valentino as Valentino Garavani, himself. Whether or not Piccioli left of his own accord, the fact that Valentino didn’t display that sort of fealty reflects the economic circumstances at Valentino, which is jointly owned by Mayhoola (70 percent) and Kering (which holds the remaining 30 percent but likely wants to return to a control position in the future). A designer like Nicolas Ghesquière can stay at Louis Vuitton indefinitely because it’s moving product. Valentino, on the other hand, has untapped potential and could be far, far more than women’s ready-to-wear, which was Piccioli’s specialty. The business needed to be fixed.

The choice of Michele as the savior here is notable because it’s a bit of a throwback strategy. Instead of taking a risk with a young provocateur (like Demna at Balenciaga or Virgil at Vuitton) or an unproven entity (Seán McGirr at McQueen or Sabato De Sarno at Gucci), this appointment reminds me of when Kering replaced Stefano Pilati at YSL with Hedi Slimane, who first became famous when designing Dior Homme. Or when LVMH replaced Phoebe Philo with Slimane at Celine. You don’t buy Slimane for the brand he’s associated with, you buy it because it’s him, and the same goes for Michele.

How much of Michele we’ll get at Valentino—and how much would be too much—will be a primary topic of discussion over the next six months, as anticipation builds around the release of his first collection, set for September. Remember that Michele received criticism in his last couple years at Gucci for refusing to evolve. Maybe the financial pressures stunted him, maybe he simply didn’t feel the need. Slimane has sometimes been knocked for stasis as well, although there is something universal about what he does at a merchandising and product level that excuses the repetition on the runway. He makes the best black boots, the best jeans, the best box bag, and makes sly use of the archives of the houses for which he designs. (Think of his appropriation of Saint Laurent’s Le Smoking jacket, or Celine’s bourgeois shirt dresses.) Who cares if every Slimane collection is just another parade of thin, prepubescent models wearing various retro fashions? It’s what lies just below the surface that matters—and in Slimane’s case, sells.

That’s one part of the bull case for Michele, anyway. At Valentino, Michele’s success will all come down to whether he can rehash his own past successes—the jumble of fancy-dress drawer florals, flounces, and faux fur—in a way that feels not only correct for Valentino, but for these times. We’ll know soon enough.

Sure, this could have gone so many different ways. I loved the Michele-to-Bulgari rumor—why shouldn’t hard luxury brands be converted into fashion brands, as leather goods brands have? And I was never convinced that Michele would make it to Dior, despite those over-reported in-person meetings with Delphine Arnault. Dior, like Vuitton and Chanel, is a machine larger than any designer, several businesses wrapped into one name. The only individual who might be deft enough to handle that whale is Slimane.

But LVMH’s inability to lure Michele to Fendi feels like a missed opportunity for the group, which needs to continue developing its midlevel brands to retain the progressive consumer, especially now. Loewe is currently filling that void, and Phoebe Philo might too, in a few years, if things don’t go south. But both Loewe designer Jonathan Anderson and Philo were brought into LVMH by Pierre-Yves Roussel, who is now C.E.O. of Tory Burch. Sidney Toledano, longtime manager of Dior, and shepherd of both Slimane and John Galliano, has retired. New LVMH Fashion Group C.E.O. Michael Burke’s greatest pick was Virgil Abloh when he was running Vuitton, but that’s a once-in-a-lifetime outcome.

All that said, who sits atop the various LVMH maisons matters less and less as the group expands further into hospitality, wellness, and other less-tangible forms of luxury. How mad is LVMH that they didn’t land Michele? Probably not that mad. But if Valentino, a brand they’ve considered buying in the past, is successful, they might feel differently. And in that case, at least, Kering would have the last laugh.

On the crazy (or not crazy?) cost of clothing: “When do we get the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants reboot, except it’s four women splitting the cost of a $26,000 Chloé dress?” —A Millennial P.R.-slash-journalist

On Glossier’s positioning: “With the right strategy, Glossier could become the Jacquemus of beauty. Fun, hypey, and luxurious, but with a friendlier price point than its peers. That is, unless Jacquemus finally launches beauty!” —A Gen Z journalist

On a Glossier-LVMH marriage: “Glossier would be a better fit at Coty possibly. Kendo Beauty/Fenty team is strong but they are out on the West Coast and run their own ship mostly. Just don’t think LVMH has done great with their beauty brands… Fresh? Benefit, big but losing market share?” —A Boomer C.E.O.

On P.R. M&A: “I guess big investors know that the golden-day profits are down at these big agencies from their heyday and can try to buy them on the cheap? Then fire the overpaid senior team who don’t pull their weight? The gutting of the industry is quite sad, no? I imagine they’ll get sucked up and become even more corporate, giving more space even for the Gia Kuans and Lucien Pages who are already squarely positioned in the market.” —A Young Millennial P.R.

I love how excited everyone is about Pierre Touitou’s restaurant opening in Paris. Time to lay off the GLP-1s, I guess? [19 Saint Roch’s Instagram]

Can’t even imagine how many teenagers are in therapy because of Brandy Melville. [WSJ]

Do I need to do an investigation into why Ben Affleck suddenly became a really bad dresser? (Not that he was a good dresser before, but…) More specifically, what was that studded suitcase all about? [Both Coats Can Stay But Everything Else Needs to Go]

I fear that, for many young people, listening to Waxahatchee is about to become their whole personality, even though I, too, love Katie Crutchfield and was excited to learn that she reads Magasin. I ordered the lip oil recommended here and I won’t look back. [NYMag/The Strategist]

Related: thanks to Alison Roman for recommending my recommendation. I can also personally vouch for many of her Paris restaurant recommendations, although who cares what I think about food. [A Newsletter]

I loved a lot of this essay, but especially the line that refers to Aimé Leon Dore as “a brand whose whole cinematic universe can be distilled down to, ‘What if we dressed like 9/11 never happened?’” Also, who do we think wrote it? Send nominations and I may publish them. (To me, the big tell is the line, “I’d go so far to argue that there are only like five dudes in the whole menswear ecosystem who dress well, and three of them work at Condé Nast.” Has to be a Sam Hine fan, right? I hear from a source close to the author (who used the pseudonym Andy Sachs, ha) that one of the three men referred to is Noah Johnson. “He’s slept on,” they say. [Hate Reads on Deez Links]

I missed this story during Fashion Month, but a friend of mine who works at the Times said it is one of the best depictions of what is going on there, so might be worth reading if you were also very busy in February. [Vanity Fair]

Upstream dreams: Brunello Cucinelli bought a “tailoring specialist” about 40 miles from its headquarters. [WWD]

We (almost) all relate to Sydney Sweeney’s need to make money, but much like her corpse-like performance in the extremely disappointing film Anyone But You (my bar is low, believe me), she is making what many might consider questionable decisions when it comes to endorsements. I’m not sure if, strategically, any of this matters—Anyone But You was a huge hit; there should be more romantic comedies—but Casey Lewis does a nice job of documenting when shills work and when they don’t in the weekend edition of her newsletter. [After School]

Until Wednesday,
Lauren