Hi, and welcome back to Line Sheet.

W magazine won this weekend’s Golden Globes preparty wars with its “Best Performances” martini fest at the Chateau Marmont penthouse on Friday night. Many celebrities, not too many publicists, and all the cool people (Nicolas Cage) showed up, and dressed up, too. (Greta Gerwig in Loewe, Andrew Scott in a vintage ALF T-shirt—no joke—Jon Hamm in… who cares, he looked great.) Leo was there, too, which hopefully made sponsor Christian Louboutin happy. (The designer, by the way, looked to be having a great time.) Anyway, congrats to editor-in-chief Sara Moonves and the one-in-a-million Lynn Hirschberg for getting people to drink alcohol and eat French fries. Why aren’t there more fashion parties like this?

Today is packed, so let’s get going. Before we do, though, for those asking: I am not heading to Europe for men’s or couture this season. Too cold. But I’ll be there in February and March. Let’s hang.

Mentioned in this issue: Raúl Martinez, John Mehas, Roger Lynch, Globes fashion, Frédéric Arnault, Janie Schaffer, Alessandro Michele, Oreos vs. Hydrox, Anna Wintour, Victoria’s Secret, Balenciaga, Stéphane Bianchi, Anne Stephenson, Agnes Chu, IMG, Martin Waters, and Jeremy Allen White’s shoes.

• A Demna deputy departs: Martina Tiefenthaler, a longtime collaborator of Balenciaga’s Demna, is leaving her post at the Kering-owned brand. Tiefenthaler met the designer when she interned for him at Margiela in 2011. Over a decade, she became a member of his inner circle, earning the title of chief creative officer at Balenciaga. The particulars of Tiefenthaler’s departure are only speculative, but my understanding is that it’s not for another job. Thoughts?

• Designer dominos fall again: Expect some big announcements in the coming days and weeks, including but not limited to the forthcoming Givenchy appointment and perhaps, just perhaps, an update on our friend Alessandro Michele’s whereabouts. I’m still betting on Fendi, but there are strong arguments for Dior. Meh!

• Battle of the Grunge kings: Remember when the LLC that is Nirvana sued Marc Jacobs for twisting the band’s wiggly lipped smiley-face logo into a T-shirt that said “Heaven” instead as a part of his 2018 Grunge Redux collection? (You can buy it for $45 on Grailed if interested.)

  Nirvana’s two living original members are Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl, expert griller and author of The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music. I’m not a lawyer, so I have no idea if they have a case, but it seems pretty dumb to me and also not the way art works. If you manipulate an image, then it’s no longer the image, right?

  Well, that’s what I think, but the Supreme Court ruled differently in a case involving an Andy Warhol screenprint of a 1981 photograph of Prince that ran in a 2016 issue of Vanity Fair. Anyway, Nirvana versus MJ may finally be going to trial, and my Puck partner Eriq Gardner, who writes about juicy legal cases in The Rainmaker every Monday, has all the details, so sign up for his dispatch.

• Frédéric Arnault’s cute new title: The second-youngest of the Arnault clan, most recently running LVMH-owned watch brand Tag Heuer, has been named C.E.O. of LVMH Watches, a newly created role. (He’ll report to Stéphane Bianchi, the C.E.O. of LVMH Watches & Jewelry.) Arnault will now have three C.E.O.s reporting to him.

  Does this job need to exist? Well, as LVMH’s business gets bigger in both watches and jewelry, it makes sense to have someone with expertise in each category. Many of the LVMH businesses are getting so big—Louis Vuitton and Dior, in particular—that I wouldn’t be surprised if they started creating divisional C.E.O. roles within those brands. (That sort of position already exists, but titles still matter to some people and renaming a position “C.E.O. of Louis Vuitton womenswear” could be an enticing talent acquisition tool.)

  The bigger thing here, of course, is that Frédéric is moving up the ranks fast, and his ambitious siblings are surely taking notice.

I have to be honest, the current situation at Victoria’s Secret is very blah, so while I have co-written an entire book on the company, the last few years—post-Les Wexner, post-Ed Razek, post-Jeffrey Epstein, post-everything good and positive also—are not the primary focus. But here’s some background for you. Martinez was recruited to Victoria’s Secret in 2020 by then-president John Mehas, one of the final Wexner hires. A vet of Tory Burch and Ralph Lauren, Mehas has a mixed reputation personality-wise, but he understands marketing and merchandising, and he assembled quite a powerful pack to turn around Victoria’s Secret. But Mehas was fired not long after he brought in Martinez. In fact, Mehas’ ouster was announced a month before Martinez’s appointment was made public.

Martin Waters, the current C.E.O. of the group, is an operations guy, not a brand guy, and the reboot simply has not worked. The disastrous so-called “reinvention” of the fashion show, last September, was a culmination of their failed efforts, and the huge marketing expense fell squarely under Martinez’s purview.

You can’t blame Raúl for the current mess at Victoria’s Secret. At least not entirely. And nor would Victoria’s Secret: Martinez is universally beloved everywhere, all over, even if sources say that he butted heads with Janie Schaffer, the brand’s current chief design officer, who was also recruited by Mehas. (Schaffer is a lingerie industry legend and credited with making Victoria’s Secret’s product chicer during her first stint at the company, circa 2010.)

Interestingly, it doesn’t seem like Victoria’s Secret will be replacing Martinez, whose official title at the company was chief creative director. His visuals team is now reporting into Anne Stephenson, the brand’s New York-based chief merchandising officer—an unorthodox approach, according to some insiders. (A rep for Victoria’s Secret explained that the company is reassessing the structure of the creative team, and that it is common in retail to organize visuals under merchandising.)

Who needs whom more, I do not know. It’s clear, though, that Lynch will give Wintour anything she wants at this point. And it’s also clear that Condé Nast needs to invest in the Anna business so that it can imbue her patina on less-elegant elements of the empire, particularly those impacted by continuous cost cuts. The majority of the company reports to her, and keeping her happy is a priority.

Unless this is the first step in some insidious Trojan Horse kind of organizational re-org, returning to Vogue (and only to Vogue) will spare Martinez some of the management headaches that plagued his last tenure. After all, he left for Victoria’s Secret after a bleak period at Condé Nast when it seemed like every editorial function was being matrixed and the brands, themselves, were becoming small shingles of editors. Back then, the researchers, copy editors, photo editors, and designers had all been cordoned off to their own pods, often serving multiple brands. This may have been the responsible financial decision, but it came with anticipated hassles. Anyway, that’s someone else’s problem now.

Raúl’s decision to return to the nest was announced, fittingly, as Ben Mullin from The New York Times reported on Lynch’s latest personal branding opportunity. Lynch is slated to participate in a Senate subcommittee hearing this Wednesday on “A.I. and the future of journalism.” What is Lynch, a career technology executive currently at war with his employees’ union, going to be discussing? More importantly: “How is he going to be part of a hearing if he can’t ad-lib CN state TV once a quarter?” a bitter, if funny, source close to Condé asked rhetorically.

Great question. I wonder what the union thinks about this: The group’s next contract bargaining meeting with management is slated for Wednesday afternoon. According to a note sent in the union’s Slack, Condé Nast V.P. of labor relations Cameron Bruce reached out to reps last Thursday and asked if they could meet to discuss layoffs. When they said no, she sent them Condé’s “most regressive proposal” yet, as one union rep called it. The proposal, according to an official statement sent out by the union, still included layoffs of 94 union members, under worse conditions than initially offered. (Severance packages were cut by “more than half.”) The union filed an unfair labor practice claim today, stating that the company’s latest proposal is “illegal.”

The celebratory re-hiring of Martinez comes at what everyone hopes is the tail-end of this long, drawn-out round of layoffs and internal uproar that began in October with the exit of Condé Nast Entertainment head Agnes Chu and the disbanding of that unit. The 94 union members on the initial layoff list have been tortured the longest, as they’ve known for months that they were going to be let go, and would not benefit from the renegotiated contract.

Besides filing the claim, the union plans to fight back by setting a date to “WALK TF OUT,” as one union leader put it over Slack. “[Management is] clearly desperate to wrap this up, but have made no moves in our direction which tees us up ever so perfectly for our walkout,” they said.

Walkout or not, it will get wrapped up, and maybe things will go back to business as usual for a while—or at least that’s what Lynch must be hoping. For Wintour, bringing back a trusted deputy like Martinez might offer some reassurance—and, at the very least, comfort. There’s no denying she will spend her last professional act running an emaciated Condé Nast. At least they have each other.

My favorite looks from the pretty-mediocre Golden Globes red carpet: Hunter Schafer in Prada (obviously), Ayo Edebiri (also Prada, sorry), Margot Robbie in Barbie-pink Giorgio Armani (so fun), Rosamund Pike in black lace Dior Couture (minus the fascinator, too fussy), Timothée in Celine (he has it), Karen Gillan in Iris Van Herpen (best of the avant-garde), Angela Bassett in Dolce & Gabbana (their clothes just fit), Cillian Murphy in Saint Laurent (relaxed), Jeffrey Wright in Dior Men, Jeremy Allen White in Calvin Klein (the shoes weren’t right, but I can forgive), Kate Capshaw in Khaite, Martin Scorsese in Armani (and really, every guy wearing Armani: all a man needs to do is wear a tux that fits), and Gillian Anderson’s perfect face. Also, if you scroll all the way down the page, you will almost certainly recognize someone you know I.R.L. by the end of it. Vogue went deep this year. [Vogue]

If you’ve never read Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class, shame on you. However, even good students will enjoy Caroline Issa’s clever recap. [Tank TV]

Paris-based brand Ludovic de Saint Sernin is showing on February 11 at New York Fashion Week. [Inbox]

Let’s garner some enthusiasm for fun red-carpet jewelry! [Town & Country]

This story about Oreos’ alleged annexing of Hydrox cookies indicates that grocery store shelves are far more corrupt than department store racks. [The Hustle]

What’s more annoying: all caps, italicizing, or exclamation points? Maybe em dashes? Or colons. [Culture Study]

I missed this buried news that IMG is moving from Spring Studios to the Starrett-Lehigh Building. Great for me because I am staying nearby when I visit New York this February, but a hilarious turn of events overall because Starrett-Lehigh (once home to the Tommy Hilfiger offices) is truly the hardest building to get to in all of Manhattan, and it’s not easy to get into, either. (I did a consulting project there in late 2012—for, ironically, Raul Martinez’s old agency, A + R—and spent all the money I made taking cabs from Carroll Gardens to 26th and 12th.) Alas, I hope for everyone involved it’s less annoying than Spring Studios. Also, only realizing now that I’ve been calling it Starrett-Leigh for the past 15 years, I don’t know about you. [WWD]

And finally… in other legal news: The Chanel v. What Goes Around Comes Around trial starts tomorrow. I like my popcorn with extra butter, please.