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Thanks, Bill. Now back to Rachel…

Last week at the Venice Film Festival, Tom Ford creative director Haider Ackermann gathered some of his famous friends at a 16th century palace to fete Black Orchid Reserve, a more highly concentrated version of the brand’s hero scent but rendered with ghost orchid. Tilda Swinton, the star of the fragrance’s new campaign, was serendipitously in Venice for the premiere of Broken English. And she joined Ackermann’s crew for a campaign reveal, intimate dinner, and impromptu photo shoot that was art directed by Kate Moss.

In some ways, the launch almost felt like a celebration of a new era at The Estée Lauder Companies, which has spent the last few years bedeviled by a rolling series of headaches—a very public C.E.O. succession process, tumultuous family dynamics, and tumbling stock prices. Indeed, nearly a year after Stéphane de La Faverie took over as C.E.O., the world’s largest family-controlled beauty company is showing signs of a rebound. Sure, net sales are still down, but the stock price is up more than 20 percent year to date, and there have been gains in a handful of markets, including the U.S.

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Much of the post-transition housekeeping is also well underway: A new executive leadership team and org chart have been implemented, and the elimination of “up to 7,000” employees is nearly complete—which, I’m told, has created a positive vibe shift among staff. De La Faverie has done his part to stabilize the P&L, but the rest of his turnaround hinges on the individual brands—many of which finally need to figure out how to communicate with customers and attract new ones in a multichannel world. Alas, the common characteristic across the E.L.C. portfolio is waning relevance, a contagion that has trickled down from the top.

Of course, some of Lauder’s biggest beauty lines continue to appear in top rankings—they’ve been household names since your grandmother first discovered them, and they still enjoy the widest prestige distribution in the world. And then there’s MAC Cosmetics, The Ordinary, Jo Malone, and Le Labo, among others, which continue to challenge industry norms and/or prove they can withstand the grueling brand churn of the social media era.

But other brands within the portfolio remain challenged: Origins, Bobbi Brown, Dr. Jart+, and Bumble & Bumble have seen either sales compress or market share slip. Balmain never took off in the first place. (“There were a lot of good learnings from the initial launch,” said a person familiar with the brand and its strategy. “There’s also now a willingness to adjust the strategy, especially with pricing and distribution.”) Overall, the company continues to grapple with continued softness in Asia, challenges in the youth market, and the North America market, itself, where prestige is dominated by the specialty multibrand channels—i.e., Ulta and Sephora—that E.L.C. has never quite managed to crack. Meanwhile, there’s increased pressure to keep up with the indie brands—Makeup by Mario, Westman Atelier, Jones Road, Summer Fridays, etcetera—that have broken through during the last decade. After all, all prestige roads still lead through Sephora—and E.L.C.’s track record at the retailer in North America has been mixed at best. I previously reported that Bobbi Brown is seeing cuts all around at Sephora, from door count to its in-store footprint, and last year, Tom Ford Beauty’s makeup business declined by almost 50 percent year to date. Even Too Faced, which was once a Sephora darling, has failed to garner attention in seasonal trend “stories” that newer and exclusive-to-Sephora brands receive. And Sephora no longer carries Smashbox, the maker of a once top-selling primer, which is basically a dead brand at this point.

Last week, I reported that Matthew Parr, senior vice president and global creative director of Estée Lauder, was let go after nearly a decade in the role, which led some to speculate about a consolidation of creative leadership at the flagship brand. One insider wondered whether Lauder was preparing to “cluster” its creatives together instead of appointing a dedicated global creative at each brand—which seemed to be the whole point of the McKinsey-esque “Beauty Reimagined” strategy that de La Faverie rolled out this past February. “They’ve been talking about that forever,” said a former E.L.C. executive.

I’m still trying to figure out why Estée Lauder hasn’t undergone a creative renaissance. By contrast, MAC, Clinique—and to a lesser extent, La Mer—have all had at least one zeitgeist moment. “The Lauder brand has had so many failed attempts at reaching a younger consumer,” said a former E.L.C. executive who has worked with the Lauder brand. Some obvious, recent examples include the Ladurée collaboration, the “sleep advisor” partnership, and the Gen Z–targeted “Nutritious” collection.

In its latest earnings report, E.L.C. highlighted the success of a new Estée Lauder Double Wear Concealer, which was ranked by Circana as the top prestige makeup product launch for the first half of 2025. Sarah Shapiro also recently noted that Estée Lauder landed in the top 10 beauty brands in Q2, according to YipitData. But some of that success has owed to the sheer size and scale of their rollouts and potentially slanted data. (As many executives and founders will tell you with notable exasperation, Circana only tracks certain brands and excludes many of Sephora’s exclusive brands.) Anyway, the concealer is hardly evidence of a turnaround. “Matthew may have been wonderful, and he can navigate the Lauder brand and E.L.C.,” the former executive added, “but I don’t think that we’ve seen anything that would reflect that the brand understands culture.” And therein lies the point. This afternoon, I took a look at the complete list of E.L.C. brands on the company’s corporate website, and de La Faverie’s burden crystalized before me: Aramis, Glamglow, Dr. Jart+, Origins, Lab Series, Darphin, Aveda, Smashbox, and a couple of others are dead weight. De La Faverie needs to clean house—either by divesting or closing some of these lines altogether—and get the company back in the M&A game for his turnaround to work. In many ways, his plan hasn’t even yet begun.

Many of you have asked for the backstory on Charles Porch, Instagram’s head of partnerships, and why his and philanthropist Robert Denning’s Paris wedding weekend at Le Bristol (with the ceremony at the Musée Rodin) was so stacked with fashion people (Derek Blasberg, Aurora James, Sara Moonves, Jenna Lyons, Chanel’s Rebekah McCabe, Brett Heyman), fashion-in-Hollywood people (the Foster sisters, Jennifer Meyer… Harry Styles), and investor types who are also fashion people (Amy Griffin, Nick Brown, Jen Rubio, Selby Drummond, Xander Ritz). Jessica and Jerry Seinfeld were also there because… the Hamptons?

Anyway, I mostly know Charles as Eva Chen’s boss, but he has a rich history as a very early Facebook employee and the best friend of Erin Foster, who officiated. (They met when they were in their 20s working as assistants.) Everyone seemed to have a wonderful time—even Tom Bannister, Eva’s husband. [Vogue, with some context from Town & Country and Porch’s 2022 appearance on Erin and Sara’s podcast] The Venice Film Festival continues, and I wish someone at A24 would send me a screener of Marc by Sofia. Until then, some notes on the clothes. Did something happen to Jude Law? He looks amazing. Also, The Rock in Prada is inspired. Also, Greta Lee is The Row. Sofia Coppola is Marc Jacobs. I am pretty close to declaring Kaia Gerber in Givenchy as the winner, though. Sarah Burton’s assignment at the LVMH-owned house is clearly to make clothes that women want to wear—and, wow, do women want to wear this. The LVMH Prize was awarded to the undeniably skilled Japanese designer Soshi Otsuki, while Steve O Smith, who hand paints a lot of his work, took the Karl Lagerfeld Prize. Naturally, the most fun part was getting a peek at the designer judges. (Phoebe Philo in all black, Nicolas Ghesquière in all white, Jonathan Anderson in a folksy denim shirt.) [Vogue India] Sam Hine got an incredible first look at the Virgil Abloh Archive, some of which will be on display at an exhibition in Paris this fall. [GQ] Elon Musk’s eldest daughter looks great in Chanel. [The Cut]

Until tomorrow, Lauren

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