Hello, and welcome to Line Sheet. I’m sending this from somewhere in Northern California, where I’m spending Thanksgiving week. I hope, for your sake, you don’t have to get on a plane.

In today’s issue, news and notes on the situation at Saks Global, as the owner of Saks Fifth Avenue and Bergdorf Goodman embarks on its most important selling season of the year—maybe ever?—amid questions about back payments and what happens in 2026. This isn’t going to be a great quarter in the U.S. or Europe for most luxury brands, let alone big department stores, so if your numbers are good, you have a lot to be #thankful for this week. Tomorrow on Fashion People, I’m joined by Avery Trufelman, host of the fabulous podcast Articles of Interest. We discuss holiday shopping in 2025, the future of Armani, Timmy’s Marty Supreme merch, and all things gear, from the military to gorpcore, which happens to be the topic of Articles of Interest’s most recent season. Listen here and here. Mentioned in this issue: Saks, Bergdorf Goodman, Ssense, Richard Baker, Black Friday, Reliance Retail, the Ambani family, EssilorLuxottica, Giorgio Armani, Olivia Nuzzi, Ryan Lizza, ew, Mark Sanford, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Mark Guiducci, Vanity Fair, Hearst, Amazon, and many more…

Three Things You Should Know…

The least sexy Armani solution possible: On Saturday, the Italian business paper Il Sole 24 Ore reported that EssilorLuxottica, the eyewear conglomerate, was interested in taking a 5-10 percent ownership stake in Armani. Of course, the longtime Armani partner was named in the late Giorgio Armani’s will as one of the companies he’d be comfortable venturing with postmortem. According to the report, EssilorLuxottica—which, by the way, owns Supreme—would not take an active management role in the business.Remember, Armani allotted 15 percent of the company to be sold in the next year or so, with even more sold down the line. In a perfect world—at least for the current Armani team—there would be some sort of agreement between the company, Essilor, and beauty partner L’Oréal that would allow current executives to remain unbothered as they reimagine the business without Mr. Armani. At a public company, the board would be forced to do what was best for shareholders and accept the highest bid. But given the governance structure of this private company, much will depend on the feelings and priorities of chairman Leo Dell’Orco, who controls 40 percent of the voting rights, and Silvana Armani, the late designer’s niece.

A MESSAGE FROM HARRY WINSTON

This holiday season, give the gift that shines forever. Visit your nearest Harry Winston salon and discover a gift that’s as radiant as you.

When it’s so bad that the Condé Nast P.R. person actually sends a statement to a reporter: In the midst of the Olivia Nuzzi–Ryan Lizza–Mark Sanford national nightmare, VF content prince Mark Guiducci is facing his first big test since he assumed the role in July. I hope most of you have never heard of these people (as unlikely as that is at this point), but the gist is that Nuzzi, a former political reporter, was embroiled in a pretty wild affair situation with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that got her fired from New York earlier this year. Guiducci then hired Nuzzi as West Coast editor soon after he joined Vanity Fair—a sort of stunt hire since she didn’t have traditional studio relationships and was new to L.A. Nuzzi’s former fiancé, Ryan Lizza, is now accusing Nuzzi of having an affair with another politician (Sanford). This is such a big deal in America that The New York Times wrote about it—and Condé even sent a rare comment to the Times, noting, “We were taken by surprise, and we are looking at all the facts.”In many ways, hiring Nuzzi was a ballsy move, not necessarily because she is a loose cannon whose memoir about the R.F.K. Jr. saga is about to be released, but because of the nature of the job itself. This isn’t the sort of thing where she’d be filing two stories a year (if they were lucky). It’s a proper job, for which she is actually supposed to be editing stories about stuff that happens in Hollywood (and wellness and the economy and other things) and ensuring the gravy train of Hollywood studio advertising keeps running. (The gig also keeps Nuzzi away from politics–and also reporting—at least at first.) Given that this thing continues to snowball, the question is: What should Mark do?I suspect he’ll take time to make a decision, given that the Sanford accusations were made by Lizza, her angry ex. Guiducci hired Nuzzi because she’s controversial and exciting—qualities Vanity Fair could use in spades. The bigger issue is that she may have lied about the extent of her entanglements, which is the part that’s really not okay, as Dylan Byers noted last week. More importantly, can Nuzzi actually do the job Mark assigned her? I’m less sure of that. One hypothetical outcome is that she’ll be moved into a contributor role and a worker bee will be given her editor job while Guiducci figures out a better way to broaden the brand’s presence in Hollywood in the lead up to the Oscar Party. The good news for Mark is that literally no European brand would ever care about any of this, ever. Naturally, a rep for Vanity Fair did not respond to a request for comment.
Layoff season at Hearst: Condé Nast is not the only legacy publisher that had to cut loose employees this fall. Last week, Hearst did the same, albeit in less dramatic fashion. A total of about 25 staffers from Elle, Cosmo, Esquire, and many other titles were let go. The Hearst union called the layoffs “cruel.” I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it’s just going to get worse. Find a new job! A rep for Hearst did not comment.

Now, for the main event...

A Nightmare on High Street

It’s shaping up to be a challenging holiday season for plenty of megabrands and multibrand retailers, but the stakes seem especially high for Saks Global, which is staring down a growing mountain of expensive debt and frustrated vendors still owed back payments.

Lauren Sherman

Luxury brands are incredibly competitive and paranoid, even those operating within the same strategic groups. But they are also incentivized to share some information, at least when it comes to retail performance, often to patch together a broader understanding of the market. Usually this benefits all parties involved. If one brand knows that many of the stores on Avenue Montaigne experienced double-digit year-over-year declines in sales during the past week, that helps put their own disappointing numbers in perspective.

There are already signs that this may be a soft holiday season for some of the megabrands and multibrand retailers. Bain expects year-over-year sales of personal luxury goods in the U.S. to increase just 2 percent overall in 2025, which isn’t enough to pick up the slack for underperforming regions. And sales performance is also incredibly individualized by brand. I wouldn’t be surprised, for example, if LVMH’s Celine has a good fourth quarter stateside given the just-right pricing—under $1,000 for the nearly sold-out dance shoe; $620 for charming silk scarves—while some of the conglomerate’s other businesses struggle.

A MESSAGE FROM HARRY WINSTON

This holiday season, give the gift that shines forever. Celebrate the holiday season with the timeless brilliance of diamond jewelry by Harry Winston.

Another tell: Most department stores launch their sales during the days before Thanksgiving in preparation for Black Friday. And at the luxury level, the discounts on the good stuff don’t usually start until later. But there is already speculation in the industry that LuxExperience-owned Net-a-Porter—known for its conservative, European-inspired approach to sales season—might break earlier than usual this time around. (Certain goods are already 50 percent off in the U.S.) At Saks Global, the owner of Saks Fifth Avenue and Bergdorf Goodman, there is talk of starting the “Friends and Family” sale—a once-real, now-phony mechanism used by many upscale department stores to communicate their first sales break on current-season merchandise—in the first week in December. (It typically begins closer to Christmas.)

At Saks Global in particular, this is a crucial holiday season. In the year since chairman Richard Baker closed the deal to fold Neiman Marcus Group into his operations, Saks Global has had to manage a growing mountain of expensive debt, challenges with vendors who are still owed back payments from before the merger, and drawn-out payment plans for the product that was shipped in 2025. Last week, the most senior of the company’s newly exchanged bonds were yielding 43 percent, which indicates that investors believe they are extremely high risk. (There are multiple bonds trading at different prices, so this is just one data point.) This past week, I had multiple vendors reach out to me expressing their own anxiety about the situation. And a number of small vendors have told me that they’ve pared down their shipping orders to the company—which can create its own self-reinforcing cycle.

The Bergdorf Mystery

If Saks Global has a great sales quarter, the retailer might be able to repay more of the back payments owed from 2024 and also accelerate payments for products currently in the store. Executives at the company remain optimistic about their ability to keep up-to-date on interest payments, thanks to significant financing and improving relationships with vendors. The group has also started commencing the closure of underperforming stores—including nine Saks Off Fifth stores in the U.S. in 2026—which will manage costs. And then there’s the potential sale of a stake in Bergdorf Goodman, which someone close to Baker seemingly leaked to The Wall Street Journal earlier this fall.

Baker is insistent that he has no intentions of breaking the lease, up in 2050, with the Goodman family, which still owns the landmark Fifth Avenue building. For decades, it was assumed that the family, which also receives a portion of sales revenue as part of its deal with Saks Global, would want to continue the arrangement indefinitely. But given the state of multibrand apparel retail, I heard months ago that the Goodmans were interested in potentially buying Saks Global out of the lease with a real estate partner and renting certain floors back to the group. (A rep for Saks denied this.) What sort of real estate investment trust or investor would want to wade into the challenged world of multibrand retail? The options run the gamut. Perhaps it would be a company like Amazon, the industry’s omnipresent stalking horse, if it received preferred shares in an investment—or, more likely, a foreign entity that sees an opportunity to expand the hallowed Bergdorf Goodman name beyond the single store. One name that came up in my recent conversations is Reliance Retail, a subsidiary of Reliance Industries, the industrial conglomerate owned by the multi-multibillionaire Ambani family. This past January, as part of its joint venture with Authentic Brands Group, Saks Global signed a deal with Reliance to open Saks Fifth Avenue and Saks Off Fifth stores in India. Just as Mexican retailer El Puerto de Liverpool supported Nordstrom in its take-private effort, I could see Reliance wanting a real piece of an American property, especially a jewel like Bergdorf. Reps for Saks Global and Reliance had no comment.

These sorts of attempts to export retail brands abroad rarely work, even in the medium term. (The success of Barneys New York in Japan is an anomaly.) And then there would be the real threat of expansion in the U.S., which would inevitably water down the brand’s pristine image. Therein lies so much of the anxiety of this season—the dawning reality that the future of the industry will have to look quite different from the past.

What I’m Reading…

It is truly incredible who organizer Tania Fares is able to woo to attend her Fashion Trust events—even Miuccia Prada, who accepted her award in person at the Fashion Trust Arabia ceremony this past weekend. Yes, I know the Fashion Trust is a good cause—the money raised benefits young designers—but there are a lot of good causes. Anyone who has met Fares understands her spell: You go into lunch thinking you’re just there to have a superficial chat and you leave handing over power of attorney. A remarkable woman. [Vogue]

Here’s another succession saga, this one with seemingly far less drama: Gildo Zegna, chairman and C.E.O. of the Ermenegildo Zegna Group, is becoming group executive chairman. The group’s new C.E.O. is Gianluca Tagliabue. Gildo’s sons, Edoardo and Angelo, are now co-C.E.O.s of the Zegna brand. Fourth generation. All good! [Inbox] Louis Vuitton is showing Cruise on May 20 in New York, and Dior is showing a week earlier, on May 13, in Los Angeles (as previewed in Line Sheet). I suspect at least one more megabrand will announce a U.S. show in the coming weeks. America! [WWD] I am desperate to see Marty Supreme—can someone invite me to a screening? Also, please send my friend Amanda Dobbins one of the windbreakers from the merch collection. [NYT] Dana Thomas has an update on John Galliano’s future plans and whether the Met exhibit dedicated to his work is actually happening. [The Style Files] Gucci Osteria is closing in Beverly Hills. [WWD] Marc Beaugé says it’s okay to wear your sweater over your shoulders if it’s practical and looks good. It probably looks better in France! [M] Instead of selling Le Parisien to a disliked billionaire, LVMH will invest as much as $170 million into the business. I wonder who won this battle with Dad! [Bloomberg] Jeffrey Kalinsky, one of the best buyers to ever do it, is bringing his namesake store back to Atlanta on August 2. [Vogue]

Until tomorrow, Lauren

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