Otherwise, I had an absolutely great time in France while taking advantage of détaxe, meeting with brands on both sides of the Seine, and most importantly, co-hosting a fabulous dinner with Lyst C.E.O. Emma McFerran in a flat overlooking the Palais-Royal, where the sweet American guys from nearby wine bar Verjus cooked us a Thanksgiving feast. (Thanks to my friend Lindsay Tramuta for suggesting the spot.)

Emma and I were joined by C.E.O.s, C.M.O.s, and creative directors from across the French fashion industry, including Mugler, Balenciaga, Alaïa, Lemaire, Jacquemus, Lanvin, Lacoste, the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode, and many others. As you know by now, these dinners are off the record, but this was by far the best conversation we’ve had yet. Like I always say, Paris is where executives talk about creativity with ease and conviction, and that word came up time and again, sans spin, throughout the evening.

A huge thanks to Emma and her crew—the irrepressible Jenny Cossons and Katy Lubin—as well as the team from Anima, my old colleague and good friend Christian Layolle and his business partner Isabelle Harvie-Watt, for orchestrating a perfect evening. (Christian’s wife, Johanna, is going to have a baby any day now; send them warm thoughts and dry diapers.) But the biggest thanks goes to Puck’s VP of brand and partnerships, Alex Bigler, who flew to Paris for 24 hours (maybe less?) to make sure everything went okay and that I was okay. Alex is best-in-class, and a major reason to co-host one of these dinners with us. If you’re interested, just reply to this email.

Finally, it’s been a while since I harassed you, The Forwarded, to sign up for Line Sheet. Make sure to do it before you submit your final expense report of the year. Big kiss.

Mentioned in this issue: Emma McFerran, Lyst, Gabriella Karefa-Johnson, Marc Metrick, Edward Enninful, Anna, the Arnaults!, Kris Van Assche, luxury fatigue, James Whitner, Richard Baker, Vanessa Kingori, and many more…

Regardless of what happens next with Berluti, it’s clear that LVMH is hyper-focused on its big brands, and willing to let the smaller ones percolate without much pressure. There’s too much riding on €24 billion-a-year Louis Vuitton and the like.

On Gabriella Karefa-Johnson exiting Vogue: Question of the weekend: Did Gabriella Karefa-Johnson actually leave Vogue of her own accord, like she said on The BoF Podcast, or did they actually decide not to renew her deal? High Fashion Twitter chatter has tied the exit to her extensive social media commentary on the Israel-Hamas war. But she was on contract at Condé Nast, rather than a W2 employee, so her actions would ostensibly have fewer consequences for the publisher than if, say, Anna Wintour decided to suddenly opine publicly about the war. Anyway, unless everyone involved is lying, which I don’t think they are, my understanding is that she chose to leave, just as she said she did. One piece of supportive evidence: Karefa-Johnson has nothing but good things to say about Vogue, her time there, and how they valued her outspoken nature.

I texted Karefa-Johnson about this specifically this morning, and this was her response:

I refuse to let a false narrative about my resignation be used to validate unethical workplace retaliation for those of us who vocally advocate for a Free Palestine. I know it is a small minority of folks with no knowledge of the matter who are desperate to use my story as justification for what we are seeing ravage our creative and professional communities, but I still feel it’s important to say: at the tail end of my contract, I voluntarily [tendered] my resignation under no suggestion by Condé Nast or Vogue due to my own personal realization that my values were incongruous with the brand at this time. The choice was entirely mine to make and this material action of solidarity was what felt right for me. Still, it was not a choice made in a vacuum.You can listen to Karefa-Johnson’s BoF pod if you want to hear more about how “we grow and sometimes our containers don’t grow with us.” But what kind of personal brand can a stylist build independently, outside of a big name like Vogue? I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently, particularly since Edward Enninful announced his departure, and particularly since his Instagram posts have grown more curious amid the lead-up to his final cover of British Vogue. Both Karefa-Johnson and Enninful, once pegged as potential successors to Wintour, are public figures whose influence goes beyond the images they make.

So what will Karefa-Johnson do next? It may be as nebulous as Enninful’s next act. In the old days, star editors developed their own magazines, but that now seems quaint and uneconomical. So many of the stars have tried their hands at becoming personalities (both online and on television), with few, if any, really succeeding. Karefa-Johnson’s talent is in image-making, and that’s primarily a behind-the-scenes role. Vogue gave her an opportunity to bring that talent to the fore. Maybe Instagram is enough of a platform to disseminate both her work and ideas, but I’m guessing investors are pitching her now on ways to think beyond that. When I asked Karefa-Johnson exactly what she is after, she said that “the move wasn’t vertical or motivated by wanting more. It was about spreading out into spaces that feel completely in line with who I am at present.” What that may mean, she continued, is that she’ll be “making images as long as I have stories to tell; and, I’m looking forward to engaging with different kinds of audiences, across different media formats to tell them.”

Online, though, there’s little incentive for a brand as big as Dior to distribute beyond their own channels. They have the budgets to market everywhere the customer may be lurking, and they want all the first-party data. And yet, given the softness in the American market, popping up on Saks.com during the holiday shopping season seemed like a smart decision, almost akin to the big streaming companies licensing their shows to other platforms. As an added bonus, they got the Saks Fifth Avenue windows, still a pit-stop for tourists meandering around Midtown on their way to see the tree at Rockefeller Plaza.

While he doesn’t technically run the Saks Fifth Avenue stores division of parentco Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC)—Saks.com spun out in 2021—Metrick is still Saks Fifth Avenue’s de facto spokesperson. In the split, Saks Fifth Avenue began paying Saks.com’s buying and marketing departments for their services. And Metrick’s team runs the show, in terms of what ends up on the shop floor and how it’s marketed. I know, it’s confusing, but it was executed this way to make the fast-growing Saks.com more palatable to investors if it were to I.P.O. At the time of the split, Farfetch and other e-commerce stocks were sailing. Today, as those companies have lost investor confidence, Saks.com is nowhere near a public float.

In the days leading up to the Dior unveiling, Saks Fifth Avenue—or Saks, or Saks.com, or whatever, all of them—was criticized by one of those watchdog Instagram accounts. This one, Estée Laundry, mostly tracks the trials and tribulations of The Estée Lauder Companies. (While the account is thought to be run by multiple people, the rumor is that at least one of them is an Estée Lauder employee—who happens to work in human resources. This account is not typically full of shit.)

Anyway, a week ago Friday, Estée Laundry posted about Saks Fifth Avenue owing Estée money, just as Saks Fifth Avenue owes a lot of people money, which I reported months ago. Two days later, on Sunday, HBC chairperson Richard Baker, the real estate guy with the good glasses, did a story with WWD announcing that he had raised $340 million related to the real estate he owns, reminding the trade’s readers that HBC is mostly a real estate developer masquerading as a retailer. In the story, he also dispelled the Estée Laundry rumors, suggesting, as I had been told by Saks insiders before, that the unresolved payments would be resolved with this fundraise. It was an attempt on Baker’s behalf to quash the negative story with a positive one, although in the end I think it probably fueled further scrutiny from other media companies.

Not bad, and further proof that real estate is a durable asset class, and more stable than, say, retail. But what happened to the $2 billion that Baker was raising this summer from two sovereign wealth funds to buy Neiman Marcus Group? My understanding is: 1) that money was raised in full; and 2) no, the $2 billion has nothing to do with the $340 million that he just raised. Given these challenging times, will Baker forge ahead with his plan? My guess is that, once again, the dream of a Saks and Neiman Marcus merger will sit on ice for a while. Baker needs to give the Neiman Marcus Group board an offer they can’t refuse.

The truth is that the department store business has never been easy. At least not in our lifetimes. But the reality of it today is that, if you want to succeed, you have to play the fashion game harder than ever before, as the Dior deal illustrates. But you also have to understand that it all comes back to real estate. Perhaps Baker, who knows that better than anyone, will win Neiman Marcus after all.

Modern advertising’s glamorous imperfections now include stretch marks. [New York Times]

The next Phoebe Philo drop is November 28: Send me what’s in your shopping cart, plus reviews. [Inbox]

James Whitner, a famous retailer of sneakers who owns a string of influential stores in the American South, is being investigated for money laundering: namely, selling products to an unauthorized overseas entity at a rate higher than the original price. The brand accusing him of this is based in the “Pacific Northwest” so um, you can guess. Whitner is denying it. [Sneaker News]

Meet the Birkland. [Seth Fountain]

Ron Herman closing its Melrose Avenue store made me long for a time when you could go to a store and try on 50 different pairs of jeans and leave with something that actually looked good on you, even though I actually bought my J.Brands at Kitson in 2006. [WWD]

I was gifted the latest issue of L’Étiquette Femme while I was in Paris and damn, it is the most inspiring magazine I’ve come across in years. No need to even use Google Translate, the images say so much. [L’Etiquette]

Nylon—now owned by BDG, as in Bustle Digital Group, not the Urban Outfitters denim line—is relaunching print. Seems like a “nice to have” for luxury advertisers? But did luxury advertisers ever care about Nylon? [BoF]

I wonder how much money Laura Reilly made in affiliate commissions over the weekend! [Magasin]

Condé Nast’s chief business officer in the U.K.,Vanessa Kingori, is leaving for Google. [BoF]

And finally… Here’s a mini sneaker-trend report from Paris: Gazelles have replaced Sambas. Solomon and Asics are as chunky as it gets. And while nobody in Paris is wearing On Running shoes, everyone leaving Paris is wearing them.