Hi, and welcome back to Line Sheet, temporarily in New York, where Puck beauty correspondent Rachel Strugatz and I are prepping for dinner at Fouquet’s in Tribeca with Trinny Woodall, founder and C.E.O. of Trinny London. In today’s issue, Rachel fittingly has a giant scoop: E.l.f., the smash drugstore beauty hit, is acquiring Hailey Bieber’s Rhode at a whopping valuation. (Who said this wasn’t a good time to sell?!) As the foremost expert on both of these brands, Rachel has all the $$ and strategic details below. Up top, a couple quick notes from me involving Dior, F1, and a former Vogue staffer’s new podcast. Mentioned in this issue: Hailey Bieber, Rhode, e.l.f., Selena Gomez, Rare Beauty, Sephora, the Ratners, Maria Grazia Chiuri, Dior, the Arnaults, Jill Demling, LVMH, Condé nostalgia, Jonathan Anderson, and many more…

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Three Things You Should Know…

Wave goodbye and say hello: Tim Blanks, who has always written kindly about Maria Grazia Chiuri without sounding sycophantic, has a nice piece about her final Dior show in Rome. Tim is singular in his taste and pretty much always stood by her, but one of the best things about Chiuri is her honesty in the way she speaks to reporters, even the ones who don’t like her clothes. In the spirit of honesty, I should note that the dress code for Tuesday’s show, which I wrote about yesterday, was actually men in black, women in white, which changes the tenor of the ask… if only a little bit. Anyway, I hear the wheels are in motion to begin announcing the changing of the guard sometime this week (goodbye, M.G.C.) and continuing early next week (hello, Jonathan Anderson). As for whether they are also going to change the name of the D-Journey bag (long for, um, D-bag), I do not know. I’m just excited to see Jonathan’s take on the Lady Dior.
It’s all plateauing: This weekend, the Arnault second family was out in full force as brothers Alexandre, Frédéric, and Jean stopped by the Oracle Red Bull Racing paddock at the Monaco Grand Prix with their father. The entire family was clad in jeans, with dad in Loro Piana hybrid sneakers. Seeing Bernard in light-wash jeans is nearly as jarring as seeing Anna Wintour in Japanese denim. I would love to know if they are Dior, like his suits.LVMH’s billion-dollar partnership with F1—worth $100 million a year for 10 years, according to my own reporting—makes sense, given the global nature of the group and the international fandom of F1. (Sports stars drive sales.) But it’s interesting that F1’s popularity in the United States, the biggest market for many of LVMH’s largest brands, has essentially plateaued after the Netflix show Drive to Survive triggered a pandemic-era boom. That’s not to say the Arnaults’ F1 deal wasn’t sound: The sport is and will remain massive globally. I do, however, think it’s emblematic of the bigger conundrum LVMH is facing. The demand for luxury goods will inevitably level off in certain regions, including the U.S. LVMH will have to be realistic about the return on investments like F1, and figure out clever ways to maintain market share in categories that consumers are no longer prioritizing.
More nostalgia for the boom era of magazines: The famous Vogue cover booker (and swimsuit designer) Jill Demling has a new podcast. It’s called Going Rogue (get it?) and features interviews with folks from the golden age of magazines, mostly Vogue staffers, including longtime sittings editor and Irving Penn collaborator Phyllis Posnick and writer Jonathan Van Meter. I reckon that anyone who enjoyed the podcast series Blow-Up: When Liz Tilberis Transformed Bazaar or Paul Cavaco’s Under the Cover will be into this, too.It’s not gone unnoticed that there is a deluge of nostalgic Condé-adjacent content out there right now. (Along with the Graydon Carter and Keith McNally memoirs, Michael Grynbaum has a big Condé book out in July.) That’s what happens when an era ends. While some of this stuff is a real pleasure to ingest and worthy of your attention, all together it feels a little too melancholy, and I’m sure Anna Wintour agrees.

Okay, now here’s Rachel with some news…

Hailey’s Rhode to Riches

E.l.f. Cosmetics, a staple of the Target beauty aisle, is buying Hailey Bieber’s booming beauty brand, Rhode, in a $1 billion deal.

Rachel Strugatz

Rhode, the fast-growing Gen Z beauty brand founded by Hailey Bieber, is getting acquired by e.l.f. Cosmetics in a $1 billion deal, the companies announced today. According to sources familiar with the situation, the deal stipulates $800 million at closing (a combination of cash and stock) with a potential earnout of $200 million based on Rhode’s performance over the next three years. It’s a lightning-quick exit for Bieber, who only recently engaged JPMorgan and Moelis to explore a sale. It’s certainly one of the most significant beauty acquisitions in recent history. Rhode, which launched in 2022, brought in around $200 million in revenue in its second full year in business, about twice original projections. According to YipitData, Rhode’s site did about $90 million in revenue in November and December of 2024 alone. That would be a rare feat for any beauty brand, especially a digitally native D.T.C. brand founded by a celebrity. But in less than three years, Bieber and her business partners—Lauren Ratner, Rhode’s president and chief brand officer, and Michael D. Ratner, founder of OBB Media—managed to transform what might have been another celebrity art project into a veritable powerhouse business, blending best-in-class marketing and on-trend product. In January, I reported that Rhode would enter Sephora later this year, a partnership the brand confirmed last week.

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E.l.f., meanwhile, has embraced a digital strategy that focuses on growth hacking, with a robust affiliate and influencer-marketing plan—a surprisingly innovative strategy for a more-than-20-year-old business cranking out CVS and Target staples. Despite being a public company with a $5.2 billion market cap, it has somehow retained the agility of a startup, churning out large-scale campaigns and Super Bowl commercials in a matter of weeks. The Rhode deal, it appears, came together in a manner of weeks. The acquisition marks an important next step for Bieber, who built an aspirational beauty brand—customers hang on her every word and product drop, from phone cases to tinted lip gloss—but presumably needs real infrastructure to scale. And e.l.f., in particular, has the retail relationships and expertise to supercharge Rhode’s distribution. (Indeed, Rhode doesn’t have any wholesale distribution at the moment—highly unusual for a modern acquisition target, and a testament to the power of the brand.) E.l.f. also understands how to scale content while staying in the middle of the cultural conversation. Rhode may never be completely independent of Bieber, but if the brand hopes to thrive without her, e.l.f. feels uniquely positioned to make it happen.

Rare vs. Rhode

I don’t think anyone expected Rhode to be the beauty industry’s first blockbuster deal of the year—least of all Selena Gomez. In truth, it’s not a great time to be Rare Beauty, Gomez’s makeup line, which was widely reported to have engaged Raymond James’s Vennette Ho and Goldman Sachs to explore a potential sale. I’ve been told by many sources over the past year that Rare Beauty doesn’t have a clear path to an exit––the brand got too big, the price was too high, the macroeconomic conditions aren’t helping, etcetera. According to BoF, which called Rare one of the “most sought-after M&A targets for 2024,” the brand was worth $2 billion last year on about $400 million in revenue—a similar multiple but richer valuation than what e.l.f. just paid for Rhode.

Though still one of Sephora’s top brands, Rare has started to slide in the rankings. Last month, a person with knowledge of Sephora’s business told me that Rare is the “biggest makeup share loser at Sephora in the past 12 months.” That tracks with reporting from YipitData, which shows that Rare lost around 2 percent of market share in the makeup category between April 2024 and April 2025. Last year, Rare also lost its number one brand ranking at Sephora to Sol de Janeiro. The business rivalry between Rare and Rhode is heating up, too. When Rhode launches at Sephora this fall, Rare will get some of the fiercest competition it’s had since Gomez launched the brand in 2020. Yes, Rare and Rhode effectively became direct competitors the moment Rhode ventured into makeup—especially blush—but once they’re fighting for shelf space at Sephora, their so-called rivalry will get real… fast.

That’s it from Rachel and me. In Thursday’s issue for Inner Circle members, I’ll have a Saks update, the curious case of Jessica Paster versus the Carlyle, and more. Until tomorrow, Lauren

Puck fashion correspondent Lauren Sherman and a rotating cast of industry insiders take you deep behind the scenes of this multitrillion-dollar biz, from creative director switcheroos to M&A drama, D.T.C. downfalls, and magazine mishaps. Fashion People is an extension of Line Sheet, Lauren’s private email for Puck, where she tracks what’s happening beyond the press releases in fashion, beauty, and media. New episodes publish every Tuesday and Friday.

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