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Hi, and welcome back to Line Sheet, where the end-of-2025 festivities have only just begun.
In today’s
issue, I’m naming Line Sheet’s Hero of the Year, a new tradition that I hope will become an annual pastime. And yes, I’ve totally stolen this idea from Matt Belloni, the GOAT and author of
What I’m
Hearing, Puck’s private email about what’s really going on in Hollywood, which is honestly a crazier industry than fashion… sometimes.
During the rigorous selection process, I waded through various options. Part of me wanted to name the LVMH executive who convinced Maria Grazia Chiuri to stay at the group and go to Fendi… but we all know it took a village, and cash. I also deeply considered Luca de Meo, the new C.E.O. of Kering, who
has helped lift the stock by some 70 percent since the mere announcement of his arrival. But Luca, who has been in his seat for just a few months, knows better than any of us that his work has only begun. The stock’s future performance will be based on the financial success of the brands (particularly Gucci), not hope. Maybe next year. Anyway, as you’ll see below, the obvious contender was hiding in plain sight.
Matt offered some good advice about this maiden voyage: He warned me
that people are more emotional about the hero than the villain, who will be revealed on Monday. I guess we’ll see. Next week, we’ll also publish a super-duper end-of-year mailbag, so send me all your smartest questions by replying to this email, texting me, etcetera. (If you don’t have my phone number at this point, that’s your problem.)
In other news, tomorrow’s Fashion People guest is Sali Christeson, the founder and C.E.O. of Argent, which makes bossy
officewear and more. (I like this blazer.) Sali has had a lot of success because she didn’t grow up in the fashion business and doesn’t take things as given. I’d love to go on a company offsite with Sali. Listen to our conversation here and
here.
Mentioned in this issue: Matthieu Blazy, Chanel, Julia Roberts, Oprah Winfrey, Kering, Luca de Meo, the Wertheimer family, LVMH, Stella McCartney, Edward Enninful, Jeff Bezos, Lauren Bezos, Bernard Arnault,
Domenico De Sole, Pierre-Yves Roussel, Virginie Viard, and many more… |
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Two Things You Should Know…
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- Hella
Stella: The Guardian took a recent spin around Companies House and found that Stella McCartney is losing too much money: The company, which lost £25 million in 2023, lost another £33.6 million in 2024 in the U.K. That’s rough stuff given that the British entity only made £16 million in revenue in 2024. Yes, those numbers don’t reflect the total global Stella McCartney business, which includes retail stores in the U.S. and Japan, but it’s still down from £40 million two
years earlier.
In the filing, the company administrators acknowledged that they won’t be able to keep operating the business unless they receive additional funds from parentco Anin Star Holding Ltd. Who funds Anin Star now that LVMH is no longer involved? Remember, McCartney rebounded with LVMH, which sunk more than £100 million into the business after the breakup of her long-term marriage with Kering.
According to the filing, Anin Star has enough money to float the brand until
2028, at which point the business will either be in shape or have to seek new capital with a challenging narrative and balance sheet. Perhaps McCartney, herself, should discuss this with Victoria Beckham, who got her business in order. I don’t have advice for McCartney, but the Adidas activewear collab, which still exists, was ahead of its time and feels like the place where she should be sinking all her resources. Hopefully, it’s not too late. - Is Gary shipping or not?: I am fielding questions and hearing daily from brands and other interested parties about the state of Saks Global. Many folks remain anxious to ship product. C.E.O. Marc Metrick, who is usually quite communicative and tries his best to assuage brand fears, has been less visible after canceling a meeting with corporate execs at Neiman Marcus in Dallas. Let’s give Metrick the benefit of the doubt—it’s the
holidays, and sometimes things get in the way of work. (Saks did not comment.)
According to sources inside Hilldun, the factoring firm that provides financing to many of the brands that sell to Saks Global, the company has made good on its payments for the past three weeks. If things continue this way, C.E.O. Gary Wassner will once again recommend that his brands ship to Saks Global—a bright spot in a stressful situation.
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Now on to the year’s big prize… |
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Despite some initial skepticism (she’s from H.R.—and Unilever?!), Chanel C.E.O. Leena Nair
has shrewdly solidified her power base in a family-owned company dominated by lifers, and established a financial model that has become the envy of the industry. |
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The New York launch party for EE72, Edward Enninful’s publishing oddity, took place
in September at Cut, the tacky restaurant beneath the Four Seasons Downtown in Tribeca. Overall, it was an unremarkable event, despite the A++ guest list. I remember dutifully completing two loops around the oddly elongated space, but didn’t notice any of Enninful’s numerous celebrity friends who would pass through that evening, including cover star Julia Roberts, Oprah Winfrey, and exercise hounds Jeff and Lauren Bezos. I did,
however, notice the entrance of Chanel C.E.O. Leena Nair.
In fact, everyone seemed to note her arrival. The crowds parted, Charlton Heston–style, as she appeared in a shimmery black knit dress, a pair of tango shoes, and a quilted clutch. I could have sworn it was a white suit, because she was so magnetic. A self-fact-check showed that my memory had betrayed me, but you get the idea. |
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A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR |
The refined BMW 7 Series is all luxury. With the ability to define your design, the ultimate glamour is yet to be.
Learn more at BMWUSA.com. |
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Fashion industry C.E.O.s aren’t usually this magnetic. They’re usually men, for starters, and rarely command
any sort of presence. Even the most pompous or gregarious or good-looking ones are, at the end of the day, insecure and often surprisingly provincial (navy) suits. The fashion industry is still largely a family business, after all, and luxury houses are generally clandestine, anachronistic, and messy fiefdoms that value discretion and loyalty over operational excellence and performance management. There are exceptions—look at what Bernard Arnault has built, even if it’s still
both a large-cap public company and family-controlled; Domenico De Sole and Pierre-Yves Roussel come to mind, too.
But the Wertheimer family’s appointment of Nair, in 2022, signaled the dawn of a transition. Like Luca de Meo at Kering, Nair was a fashion outsider armed with global public company expertise alongside a fetish for discipline. This was probably inevitable. Fashion is no longer a cloistered sector but rather a
massive business that drives a large swath of the global economy. The market for personal luxury goods alone will reach €358 billion in 2025. It’s also increasingly an industry under duress and in search of new ideas. |
I’ll admit that I wasn’t so impressed when the Wertheimers hired Nair. I really liked her
predecessor, Gap and L’Oréal alum Maureen Chiquet, who reportedly clashed with the family over the succession plan for Karl Lagerfeld—the company’s creative director for nearly 40 years, until his death in 2019. What would an H.R. exec from Unilever, I wondered, know about running a luxury goods business?
For what it’s worth, Chanel was in pretty good shape when Nair arrived. In the year prior, the brand’s annual revenue had bounced back from its pandemic
low and was up 23 percent from 2019. But it was also becoming clear that the tremendous growth of the luxury goods market was unsustainable for all the obvious reasons—the speedy rise of the online secondhand market, the lack of design innovation, closet capacity, sheer boredom, and a latent recession in China.
From Nair’s earliest days in the job, I heard stories about her steady efforts to manage around the challenge—focusing on steady, non-trend-driven business units like
accessories, while creating a professional culture within a private family business. She reorganized the company to matrix the once heavily siloed fashion, beauty, watches, and jewelry units without impacting quality. She also had to manage—and in some cases, manage out—consigliere-type execs who had stuck around for decades, sometimes by doing good work, other times by playing politics. Nair also possessed an uncanny ability to remember pretty much everyone’s name; she said hi to people in the
bathroom; in a nasty industry, she was exceedingly approachable. Revenues were up 17 percent year-over-year in 2022, and 16 percent in 2023, to almost $20 billion, making Chanel second only to Louis Vuitton in terms of single-brand scale.
After the departure of stopgap creative director Virginie Viard in June 2024, there was a question of whether
Chanel was truly set up for the future. The idea, I heard from people inside the organization, was to hire a creative director who would be woven into the fabric of Chanel, à la Hermès, rather than the image of Chanel being woven by them. The appointment of Matthieu Blazy at the end of 2024, nearly six months after Viard’s exit, showed that the company was interested in the future, not the past. Blazy had been influential behind the scenes—designing Margiela,
working for Raf Simons and Pieter Mulier—but this level of spotlight was still new. It was a risk.
The only way someone like Blazy gets hired is if the people doing the hiring are thoughtful about it, and don’t let their own egos get in the way. Would he have been the choice if Nair hadn’t set the tone at the top? Who knows? In the end, Blazy delivered
far more than what was expected of him. He reset the expectation of what a fashion show should be, calling back to a time when collections were not simply merchandising vehicles but rather something to appreciate and relish. Dopamine is a powerful hormone, and fashion’s levels have been plummeting for a while. |
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I would love to believe that we are on the precipice of a major rebound in luxury spending, but fashion’s
place in the culture has shifted. People now spend their time and capital on other avocations, and the most successful executives in the industry are the ones who understand this transition. Nair didn’t by any means save Chanel, but I’m not sure where the company would be without her. |
What I’m Reading…
and Watching… and Shopping for… and Listening To…
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TikTok has signed a deal to sell its U.S. unit to Oracle, the private equity firm Silver Lake, and others.
[Sara Fischer on Twitter]
A Tim Blanks double-header! First, he spoke to Helmut Lang about the MAK retrospective in Vienna—the first retrospective of Lang’s work, ever—and then he wrote about the lesser-known designer and stylist Antony Price, whose work with musicians like the band Roxy Music in the 1970s and 1980s was
hugely influential. They’re definitely companion pieces and you should read both. I want Tim to write a memoir! [BoF and BoF]
I hear that
Naomi Fry is great in Marty Supreme (of course she is), but she also looked great in Rachel Comey at the premiere. I love the orangey red jacquard knit with little black flowers. (You can buy the set here and here.) [Chris Chang’s
Instagram]
Marisa Meltzer, the ultimate enabler, has selected a range of gifts for our favorite vintage purveyor. There is a neon paisley dress from Raf-era Jil Sander (you gotta get it), a Donna Karan
asymmetrical gown from the 1990s, and the perfect Chanel skirt suit with trimming that almost looks like rickrack, but not quite. [Resee]
U Beauty, Tina Craig’s better-than-it-needs-to-be line, is launching at Sephora. A big deal. [Inbox]
Anna Wintour talking for more than an hour! [The Rest Is Politics]
In 2015, Chanel bought back La Pausa, Gabrielle “Coco”
Chanel’s clifftop villa in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin. It’s now a sort of retreat for artists, looked after by Yana Peel, the company’s president of arts, culture, and heritage. [W mag]
The Quentin Tarantino–owned New Beverly Cinema is showing a Rob Reiner–Nora Ephron cross-pollination
double-header of When Harry Met Sally… and Sleepless in Seattle on December 30 and December 31. There are only walk-up tickets available for now, but I’m very excited to eat at Osteria Mozza at 5:30 p.m. with my friend Amy and power through. [The New Beverly] |
Until tomorrow,
Lauren
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