Hi, and welcome back to Line Sheet.

In today’s issue, Malique Morris checks in on Victoria’s Secret’s return to the fashion-show-as-spectacle game (remember anti-fur activists chasing Gisele down the runway?) that vanished after former C.E.O. Leslie Wexner pulled the plug in 2019. Malique also has the latest on the skinny-versus-wide-jean debate, and Rachel Strugatz is here with some Victoria Beckham intel just in time for the World Cup final. Down below, Malique presents the Resee, his incisive highlight reel of the week in fashion, including a look at Gap’s knack for non-cringe celebrity partnerships, Kylie Jenner’s new swimsuit collab, the industry’s recent executive churn, and more. Also mentioned in this issue: Timothée Chalamet, Rihanna, Hailey Bieber, Alaïa, Gigi Hadid, Kylie Cosmetics, Phoebe Gates, Troye Sivan, Vogue World, Zac Posen, Richard Dickson, Luca de Meo, Tyla, Alessandro Michele, Olivier Rousteing, Rhode, Michael Rider, Pieter Mulier, Sabato De Sarno, Young Miko, Francesca Aiello, and more.

Three Things You Should Know…

Malique Morris

Victoria’s Secret wings it to L.A.: The Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show used to be a lavishly produced, global pop culture spectacle: Gisele Bündchen’s $15 million bra in Cannes in 2000; performances by Rihanna and Justin Bieber in New York in 2012, and Lady Gaga and The Weeknd in Paris in 2016; the high camp of models wearing giant angel wings; etcetera. But by 2019, the brand had dropped the show—in part because nobody was really watching.Of course, the culture has changed since then: Victoria’s Secret is suddenly hot again, aughts-era nostalgia is in, and web traffic surged by 60 percent when C.E.O. Hillary Super and creative chief Adam Selman took over the supermodel-laden show last year in Brooklyn. New customer sales ticked up 15 percent, Super told investors. The brand’s decision to stage its next show in Los Angeles this October—and to bring Gigi Hadid back to the runway—signals a renewed commitment to its heritage. (It’s also a notable locale retread of the 2025 edition of Vogue World, a now annual rite that borrowed a little of its “let’s put on a show” vibe from the VS runway extravaganzas of yore.) Anyway, Victoria’s Secret wouldn’t be doing a show at this point if it didn’t expect it to juice brand awareness or top-line sales growth. We’ll see what happens.
Will we ever settle on a pant silhouette?: Fashion trend cycles no longer move in a straight line, and nowhere is that more evident than in pants. Last month, I wrote about the reemergence of skinny jeans and the possibility that the pendulum was swinging back after years of wide-leg dominance. This week, however, the Financial Times published a story documenting the rise of balloon pants—the harem silhouette that Pieter Mulier made a signature at Alaïa, and that Michael Rider has adroitly co-opted at Celine (where he’s also showing nearly spray-on skinny pants).Turns out the balloon pant phenomenon is real, and booming, both in luxury and on the high street. According to Lyst, demand for the silhouette nearly tripled year over year in July. Alaïa leads the category, naturally, but Inditex-owned Massimo Dutti and Free People also rank among the platform’s strongest performers for the style. No, the resurgence of skinny pants was never going to overcome the fashion snob’s belief that wider pants signal better taste. But the simultaneous rise of radically different silhouettes underscores the degree to which we choose our own information adventures these days.

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Rachel Strugatz

Victoria Beckham is here for the footy: On Friday morning, Victoria Beckham herself popped up at her fragrance’s pop-up at Caffe Paradiso in Nolita. (She and her husband are in town for the World Cup final in New Jersey on Sunday. Sorry about that England–Argentina heartbreaker, Becks!) The space is smartly built around Portofino ’97, the brand’s first and bestselling scent. Over the past two years or so, Victoria Beckham Beauty has been on a tear, largely thanks to the introduction of its first foundation product (a partnership with Augustinus Bader), continued momentum around its bestselling eyeliners and Posh Balm (a lip balm), and, of course, fragrance.Former Chanel executive Lauren Edelman stepped into the C.E.O. role about a year and a half ago with a mandate to reinforce a three-pillar strategy around makeup, skincare, and fragrance. According to sources, Victoria Beckham Beauty surpassed $100 million in net sales last year—impressive considering around two-thirds of the business comes from the website. It’s also worth noting that Beckham built her beauty business without the muscle of Sephora. (I’m told the retailer has been wooing the brand, without success.) Last November, I reported that Beckham had engaged Rothschild & Co to facilitate a sale process. I’ll be back with more on that soon.

And now, here’s the week’s best and worst moments in fashion…

Gap’s Celebrity Nirvana & Luxury Musical Chairs

The industry’s frenzied hiring spree continued this week as brands bet on seasoned operators, Phoebe Gates avoided a nepo baby time-out, and Hailey Bieber added a denim Gap collab to her billion-dollar playbook.

Malique Morris

The notion that Bill Gates’s daughter, of all people, would find herself ensnared in a fashion-tech scandal was pretty irresistible, even if most of the media coverage missed the point. The real takeaway on the Phoebe Gates “cookie-stuffing” episode at Phia is just how flawed the whole affiliate shopping ecosystem has become, at least outside the creator economy, where people with real influence can actually drive sales. For everyone else, the best way for brands to excite shoppers is still the celebrity collaboration. (It’s played out but effective.)

Few brands have been as good as Gap at selecting partners who redeem these otherwise overwrought and icky tie-ups. This week, America’s favorite mall brand launched a denim line with Hailey Bieber, an easy-win brand alignment. Everybody wants Bieber—she’s naturally gorgeous, has impeccable taste, and her ubiquity hasn’t yet proven too annoying. This year, she’s starred in campaigns for Victoria’s Secret, Saint Laurent, and Skims. Plus, her true moneymaker, skincare brand Rhode, remains the most searched brand on Sephora’s website, according to data aggregator RetailBoss. Engagement and sales are all but guaranteed. Under Gap Inc. C.E.O. Richard Dickson, Gap’s enviable celebrity playbook includes an airtight mix of tried-and-true names like Bieber and more aspirationally famous folks like Tyla, Troye Sivan, Young Miko, and Katseye. The brand recently executed well-timed collaborations with figures such as Victoria Beckham, whose line dropped in April shortly after a Netflix docuseries made the case that she remains the world’s flyest woman in 6-inch heels. Millennial women immediately searched for the $150 grey shrunken t-shirt that she wore throughout the doc. A beautifully cut, white Gap x Victoria Beckham logo tee from her collab came pretty close. Likewise, Bieber’s 1996-inspired, low-rise, wide-leg $90 jeans are a reminder of what Gap does best: capture what people actually want to wear without feeling like a knockoff.

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Of course, Gap Inc.’s portfolio has liabilities. Last month, Old Navy’s interim chief marketing officer, Derek Yarbrough, left after the brand posted nearly flat sales in the first quarter, largely due to a poorly executed product launch. And Lauren has written extensively about the questions surrounding chief creative officer Zac Posen as of late.

Kylie Chameleon

It’s kind of fabulous that, during the same week that Hailey Bieber launched a denim line with Gap, Kylie Jenner’s fashion label, Khy, embarked on a collaboration with Frankies Bikinis—the Victoria’s Secret–backed, hot-girl swimwear label founded by Francesca Aiello when she was still in high school. After all, Jenner created the blueprint for Bieber; she, too, was an omnipresent nepo-baby influencer with a billion-dollar beauty empire. That isn’t the case today. No one talks about Kylie Cosmetics anymore, and Khy hasn’t garnered the same heat.

But Kylie’s partnership with Frankies Bikinis may work. Her hypersexualized image appeals to the brand’s customer base of women for whom oiled-up sexiness never went out of style. In another flight of the Calabasas winds, Frankies’ incoming C.E.O., Paula Galperin, hails from a different corner of Kardashian land, where she was co–general manager of NikeSkims. She’ll need to recalibrate the company’s playbook if she hopes to meet its goal of doubling annual sales to $100 million. Timothée Chalamet with a spray tan in a budgie smuggler, anyone?

Designer Rotation

Have we finally reached the last round of the great game of designer musical chairs that began in 2024? On Tuesday, Rabanne finally confirmed that Olivier Rousteing, once the king of the celebrity-megastar mashup, will succeed Julien Dossena as creative director. Back in the mid-2010s, Rihanna, Beyoncé, and the whole Kardashian–Jenner clan were part of Rousteing’s #BalmainArmy, a demonstration of the marketing power of celebrity friends. Rousteing’s short, beaded, militaristic dresses were foundational for a generation of fashion obsessives who wanted to be hot and didn’t take themselves too seriously. Rabanne, which mostly sells $132 fragrances, is likely hoping he’ll do the same for its desirable—but not inescapable—chain-mail dresses and going-out tops.

As Line Sheet subscribers know, the recent wave of executive reshuffling across fashion has been staggering. Last week, I wrote about the trend of embattled legacy brands tapping leaders outside fashion to right their ships. This week, those shake-ups went into overdrive, especially at Kering, where C.E.O. Luca de Meo appointed LVMH veteran Romain Spitzer as C.E.O. of Bottega Veneta. You could argue that Spitzer’s beauty-centric résumé doesn’t jibe at Bottega, a leather goods outfit through and through. Still, he arrives with the sentimentality of a luxury executive—something that can’t be taught, and that a former car guy like de Meo probably doesn’t get.

Also this week, La Perla appointed former Gucci executive Alessio Vannetti as C.E.O. to essentially rebuild the lingerie maker from scratch after it emerged from bankruptcy last year. Vannetti, who was Gucci’s communications director from 2015 to 2019, was an instrumental lieutenant during the Alessandro Michele and Marco Bizzarri years, when the designer’s maximalist aesthetic was a money machine. Vannetti left Gucci for Valentino in 2020, then returned as chief brand officer in 2023, where he was part of Sabato De Sarno’s polarizing, short-lived run as creative director. La Perla’s new owner, Peter Kern, who acquired the brand out of bankruptcy last year, is confident that Vannetti is the person who can put the company’s exorbitantly priced negligees back in the conversation.

Rounding out the week’s luxury executive bingo, Bluemercury named former Kering Beauté chief executive Alexandre Choueiri as C.E.O. Choueiri spent 22 years at L’Oréal, which, ironically enough, acquired Kering Beauté in March. He comes from beauty, knows how it operates at its highest level, and will apply that to Bluemercury. Choueiri will report directly to Olivier Bron, the C.E.O. of Bloomingdale’s, which is more than pulling its weight at Macy’s Inc. Sometimes it’s okay to make the obvious choice.

The Week in Feedback

On Luca de Meo’s musical taste: “It’s a terrible playlist (just a bunch of tracks with no flow connecting them). But I can almost believe he created that on his own, which is a new angle: an adult in the room, a car guy, and now a relatable Boomer.” —A luxury advisor

On Phia: “I find it very odd the founders haven’t said anything yet. It’s been a week.” —An industry observer

Enjoy the weekend, Lauren

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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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