Hi, and welcome back to Line Sheet. I’m en route to Los Angeles, returning from my busiest Fashion Month ever. I’m sorry about everyone I missed, and glad about others I did. I learned a lot, much of which you’ll be reading in the coming weeks. I look forward to spending time with many of you in New York or Europe this spring, too. It really, truly, actually never ends.

By the way, did you know French people do get Botox… although in doses that are a fifth of what people are doing in America? The effect is subtler, but similar: “I haven’t expressed empathy in two years,” said my friend Alice.

Today, you’ll find my closing runway remarks. Most important, though, is the latest dispatch from our peerless beauty correspondent (and top Miu Miu client) Rachel Strugatz, who has an M&A scoop, and fresh intel about what went on at Sephora’s annual (Taylor Swift-themed) brand summit. If you’re a beauty company that loves Rachel’s work, why not hit up Fritz@puck.news to talk group subscriptions? You can afford it!

Mentioned in this issue: Carolyn Bojanowski, Sephora, Taylor Swift, Summer Fridays, Marianna Hewitt and Lauren Ireland, Artemis Patrick, Seán McGirr, Miuccia Prada, Chitose Abe, Dara Allen, Nicolas Ghesquière, Louis Vuitton, John Galliano, Susanna Venegas, LVMH, Givenchy, Loewe, Alicia Sontag, Sol de Janeiro, Roger Lynch, Sarah Burton, Kim Jones, and many more.

• Final thoughts on the shows: Looking back, I’d say the theme of this season was impenetrability—and I’m not talking about Seán McGirr’s metal dresses at McQueen. In the quest to achieve commercial success, so much of what we saw looked flat, void of personality, superficial, etcetera. But in the final days of Paris, Sacai’s Chitose Abe and Miu Miu’s Miuccia Prada rose above. (No surprise.)

  At Sacai, Abe’s show notes referenced the late Bill Cunningham, the bicycling, French-blue work jacket aficionado and father of street style photography. (Mark Bozek, director of the 2018 documentary The Times of Bill Cunningham, was in the audience.) The whole gimmick here was that every piece, even if it looked like a top and trousers, was actually a dress—a garment woefully underrepresented in retail stores at the moment. Fine by me, but you didn’t need to know that to admire the swinginess of the silhouette, and the flyaway tails. It looked aerodynamic, and very good.

  Miu Miu was very, very good, too: a retrospective of a woman’s life through clothes, from school uniforms to post-party pajamas (worn with pearls). The little black dress was a thing this season (maybe the fate of Givenchy is top of mind?), but you only need one, and that one was designed by Miuccia. There’s a lot of real-person runway casting these days, but Prada’s “characters”—from Dara Allen, the fashion director of Interview, to Qin Hulian, a doctor—came off as more real. Every one of her collections is a confession.

  You know what else was super great (a phrase I find myself repeating to French people again and again)? Louis Vuitton, which celebrated a decade of Nicolas Ghesquière with a 4,000-person show at the Cour Carrée. (Many employees, including store managers, were invited.) I was at one of the very early Ghesquière shows when he was still doing those short A-line skirts that got copied the world over, and I was also at the March 3, 2020, show before the world closed down. It was very stuffy in the venue that day, and I remember wondering if it would be the last show I’d ever attend.

  Tuesday night’s space-age set felt airy by comparison, with plenty of breathing room for guests even though there were so many of them. While this collection was meant to be a retrospective, it looked fresh and clean, from the silk bombers to the subtly curved hip silhouette on the dresses. There was an athleticism to it all. Ten years is a long time for a designer to stay in one place, but Ghesquière showed last night that if you’re good, you’re good, no matter what happens between Point A and Point B. An uplifting way to end the month.

• Inside the Galliano exhibit resee: I got a chance to sneak by the presentation of John Galliano’s much-talked-about Maison Margiela Artisanal collection, and boy am I glad I made the time. As my guide said, it was like looking “inside John’s head,” with the typically all-white design studio painted black, meticulously organized to display the layers upon layers of work that went into creating it. There were inspiration books and early sketches, yes, but also plenty of effort made to show the wonder of garment construction. Some of the gowns were laid out on vintage autopsy tables, and you could look at them up close with a magnifying glass. If this doesn’t end up in the permanent collection of a museum, I’d be shocked.
• Everyone is still wondering what LVMH is going to do about Givenchy: Of all the rumors and chatter in Paris, this was the topic that people kept returning to, over and again. The studio collection, designed by womenswear head Susanna Venegas, was very nice. Seems that they are not in a rush to name someone, despite the persistent Sarah Burton rumors, and the occasional Kim Jones goss.

  It would be great to see Venegas elevated, although that is not the typical LVMH move. (They usually go with a name.) Whatever happens, let’s hope it’s something meaningful, because Givenchy feels ready for primetime. Yes, LVMH is a different business than it was even 10 years ago, and those smaller brands are less important to the portfolio given how profitable the biggest brands have become. What does $400 million a year in sales mean to a portfolio when other brands are bringing in $15 billion, or $20 billion? And yet, look at what they’ve managed to accomplish over the last decade with Loewe, a lesser-known name that grows in sales and influence with every season. I am convinced there is an appetite for a Givenchy return.

• Oops, I made a grave mistake!: In Monday’s update on Condé Nast C.E.O Roger Lynch’s runway show schedule, I mentioned that H.R. head Stan Duncan was at Saint Laurent, too. However, that was wrong. Duncan was at Dior. Sorry, Stan, for the mix-up—I really took you for a Saint Laurent guy.

  Speaking of Condé and executive recruitment, the company just posted a job listing for a “senior director, corporate development,” with the top “responsibility” bulleted as: “help build Condé Nast’s M&A deal pipeline and support the execution of corporate initiatives on behalf of the executive leadership team and Board of Directors.” Let me know if you’re applying.

Generally speaking, if you want to get a deal done in beauty, you go with Vennette. Over the years, beginning with her tenure at Financo, she has become the Aryeh Bourkoff of the industry, working on both the buy and sell sides. (Look up Aryeh, you philistines…) Ho was the invisible hand behind Unilever’s $2 billion acquisition of Paula’s Choice; Shiseido’s $845 million purchase of Drunk Elephant; and Hero’s $600-and-some million sale to Church & Dwight. Ho and her team have also worked with Tatcha, Briogeo, and others.

The skincare line also conveniently went into lip just as gloss, balms, and oils became the beauty category of the moment. In fact, I heard that Lip Butter was actually the best-selling lip product in all of Sephora last year, makeup brands included. “Everything is rooted in skin, but they have the ability to cross categories and succeed,” one source familiar with the situation told me. “They started getting a bunch of inbound and so they did engage a banker, but they are not in a process yet,” another source told me this week. (Tangentially relevant: Hewitt has her own $18 Erewhon smoothie.)

Interestingly, one of Summer Fridays’ investors is Alicia Sontag of Prelude Growth Partners, which is also involved in rumored acquisition targets like Makeup by Mario and Westman Atelier, the latter of which Lauren reported is not for sale yet. Sontag is an ex-Lauder and Johnson & Johnson executive with a sophisticated, full-funnel view of modern consumers. She also invested in Naturium, one of the only other successful influencer beauty lines to date, which was acquired by e.l.f. Cosmetics last year. (Hewitt, Ho, and Sontag declined to comment.)

For the uninitiated, attending the summit for the first time is akin to going to your first fashion show—but instead of Anna Wintour, there’s Sephora’s merchants, like Carolyn Bojanowski, Artemis Patrick, Priya Venkatesh, Alison Hahn, and other real gatekeepers of the beauty industry. Their decision to stock a brand’s revolutionary, science-backed, medical grade, biomimetic, patent-pending, or proprietary-ingredient-packed serum can elevate a startup to an acquisition target within a few years. One longtime attendee said the event was a “coming out” for Patrick, the beloved, longtime Sephora executive who was promoted to president last fall, and every founder I spoke to praised Bojanowski’s commitment to the theme, sparkly silver boots and oversized sparkly blazer included. “She looked like a Taylor Swift doppelganger, it was iconic,” one said. There was no way last year’s video game-themed summit could have been as fun.

As for the accolades, “Social Star” went to K18, which late last year sold to Unilever for $700 million; “Best Hit Product” went to Kérastase for its Elixir Ultime serum; and “Record Breaker of the Year” went to Summer Fridays, which, like Rhode, can’t seem to sell its lip glosses fast enough. Every year there’s a designated darling, I learned, and this year it was Sol de Janeiro, which sells an overwhelming amount of Brazilian Bum Bum Cream and body spray.

So what is no longer a Sephora darling, curious and drama-starting reader? That would be Charlotte Tilbury. Despite being one of the retailer’s best-selling lines, the brand quickly lost its status when it entered 600 Ulta Beauty stores last month, I’m told. There was also talk of Sephora’s beauty “eras” past and present (R.I.P. eyeshadow palettes). We’re in the Lip Gloss Era, in case you haven’t heard.

Until tomorrow,
Lauren