Gwyneth’s Reboot, Miu Miu vs. Loewe & The Jeffries Sitch

Hi, welcome back to Line Sheet. I loved all the dispatches from the weekend’s coastal fashion weddings. In New York, there was Harper’s Bazaar accessories director Miguel Enamorado’s long-anticipated party, which was like a high school reunion for the fashion clique of a decade ago (yes, Michael Carl was there). Meanwhile, all the way over in Palm Springs, British influencer-y journalist Katherine Ormerod’s nuptials attracted a clique that included my friend Hannah, Beth from Net-a-Porter, and Virginia, one of the greatest U.K. P.R.s around. (They all did a very brave thing and chose Katherine over Joni Mitchell at the Hollywood Bowl on Saturday night.) Biggest congrats, though, go to the people who skipped the weddings and went on the Iceland press trip with Canada Goose and Haider Ackermann. Especially Tim and Alice. It looked really fun.Today I’ve got some thoughts on the swelling enthusiasm for Loewe’s unexpected campaign star, plus the latest Lyst rankings (everyone loves a ranking). Yes, I’ll be back tomorrow with an analysis of the Kering and Hermès results (big misses and encouraging hits), and more on the arrest of former Abercrombie & Fitch C.E.O. Mike Jeffries for sex trafficking. For now, though, I’d like to draw your attention to the main event: Rachel Strugatz takes the temperature at Goop, which laid off 40 or so people in September after its yearlong attempt at launching a cheaper, mass-market beauty line misfired. I’m a big Gwyneth Paltrow fan (especially the dating Dating-Brad-then-Ben fashion era, which makes me want these pants from The Row), and also I love Goop Kitchen, even if my rings are tight the morning after we order it for dinner, so here’s hoping the biz is already in turnaround mode. Sign up to read up. 🎧 Programming note: On Tuesday, I was on Pivot, a podcast that a lot of you (and other people) listen to, with my Selling Sexy co-author Chantal Fernandez. Listen here if you missed it. There’s also a good, very top-level discussion about Disney’s succession plans. (If you haven’t heard, former Nike C.E.O. Mark Parker is no longer the chairman of the board.) Mentioned in this issue: Goop, Gwyneth Paltrow, Loewe, Juergen Teller, Abercrombie & Fitch, Mike Jeffries, Les Wexner, Jonathan Anderson, Sue Kroll, Barneys New York (but the Beverly Hills one), Lyst, Pieter Mulier, Alaïa, Miu Miu, Prada, Adrien Da Maia, and many more…

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Three Things You Should Know…

We’ve only just begun?: Mike Jeffries, the rage-inspiring former C.E.O. of Abercrombie & Fitch, was indicted (alongside his boyfriend, Matthew Smith) on Tuesday and charged with sex trafficking. The duo are accused of coercing young men into sex by promising a chance to model for the company. (For much of Jeffries’ wildly successful-until-it-wasn’t reign, the homoerotic, black-and-white campaigns were often shot by Bruce Weber, who has faced down his own issues.) Tomorrow I’m going to get into Jeffries’ connection to Les Wexner—the former Victoria’s Secret owner once owned Abercrombie & Fitch, too—and tell you what I know about Jeffries’ behavior over the years he was running the business.For today, I’ll leave you with one thought. Investigations like these often take years to come together, and many of the current ones were initiated at the height of the #metoo movement, when information was trickling out about men who acted badly during the height of their powers. So perhaps it’s no surprise that the Sean Combs and the Jeffries thing happened within weeks of each other. My take: We probably haven’t seen the half of it.

Yeah x 10: Loewe’s latest campaign slaps, as the kids say, and not simply because it features Juergen Teller’s head-on portraits of celebrities in the foreground and weird little characters in the background. (It’s giving Mr. Mom movie poster vibes.) No, the news here was that Loewe creative director Jonathan Anderson cast Amazon Studios head of marketing Sue Kroll in a starring role. Kroll, with whom Anderson interacted during his time designing the costumes for Challengers, an Amazon MGM production, is a known fashion connoisseur who loved shopping at Barneys New York in Beverly Hills when she was at Warner Bros. (Who didn’t?)People in my D.M.s who have worked with Kroll—who didn’t get paid by Loewe, according to What I’m Hearing author Matt Belloni—referred to her as “the chicest,” “my favorite person,” and “my actual hero,” while another Hollywood person proposed, “Let’s be Sue Kroll for Halloween.” I don’t dress up for Halloween, but it’s a great idea, as was this campaign. Kroll has rightly been immortalized by Anderson, who reinforced what Alaïa already proved a few weeks back: fashion advertising campaigns are not dead. They don’t have to be boring. Really, they don’t! Stop making boring stuff, guys!
Lystical: Fortune favored several Line Sheet darlings on Lyst’s quarterly ranking of the top brands and products around. First up on the brand side: Our guy Pieter Mulier and his Alaïa jumped 12 places to become the fifth “hottest” fashion brand in the world. (Lyst determines what’s “hot” by calculating the number of product views, searches, and sales. Demand for Alaïa was up 50 percent over the past quarter.) Miu Miu, Loewe, Prada, and Saint Laurent ranked #1 through #4, respectively, with Bottega Veneta bringing up the caboose at #6.Who even cares about the rest of the ranking? J.K.! I do! Ralph Lauren (#14), Toteme (#16), Victoria Beckham (#19), and Chloé (#20) were all first-time entrants. Unsurprisingly, the Alaïa mesh ballet flat was the #1 product, followed by that swingy, Tiktok-y, “Brooklyn” bag from Coach. What’s missing: Bally’s boat shoes. Let’s get them on there next season by all buying a pair.

And now here’s Rachel on Gwyneth…

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Gwyneth’s Beauty Makeover

Despite recent layoffs, Gwyneth has found her groove in the food business and gotten serious (no more vagina candles) about her beauty brand. But can her wry, in-on-the-joke WASP aesthetic and celebrity icon status overcome C-suite troubles and find her an exit?

RACHEL STRUGATZ

Just after Labor Day, about 40 employees were laid off at Goop, the celebrity lifestyle-cum-wellness company founded and run by Gwyneth Paltrow. Among the departed was C.M.O. Lauren Johnston, a former Google marketing executive who’d been hired only eight months earlier. Needless to say, the vibes are somewhat less than immaculate at the 16-year-old e-commerce company, which remains unprofitable. Last June, shortly after I wrote a piece revealing that Goop’s affordable beauty and wellness line, Good.clean.goop, was in the “bottom 15” at Target, Paltrow launched an investigation into who, exactly, leaked that statistic. In the aftermath, a handful of people were laid off—ultimately for unrelated reasons.The company line is that the roiling drama over the past year is the byproduct of an overdue restructuring, and insiders insist that a leaner team, coupled with streamlining the business to focus on a few key categories, should eventually achieve profitability. But Goop’s longstanding struggle to install more seasoned executives around Paltrow, or to implement a more coherent strategy, continues to bedevil the brand.At the moment, Goop has three prime revenue lines: Goop Beauty, the company’s higher end cosmetics label and the current focus of Paltrow’s attention; G. Label, an underwhelming clothing line that Paltrow would never wear if she didn’t have to sell it; and Goop Kitchen, a food delivery and takeout concept that recently raised $15.5 million from Travis Kalanick, the co-founder and former C.E.O. of Uber, who now runs CloudKitchens. Revenue for Goop Beauty was up close to 42 percent in 2023, according to a company spokesperson, and up 20 percent so far this year, while revenue for G. Label is up 45 percent year over year. Of course, all of these numbers are impossible to confirm without actual sales figures. The company declined to share overall revenue for last year, or revenue projections for this year. The Goop spokesperson was more than happy to boast about the company’s food vertical, however, which is delivering 60 percent year over year revenue growth YTD, generating strong EBITDA, and “reaching company level profitability.” The success of Goop Kitchen was confirmed by a high-profile investor, who told me the average unit volume is “crazy” as a result of a “highly structured” deal with Kalanick’s ghost kitchen business. A sixth Goop Kitchen location just opened in Venice, Calif., where “Good clean food” like gluten-free, dairy-free salmon bowls and bougie pizza are a hit. Rumors have swirled that the concept is coming to the East Coast. None of that is particularly surprising. Los Angeles has always been ground zero for wacky cleanses, detoxes, and diets—Paltrow’s wheelhouse—and the ideal launchpad for a product that caters to wealthy, health-obsessed women who don’t want to cook. If anything, the only surprise is that Paltrow wasn’t cornering that market all along.

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Missing the Clean Beauty Moment

A few weeks ago, Paltrow posted her “no-makeup makeup” routine on YouTube, which naturally included four newish makeup products from Goop––and nothing else. These days, it’s rare for anyone to use just one brand for all of their makeup and skincare, and the charade would have been slightly more believable had she thrown in some Westman Atelier, Ilia, Saie, Rhode… anything. Either way, Paltrow has been working hard to promote these beauty products, all of which debuted within the last year, and all of which need all the help they can get.It’s a mystery why Paltrow never really capitalized on beauty in the heyday of her influence, during a not-so-brief moment in time when Goop was the only thing wealthy women of any age group would talk about. In any case, Goop is aggressively going after beauty now, even if it’s six to seven years too late and their “clean” messaging feels dated. “If they didn’t let their foot off the gas, that could have been the Dennis Gross peel––or at least something close to it,” a beauty marketing executive said of Goop Beauty’s early exfoliating facial and glycolic acid glow peels. (Shiseido bought Dr. Dennis Gross Skincare last year for $450 million.)Instead of building a sustainable beauty business, however, Goop leaned into shock value, which resulted in the kind of persona-driven media coverage that was Paltrow’s expertise from years of hawking diets, unorthodox treatments, etcetera. While other skin care lines prioritized wholesale relationships, Goop marketed a candle that supposedly smelled like Paltrow’s vagina, which was soon phased out in a bid to be taken more seriously in the space. The focus turned to sex toys—Goop now sells four models—including a $98 “Viva la Vulva.” One of the brand’s problems, I’m told, is that Paltrow, who’s worth about $200 million, isn’t really a fan of some of the beauty products herself. “It would get really hard to get behind some of the products, because we would know that Gwyneth didn’t really care about them,” said a former employee who was among the recent wave of layoffs. “She wasn’t crazy about the lip glosses that just launched,” this person added, recalling that Paltrow’s disdain for certain products was openly discussed in meetings. (A Goop spokesperson said that Paltrow is “deeply involved in the development and creation of every beauty product that we bring to market. We do not release products that she does not stand behind.”)

The Clean Issue

Then there’s the other beauty brand, Good.clean.goop, which launched on Amazon and in Target last October. Paltrow was quoted in a trade publication saying that the line was “doing well,” but the numbers tell a different story. A person with knowledge of the situation told me that, in the last year, Good.clean.goop did just over $1,000,000 in sales. By contrast, Glossier’s successful fragrance launch earlier this month generated $1 million in sales in its stores and online in one day.Apparently, no one at Goop had modeled for an outcome where the line didn’t succeed. “After it came out and sales were terrible, there was a meeting about figuring out how to make this work. It was a scramble because Target was pissed,” said a former employee. “They thought they were going to launch it, and it was just going to take off.” Naturally, Goop didn’t think additional marketing would be required, and that the line could simply rely on Paltrow’s name, the retailer’s huge door count, and foot traffic to make the big numbers the brand needed. Alas, these hard lessons sting largely because the company is learning them so late.

That’s it from Rachel and me. By the way, Where is Adrien Da Maia, the recently departed C.E.O. of Courrèges, going? Artemis, the Pinault family office that owns Courrèges, said it was an “entrepreneurial” thing. On the subject of entrepreneurs, what’s the next investment from LVMH Ventures? I hear it’s being announced on Friday. Unless I announce it in Line Sheet first… with your help! Call me.Until tomorrow, LaurenP.S.: We are using affiliate links because we are a business. We may make a couple bucks off of them. I think this is the winning disclosure?

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