Hi, and welcome back to Line Sheet. It’s a big week here in Los Angeles, starting with a Puck private dinner that I’m hosting with my pals from Lyst tomorrow. (If you weren’t invited, don’t worry, there is more to come this year.)

Today’s issue features my dispatch from Hermès’s Nashville store launch amid the news that the brand’s menswear designer, Vèronique Nichanian, will be retiring after 37 years in the gig. Up top, I’ve got some data on the performance of the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, big magazine-cover news (yes, this still exists), plus a report from Saturday night’s Academy Museum Gala and Armani’s unofficial afterparty at the Chateau Marmont. Also, Rachel “Rachel@puck.news” Strugatz is here to dissect Kering’s plans to sell its beauty unit to L’Oréal for $4.7 billion. Remember, Kering acquired fragrance brand Creed for nearly that much just two years ago. Luca de Meo is not fooling around…

Programming note: Tomorrow on Fashion People, my guest is Leandra Medine Cohen. We’re discussing her new collaboration with Swedish Stockings and way more. Listen here and here.

Mentioned in this issue: Giorgio Armani, Jonathan Anderson, Jeremy Allen White, Sydney Sweeney, Pierpaolo Piccioli, Kering, L’Oréal, Meghan Markle, Victoria’s Secret, Adam Selman, Hillary Super, Hermès, Axel Dumas, Grace Wales Bonner, Nadège Vanhee, Ben Weprin, Sid Mashburn, Lucas Emilio Brunner, and many, many more…

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Four Things You Should Know…

Armani’s night: I did a crazy thing on Saturday. First, I stopped by cocktail hour at the Academy Museum Gala, which has become the unofficial start of Oscars campaign season and one of the best red carpets on the calendar. (Given that the Paris shows end right before the event, there is always plenty of gown inventory.) Jonathan Anderson finally nailed it: Greta Lee and Mikey Madison, both in Dior, were two of the best dressed of the evening. Then, I changed into jeans and headed to the Greek to see Rilo Kiley on my grand tour of ’90s reunion tours.

I contemplated skipping the Armani party in the courtyard at the Chateau Marmont—I didn’t want to have to change again—but I rallied. It ended up being one of those parties where you feel like the only person who isn’t famous: Eddie Redmayne and Amanda Seyfried were chatting in the garden, Channing Tatum and Joey King had a run-in by the entrance. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Jeremy Allen White smoking a cigarette back by the bar. W’s Sara Moonves and Lynn Hirschberg were holding court at a big table with the Fanning sisters, Kirsten Dunst (looking amazing in Rodarte), Jon Hamm, and honestly I can’t remember who else. Zoë Kravitz and Demi Moore were there, too, and so was Lee.

I’m not sure there is another brand that could will so many ambassadors for its competitors to attend an event. But Armani is special, and there is a sense of optimism at the company right now, despite the passing of Mr. Armani, and the likelihood of a transformative transaction to come. The business is up double digits in the U.S., I hear, and everyone can feel the opportunity. It also helps that they know how to throw a great party.
Meghan Markle’s cover comeback: There was a reason Harper’s Bazaar editor-in-chief Samira Nasr and the Duchess of Sussex were so chummy backstage at Pierpaolo Piccioli’s Balenciaga debut: I hear that Markle is slated to be on an upcoming cover of the Hearst-owned magazine. I have zero details. Markle’s last big glossy cover was British Vogue’s September 2019 issue, which was exhausting for everyone involved. I hope she wears Balenciaga. (A rep for Hearst did not respond to a request for comment.)
Is the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show worth it?: We live in such a fragmented culture that it was really, really hard to tell whether Adam Selman’s Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show was a true success. Some people told me it was blowing up on their TikTok; others said it felt tired. In the end, there were more than 60 million views across platforms, and sales were up 20 percent (in the three days following the show) from last year. (A rep for Victoria’s Secret declined to comment on these figures.) As one fashion editor smartly put it, people are into sluttiness right now, and this was the exactly right take on slutty—from the nude prom dresses to the skimpy underwear itself. It was nonchalant slutty.

But C.E.O. Hillary Super still needs to decide whether the uptick in sales and all the social media hits are worth the $10 million-plus investment. (I don’t know the exact figure.) And if they scrapped the show, what less expensive marketing apparatus might replace it? Would TikTok and influencer marketing, à la American Eagle, offer a longer tail? I have no idea, but it’s up to Selman, Super, and their teams to figure out what is sexy now, and how to communicate that in a fresh way. Maybe the show really is the answer. Maybe not. But generally, they’re feeling really positive about it.

Also: In an email last week, I said that the company’s EBITDA margin contracted 80 percent in the last quarter. It didn’t. I meant 80 basis points, which is still significant but not as crazy. I know that, internally, people feel like they are mitigating it as best they can.

Rachel Strugatz

Kering’s plan to offload its beauty unit: Nearly three years after touting its ambitious plans to build Kering Beauté from the ground up, Kering is retreating. On Sunday, one day after The Wall Street Journal reported that Kering was nearing a deal with L’Oréal to sell its entire beauty business, both parties announced that they’re “entering a long-term strategic partnership in luxury beauty and wellness.” L’Oréal paid €4 billion, or close to $4.7 billion, for luxury fragrance brand House of Creed, plus 50-year licenses to slap Gucci, Balenciaga, and Bottega Veneta on beauty products. (L’Oréal, of course, still has to wait another few years until it can take over Gucci’s beauty license from Coty, which is said to expire in 2028.)

It was a bold first move from Kering’s new C.E.O., Luca de Meo, and a smart one. The deal accomplishes three things at once: It diverts focus back to Kering’s core business, eliminates risk associated with owning all of its beauty outright, and meaningfully improves cashflow. In a different economic climate, de Meo could have perhaps waited it out and given the division time to establish itself––especially given the relaunches of the Bottega Veneta and Balenciaga fragrance businesses––but he has a short window of time, especially when it comes to a category that is not the luxury giant’s core remit.

Someone asked me if the deal is an indication that one can’t be an expert in both fashion and beauty. But it’s not that simple. I’ve reported quite a bit about the success of owned beauty brands, from LVMH’s Dior and Chanel to Puig’s pivot to building beauty for its owned brands (Carolina Herrera, Rabanne, etcetera)—but all of these had decades to build in-house expertise. Of course, it’s more beneficial to own your own beauty brands, but to get it right can take many, many years—time that Kering doesn’t have. Handing beauty over to L’Oréal basically ensures the future success of Kering’s beauty entities. L’Oréal’s only business is beauty, and it’s the one thing it does better than almost anyone else.

Now on to the main event…

Axel’s Rose

Scenes from the opening of Hermès’s new Nashville store, where the ill-timed retirement announcement of its longtime menswear head only underscored the steady hand of the brand’s sixth-generation heir and executive chairman, Axel Dumas.

Lauren Sherman

About an hour before Hermès welcomed guests to its new store in Nashville, news broke in Paris that the brand’s menswear designer of 37 years, Véronique Nichanian, was retiring. I’m sure the comms team wished that Le Figaro, with whom Nichanian spoke exclusively, would have waited a few hours to publish, but there were very few people in Nashville who realized anything had happened. At the event, I nudged Axel Dumas, the brand’s sixth-generation heir and executive chairman, about the news while standing near the glassed-off handbag wall—each style, from a canvas Togo to a crocodile Kelly, shaded in with the proprietary color Rouge H. He politely changed the subject.

At pretty much any other luxury house, the exit of the designer would be an earthquake. But Hermès has undoubtedly been succession planning for two or three years: When the company moved its headquarters a few years back, Nichanian’s team stayed in the old offices—a clear indication that she wanted to keep her routine for her last few years working. At 71, she could have surely gone longer. Her collections are still closely watched by menswear insiders, and Hermès is already a model for other luxury houses: The big idea doesn’t come from one designer’s vision, so there’s no need to engage in rapid turnover and succumb to key-person risk issues. In the end, she held her post for 37 years, one more than Lagerfeld spent at Chanel.

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Hermès is expected to announce her successor on Tuesday. The first candidate to pop into my texts was Grace Wales Bonner, the 35-year-old Brit whose name surfaces any time there’s a big menswear job up for grabs. It’s an interesting idea, given her quiet confidence and design sensibility.

But I also wouldn’t be surprised if it were an unknown in the vein of the company’s womenswear designer, Nadège Vanhee, who worked behind the scenes for years before replacing Christophe Lemaire in 2014. Vanhee was a designer for hire—no namesake label to manage, or wind down—who was given the time and space to develop her practice because of Hermès’s reliance on hero products, historic brand codes, and managed pricing. The collections are a commercial and editorial success, and like Nichanian, Vanhee may be headed toward a 30-plus-year career at the company.

Don’t Fly Private

Elsewhere at the store, clients were mixing with Dumas and other Hermès executives, as well as the starry locals that make up the Nashville expat scene, like Karen Elson. We love to skewer the awful term quiet luxury, but there is something quiet about how Hermès does things. The store is located in an old-timey brick building—a former hosiery factory—in a neighborhood called Wedgewood Houston, which is being redeveloped by AJ Capital Partners. Its founder, Ben Weprin, sat across from Dumas at a 500-person dinner, which featured less quiet performances by Alison Mosshart and Jack White, afterward. (For guests of the party, White enlisted his label, Third Man Records, to press an album of a single written just for Hermès.)

The store, which sits adjacent to the biggest Soho House in the U.S., is the latest expression of Nashville’s ascent to a real, wealthy city. (On Friday, the day after the party, the alley was lousy with black cars waiting for private clients who were granted early access to shopping.) But customers will still have to make an effort to get there. Unlike several of its competitors, Hermès has expanded into U.S. secondary markets by mixing obvious locations (a corner store in a Calabasas shopping center) with clever choices (Austin’s yuppified South Congress Avenue). Back when Hermès opened in Miami’s Design District in 2015, developer Craig Robins’s vision hadn’t fully materialized. Hermès, which broke sales records on the first day of the Miami opening, helped coax it along. (As for Nashville, sales on the first two opening days exceeded internal projections, I hear.)

This approach, of course, starts at the top. On Friday, before returning home to Los Angeles, I paid a visit to Sid Mashburn, a designer of traditional menswear who recently opened in another remarkable Nashville development, Neuhoff, which sits right along the Cumberland River. (A footbridge will be built so that workers at the nearby Oracle campus can easily access the 914,000-square-foot center, which was the city’s meatpacking district more than a hundred years ago.) Standing over his tie rack, Sid said the obvious thing: Hermès remains the standard to which every other brand in this business holds itself—not just the designs, but the fact that it’s a family-controlled company with a focus on long-term health, without any need for panic.

Later on Friday, as I was heading back to L.A., I got a clue as to how the Dumas family pulls this off. Nashville may be an emerging city, but the LAX route hasn’t reached the saturation that requires the airlines to fleet it out with triple-cabin 777s. As I milled by the gate, I prepared to board my economy seat in a veritable puddle-jumper—the American Eagle type with an ersatz business class and no first-class lie-flats. Upon boarding, I spotted Dumas himself, alone, chatting with a couple of clients. It reminded me of the famous story of Jane Birkin sitting next to his uncle, Jean-Louis Dumas, on a plane—the chance meeting that led to the creation of her bag. The lesson? Don’t fly private.

What I’m Reading…

Best dressed at the Academy Museum Gala: Jeremy Strong in Loro Piana, Emily Ratajkowski in Duran Lantink’s Jean Paul Gaultier, Hottest Woman Alive Greta Lee in Dior, Tessa Thompson in Balenciaga, Mikey Madison in Dior, Jeremy Allen White in Louis Vuitton, Kirsten Dunst in Rodarte, Kaia Gerber in Givenchy, Sydney Sweeney in Armani Privé, Seth Rogen in Brunello Cucinelli, Zoey Deutch in Zac Posen, Rose Byrne in Celine, Charli XCX in Saint Laurent, Zoë Kravitz in Saint Laurent. [Getty]

From left to right: Jeremy Strong, Greta Lee, and Emily Ratajkowski. Photos: Emma McIntyre/Stefanie Keenan/Oscars/Getty Images for Academy Museum of Motion Pictures

Dries Van Noten is dressing Alanis Morissette (in Julian Klausner’s debut womenswear collection) for her residency at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace in Vegas, which started October 15 and ends November 2. I love this. [Inbox]

R.I.P. to Louie Chaban, a beloved modeling agent who repped everyone from Maggie Rizer to Karen Elson. [WWD]

Many people sent me this news about the Mango founder’s son being a suspect in his death. (Isak Andic fell off a cliff while the two were taking a hike late last year.) Riveting! [The Cut]

You know what can’t be produced in the United States? Luxury handbags. Also: cognac! [WSJ]

Read this if you dress better than your partner. [Cosmopolitan]

According to this report, the Arnaults essentially told Le Parisien to get its act together, business-wise, so that LVMH doesn’t feel compelled to sell it to controversial billionaire Vincent Bolloré, which the people of Le Parisien definitely don’t want! [La Lettre]

Saks Global reported net losses of $288 million in its second quarter. Sales dropped 11 percent. Gross merchandising value was down, too. [WWD]

Congrats to Lucas Emilio Brunner, who won the Hyères grand prize. [WWD]

Issey Miyake announced that, on December 12, it will indeed be leaving its Tribeca location at 119 Hudson Street (soon to be occupied by The Row). There will be a new Issey store on Madison Avenue soon. [Inbox]

Extremely fun story (written by Friend of Line Sheet Alyssa Vingan) about great Wearer of Pants Elissa Santisi and her daughter Francesca Keller, who are now a famous TikTok duo. [New York Times]

Until tomorrow,
Lauren

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