Apr 8, 2026

Hi, and welcome back to Line Sheet. Thank you to the reader (and writer and publicist) who bought my Belle and Sebastian tickets. Hope you had fun tonight.

Today’s issue belongs to Rachel “Rachel@puck.news” Strugatz, who is back with the inside story on Gap Beauty’s relaunch. Remember the fragrances that kind of smelled like a hippie? Anyway, it’s a great, can’t-find-it-anywhere-else look under the hood. Up top, Rachel also has some intel on a new MAGA-adjacent beauty brand from cheerleader-influencer-WAG Brittany Aldean, the wife of country music star Jason Aldean. And Sarah Shapiro is back with an explanation of why little-girl pointelle knit has taken over fashion. I’ve also read between the lines of the statement that Fear of God’s Jerry Lorenzo just sent about the exit of his C.E.O., Bastien Daguzan. (There will be no more C.E.O.s at Fear of God for now.)

P.S.: Let me know if you want me to do a deep reading of the Beckham story on The Cut for tomorrow’s issue. Or maybe Friday’s? There’s a lot going on this week.

Also mentioned in this issue: Alix Earle, John Demsey, Richard Dickson, Mickey Drexler, Lili Chemla, Bath & Body Works, Deb Redmond, Jamie Mizrahi, Emily Bode, Taylore Scarabelli, Victoria’s Secret Pink, Eugene Rabkin, Hailey Bieber, Marta Lastra, Georgia Dream perfume, Mel Ottenberg, Rose Colcord, and more…

Three Things You Should Know…

No brand is an island: This evening, Fear of God announced that it was eliminating “the office of the C.E.O.” from its organization—meaning that Bastien Daguzan, who joined the Los Angeles–based business a couple of years back, is exiting. Daguzan, who previously ran Jacquemus, Rabanne, and Lemaire, was brought in as a consultant and then subsequently elevated to lead the Jerry Lorenzo–founded brand, which has built its business on the back of the B.U.M. Equipment–coded Essentials line, distributed everywhere from Ssense to, famously, Pacsun. Daguzan’s remit was to help usher in the sort of awareness and recognition that many on the inside of the fashion industry believed that Lorenzo deserved. The brand staged a big show at the Hollywood Bowl and started plotting out retail and international distribution.

I always suspected that Daguzan would not last long in the role. Founder-led brands come with their own set of complexities—usually a potent mix of ego, insecurity, and economics. Also, the company is based in Los Angeles, where the rules of the global fashion system do not apply on account of the shallower talent pool and divergent culture. Lorenzo has had a ton of success without a C.E.O. in place, and I’m sure he still likes to manage some things himself. The corporate poetry of today’s (very L.A.) statement intimated as much: “Our responsibility extends beyond the successes and failures of the tangible. We are committed to an eternal vision guided by alignment, intention, and consideration.”

Anyway, the next stage of Fear of God, which does somewhere in the vicinity of $250 million a year in revenue, very much depends on what Lorenzo actually wants. Does he want to scale the business to a point that a company like Zegna would be interested in acquiring it? Does he want to run it the way he wants to run it, forever and ever? The two things are almost certainly mutually exclusive. You simply can’t build the next Armani out of Los Angeles.

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Rachel Strugatz

Beauty for the MAGA crowd: Brittany Aldean, who is best known as the wife of country music star Jason Aldean, has evolved into a legit influencer in her own right, with more than 2.5 million Instagram followers. A few years ago, the couple started a thriving MAGA merch website—a “fun little business,” she once told me, with no long-term strategy—that ended up becoming a prelude to something potentially far larger. Tomorrow, Aldean is launching Vada, a fragrance line that is part of a new beauty brand she’s been cooking up for the “family values” set.

I’m definitely not the Vada target audience, and you probably aren’t either. Generally speaking, “faith, family, fun, and freedom” are not the values communicated by beauty brands and the people who start them. But… Aldean told me that’s the point. She hopes her customers might wear her Georgia Dream perfume to go to church on Sundays or to family gatherings. For what it’s worth, the brand looks great, the price is right (their perfume costs $98), and I heard there’s already interest from a pretty significant retailer. If this works, Aldean could be the mini Hailey Bieber or Alix Earle for, as she put it, the “hard workers and the people who make America great.”

Sarah Shapiro

Pointelle pokes through: Pointelle, the delicate knit with small eyelet holes long associated with baby clothes and lingerie, has quietly gone mainstream and high fashion. According to retail intelligence platform Edited, arrivals of women’s pointelle pieces rose 11 percent year over year in Q1, with bottoms like lounge pants surging 40 percent. And mall brands like Victoria’s Secret, H&M, and Gap have all deepened their assortments for spring and summer.

Makes sense: Dôen helped seed the trend in 2018 with designs that felt current and easy to wear, followed more recently by JW Anderson, Dior, and Valentino. Lili Chemla, founder of Leset, told me the category exploded in 2023 and 2024, and has since matured into a core business. When she launched Leset, Chemla brought a children’s t-shirt—the garment that has kept the pointelle stitch alive—to manufacturers to source production. A similar story is playing out at Cou Cou Intimates, where creative director and founder Rose Colcord has grown the brand 150 percent year over year with pointelle at its center. “That fabric instantly captured everything I’d been trying to articulate,” she told me. “It felt familiar, nostalgic.”

And now, here’s Rachel…

John Demsey’s American Beauty

While its corporate mothership focuses on an ambitious turnaround, Gap is preparing to revive its once-dominant beauty business for a new generation of customers—while leaning on a roster of high-profile, semi-controversial talent.

Rachel Strugatz

For the better part of the last two decades, Gap has been trying to recapture the magic of its Mickey Drexler era—those halcyon days when the brand was the defining creator of, among other things, mass fragrance. As part of its ambitious, Richard Dickson–led turnaround, Gap Inc. has undertaken a long-overdue, splashy return to the beauty business. The company—which owns Gap, Old Navy, Banana Republic, and Athleta—quietly began rolling out Old Navy’s beauty business last year. But industry insiders are far more piqued by the Gap brand’s beauty revival, which will kick off this summer with products that harken back to the brand’s “O.G. idea,” according to a person familiar with the strategy.

A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR

Readers of a certain vintage will recall the original Gap Beauty, which comprised an inescapable collection of unisex fragrances. Scents like Heaven, Dream, Grass, and others were many Millennials’ first exposure to fragrance. Perhaps it’s surprising that it took the company this long to reenter the category, but at least Gap seems to have a clear strategy: I’m hearing the new line will have approachable prices, with eaux de parfum costing just over $50, and body sprays around $20. And despite being less than half the price of a designer or prestige fragrance, I’m told the look and feel will resemble a “prestige” collection, intended to compete with brands like Maison Margiela’s Replica line.

There are some heavy hitters involved in the refresh, too. Last September, Gap Inc. very publicly announced it had tapped John Demsey, the canceled-then-quietly-uncanceled veteran Estée Lauder executive, to help oversee the group’s beauty rollout. Around the same time, Deb Redmond, a former merchant from Nordstrom, was named general manager of beauty, and a handful of additional senior hires will soon be made public. As I’ve reported, Demsey was working with the group long before the announcement, and has spent around two years shaping and developing the beauty businesses for Gap and Old Navy. (Demsey declined to comment for this article.)

Obviously, the Gap comeback has sparked the most interest, but Old Navy—a more than $8 billion-a-year business—may present the bigger opportunity for the group. The brand already tested the market last October when it successfully debuted its in-house beauty line, Old Navy Beauty Co., which it stocked in “Beauty Marts” in select stores alongside a number of mass-priced, third-party brands such as E.l.f. Cosmetics (come summer, the in-house line will also see a refresh, I heard). “They needed to prove that Old Navy could sell beauty, because that wasn’t a guarantee––and now that’s proven,” said a person with knowledge of the business. The in-house line should also get a boost from Beauty Space, which formerly operated Space NK’s U.S. business and is helping power Old Navy’s third-party beauty business. (A spokesperson for Gap Inc. declined to comment.)

Dickson’s Gen Z Play

In December, Gap unveiled its first collaboration with a beauty brand—a 20-piece apparel collection coupled with Summer Fridays products. Customers received a free gift (a cute zip pouch with a mini vanilla lip butter balm, a Jet Lag mask, etcetera) when they bought loungewear or a Summer Fridays hoodie. But on some level, the merch served a more important function than the clothes: acclimating the beauty brand’s Gen Z shoppers to Gap products. “It was meant to be a signal that we’re going back into beauty in a big way, versus just randomly relaunching perfume again one day,” said a person familiar with Gap’s beauty plans.

Under Demsey and Redmond, I’m told, Gap will initially differentiate its beauty strategy by focusing largely on fragrance; Old Navy’s offerings include body mists, lotions, and washes in addition to scents. But there will be other competition, too. Mall brands like Victoria’s Secret Pink and Bath & Body Works are all racing to capitalize on the same growth area: younger, budget-constrained customers who are increasingly making low-risk, recurring beauty purchases in person. (For what it’s worth, Bath & Body Works’ fragrance business has never seemed to slow down, but the Sol de Janeiro–fueled body splash craze gave the mall chain renewed momentum and brought in an entirely new generation of customers.)

Anyway, the powerful trifecta of in-person shopping, affordable prices, and the nostalgia factor should attract shoppers who weren’t even alive during the mall brands’ heyday. Plus, I have to assume that these customers would prefer to buy body splash at Gap or Victoria’s Secret than at Target or Walmart, even though the latter carry similarly priced offerings. And while it’s an open question how Sephora’s grip on the younger generation might impact the rollout, I think Gap is well-positioned to rebuild its beauty business with this very consumer in mind. At least, that is Dickson’s hope.

What We’re Reading… and Preordering… and Listening To…

Taylore Scarabelli, Interview’s longtime senior editor, is leaving the magazine. (I’m told to freelance and work on her newsletter, to start. She may be too big of a star for Vogue.) I like Taylore, I like her writing, and if you don’t follow her, you should. Also, kudos to Interview editor-in-chief Mel Ottenberg for hiring and fostering talent. He is the best! [Also, Here Is Taylore’s Instagram]

Fashion journalist and critic Eugene Rabkin’s Torn: Fashion and Postmodernism is available for preorder. Eugene has forged special relationships with many important designers, and is an unrelenting critic of how things are, and vocal about how he thinks things should be. We often disagree. Can’t wait to discuss the ideas in the book with him. [Buy It on Amazon Just to Annoy Him]

Horses Atelier, a cute Toronto brand known for its flight suits, is closing. I once owned a lavender one before I came to terms with the fact that I will never be a jumpsuit person. [Instagram]

This is an extremely comprehensive and on-point analysis of the Anna/Miranda Vogue cover. We should have just transcribed it and published it, because it is exactly how I feel. [The Ringer]

Altuzarra promoted Marta Lastra to C.E.O. [Inbox]

Just remembered that there is a Printemps store in New York! (In France, the department store group is eliminating around 230 jobs and closing a store in Rennes.) [WWD]

It’s smart that Bode designed just one style of jeans to launch its collaboration with Levi’s. They are on sale April 10 at 11 a.m. ET, and circuitously named after Emily Bode’s pet pony from childhood. [Instagram]

“Sweet Baby” Jamie Mizrahi is the latest stylist tapped by Quince. [TikTok]

Until tomorrow,
Lauren

P.S.: We use affiliate links because we are a business. We may make a couple bucks off them.

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