Hi, and welcome back to Line Sheet. This week marks at the unofficial end of the annual fashion calendar, capped off with the Marc Jacobs show tonight in New York. (I have FOMO.) Europe is already slowing down in anticipation of the summer holidays, and all of Paris is planning their pre-Olympics escape strategy. (Except for those who, you know, have to be there.)

While plenty happens behind the scenes between now and when New York Fashion Week starts on September 6—collections are conceived, half-year financial results are reported, there might even be a designer appointment or some M&A—this is the one time of year where the industry backs away from public displays. Of course, there will be a few exceptions, including next week’s Allen & Co. conference at Sun Valley.

I look forward to once again reviewing everyone’s carefully styled looks as they make their way into the lodge. Today, though, I have details on the first (to my knowledge) Arnault to make an appearance at the retreat. Plus, I’ve got a Chanel update, some fun London real estate news, and an examination of the current situation at Kering. After all, it was just last year at Sun Valley that C.E.O. and chairman François-Henri Pinault accelerated his plan to buy CAA through Groupe Artemis, his family office.

At the same time, Pinault was busy responding to activist investors with a group-level restructuring at Kering that is still underway. While CAA remains largely unchanged a year later, Kering is a completely different company, and there’s still plenty of work to be done. Much more on that below.

🚨🚨Programming note: Tomorrow on Fashion People, I’m joined by Steff Yotka, the former fashion writer at Vogue and current head of content at Ssense. (In a past life, she worked at Style.com and Fashionista, where she was once… my intern.) There are few people in this world with whom I enjoy talking fashion more than Steff, so don’t miss it. Also, she has an amazing idea for the folks at Chanel: Bruno Pavlovsky, it’s time to pop in the AirPods.

Oh, and lest you think I would forget: We’ve got to talk about your status with us. June was one of Line Sheet’s best subscription months yet. I’m honored that this is becoming the place where our industry communicates, but there are still way too many of you getting the free, truncated version of this email—either because you don’t know better, are tech disabled, or are foolishly rubbing pennies together. F.Y.I., every time someone tells me how much they love Line Sheet, I check the database to see if they’re actually signed up or not. Nothing gets past me, okay? Join everyone else and subscribe to Puck if you love me and journalism. (Honestly, even if you hate both of those things… you still need them.)

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Mentioned in this issue: Virginia Viard, Chanel, Bruno Pavlovsky, the Wertheimers, Hedi (always), Sun Valley, Géraldine Guyot-Arnault, Alexandre Arnault, Cathy Horyn, Condé Nast, Sporty & Rich, Mount Street, Jill Biden, Vogue, Irene Neuwirth earrings, Chris Black, J.Crew, The Bear, Chris Storer, Matter of Fak, François-Henri Pinault, Kering, Marco Bizzarri, Francesca Bellettini, Jean-François Palus, Stefano Cantino, Valérie Duport, Laurent Claquin, GQ China, Yolanda Edwards, Keith McNally’s daughter, Richard Turley, Beatrice and Salvatore, and many more…

• The Arnault in Idaho: The annual Allen & Co. conference, which takes place next week in Sun Valley, has long been the domain of Kering’s François-Henri Pinault and a few American fashion denizens: Diane von Furstenberg often shows up with Barry Diller; Alice + Olivia’s Stacey Bendet made an appearance last year with her husband, Eric Eisner; Away C.E.O. Jen Rubio has powered through with her husband, Slack founder Stewart Butterfield. But this year, the industry dynamic is set to shift as Alexandre Arnault, the middle child of LVMH chairman and C.E.O. Bernard Arnault, is slated to attend.

  Everyone loves Alex—wearer of Bode and (LVMH Ventures-backed) Aimé Leon Dore, fluent speaker of M.B.A. English, and runner of marathons—who currently lives in the U.S. and is working on Tiffany. His wife, Destree designer Géraldine Guyot-Arnault, seems cool, too. Maybe she’ll accompany him. Let’s generate some M&A buzz!

• Time waits for no one, including Chanel: If you thought we were going to have to wait forever for Chanel to announce Virginie Viard’s replacement, Cathy Horyn suggests otherwise. Horyn confirmed in The Cut that Viard was fired by Chanel’s president of fashion, Bruno Pavlovsky, who had the support of Alain and Gérard Wertheimer. Horyn didn’t quote Pavlovsky on those points, but she did talk to him for the piece, so it was obvious he wanted to make clear that it was he, not C.E.O. Leena Nair, who made this decision—and that he is still in charge of fashion, no matter how badly Nair wants to reorganize the group.

  As for who may be the one to follow Viard, Pavlovsky said on the record that the family has not made a choice. Also notably, Hedi Slimane wasn’t mentioned anywhere in the story. Of course, there are many reasons to doubt that Slimane will be anointed, from his desire to control every aspect of a brand to his rejection of Vogue and Condé Nast, an important partner to Chanel. But perhaps the greatest risk associated with Slimane is that he would not view the title as some Lagerfeld-ian lifetime appointment. Pavlovsky said that whoever gets this job will be responsible for helping Chanel “continue to lead for the next 20 years.”

  And therein lies the tension, and the real challenge for Chanel and its current management and infrastructure. The likelihood that Pavlovsky will be able to find a person who is as consistent and competent as Slimane, who can perform at his level, and who also wants to stick around for two decades, is zero—alas, the world doesn’t work like that anymore. Instead, the Wertheimers should install him, let him reimagine the business for the next 10 years (itself a long time), and concurrently leverage that vision for the decade thereafter. There is a precedent for this sort of management horizon with Slimane. The merchandising plan that he and his team put in place at Saint Laurent is still working. Before that, he created an aesthetic at Dior Homme, which he led for seven years, that drove the business for another decade following his departure.

  An executive recruiter told Horyn that Chanel’s imperative with this appointment should be to “make Bernard Arnault sick.” (Sheesh, I don’t like that sentiment. But that quote definitely comes from a French person.) Slimane may very well not get the Chanel job, but he might approach this threshold. I have heard that his relationship with Arnault became strained after LVMH forced him to cancel his Celine menswear show due to protests in Paris, but the rumors that they stopped speaking are not true. (These two men have worked together on and off for more than 20 years, and have made a lot of money together.)

  Obviously, these businesses are far too big to be driven by spite, but a Slimane appointment would nevertheless elevate Chanel. We’ll see what happens.

• A Mount Street makeover: I hear that Sporty & Rich is in talks to take the Roksanda space on one of London’s fanciest shopping streets, further reshaping that stretch of stores. For a while, Mount Street was primetime for pure luxury brands. (The Row is right around the corner.) More recently, though, Toteme moved into the old Balenciaga space, Celine moved over to Bond Street, and I’m told Valextra is thinking of making a change. Of course, Goyard is still there, but the shift from pure luxury into premium brands perhaps connotes a shift in what shoppers are prioritizing today, at least on this one street in Mayfair.
• Jill Biden’s softly lit distraction: Good timing or bad timing? The first lady’s August 2024 Vogue cover—shot by Norman Jean Roy, styled by the magazine’s current go-to, Max Ortega, looking pensive—dropped just days after President Biden’s unequivocally disastrous debate against Donald Trump. The piece itself is innocuous, but includes an update at the top with a quote from Dr. Biden, extracted from her over the weekend, over the phone, as the family was holed up in Camp David, where they were reportedly being further canonized by Annie Leibovitz. “[We] will not let those 90 minutes define the four years he’s been president. We will continue to fight,” she said.

  The idea that a piece like this could do anything to sway anyone one way or another politically is pretty naive—Vogue may have been one of the first glossy magazines to endorse a candidate, but at this point even The New York Times editorial board’s influence on policy and politics is pretty nonexistent. What it did convey was tradition: Biden is wearing Ralph Lauren and Michael Kors (off-white and navy, respectively) with Irene Neuwirth earrings in two shots. (In another, she dons a Coach trench.) Other than wearing jewelry from the Los Angeles-based Neuwirth—who has, thanks to her previously established relationship with Kamala Harris, become a go-to for both the vice president and first lady—these are standard choices, indicating that everyone involved is eager to stay the course. The real power move would be for Anna Wintour, who has become one of the Democratic Party’s largest bundlers, to come out herself and urge Biden to step aside. And that’s certainly not happening.

• Beyond chef’s whites: Today, J.Crew men’s launched a limited-run collaboration with FX’s The Bear, including a t-shirt, trucker hat, and sweatshirt branded with the Matter of Fak Supply logo, referencing the fictional company started by the restaurant’s handyman, Neil Fak, played by I.R.L. chef Matty Matheson.

  My friend Chris Black, who consults with J.Crew on marketing, undoubtedly orchestrated this. He is also in cahoots with The Bear, even making a brief pseudo-cameo in the first episode of the just-released third season, along with other coastal-elite figures, including Sue Chan, Naomi Fry, and Chris Chang. Black also hosted the red carpet with his B.F.F. and How Long Gone co-podcaster Jason Stewart.

  I haven’t seen any of the new episodes just yet. (Hulu doesn’t stream in Europe, where I was when Season 3 premiered. Also, I’m currently obsessed with Presumed Innocent.) However, I do like The Bear. It’s a little too sincere for my cold, hard heart, but hey, you have to admire the world building, which makes it an ideal property for a fashion collaboration. Showrunner and creator Chris Storer really nailed the Millennial-Gen X Borderline aesthetic—from the Trent Reznor–Atticus Ross score and Thom Browne chef whites worn by Sydney to the very Clinton Street circa 2002 interiors of the restaurant and Carmy’s collection of raw Japanese denim. It’s also a gentle sendup of the generation’s obsession with restaurants and iconoclastic restaurant culture, derived from David Chang and No Reservations. Anyway, enjoy your merch.

About 15 years ago, Kering embarked on what was an incredibly effective pruning of a family business. Pinault eliminated the mass retail and sports brands that helped build his father’s fortune, but had since become a distraction, instead homing in on vertically integrated pure luxury, which was growing exponentially. The move was rewarded by investors, and Kering’s market capitalization peaked at $115 billion in mid-August 2021. Today, in the long aftermath of Alessandro Michele’s exit from Gucci and the Balenciaga crisis and the cooling of the Chinese economy and post-ZIRP U.S. market, the company’s valuation has decreased to $41 billion—a wee bit more than a tenth of LVMH’s $382 billion market cap.

When I started reporting on the changes last July, it seemed like Pinault was implementing the first stages of his own succession plan. Bellettini may not be C.E.O. of all of Kering tomorrow, but the goal is obviously to prepare her for the role, just as Palus is preparing Cantino. Pinault may have no interest in retiring; he is a young 62, but he’s also taken on more responsibilities at the family office, Groupe Artemis, as his father, François Pinault, nears 90. And, of course, there’s the $7 billion majority position he took in Creative Artists Agency last fall. (Pinault acquired his stake from TPG, an investor in Puck.) Will Pinault’s own children step in someday? His eldest child, the 26-year-old François Louis Nicolas Pinault, is engaged, recently replacing his grandfather on the board of Christie’s, and working in a mid-level role at the group. But neither François Louis Nicolas, nor the rest of the even-younger children, are as far along in succession exercises as the Arnault kids.

The other problem stemmed from Big Luxury’s fixation on newness to meet the insatiable consumer’s needs, which sucked the creativity out of much of the process, resulting in obscenely priced commodity goods. That was okay when interest rates were zilch and the Chinese economy was accelerating every year—an era that reached its apotheosis during the pandemic, when wealthy consumers had a surplus of cash, limited ways to spend it, and too much time on their hands. After the gold rush, however, brands eventually attempted to make up for slowing sales by increasing prices, assuming the highest of the high-net-worth consumers wouldn’t notice. But they did.

In recent years, Kering also made a change to its talent acquisition strategy, loosening ties with the recruiter Floriane de Saint Pierre (who brought both Hedi Slimane and Anthony Vaccarello to Saint Laurent, for instance), and instead relying further on Lionel Vermeil, who was named “luxury prospective director” in 2021. Vermeil, a longtime publicist at Balenciaga, previously advised Pinault on talent acquisition, and is widely credited with scouting Demna. However, the group’s recent appointments—Sabato de Sarno at Gucci and Seán McGirr at Alexander McQueen—have yet to prove out. The group reports its first-half results at the end of July, so perhaps we will get some clarity on Gucci by then. I can’t fathom a situation where a decision isn’t made about Sarno by the end of the year. If sales start bumping, they’ll stick with him. If they don’t, they simply cannot go on without making a change.

The current successes at Balenciaga and Bottega show that generic, commodified luxury is no longer enough for the consumer. They also speak to what made Kering successful in the first place: originality and uniqueness in the market. But Pinault cannot simply snap his fingers and make Gucci and Saint Laurent boom once again. They grew so much, so fast, that a slowdown was inevitable. And nailing the alchemy—the right designer, the right merchandising team, the right distribution, the right price—has never been harder. Pinault won the proverbial jackpot with Michele and the one-two punch of Slimane and then Vaccarello at Saint Laurent, but the industry is a far different place than when Pinault renamed his father’s business, in 2013, from PPR to Kering. (The other two names in Pinault-Printemps-Redoute represented retailers that had been sold off in the streamlining.)

Pinault isn’t done empire-building, though. Bringing the Qatari-owned Valentino into the group—Kering cut a deal to acquire 30 percent of the business last year with an option to purchase the whole thing by 2028—could be good for portfolio diversity, especially if the designs of Michele, who just revealed his first collection, hit big. But after being in Europe these past two weeks, less focused on the shows and more on the business, I’ve never been more convinced that groups like Kering must band together in order to compete against LVMH. They may never be as big, but they need to be bigger in order to keep things moving. Perhaps it’s time to make a deal.

Is this the beginning of the Substack exodus? Travel and culture writer Yolanda Edwards is moving her newsletter off of the platform in hopes of creating a product that is “as visual and as searchable as travel deserves to be (and should be).” [Yolo Journal]

Fashion and politics: Labour is slated to win the election in the U.K., but don’t expect the new government to reinstate the VAT refund for tourists. And we all know what happened on Sunday in France, but here’s a reminder that it’s not good for luxury. (It might not be that bad, either, but it’s not good.) [BoF]

Keith McNally’s daughter is now a SKIMS model. [Instagram]

Casey Lewis’s newsletter on Sunday was particularly great, especially the analysis on the failures of Kate Spade New York—we should get into that some time. [After School]

We’re big Richard Turley fans in our household! [The Full Bleed]

Fashionable men are very into dressing like Cary Grant, which means they are reaching for pleated, higher-waisted trousers and soft shirting. I like this look, but it also scares me because if it proliferates too far it’s going to start feeling cheesy, like when guys started dressing like Mad Men extras circa 2009, 2010. [WSJ]

Congrats to Australian designer Christopher Esber, who is building quite an interesting business, on winning this year’s ANDAM Grand Prize. [WWD]

This writer is arguing that it’s a good thing the Democratic Party is turning against Joe Biden: “Dissent offers the possibility of course correction.” This is an important lesson in any business, or any industry, including fashion, where people are often afraid to challenge the status quo. [The Atlantic]

Until Wednesday,
Lauren