Hello, and welcome back to Line Sheet. I’m fully integrated back into Los Angeles life. Yesterday, I caught the new Paul Thomas Anderson film, One Battle After Another, in VistaVision at the Vista Theater; cruised over to the Westside to celebrate Jennifer Meyer’s 20th anniversary in business (a milestone!); and then headed to Inglewood to see Haim perform at The Forum. (P.T.A. was there, too. Full circle!) Anyway, I’m mostly around this month. Excited to see you.

Today, Sarah “SShapiro@puck.news” Shapiro is back with her monthly report on what fashion is actually selling, with intel provided by the fine folks at affiliate marketing platform ShopMy. Sarah shares the top 10 bestselling items of September, but she also dips further into the data to pull out some emerging contenders to watch. Up top, some news and notes on Aritzia’s ascent, plus more intel on the Kering town hall meeting and that new Manhattan concept store opening in 2027.

Programming note: I stopped by The Powers That Be with Peter Hamby to discuss the Fashion Month that was. (Todd Snyder, please invite Peter to your show next year.) Listen here and here.

Mentioned in this issue: Khaite, Catherine Holstein, Benjamin Talley Smith, Brigitte Kleine, Staud, Dries Van Noten, La Ligne, Dôen, Gucci, Jen Rubio, Luca de Meo, Kering, Aritzia, Jennifer Wong, and many, many more…

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Three Things You Should Know…

More on that Jen Rubio store concept: With news that The Webster is selling to Frasers, people were even more chatty than usual about Away co-founder Jen Rubio’s fancy new store, Elsa, set to open in the Meatpacking District in 2027. I’m hearing that Rubio was inspired by once-high-functioning specialty stores Jeffrey and Colette, and that there will be lots of home goods among select fashion pieces. (Don’t expect to see whole collections here.)

In other retail real estate news, Thrive Capital’s Josh Kushner is renting out the Puck Building to one of his portfolio investments, OpenAI, which means that some tenants, including R.E.I., are getting booted. I was hoping that the building might reopen its famous ballroom, which you might remember from the New Year’s Eve scene in When Harry Met Sally. (Friend of Line Sheet Mattie Kahn’s parents got married there.) But, alas!
About that Kering town hall meeting: Yesterday, Kering group C.E.O. Luca de Meo met with 300 or so top-level executives to discuss his plans for the business. The headline is that de Meo essentially said he doesn’t want to rely too heavily on runway show collections to drive sales: 20 percent of revenue should be from capital-F Fashion, with the other 80 percent coming from everything else. Traditionally at Kering, the creative directors had a lot of control over the whole shebang, which made for fast-and-furious successes, but a few car crashes, too. (The best-managed brand at Kering, in my opinion, has long been Saint Laurent, which was already operating along the lines of the 20-80 model, if perhaps a little more reliant on the runway.)

Anyway, this is how it should be. If your big bet is a runway show each season, you’re going to lose sometimes. If you have a good underlying business, the runway can be more experimental, fun, and create good vibes toward the brand. You can also afford to mess up sometimes.

Internally, the sentiment about the Kering meeting is that de Meo was calling for a culture reset, which was expected. It sounds like this guy is being a grownup and managing this group like the giant global business it has become. Paris is no longer Kansas.

Sarah Shapiro

Aritzia’s blowout quarter: On Thursday, Aritzia announced that quarterly revenue had jumped by a third, sending the stock roaring. On the earnings call, management also pointed to several future growth opportunities, including the retailer’s recently relaunched international website (which reportedly doubled sales) and the imminent launch of an app (which C.E.O. Jennifer Wong predicted would capture 20 to 40 percent of digital transactions). Even so, analysts on the call pushed the Canadian retailer to accelerate the timeline for new store openings and renovations: Aritzia has committed to at least 12 new stores in 2026, and to complete the renovation of their Flatiron location in New York.

Obviously, the question isn’t whether Aritzia can grow, but how fast. Trump’s tariffs have already complicated the retailer’s plans by shaving 3 points off their margins, and also derailed their goal to hit their fiscal 2027 targets early. Now, the brand is looking at 15.5 to 16.5 percent adjusted EBITDA margins this year, when they’d otherwise be at 18 to 19 percent.

Now, the main event…

The Week in Shopping: September’s ShopMy Favorites

An exclusive look at what shoppers are craving this fall, from Staud and Loeffler Randall boots to Gucci’s Giglio tote, Khaite’s $600 jeans, La Ligne’s Mini Marin sweater, and other autumnal standards.

Sarah Shapiro

There are countless things we associate with fall, but for Line Sheet readers, shopping has to be the biggest one. Last month, in my ongoing exclusive data partnership with ShopMy, the top sales-driving links across the internet hinted at some of the trends we can expect this season. Now, we have the results from September, and the top 10 converting links—no surprise—were dominated by footwear and denim. (As a reminder, these results reflect the items shoppers clicked on that drove them to a retailer’s platform, not necessarily what they ended up buying.)

It was obviously a strong month for Khaite, which had two pairs of jeans show up on the list: the Kerrie wide leg and the Abigail straight leg, both priced over $600. This tracks with data from Lyst, which showed that demand for Khaite denim spiked 63 percent from August to September. It’s also further evidence that designer and Khaite founder Catherine Holstein, who’s been working with Benjamin Talley Smith, knows what she’s doing with denim. Holstein has found a successful merchandising strategy—shaped with veteran operator Brigitte Kleine, who was installed as C.E.O. two years ago—and Stripes must feel like their $150 million investment in the company, made in March 2023, is paying off.

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While there weren’t any shoes in August’s top 10 list, four pairs appeared in the September roundup: Staud’s Wally boots, Loeffler Randall’s Goldy knee boots, Aeyde’s Sofie ankle boots, and this suede sneaker from Dries Van Noten. Over 50 percent of the Goldy knee boot purchases came from new customers, according to a source, yet another indication that influencer platforms are functioning as acquisition engines rather than just sales channels. (Over 300 creators, according to ShopMy, shared this item.)

Meanwhile, it’s worth noting the appearance of Dries Van Noten’s suede sneaker in the top 10, which suggests that chatter about the demise of the fashion sneaker may be overblown. That said, monthly searches for Adidas’s Sambas are down 32 percent from their 2024 peak, according to Style Analytics. And anyway, boots are what raise retailers’ spirits every September. At Loeffler Randall, they accounted for 40 percent of all footwear sales last month. (Espresso is currently the best-selling colorway.) For Staud, an inside source shared that the Wally and all its iterations made up over half of their sales in the footwear category so far this fall.

Knits, Trenches & Handbags

Beyond footwear and denim, a few other new-ish iterations of fall classics appeared on the list. Naturally, there was a sweater: La Ligne’s Solid Mini Marin, which is part of a knitwear category that accounted for 45 percent of the brand’s total September sales. Notably, the Mini Marin drove more customer acquisition on ShopMy than La Ligne’s own e-commerce site, where returning customers gravitated toward the Solid Lean Lines cardigan. Again, this underscored that different platforms can serve different purposes in the sales funnel.

Otherwise, Dôen’s Lavon pant—the fall evolution of Dôen’s top seller from the summer, the Iona silk lace shorts—claimed the number five spot. Gucci’s Giglo small canvas tote claimed the number nine spot. (At $1,850, it’s the most expensive item on the list, but still an entry-level price point for the luxury brand, along with top sellers like the Hailey oval sunglasses.) And finally, Jenni Kayne’s McCall trench, priced at $795, came in at number 10. (The item quickly became one of their top-five-selling items in the outerwear category after its September 5 launch.)

In short, September’s list seems to validate the strategic bets that brands have been making to drive sales, namely through affiliate marketing and working with platforms like ShopMy to seed products and highlight key items. It will be interesting to see how these brands continue to lean into affiliate marketing, and which of them, or their SKUs, move into October’s top 10.

See you this weekend,
Lauren

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

Puck fashion correspondent Lauren Sherman and a rotating cast of industry insiders take you deep behind the scenes of this multitrillion-dollar biz, from creative director switcheroos to M&A drama, D.T.C. downfalls, and magazine mishaps. Fashion People is an extension of Line Sheet, Lauren’s private email for Puck, where she tracks what’s happening beyond the press releases in fashion, beauty, and media. New episodes publish every Tuesday and Friday.

Puck’s daily art market email, anchored by industry expert Marion Maneker, offers unparalleled access to the mega-auctions and galleries, elite buyers and sellers, and the power players who run this opaque world. Wall Power also features Julie Brener Davich, a veteran of Christie’s and Sotheby’s, who provides unique insights into how the business really works.

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