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| Hi, and welcome back to Line Sheet. I had a fab time last night at our private dinner with Marc Metrick, Tracy Margolies, and Roopal Patel from Saks, plus a bunch of Line Sheet superstars (who happen to be readers, too). These off-the-record, fun-as-heck get-togethers are one of my favorite things about how we operate at Puck. If you were there, I hope you enjoyed the conversation. Thank you to Eric Van Gelder for making sure everyone had a drink, and to Brigade’s Max Stein for knowing when to tell me no. For those interested in co-hosting a dinner with me, hit up best-dressed Puckster Alexandra@puck.news for more info.
The marathon to the Met begins tonight, which means I’ll be out and about as much as I am physically able. (If your party’s start time is 11 p.m… let’s have coffee the day after instead.)
🚨🚨 Programming note: Stylist Kate Young is on tomorrow’s episode of Fashion People, my new podcast, talking Met Gala. She’s been dealing with this thing for more than 20 years—first as a young editor at Vogue and now as a person who dresses celebrities. She remembers a lot. Subscribe and listen here.
Today, for your reading pleasure, a jam-packed issue: I’ve got the scoop on what’s going on behind the scenes at Matches and Net-a-Porter, an update on the Old Navy situation (plus Sandra Stangl’s long-awaited exit from Banana), and a theory on the whole Marc Jacobs pseudo-drama.
Mentioned in this issue: The Met Gala, Anna Wintour, the Condé Union, LVMH, Marc Jacobs, Bernard Arnault, Frasers, Matches, Net-a-Porter, Johann Rupert, Anne Hathaway, Neiman Marcus Group, Zac Posen, Behnaz Ghahramani, Gap Inc., and many, many more… |
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- Are any celebs going to show up to the Met?: This is turning out to be one of the trickier Met Gala seasons for Anna Wintour & Co. Everything will likely be fine on Monday night, but there are more P.R. fires currently ablaze than before any other gala in recent memory. The first issue is the potential Condé Nast union strike. It doesn’t seem like many (if any) Vogue staffers are going to participate, although the union’s strike permit is in the works, I’m told.If they do strike, would actors boycott the gala in solidarity, à la Anne Hathaway walking out of the Vanity Fair photo shoot back in December? My assumption is no—no one wants to mess with Anna. Also, this is technically a fundraiser for the museum, a notion that gives celebrities air cover to walk the steps no matter the circumstances. They may wear a pin, like they did at the Oscars, and they may avoid the Vogue livestream, but I don’t think this warrants bailing out.
Then there are the potential Gaza protests. And maybe climate protests, too? Also, there is the whole TikTok sponsorship question, although I suspect that’ll be much ado about nothing. Yes, President Biden just signed a bill forcing ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parentco, to sell the company’s U.S. operations. But this drama is far from over and, in more pleasant news, the company’s licensing battle with Universal was resolved today. Also, fashion people love TikTok. They don’t care! Wintour has been extracting money from Big Tech for years now—Apple, Amazon, and Instagram have all been leading sponsors of the gala—and knows that the fashion industry increasingly relies on TikTok for marketing, and there’s not going to be any material pushback from brands who bought tables.
- Some more Gap Inc. intel: Whoa, I got a lot of feedback on that Zac Posen report card. Some comments came from people at Gap Inc., insisting that Richard Dickson was already doing what I said he should be—shrinking the businesses in order to grow it, and that the company’s quarterly earnings report later this month will validate his early success. I hope it’s true for the sake of the brands, the Fisher family, the shareholders—and most importantly, the consumer!—but forgive my skepticism. It’s been a tough 15 years for this business, and I have heard this song and dance before. Dickson is different from the previous Gap Inc. leaders, so maybe he can pull it off. However, a couple of okay quarters does not a revolution make.In other news, several Old Navy executives jumped out of the woodwork to voice their disagreement over my depiction of C.M.O. Behnaz Ghahramani. They thought I was “very polite.” Look, people complain about other people to me all the time, and I am loath to say someone is doing a bad job without concrete evidence. But this cohort suggested that I underplayed the tension between Ghahramani—whose background is in luxury and mid-priced fashion—and the staff. In particular, they cited a recently conducted, months-long marketing department audit that interrogated her way of working and how it’s affecting the company. (In her past life as the C.E.O. of Brother Vellies, Ghahramani also had a strained relationship with founder Aurora James, I’m told.)
Some team members said that Ghahramani simply does not understand fast fashion or the Old Navy customer. Last week, Ghahramani apologized to the marketing department in a meeting. “It was embarrassing and tough to see a C.M.O. not be held truly accountable for bad behavior and poor performance,” one person said. (A rep for Gap Inc. said the company does not comment on rumors or speculation.)
What I do know is that Ghahramani has made an effort to remain in Posen’s good graces. (For his part, Posen was once again described as “nice.”) As for the rest of the Gap universe: Dickson finally announced yesterday that Sandra Stangl is out as president of Banana Republic. (I reported last fall that her days were numbered.) In his note, Dickson said that he is still searching for a replacement, but there are already rumors that Gap president and company lifer Mark Breitbard may be headed back to Banana as C.E.O., and that Posen might dip his toes into Banana, too.
- Is LVMH entertaining a sale of Marc Jacobs?: On Tuesday, Bloomberg dropped a hand grenade on the fashion industry with a report that LVMH was considering offloading Marc Jacobs after completing a turnaround of the once-beleaguered brand. LVMH “strongly denied” the report.What happened here that would convince Bloomberg that it had a scoop but also allow LVMH to vehemently deny it? Did LVMH executives engage in a meeting or two with potential suitors? Possibly. After all, Marc Jacobs is an attractive business: The brand generates more than a half a billion dollars a year in sales and was on track, as of 2022, to hit a billion by 2027, according to my own reporting. While growth may have slowed over the past year, the brand would be the crown jewel of many lesser portfolios. And it’s probably just the right size to avoid Lina Khan’s wrath. Regardless, LVMH executives meet with people all the time about all kinds of futuristic, hypothetical scenarios—including, yes, buying and selling brands. It usually doesn’t mean anything.
Of course, it wouldn’t be the first time that LMH had at least considered the possibility of selling or spinning off the brand. After the successful Michael Kors I.P.O. in 2011, LVMH—which sold its stake in Kors in 2001—fantasized about doing the same thing with Marc Jacobs. At that point, MJ had a huge contemporary business, Marc x Marc, successful fragrances, and critical adulation. But things went awry when the company collapsed its main and contemporary collections into one offering—a trendy concept at the time, but a tactic that nevertheless messed up the retail distribution and generally confused customers. Sales diminished. There was even talk of Marc Jacobs, himself, exiting. In 2018, the luxury group covertly hired designer John Targon to work in parallel to Jacobs on a commercial line, then fired Targon two months later.
Eventually, C.E.O. Eric Marechalle, who joined in the middle of all this chaos from LVMH’s Kenzo, got the house in order by letting Jacobs do what he does best—design runway collections with limited distribution. They launched Heaven, a sub-brand that conjured the Jacobs of his youth, and gently priced MJ’s new-and-improved handbags to compete with Michael Kors and Coach. Incredibly, it worked, and put the brand in a better position than it had been in years, affording LVMH access to the semi-price-sensitive fashion consumer.
Of course, Bernard Arnault has sold off beloved brands—including Christian Lacroix, the first he ever incubated, his stake in Kors, and Donna Karan International to schmatta shiller G-111. You don’t become the world’s wealthiest man by being sentimental. But Marc Jacobs is different. Jacobs, himself, is still very much a part of culture, and a significant contributor to LVMH myth-making. There are currently plans to relaunch Jacobs’ defunct cosmetics line, this time with fragrance partner Coty. And many people I talk to have expressed a desire to see the designer end up at Chanel. As I wrote a few weeks back, both Jacobs and John Galliano made Arnault a lot of money at Louis Vuitton and Dior, respectively, and still convey tremendous value. Arnault is behooved to keep Jacobs close, away from competitors. Letting go of him wouldn’t be a good look for anyone, no matter what that Bloomberg story says.
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| On Monday, British retail group Frasers bought back the intellectual property of Matches, the bankrupt company it acquired late last year for a pittance—only to subsequently realize that its prospects were vanquished and its debts insurmountable. What’s going on here? Well, since Frasers put the business into administration—the British equivalent to Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection—it’s perfectly legal for the group to buy back the I.P. without buying back all the debts. So most, if not all, of the brand partners owed money by Matches will never see it.This transaction doesn’t mean Frasers will try to rehabilitate the business, however. On the contrary, I’m told Frasers executives have been properly admonished that many major brands will not work with them. Fashion is built on relationships, and Tom and Ruth Chapman, the founders of Matches, were famous for them. Frasers may be viewed as a déclassé organization with a downstairs founder—a major turn-off for snobby fashion execs—but the bigger issue is that most of the Matches remainders, especially the most senior leadership, didn’t have connections with these brands. They were also hellbent on scale, whereas Matches perennially loved to brag that its average order value was among the highest in the industry—a detail, of course, that seemed to confirm that it was patronized by true luxury shoppers. Anyway, all that brand equity has been vaporized in a flash. |
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In a clinical study, eighty-six percent of women reported improved hair growth after taking Nutrafol Women’s Hair Growth Supplement for six months. Women also reported visibly thicker lashes and brows, reduced feelings of stress and supported sleep quality.
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| Once Frasers knew several of the big brands were out, they likely figured they’d never be able to pay off the existing debts. Meanwhile, they may profit from the stock they are still selling—not only via the site but also, as I previously reported, marketplaces like Walmart.com. My guess is that Frasers will hold on to the Matches I.P. for as long as it needs: either forever, or whenever an unexpected buyer comes along.It’s a real shame for the executives who built Matches, and for its loyal customers, but especially for the young brands waiting on six-figure checks. Now, some of them will not survive. Alas, as I told one friend running a still-new, sub-$10 million business: You have to get used to these semi-cyclical disruptions. Barneys New York and Opening Ceremony were the casualties of 2019, Neiman Marcus was 2020. Retailers going bankrupt to clear debt is not a new phenomenon, and it will continue to happen. Interestingly, there were no takers for the email database. Or for the Raey in-house label, which has a great designer in Rachael Proud. Maybe it just wasn’t worth it. |
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| In the end, it seems that investors view Net-a-Porter as the retailer most worth saving, largely because of its first-mover advantage. Net-a-Porter earned customers’ trust from the beginning, and their loyalty, too. Even with all of its challenges over the last decade—from the infamous tech replatforming and logistics nightmare to general mismanagement by its overlords—the company remains the only name in online luxury that really matters.So perhaps it’s no surprise that there are three bidders to acquire it, with final proposals due within a week or so, I’m told. Apparently, even if all three bidders were to pull out, Richemont chairman Johann Rupert would consider splitting the Yoox and Net-a-Porter businesses apart and selling them to separate acquirers. (My hunch is that Yoox, the Italian off-price retailer, is not long for this world, regardless.) |
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| Who are the bidders? I’ve reported on the early whispers of Bain Capital, which would be a financial investor. (The company declined to comment.) The strategic name that keeps coming up, time and again, is Mytheresa—the German Net-a-Porter mini-me, whose careful C.E.O., Michael Kliger, has kept the business admirably focused amid his decade in charge, free of the distractions that marred Farfetch and the growth pressures that ruined Matches and, to an extent, Net-a-Porter.Mytheresa, which used to be part of the Neiman Marcus Group, now trades on the New York Stock Exchange, where the shares are “seriously undervalued,” as one retail executive put it, dragged down because of trouble in the sector, less because of the company’s performance. (This is not investment advice.) I was told this week that Mytheresa had hired J.P. Morgan to explore options, whether that means the purchase of Net-a-Porter, a take-private, or a combination. (J.P. Morgan and Mytheresa both declined to comment.) If Mytheresa and Net-a-Porter were to combine in some capacity, my hunch is that Kliger would become group C.E.O. and attempt to apply his methods to Net-a-Porter and Mr. Porter, which remain far more well-known. Maybe brand does matter after all. |
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| Nike really has to reissue these shorts. [GQ]A good note on the menswear guy. [Twitter]
But… who would want out immediately? The privilege! [NYMag]
Jeffrey Kalinsky left Theory. Beloved figure, but it probably wasn’t the best fit. He told Lisa Lockwood it was his decision. But just an F.Y.I., there were several layoffs at the company the same week, including Theory Project designer Lucas Ossendrijver. [WWD]
The origins of the I Told Ya t-shirt. [Town & Country]
A great, old Met Gala look. [Twitter]
A lip tint P.S.A. [Sofia Coppola x Augustinus Bader] |
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| And finally… Happy birthday, Rosie!!Until Monday,
Lauren |
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| FOUR STORIES WE’RE TALKING ABOUT |
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| Sharidise Lost |
| Divulging the details of the Ellison-RedBird Paramount bid. |
| WILLIAM D. COHAN |
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