And now, the latest at Net-a-Porter…

Back in April 2025, during one of the first town hall meetings following its acquisition of struggling Yoox Net-a-Porter from Richemont, Mytheresa C.E.O. Michael Kliger offered a blunt assessment to his new colleagues. “We need to get shit done,” he said. Now, a year into the journey, some things have gotten done. Mytheresa, for its part, formed LuxExperience, which now owns all these once-bright shopping platforms, and Kliger ascended to C.E.O. of this mini-conglomerate. Among his top agenda items, in the meantime, has been restoring Net-a-Porter, the genre-defining company that Natalie Massenet created many lifetimes ago, in 2000, ushering in the era of online luxury shopping.

In its day, Massenet’s upscale digital emporium combined aspirational and ultra-luxury brands while producing editorial content—from first-rate style guides to celebrity interviews—that could rival the glossies. Unfortunately it all started falling apart, as is often the case, through a series of ill-fated mergers and combinations and moronic executive decisions that have become industry lore. There was the 2015 Yoox merger, which blindsided Massenet and eventually sent her into the higher calling of venture capital, and predictably led to an era of bloat and undifferentiated irrelevance. Then there was Richemont’s controlling investment, in 2018, which was followed by disastrous tech investments, lousy customer service, and more cries from the digital salt mines. Meanwhile, Net-a-Porter’s interim president and C.E.O. from 2022 to 2025, Alison Loehnis, became the public face of a business she had limited ability to reshape. (These days, she’s living the dream as a part-time influencer.) By 2024, NAP found itself caught in the luxury slowdown that forced Farfetch, which was once supposed to buy a near-majority stake in YNAP, to sell itself to Coupang, while Matches collapsed altogether. (A relaunch might happen next year.) And so along came Mytheresa and Kliger, followed by the Germans.

Anyway, Kliger has been true to his word and seems genuinely committed to rekindling the magic that once made Net-a-Porter special. A year ago, he elevated Heather Kaminetsky, a Mytheresa executive who was once Net-a-Porter’s vice president of global marketing, to C.E.O., and allowed her the space to perform some overdue, if obvious, housekeeping. Kaminetsky eliminated more than 100 labels, introduced exclusive capsule collections and V.I.P. events, focused on affluent customers willing to pay full price, yada yada. Last summer, she recruited Claudia Plant, who spent more than a decade at Net-a-Porter before decamping in 2016, as chief brand and customer officer. Kliger also summoned back Toby Bateman, who’d helped launch Mr Porter, to run that brand.

In the old days, Net-a-Porter and Mr Porter established themselves as destinations for the luxury aspirant who starts out buying Me+Em and graduates to The Row. “There is so much room in luxury to fulfill these positions and attract different customers,” Kliger once told me at the time, likely seeking to quash any concerns about a monopoly.

The tension, of course, is that Mytheresa built its reputation on serving the ultra-wealthy luxury shopper through exclusive capsule collections with brands such as Brunello Cucinelli and Bottega Veneta, along with invitation-only experiences like pool parties with Missoni in Ibiza. Under Kliger, Mytheresa emerged as pretty much the only luxury e-tailer standing, thanks to sharp edits of brands that high-net-worth customers actually wear, disciplined marketing spend, and fastidious one-to-one customer experience, such as tracking browsing behavior to identify potential top spenders and giving them perks including free shipping, returns, and access to personal shoppers. Most importantly, Mytheresa resisted the temptation to use aggressive paid marketing to fuel inorganic growth. As a result, it never reached the scale of some competitors, but the business remained manageable and, in most quarters, profitable. Can Kaminetsky achieve something similar? (LuxExperience declined to comment.)

Alas, Net-a-Porter’s results will probably get worse before they get better. In LuxExperience’s fiscal third quarter, sales at Net-a-Porter and Mr Porter declined 12 percent, while EBITDA fell 75 percent. LuxExperience could very well be following the shrink-to-grow philosophy that has become common across luxury retail. Yet the declines also highlight a flaw in the strategy: Net-a-Porter is not Mytheresa. NAP still has the strongest “brand” in the market, but it sacrificed some of that singular quality in the name of growth under Richemont. A prominent multibrand retail veteran recently told me that fashion-literate women in their circle talk more about Moda Operandi than Net-a-Porter.

Facing renewed competition, Net-a-Porter and Mr Porter are overhauling their editorial operations. I’m told that Plant hasn’t sugarcoated the need for the content to improve. Notable departures—last November, Net-a-Porter’s fashion director Kay Barron left to start a video-first shopping app, and content director Alice Casely-Hayford likewise left in February—weren’t necessarily related to the new regime. Nevertheless, Net-a-Porter is pushing less content to YouTube, including its popular fashion challenge. As I wrote last week, Mr Porter laid off several editorial employees last month, including head of content Finlay Renwick. That came after the 700 layoffs that occurred between November 2025 and March 2026.

Insiders tell me that Net-a-Porter and Mr Porter are migrating to Mytheresa’s in-house e-commerce software platform, even though that latter tech apparently isn’t as efficient as NAP’s, which can troubleshoot shipping delays and product returns faster. During a staff meeting last fall, Kaminetsky acknowledged that Mytheresa’s software was imperfect, according to a source who heard the remarks, but asserted it was good enough—a significant risk in a business largely predicated on customer experience.

At the same time, Net-a-Porter and Mr Porter are improving conditions for valuable brand partners. One IYKYK menswear label, which ships around €200,000 worth of goods to the e-tailer each season, told me its buying budget at Mr Porter has tripled in the last year, and that its sell-through before markdown increased 50 percent year over year for the spring 2026 season. Meanwhile, people in and around the business have a lot of confidence in Kliger, Bateman, and Kaminetsky. Kliger, after all, made Mytheresa the online luxury standard while the industry was reeling, and Kaminetsky was a key deputy in that effort. Bateman, meanwhile, has been described as “Mr Porter himself.” As the multibrand veteran commented, “They’ve got good people over there. It’s not going to happen overnight.”

Gwyneth Paltrow simply cannot help herself! [Entertainment Weekly]

Christopher Bailey has saved a historic British pottery firm from extinction. He is truly kind. [Financial Times]

Rachael Proud, the designer behind Raey, Matches Fashion’s beloved in-house line, has a new job designing Dagmar. Good, because she’s really good. [British Vogue]

It’s simply too much! [Josh O’Connor Looking Incredibly Cute and Perfect in Dior]

Here is a quick analysis of the Gracie Abrams Vogue cover: She is incredibly beautiful. The images are clear and a few are striking. I wish it didn’t feel so empty. But maybe that’s just a reflection of our time. [Vogue]

Until tomorrow,
Lauren

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