🚨🚨 Programming note: Tomorrow on Fashion People, Ssense’s Steff Yotka calls in live from Copenhagen Fashion Week. We also discuss Olympian fashion, possible replacements for Peter Hawkings at Tom Ford, and brat-summer fashion (my teeth are clenched). Listen here!

Thanks for all the great feedback on last week’s emails, by the way. Up top, I have a bit of additional intel on what’s happening at Nike, a look at fashion brands backed by wealthy scions that have been successful, and, by popular demand, my thoughts on People’s Choice Award winner Blake Lively’s new haircare line. Also, we take a very short stroll down Outdoor Voices memory lane. This is truly the sort of intel you can’t get anywhere else, so don’t forget to subscribe.

Mentioned in this issue: Tom Ford, Peter Hawkings, Gucci, Domenico De Sole, Kering, Nike, John Donahoe, Phil Knight, Fforme, Ssense, Haider Ackermann, WSA, Pierpaolo Piccioli, Gabriela Hearst, Khaite, Nina Khosla, Phoebe Philo, Blake Lively, Blake Brown, Estée Lauder, Outdoor Voices, Croissant, Rihanna, Jahleel Weaver, Zuck, and many more…

• You can’t just do it: I’ve received a lot more information on what’s happening at Nike, much of which I’ll incorporate into future issues as the story develops. One thing to note, in the meantime, for those of you in the cheap seats: All of Portland whining about C.E.O. John Donahoe is not going to force his exit. For one, this isn’t middle school: A $100 billion market cap company isn’t going to fire its very pedigreed C.E.O. over a viral LinkedIn post. Any sort of change would come from Wall Street analyst rumblings, an institutional investor, an activist, or the board. Also, the company’s revenue has skyrocketed since Donahoe’s arrival, in 2020, hitting $51 billion in its last fiscal year, up from $39 billion in 2019.Also, Donahoe and Phil Knight, Nike’s co-founder and chairman emeritus—a.k.a, the Shoe Dog—are really good buds and serial business partners. Knight has publicly stated multiple times this year that he believes in Donahoe. Plus, there’s not an obvious successor. Donahoe’s deputy, Heidi O’Neill, may not have agreed with Donahoe’s initial strategy, as some executives believe, but she’s behind him now and has thus “made her bed,” as one source put it. (Disagree and commit, in the lingua franca of modern management theory.)

  Internally, people love Craig Williams, the former president of Jordan Brand who was promoted last year to oversee both the wholesale business and supply chain and logistics. But he’s only been with Nike for six years and hasn’t run a public company, and certainly not one that makes twice as much money as Kering. The bottom line: A lot of people have been pushed out of Nike in recent years, they’re upset, and they’re even more upset now that the company has made some missteps. But the sum of Donahoe’s tenure thus far is greater than the last year of turmoil. That may change, but for now, it’s a matter of, You get what you get and you don’t get upset.

• What the global stock market freak-out means for you: Two weeks ago, they were worried about China. Now, it’s the slowing U.S. economy. The Dow was down about 1,000 points today. Let’s do a survey of some of the luxury and retail stocks of interest. LVMH is down 20 percent over the past six months. Abercrombie & Fitch is up 23 percent over the same period. Kering is down 30 percent. Gap Inc. is up 6 percent during that time, but down 5 percent over the past five days. Hermès is even down a bit! The takeaway may be that if your business is reliant on the U.S. or Chinese markets (or a combination of both), these next few months leading up to the election are going to be tough. One of the big mistakes fashion companies (and, I presume, other companies) make is that, when things are good, they hire way too many people and start spending too much money. Then, when things are bad, they have to do layoffs again. Well-run companies (like LVMH) operate leanly at all times. It’s best to always be prepared for the worst, which probably won’t be that bad.
• More on Fforme: Last week, I said I couldn’t think of a brand backed by a wealthy person that got anywhere real. Someone responded and mentioned Gabriela Hearst (funded by the designer’s husband, Austin Hearst) and Khaite (originally supported by Adam Pritzker). I guess I should have clarified and said I’m bearish on brands backed by a benefactor.On G.H.: Gabriela previously had another fashion brand before her namesake, called Candela, which she operated with her ex-husband. It was very successful for a time. She herself is an operator. It’s not as if Austin Hearst was just like, Hey honey, take my money and launch a cute brand. As for Pritzker, once again, this wasn’t just a rich person giving money to a designer he liked. He is a serial entrepreneur who was already operating a whole fashion business—Assembled Brands, which at the time included e-commerce site The Line and its in-house label, Protagonist—before he launched Khaite with Cate Holstein and Vanessa Traina, both of whom had years of industry experience.

  The lesson here is that you have to really want to get in there and gain operational knowhow, otherwise all the money in the world won’t guarantee success. Let’s hope that is Fforme owner Nina Khosla’s intention. I also got some input from a person connected to the brand who is rooting for C.E.O. Joey Laurenti: “I’m hopeful he can turn it around by making clothes a bit more wearable, a bit more special, and a teensy bit less expensive.”

• On the Blake Lively haircare line, Blake Brown: As Rachel Strugatz will tell you, a celebrity-backed beauty brand only works if the product is good and the pitch is convincing. And even then, it’s not guaranteed without exactly the right distribution and marketing strategy. Lively’s mermaid-waves, reminiscent of Dolly Surprise, are the best thing about her image, and I wasn’t as offended by the advertising campaign as some people, who complained that her hair looked dry. (Well, um, it is.) It’s yet another example of Lively being real in a very unreal, Hollywood way. As for the Chiquita Banana outfits she’s been sporting on her It Ends With Us press tour? Look, it gives us something to talk about. I hope the young New York brand Dauphinette sold some dresses in the following days.
• Before anchovies were Lisa Says Gah-worthy: My reporting last week on Croissant and its C.M.O., Outdoor Voices employee No. 1 Andrew Parietti, conjured plenty of mid-2010s nostalgia. One person wrote in to remind me of a 2016 O.V. event at the St. Patrick’s Youth Center gym in SoHo, where there are a lot of fashion shows and sample sales. Los Angeles-based Sqirl catered, passing out mini versions of their sorrel-pesto rice bowl (still the best meal in America), O.V. gave away color-blocked leggings (I wore them out, they were so good), and then-Bon Appétit editor-in-chief Adam Rapoport delivered a “very weird, try-hard speech,” as the reader recalled.It was a fun event. (Check out the lead image on this party coverage from The Daily Front Row featuring Sweetgreen co-founder Nicolas Jammet, Condé Nast outgoing chief revenue officer Pam Drucker Mann, Sqirl chef Jessica Koslow, and Rapoport.) Speaking of: When is the Bon Appétit book coming?

This former Gucci designer very incisively compared that experience with what is currently going down at Tom Ford, the brand, referring to the abrupt exit of creative director Peter Hawkings, the lackluster sales for both women’s and menswear, etcetera. All those years ago, this person told me, the designers put in charge had to adjust quickly to life after the wunderkind: smaller budgets, fewer extravagances, and less tolerated eccentricity. For instance, this person recalled the Spring 2005 men’s runway show, where butterflies from the famous taxidermy store in Paris, Deyrolle, were fastened to the lapels. “I just remember, at the end of the show, going backstage and seeing the butterflies scattered on the floor” as if they were cheap sequins falling off a dress, the former Gucci designer said. It was excessive, wasteful: the remnants of a time of incredible wealth creation for Ford, De Sole, and the Gucci Group.

It was decided fairly early on in the process that Hawkings would be Ford’s replacement—a detail that Hawkings shared quite openly. This seemed like an obvious and brand-affirming choice. In fact, I wrote about it in the very first issue of Line Sheet since it was common knowledge among the London fashion set. And despite dedicating his entire professional life to the service of his mentor, Hawkings soon seemed to be serving a brand of his own.

In the end, it was likely a confluence of factors that cost Hawkings the gig. Here’s hoping he is able to share his side of the story one day. And more importantly, that he is able to move on, because everyone needs to do so. The question of who will replace him remains unanswered. One reader, a luxury exec, pushed back on the idea of Haider Ackermann, which I floated last week. His exit from Berluti was not good, and Canada Goose is doing a lot to make him happy, setting up a design studio in Paris and so forth.

Another doozy of an unfounded rumor concerns Pierpaolo Piccioli, who I’d sooner believe is going to Chanel. To be sure, it’s not going to be as easy for me to find out who is replacing Hawkings as it was for me to discover that he got the job—or that he was leaving, for that matter. On the subject of Ackermann, I get all those reasons that he wouldn’t be right, but what Zegna likely needs is someone who will make beautiful clothes and let the literal suits run the business. Perhaps he’s the best choice after all.

My theory on why and how Mark Zuckerberg has gotten into “Buck Mason, Todd Snyder, and John Elliott”? Instagram ads! [WSJ]

If you’re a fatalist, this podcast might help you reframe your thinking. [Critics at Large]

Bob Lefsetz is very annoyed that Elliot Grainge, son of Universal Music Group C.E.O. Lucian Grainge, husband of Sofia Richie, is now the C.E.O. of Warner’s Atlantic Music Group. (This means he is effectively competing directly with his father. Like, say, if Alexandre Arnault became the C.E.O. of Kering.) Fascinating stuff. [The Lefsetz Letter]

The Ballerina Farm saga continues. [The Times]

Let this look be for a role? [Daily Mail]

Have you ever been to the Ssense store in Montreal? I have! Now, too, has James. [Throwing Fits]

If you, too, couldn’t stop thinking about that story in The New York Times that claims eating too much salami can make you more likely to get dementia, read this funny essay from my friend Sarah. [The Real Sarah Miller]

Why is everything locked up at CVS and Target? Amanda Mull knows the answer! [Bloomberg Businessweek]

Take a look at these uniforms Issey Miyake designed for Lithuania for the 1992 Olympics. [Instagram]

Brock Colyar is the party reporter we need! [New York]

Lane is on the WSA beat! [WSJ]

Becky did a great job explaining what makes Hermès special. [5 Things You Should Buy]

Phoebe Philo in 2002. [Instagram]

I love this guy’s outfit. [Twitter]