Hi, and welcome to Line Sheet. I heard some of you are not in Greece, but are in Italy, or Denmark, or floating on a body of water instead. This weekend, I went to Legoland. (In Carlsbad, not Billund.)

🚨🚨 A programming note: Tomorrow, New York Times reporter Jessica Testa is back on Fashion People to discuss the Miu Miu girl, the Olympics Closing Ceremonies, not being in Europe, and more! Subscribe here.

Today, I check in on Phoebe Philo & Co., offer the requisite European intel, and address the Kanye-archive catastrophe. Finally: Is it over for the Apple Watch? (No, but…)

While I have you, let me remind you that Puck is awesome and is only getting better every day. Join us.

Mentioned in this issue: Phoebe Philo, Patrik Silén, Tom Ford, Haider Ackermann, Kanye West, the Yeezy archives, Nicolas Ghesquière, Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Jonathan Anderson, LVMH, Apple Watch fatigue, Dora Fung, the Olympics, Dimepiece, Stella McCartney, Cristaseya, Karen Bass, Billie Eilish, Ralph Lauren, L’Avenue, slacks, and more.

• The Haider Ackermann for Tom Ford campaign continues: Ackermann—current creative director of Canada Goose, former creative director of Berluti, and founder of a namesake, currently defunct, brand—keeps bubbling up in conversations. I hear that an announcement regarding the Peter Hawkings replacement could be made as early as September.
• I know, I know, Nicolas Ghesquière isn’t leaving Louis Vuitton: But one faithful, well-connected Line Sheet reader still wants to know: What if he got the Chanel job? We’ve discussed him assuming that role before, remember? What if he left and Jonathan Anderson took Louis Vuitton womenswear? For what it’s worth, in the real world, it doesn’t sound like Chanel is anywhere near making a decision.
• Who won the Olympics… other than LVMH?: Sure, Nike and Skims didn’t fare all that badly, but I’d posit that Omega, the Swatch-owned watch brand and the “official timekeeper” of the Olympic Games, popped up more in my Instagram feed than any other, simply because they hosted a lot of editors and influencers at the so-called Omega House, a takeover of an 18th century mansion in the 7th arrondissement. (Paris P.R. extraordinaire Lucien Pagès ran the show.) Nicole Kidman, Cindy Crawford, her daughter Kaia Gerber, and Michael Phelps all showed up. So did Dora Fung. Best of all worlds.

I don’t care about any of that. I do care, however, that West (or someone in his inner circle) has apparently lost access to a storage locker filled with Yeezy samples, sketches, patterns, pieces from his Sunday Services, and gold masks from West’s Nebuchadnezzar opera performance with Vanessa Beecroft at the Hollywood Bowl in 2019. Why these materials were in a storage locker is anyone’s guess. But if a person forgets—or fails—to pay for their storage unit, it typically goes up for auction or is sold by the storage facility. And it seems like no one in the inner circle knows who is in charge here. West’s longtime music producer Mike Dean chimed in on one TikTok post, suggesting that the collection may belong to him.

No matter who it belongs to, it contains quite a bit of confidential, and proprietary, information. “Archives are so precious,” as a luxury executive with ties to West said to me. And yet, thinking about West’s trajectory between his “White Lives Matter” show in Paris in 2022 and his semi-pariah status today, the value of those archives has obviously diminished. (What museum would want them in its permanent archive now?)

My position on West has always been that if he can continue to move product, he’ll have a place in the industry. (His appearance at the Marni show in Milan last fall surprised only a few Americans.) Perhaps he’ll continue being invited to the party, whether or not there is something to buy. Fashion is a circus, after all.

After initial skepticism from the fashion industry and consumers alike, the Apple Watch trounced smartwatch and fitness tracker competitors—Nike eliminated their Nike+ FuelBand—and threatened sales of traditional watches at the affordable and entry-level luxury price points. In the end, though, Apple didn’t overtake the watch industry, or even the smartwatch industry. Watches thrived at the low and very high end and continue to do so, despite lagging sales in China. Apple’s real feat here was creating a new hybrid category—a blend of performance and lifestyle, like a pair of Lululemon leggings—in which it was the only player.

But the Apple Watch also accomplished something else, especially with younger consumers, that I don’t think the company could have anticipated: It conjured interest in other watches. Despite its business-model challenges, watch aficionado site Hodinkee grew exponentially during the rise of the Apple Watch. By the time I moved to Los Angeles, in 2020, I was closely following Dimepiece, Brynn Wallner’s publication about women wearing and collecting watches, and was itching for something nicer, but feared I couldn’t shake my health tracking addiction. First, I traded up to an Hermès Apple Watch. And by my 40th birthday, I had traded up once more, to a jewelry watch. Over the past two years, I’ve worn the Apple Watch less and less (mostly for running, and sometimes not even then) and my classic Swiss more and more. It looks better.

In 2016, just a year after the first Watch was released, Apple sponsored the Met Gala. During the cocktail party, I decided to count the number of Apple Watches I spied on guests. At least 10 women were wearing them—I don’t remember if I counted myself—and I assumed there were plenty of men, too, whose watches were hidden by their jacket sleeves. (No matter that it’s poor etiquette to wear a watch to a formal event unless the face is covered, or it’s a pocket watch.) Today, I wonder if I would see more, or fewer, Apple Watches in that room. I think we all know the answer.

And now, some news and notes on Phoebe Philo…

The feedback, in some ways, highlighted the often totally unfair challenge facing Phoebe Philo, a startup brand founded by a world-famous designer. On some level, who cares if a refund takes months, not weeks: That’s typical startup stuff. The rollout of the British designer’s namesake line, following a tortured two-year development process, hasn’t been that much more dysfunctional than other newly launched companies, which are generally riddled with logistics muck-ups, frustrating customer service interactions, and wonky U.X. design. It’s just that most fashion startups can’t feel the weight of the industry on their shoulders. They don’t have a famous founder, and they aren’t backed by LVMH.

While much of this criticism is unfair and sour grapes, it’s often a proxy for another observation. There’s no doubt that Philo has shifted the current fashion conversation with her strong sense of self and gut-driven designs. Consumers, after all, are hunting for real clothes—pieces that make people feel comfortable, but also competent and sexy—and Philo’s new offering fits the bill. The return of Philo also heralded the return of the designer. Since her debut, many of her peers—John Galliano, Sarah Burton, Haider Ackermann, Stefano Pilati, and Marc Jacobs—have been floated in conversations about jobs at big fashion houses. Just a few years ago, those jobs were going to resolute creative directors: people who may not be able to sketch, or drape, but know how to delegate.

Sure, with her new brand, Philo is once again influencing the high street, reinforcing the return of the cargo pant as a fashion item, fueling Cos and the Frankie Shop for years to come. Popped collars, chalky yellow, and serif fonts are back. But there’s been no crash-bang moment akin to the Céline days, when the world realized Philo was it. Back then, of course, Instagram and TikTok did not exist. Today, there are a million tiny ideas floating around, which means the big ideas feel smaller, too.

Also, unlike at Chloé and Celine, Philo has now endeavored to build her own company—taking on ample responsibilities that Richemont and LVMH once managed for her. There have been unsurprising growing pains along the way. Managing director Patrik Silén, who was basically performing the duties of a C.E.O, left the business in late June, according to Companies House, the U.K. business registrar. In fashion, of course, the people who start a company are rarely the ones who help grow it, and almost never the ones who sell it. But Philo and her husband (and business partner) Max Wigram took their time choosing Silén, a longtime McKinsey guy who spent a couple of years working on strategy at Asos before joining PP. And Silén wasn’t just a hired gun. Philo and Wigram granted senior leadership—including Silén, Adam Anders, Joaquim Figueiredo, and Christiane Juergensen—equity in the business. (Besides the couple and these executives, a U.K. subsidiary of LVMH owned about a quarter of the company as of February 2024, according to a filing.)

It’s no surprise that Silén left—whether he was fired (the word on the street) or simply found a new job. Early-stage startups are prone to conflicting visions and management styles. Philo is a visionary founder who understands and detests the shortcomings of the fashion system—the waste, the archaic design-to-retail process, the undermining of working mothers—but has never before worked outside of that system. LVMH is there to support and advise, but this is Philo and Wigram’s project—they are the ones making the decisions, for better or for worse. But looking back on the past year—the haute-filth imagery, the initial drop, the Bergdorf Goodman pop-up—it’s impossible not to wonder: Are they just getting started, or will they never really start?

And then there’s distribution: There’s only so much product Philo can move by selling through her website and a single shop-in-shop. If Philo could go back in time, would she have employed a more traditional strategy of selling at department stores, and maybe even hosting some sort of Fashion Week event?

But it’s also fair to blame the company’s execution. It’s no surprise that Philo, who clearly covets control, chose to sell direct-to-consumer, via private appointments, before eventually creating one physical pop-up (inside Bergdorf, the only store in America where that would have made sense). It’s not dissimilar from the approach pioneered by Cristaseya, a brand Philo is said to have studied, or even Attersee, Isabel Wilkinson Schor’s fabric-driven essentials line, both of which owe a great deal aesthetically to Philo’s Céline. The difference is that these brands’ prices, while high, are perceived as downright gentle to anyone who regularly shops designer. With Phoebe Philo, there’s been so much hullabaloo over the pricing—the $8,000 handbags, the $9,200 gathered waist leather jacket, the too-expensive-to-list spangle dress.

Perhaps Philo is playing a long game, and remains confident that selling direct, and outside of the traditional calendar, is better for the business, and better for her. Perhaps, as we head into September, we’ll see some change in the strategy—one that allows her to better take advantage of her ability to shape the culture of clothes. Perhaps nothing will change. Either way, it seems like she and Wigram are learning an age-old lesson: Even for the famous, startups are hard.

Lockstep individualism: A great reminder that none of us is special. [WaPo via A Thing or Two]

I love Beverly Nguyen’s whole situation, and now a bunch of 65-year-old wealthy white people will know about it as well, since she’s been featured in Styles. [NYT]

Did you know that Arizona State University took over FIDM? This is sort of a crazy story and probably warrants a larger story about ASU and higher education in America, etcetera. [WWD]

A deep dive on Bowling Green, Kentucky, the Ozempic capital of America. This. Is. A. Book. [Bloomberg]

I loved Halie LeSavage’s feature on Pico, a Copenhagen store that sells hair clips, bows, scrunchies, and the like. It’s become a destination. I want to go, even though I only wear scrunchies in the house. Hey, Halie: When one of the newspapers copies your story and doesn’t credit you, don’t worry, know that I know. [Marie Claire]

Forget about Blake and Britney for a minute and remember this incredible Steven Meisel-shot Versace campaign from 2000. [Date With Versace]

Gap is updating its stock ticker to… GAP. [WWD]

Until Wednesday,
Lauren