Hi, and welcome back to Line Sheet. So glad we don’t have to talk tariffs. I’m home in Los Angeles after a fast and (hardly) furious trip to New York.
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To make advancing to the Inner Circle worth your while, I’m catching you up on various popular storylines—from the Prada-Versace deal that finally materialized and Maria Grazia Chiuri’s future at LVMH to the latest at Vanity Fair (the job posting has posted) and a change at Chrome Hearts. A friendly reminder: I am prepping a spring mailbag issue and would love to answer any and all of your questions. Just hit reply to this email, or DM me on social media, or whatever. Or text! You have my number.
Programming note: Tomorrow on Fashion People, my guest is Marc Metrick, C.E.O. of Saks Global. During our conversation, Marc addressed pretty much
everything that’s going on there, from the payment issues to what’s happening with the downtown Dallas store. This is a must-listen. Do so here or here.
Mentioned in this issue: The Prada family, Versace, Lorenzo Bertelli, Vanity Fair, Maria Grazia Chiuri, Dior, LVMH, Silvia Venturini Fendi, Matt DiGiacomo, Chrome Hearts, elastic-waist pants, Davide De Giglio, HommeGirls, John Elliott, Salone del Mobile, and many more…
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Three Things You Should Know...
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- The Vanity Fair E.I.C. search diaries: The job listing was posted yesterday. No surprise that the title is global editorial director, which is sort of like the sad desk salad of LinkedIn. The job description sounds like it was written by ChatGPT: The ideal candidate needs to be a good line editor but also an amazing public speaker, know how to run a business, have a lot of great contacts, love hosting events, and be a motivational leader, but also handle all the crap that comes with working at Condé Nast for way less money than any predecessor.I actually know a few people who possess all (or 85 percent) of these skills, but they won’t want this job because it’s going to be very hard to be creative, and build the right team, without the necessary resources. I’d guess that whenever Condé Nast finally makes this hire, they will make a point of saying that they are ramping up investment. But the reality is that it takes a couple years to reimagine a brand, and it will be impossible to do so without a dedicated team, and while stemming declining revenue. As we all know, most of Condé Nast is now run via the hub model, with teams like marketing, audience development, and copyediting working across titles. It’s hard to grow after so much cutting, and even harder to create distinct cultural products after so much centralization.The few magazines that really work today—New York, The New Yorker, and, to an extent, Vogue—have dedicated teams. Anyway, this is an impossible task, and while I will keep you abreast of successor speculation, we should all be prepared to be disappointed.
- Maria Grazia’s final run at Dior: In European circles this past week, there were a lot of conversations about the future of Maria Grazia Chiuri, the current womenswear designer at Dior whose exit is expected sometime in mid-2025, likely after her Resort show in Rome in late May. (On April 15, she’ll show her Pre-Fall 2025 collection in Kyoto.)It seems that, pretty recently, Chiuri came to some sort of agreement with LVMH. Whether that means an exit from the group or a move to Fendi (or another LVMH-owned brand) is still unclear. As I mentioned earlier this week, it may be prudent for LVMH to ask Silvia Venturini Fendi to continue designing both menswear and womenswear collections over the next year as Chiuri comes to terms with a possible move. Venturini Fendi’s recent womenswear collection was well received; she’ll probably be the final Fendi family member involved with the business; and, given the economic outlook for 2025, now is perhaps not the time to invest in a refresh. (LVMH does not typically invest when things aren’t good, especially at smaller brands.)But I hope Chiuri takes this appointment; it would be a shame for LVMH to lose her altogether. She is a fantastic commercial designer, and while the job at Dior has made her very rich, people who like to work like to work, and landing at a house based in her hometown of Rome would be a nice final act of a remarkable career.
Regardless, the way this has all played out is unfortunate, and will not only put a damper on what should be a celebratory exit, but also zap some of the excitement out of Jonathan Anderson’s arrival. Of course, that’ll change fast—once he gets going, the entire industry will freak—but again, this has been a public relations disaster for LVMH that needs to be remedied soon.
- The most important creative director move nobody is talking about: Earlier this week, I read my partner Marion Maneker’s dispatch from Matt DiGiacomo’s art show with great interest. DiGiacomo, after all, has been the creative director of Chrome Hearts—arguably the most important luxury brand in America—and a collaborator with the brand before that. (He met co-owners Richard and Laurie Lynn Stark by, at one point, dating their daughter Jesse Jo, who also works in the business.) Turns out, as Marion reported in his excellent email, Wall Power, DiGiacomo left Chrome Hearts a little less than a year ago.Given Chrome Hearts’s outsize, if under-the-radar, contributions to the American fashion industry, why has no one noticed? Well, we know why. The Starks are notoriously private and do very little traditional press. And really, Chrome Hearts is the Starks, in all their tarnished silver glory. DiGiacomo was but a visitor. (A rep for Chrome Hearts didn’t respond to a request for comment.)
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Now, on to the news of the day…
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Prada’s $1.4 billion acquisition of Versace provides a mini-bailout for Capri and a soft landing for Donatella. But the stakes are much higher for the Prada family: This deal represents an expensive opportunity to transform a beloved brand, further elevate Miu Miu, and allow an heir to create the empire that foiled his parents.
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As recently as yesterday, it wasn’t clear whether the Prada Group’s acquisition of Versace would actually happen. Trump’s tariffs and the bond market were screwing everything up, obviously, but the Prada family also appeared to be stalling. According to The Wall Street Journal, they hadn’t yet signed the paperwork. I wondered whether the family, which owns an 80 percent controlling stake in the business, had gotten cold feet. After all, they’re purchasing a deeply troubled company that will need a near-complete overhaul—all in the midst of a trade war, a likely global recession, and a faltering Chinese economy. Few would have criticized them for walking away.
In the end, though, I heard that the market fluctuation was simply making pricing a little tricky. And the press release—sent today by the Prada Group at an artfully imprecise 2:34 p.m. CET—indicated that the cash offer of €1.25 billion ($1.4 billion) would be “subject to adjustments at closing.” But that’s right around the ~€1.5 billion price that had been whispered during the past few weeks (and previewed right here). Capri’s weather-beaten C.E.O., John Idol, got his deal, and will be able to use the cash to help fund the turnaround of Michael Kors, the brand that funded the acquisition of Versace in the first place.
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On the Capri side, investors did not initially respond well to the news, with the stock dipping around 13 percent as trading opened. I guess the market thought that Capri could potentially get much closer to what the company paid for Versace a mere seven years ago. Guess what, though, they couldn’t. The stock started to crawl back up within a couple of hours. Anyway, analysts were more bullish. Simeon Siegel over at BMO gave Capri an outperform rating, noting that the flip from net debt to net cash was “not yet being reflected in shares and represents a compelling opportunity beyond the specific announcement event.” Here’s hoping for Idol and the team.
Over at the Prada Group, this potentially transformative move could have ripple effects across the industry. The company, which is currently listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, also saw its stock price dip about 6 percent in after-hours trading. But while the acquisition of Versace—a business that generates less than $1 billion annually in sales—doesn’t feel as if it could move the overall needle, this acquisition will almost inevitably shift the power dynamic in Europe, where Prada continues to grow as the majority of its competitors shrink.
In the past five years, the group’s sales have more than doubled—from €2.3 billion in 2020 to €5.43 billion last year. In 2024, Kering-owned Gucci’s sales were €7.7 billion, down from a peak of €10.5 billion in 2022. While LVMH doesn’t break out sales of its individual brands, its fashion and leather goods division shrunk last year by more than a billion euros. Sure, Versace is a blip to LVMH. Anyone over at Avenue Montaigne would dismiss this deal as inconsequential. But luxury is still a long game, and something more is afoot here.
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The Apotheosis of Lorenzo
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In fashion, we like to talk about market share versus mindshare. In recent years, both Prada and Miu Miu have gained mindshare, landing at the top of Lyst’s hottest brand ranking time and again, selling logo after logo long after every other logo started feeling passé. The magic is real. And now, as capital-F Fashion moves away from fetishizing so-called normal clothes—from logo merch to bourgeois staples—Versace presents a perfect opportunity.
Whatever you thought of Donatella Versace’s final show in Milan this past March, it was a spark of an idea: Let Them Have Bad Taste. The puffed-out miniskirts in baroque archive prints and silk-lined leather jackets were kinda bonkers, sure, but they were also pretty enticing. And it’s something Dario Vitale, if he’s as talented as promised, should be able to hook into. The Prada Group is fortunate—coincidence or not—that Vitale witnessed, and played a pivotal role in, the transformation of Miu Miu, and understands how the sausage gets made.
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And yet, it’s not going to be a cheap fix. Prada is raising €1.5 billion in debt to buy Versace. Once the deal closes, the turnaround operation is also going to require a massive capital expenditure, likely exacerbated by Trump’s simmering trade war. One benefit for the Prada Group, as I’ve mentioned before, is that Versace has great real estate, some of which can be converted to Miu Miu stores to further expand that rapidly growing business. It’s going to take at least two years to get Versace in the right place, and the plans may be stalled by the macro environment.
But all in all, this could be the beginning of a happy ending for Versace, and the beginning of Lorenzo Bertelli’s true ascendance. The 36-year-old son of Patrizio Bertelli and Miuccia Prada, and currently their only child entrenched in the business, is being groomed to take over the company sooner than later. The industry is much different from when his parents first attempted (and failed) to build an empire, back in the ’90s, via the acquisitions of Jil Sander and Helmut Lang. The competition is far fiercer, and better capitalized, among other factors. Let’s see whether Bertelli fils can avoid the traps that enfeebled his parents.
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I don’t love how this person got there, but I agree with the final conclusion, which is that elastic-waist pants are usually not the answer. [ Hate Read]
HommeGirls, the fashion magazine that understands that magazines are brands, has unleashed one fabulous cover after another, starting with Jennie from Blackpink (she’s so pretty) and following up with Shygirl and Natasha Lyonne. I hear Friday’s debut will be Alaïa-centered and Saturday is a Renell Medrano self-portrait. As we all know very well, magazines aren’t really the medium these days, but images with feeling still hit. Click through, it’ll make you happy. [ Instagram]
Last week, Sarah revealed that middling American menswear line John Elliott was in a tough sitch. Sarah heard rumblings that Authentic Brands Group was considering acquiring the I.P., but in the end it was actually Authentic Luxury Group, the joint venture between ABG and Saks Global. I hope Jean Palmieri appreciated Sarah’s tip. [ WWD]
Davide De Giglio, the co-founder of New Guards Group, is making big bets on beauty, investing in Rhode and Isamaya Beauty. [ BoF]
When industry people head to Los Angeles, they often ask me where they should eat. I don’t have a lot of answers, because eating out in this town is really not about the food. (And that was true long before GLP-1s.) But there are exceptions—especially for breakfast and lunch—and writer Emily Wilson’s ranking of the 15 best salads in Los Angeles is very close to what my list would look like. [ The Angel]
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And finally… Was this the last year of Salone del Mobile being fun? Because it looked really fun. Two days of Miu Miu–moderated conversations about girlhood. Many days of Prada talks about everything else. The Loewe teapots. The Row’s new home collection. The T mag party. The overflowing negronis and gossip. Can you imagine being a person who just goes to Salone and hangs out?
Until tomorrow,
Lauren
P.S.: We are using affiliate links because we are a business. We may make a couple bucks off them.
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