Ciao, and welcome back to Line Sheet! Day 2 of my 15-day European journey; I’m feeling good. Properly hydrated, if barely. I love my job. How are you?

Today, I’m investigating rumors, reporting from the shows, updating our favorite storylines, and distracting you with some red-carpet talk. What more do you want? Let me know by replying to this email.

Mentioned in this issue: Louis Vuitton, Coupang, Farfetch, José Neves, Christy Rilling, Arnault-heir significant others, Michelle Obama, Edward Enninful, more i-D gossip, The Cut, Choire Sicha, Milano, Paris, Pharrell, Bradley Cooper, Brunello Cucinelli, Fendi, Burberry, Daniel Lee, Alessandro Michele, Stefano Pilati, Lanvin, Renzo Rosso, John Galliano, Miuccia Prada, Raf Simons, Moschino, Adrian Appiolaza, Loewe, Armani, and more.

• The first commercial take on Pharrell at Louis Vuitton: I’ve heard from people on the retail side that it’s selling very well in the U.S. (even with Bradley Cooper modeling the checkered hat). Of course, it’s only been a month, but it’s a positive early sign for LVMH.
• Farfetch, it never ends!: Coupang technically paid £5 for the entity that is now Farfetch, according to a report filed in good ol’ Companies House earlier this month. Other tidbits, seemingly written by the folks brought in to restructure the business:
• A new entity, FF Realisations LLC, was created in late January to put Farfetch into administration—the U.K.’s equivalent of bankruptcy protection—in order to keep the remaining business functioning and protect it from $611 million in debts.
• Farfetch contacted 47 potential buyers when it realized it needed to be sold or face liquidation: seven buyers were interested, two sent diligence questions, but no proposals were received. The holders of the convertible notes—who, remember, threatened legal action against Farfetch—did not place a bid, according to this report.
• As of late January, Farfetch had already taken out $150 million of the $500 million bridge loan.
• The restructuring people made a list of all the reasons Farfetch failed. The biggest being that “Cash forecasts were based on EBITDA projections [that] did not include costs that would ordinarily be included in EBITDA. Consequently, forecast cash was overstated.” Jeez, you had one job… Also, they were burning through $50 million in cash a month.
• The other reasons were poor performance at Reebok (a team-up with Authentic Brands Group), Browns, and New Guards Group. In this case, the “what went wrong” is pretty easy to identify. It all can be boiled down to José Neves overshooting his shot. When Farfetch bought NGG in 2019, it was an EBITDA-positive business with little overstock, growing at a steady pace. But Neves wanted the online business in particular to grow at an impossible rate. He promised the market far too much, sure, but it also sounds like he wasn’t honest with his own C.F.O.

• The Oscars are just over two weeks away: I’m sure we’ll be chatting plenty about this season’s big brand contracts, but what do people do when they can’t constantly borrow dresses, or request custom? Christy Rilling is a name that keeps popping up in conversations. Best known as Michelle Obama’s tailor (Ruth La Ferla profiled her in early 2023), she makes custom garments for celebs, spouses of celebs, and below-the-liners alike, and launched an official collection—Guild of Hands—late last year. (Jewelry designer Irene Neuwirth, who I mentioned earlier this week as an ace red carpet dresser, is a client. So are Julianna Margulies, Laurie Simmons, and the Springsteens.) I’m not sure how Rilling has developed a reliable atelier in the middle of Manhattan, but she has, and if you want your dress to fit you properly and don’t mind spending money, she seems like a smart option.

• A clarification on the Rag & Bone sale number: A friend of the brand messaged me to point out that the $56 million that Guess? Inc. contributed was only a portion of the total sale price when you factor in what WHP, the licensing firm, is contributing. (Unfortunately, that figure has not been released.) So everyone made out far better than it looked.

• Edward at i-D?: An interesting, if initially insane, theory going around is that former British Vogue editor-in-chief Edward Enninful would make sense as the next editor of i-D. After all, he famously started his career there, is just friendly enough with owner Karlie Kloss, and would benefit from having an editorial platform. Stylists make good editors-in-chief at indie mags because they essentially use them as marketing for their commercial work. (Former i-D editor-in-chief Alastair Mckimm, Katie Grand at Perfect, and Mel Ottenberg at Interview are good examples of this.) They can get their rocks off with the mag—imaginative editorials, sitting front row at fashion week—and make bank styling commercials.

  This doesn’t work so well at the big publishing houses because there are more restrictions around outside work, and the money is lousy, which is certainly part of the reason Enninful exited Condé Nast. I had originally thought i-D would go to an up-and-comer, but given how sad Enninful seemed to be letting go of the Vogue work, maybe we can The Secret this to happen.

• Feedback on The Cut story: You all are passionate. One observation lobbed back at me about The Cut’s sizzling spring issue, sponsored by Kate Spade New York, was that it reeked of Choire Sicha, New York mag’s editor-at-large and probably the most famous of former Gawker editors, other than the guy who got sued by Hulk Hogan. I’m doubtful: (Sort-of) love Choire, but… no. (Also, yes, it takes a village, but it’s Lindsay Peoples at the top of that masthead.) As another person noted, the success could be boiled down to the fact that the two essays were written by veteran internet writers—confused Charlotte Cowles was one of The Cut’s original bloggers—who know how to enrage 39-year-olds who went to Oberlin, have nanny shares or stay-at-home husbands, and live on the edge of Bushwick and Bed-Stuy. The other thing someone wanted to flag: Remember that Vox Media laid off 4 percent of its staff in November 2023 (the second round of layoffs in that year), effectively making room for these hires at The Cut. Whether this was the intention or not, it makes business sense.

But even by Wednesday, all anybody wanted to talk about was Burberry. Still. Two days later. What was happening? Did Daniel Lee get fired right after the show, as the internet gremlins were speculating? (God no. Another bad, bad, false rumor. It went well this time.) In more reasonable queries: Can the business be more than coats? Does it need to be?

A few days out, my assessment is that Burberry should, once and for all, be absorbed into a larger group, probably Tapestry, although the impending Capri acquisition makes that harder to pull off in the short term. (Remember that C.E.O. Jonathan Akeroyd was once C.E.O. of Capri-owned Versace.) In the long run, it’s where Burberry belongs. I maintain that this collection was an improvement. I’d love for it to be more than it is, sure, but we’ve got to temper our expectations. The brand is limited in a way die-hard fashion people may not want to believe.

Returning to Lanvin: It’s likely that the company will announce a new creative director soon, according to reports, and boy is there potential there. (Would have been so fab if it was Pilati, I’m such a fan, but here’s hoping it’s a woman instead.) Last year, Lanvin generated about $120 million: That’s tiny for a name so well-known and admired. With the balance of distribution, marketing, and product, it could get bigger, fast.

Back in Italy, Renzo Rosso’s OTB represents a model for the Lanvin Group to possibly aspire to. Last week, the company released its annual report, expressing intentions to go public by 2025. Annual revenue surpassed $2 billion, up 7 percent from a year earlier. Much of that growth came from opening stores—the group, which includes Jil Sander, Maison Margiela, and Diesel, among other designer-driven propositions—and I assume that it needs to keep a close eye on its inventory levels. (This company is in the business of selling clothes, not just accessories, and it’s easy to overproduce apparel. You can only offload so much into the off-price channel.)

But Rosso has admirably developed a profitable alternative to the two big conglomerates, a place where designers can still be designers. I sadly missed yesterday’s Diesel show, but from afar, I wonder if Glenn Martens has a bit of genius in him. (He canceled his Y Project show in Paris this week amid “uncertain times.”) At today’s MM6 show, it was clear that Rosso is hellbent on balancing the commercial with the creative, giving John Galliano the space to make couture-like garments that wowed audiences last month in Paris while selling the shit out of leather legging boots, straight-shooting low-slung trousers, and stand-up collar shirting.

Today, along with MM6, I hit up Prada, Moschino, and Emporio Armani. (Tom Ford, too, but that’ll have to wait until Monday.) Prada remains the platonic ideal. Yesterday alone, I had two friends ask me to pick up items from its sister brand, Miu Miu, in Paris. People, real people, are buying it. On the train heading out of the show, I sat next to a woman dressed head to toe, from her lug soles to her dainty pink top handle bag. On the terrarium-floor runway, Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons’ models moved like the wind, the streamers on their dresses mimicking a bird’s wings flapping against the gale force.

Backstage after the show, Prada, wearing matching emerald and diamond brooches on her lapels, and Simons, drinking a glass of what looked like wine, were most wanted. People were manic for them. Partially because of their explosive talent, partially because they actually know how to communicate clearly about their work. It was hard to catch everything they were saying, but in the end, Simons made a comment about there being “no way to think about the future unless you understand the past.” Of course, there’s a difference between being of the past and understanding it. Prada and Simons are anything but stuck.

New Moschino designer Adrian Appiolaza was integral to the success of Jonathan Anderson’s Loewe. The question here will be: What is he without Anderson? Moschino is a funny brand, and you can’t say that about many; fashion takes itself too seriously. It seemed, with this debut collection, that Appiolaza gets the joke: I smiled at his clown polka dots and Minnie Mouse pumps. The slouchiness of the silhouettes grounded it in some reality, but not too much.

Emporio Armani never changes, that’s part of its charm. Except that, right now, the Armani look is everywhere, as my friend Becky noted, making the designer’s latest collection feel incredibly… on point. “Everyone wants to be Armani,” she said. I loved the printed jackets and velvet pants, all topped off with a boxy little hat. Very on-trend, but also not, because this is simply his thing.

Of course, what will happen to Armani, the company, when the time comes for something to happen, may be the greatest Milan mystery of all. Perhaps nothing. Armani has set up the business in such a way that his family will be protected. But when the Arnault-heir significant others showed up to the Armani Privè couture show in January, the industry couldn’t help but indulge in a little wishful thinking. It’s fashion’s way.

I don’t like weed for me, but I love Brett Heyman’s pivot from handbags to cannabis. More profitable? [New York Times]

How Alex Mill managed to use “You’re the One That I Want” in its new, cute denim campaign without getting sued. [Link in Bio]

WeightWatchers created a new program meant to complement the use of GLP-1 drugs, and a bunch of people—including many influencers—are mad about it for various reasons. [Bloomberg]

Sometimes I’m embarrassed that I don’t find reality television pleasurable—the formula stresses me out—but I still ate up this piece on “Scandoval” by one of my favorite writers, Irina Aleksander, who has a talent for crystallizing the “why” of seemingly exhausted subjects. (Also: What a loon. I can’t believe you all look at that mustache for hours at a time.) [NYT magazine]

My Puck partner Julia Ioffe’s piece on the death of Alexey Navalny, and the work of his wife Yulia, is a must. [Puck]

A nice profile of Moschino’s new creative director, Adrian Appiolaza. [Vogue]

Somebody has to buy that Style.com URL! (Also, Tim, I love you so much.) [Family Style]

Let us be reminded that the return of the French manicure can be traced back to Tyler Haney. [Vogue]

Ssense x Essence: A good idea! [Instagram]

There’s been a lot of chatter about brand playlists lately. Balenciaga took it a step further. Not only are they releasing a selection chosen by late composer Angelo Badalamenti before he passed in 2022, but they are also partnering with Manhattan School of Music on a masterclass inspired by Badalamenti, as well as a bit of merch. [Spotify]

Narciso Rodriguez wants to relaunch his ready-to-wear collection. I’ll take it! [Town & Country]

Until Monday,
Lauren