Hello, and welcome back to Line Sheet. Happy Prada Day to those who celebrate. It’s the only show where a noticeable number of people arrive in head-to-toe looks designed by the house. (I’d never go that far, but I did pay a little homage this time by choosing a Raf Simons–era Jil Sander jacket.)

I’ll have my thoughts on the show, and more from Milan, in the near future. For today’s issue, accessible only to Inner Circle members, I’ve got an examination of LVMH’s new partnership with Global Fashion Agenda, some big-picture takeaways from yesterday’s Loro Piana presentation, and a theory about Amazon, Saks, and Bergdorf Goodman.

For the main event, I’m taking a look at billionaire investor Amy Griffin’s portfolio following that doorstopper of a Times story questioning the accusations she made in her blockbuster memoir, The Tell. In some ways, this is the new Massenet scandalette of the moment, although everyone involved is going to hate that comparison—a saga of a very wealthy, connected woman whose personal and professional life was largely intertwined, for better or worse. (By the way, did you hear Natalie and Erik settled?! A little more on that below.)

Programming note: Tomorrow on Fashion People, we’re releasing a conversation on the state of resale with The RealReal’s Kristen Naiman, Marisa Meltzer, Erika Veurink, and Puck’s very own Sarah Shapiro, recorded live at WSA a few weeks back. Listen here and here.

Mentioned in this issue: Amy Griffin, G9 Ventures, Goop, Gwyneth Paltrow, Oprah Winfrey, Meghan Markle, Reese Witherspoon, LVMH, Kering, Antoine Arnault, Amazon, Jeff Bezos, Saks Global, Bergdorf Goodman, Richard Baker, Armani, Loro Piana, and many more…

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Now, on to the main event…

No matter what or who you believe, The New York Times’s investigation into investor-billionaire-couture client Amy Griffin was pretty arresting. The reporting, which took three months, focused on Griffin’s account of rape by her former middle-school teacher as depicted in her 2025 memoir, The Tell—memories that she has said were uncovered while using MDMA.

But the piece also interrogated her depiction of other people involved—including a former classmate, who claims to have been assaulted by a different teacher at the same school dance where Griffin alleges that she was victimized. Griffin declined to speak to the Times, but her lawyer Tom Clare told the paper that the reporters’ 11-page document, filled with questions for his client’s pre-publication responses, “has caused additional trauma and extreme physical and emotional harm to a survivor of sexual assault, which is inexcusable.” (Clare, the namesake of the D.C.-area firm Clare Locke, is the go-to pit bull in these sorts of defamation and defamation-adjacent cases.)

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There have been some whispers and speculation about Griffin ever since her book was published in March, largely about the unusual MDMA element. (MDMA is really trending…) At the time, I processed most of this skepticism as simply the subconscious vitriol that many people feel toward uber-successful women—particularly genre-defining polymaths like Griffin. Like many socialites of her generation, she has ascended not by sitting front row at fashion shows or fronting a charity (though she does both), but rather by doing real(ish) work and operating with more than a modicum of self-awareness. She has ostensibly hustled for most of her life, starting in marketing at Ms., Working Woman, and Sports Illustrated.

The heiress to a gas station and convenience store fortune, Griffin grew up rich in Amarillo, Texas, but her financial opportunities grew significantly after she married John Griffin, the hedge fund manager and founder of Blue Ridge Capital. In 2017, she started G9 Ventures, a V.C. firm, with money she made on her own off of distributions from her family business. G9 has approximately 60 active investments and more than 20 exits, including Bumble, which went public in February 2021 at a $2.2 billion valuation. On, another minority investment, I.P.O.’d at $746 million, also in 2021. Griffin’s investments have also included Goop and Goop Kitchen, Rōz, K18, Spanx, Westman Atelier, Starface, Studs, and Oura. She also sits on the boards of Bumble, Gagosian Gallery, and Spanx.

Someone derided her investment approach as “spray and pray” given her small check sizes, often below $500,000 (although they do get into the millions), but G9 undeniably offered Griffin access to a powerful network of likeminded women at the intersection of society, tech, Hollywood, and fashion. She wasn’t just a rich lady any longer. Now, she was a hybrid of C.Z. Guest and Kirsten Green, who had relationships with Gwyneth Paltrow, Reese Witherspoon, Meghan Markle, and Oprah Winfrey. Her friends were invited to her readings at the Godmothers bookstore near Montecito and her female-founder-focused G9 summits, which took place in the Hamptons for a few summers in a row and attracted People magazine–level coverage. “When she summons the lady community out east, you wind up with everyone coming out there, because she’s in everything and could certainly do more,” one person who has dealt with Griffin told me. I met Griffin in person at an event hosted by Bobbi Brown at Gloria Steinem’s apartment.

This past summer, however, there was no G9 summit. I’m told that Griffin felt her mission of convening female leaders was being undercut by the celebrity element, but she was also busy promoting the book, and perhaps bracing for the Times article to come out while online commentators picked apart her story. (A personal familiar with the operations pushed back on that notion, and said that pausing the summit “was less about any one factor and more about wanting to take a step back and reflect on how to make the gathering as impactful as possible for their founders.”)

Will Griffin’s check mean so much now? As with Net-a-Porter founder Natalie Massenet’s recent public spat with her ex-partner Erik Torstensson, the fallout from a messy personal drama is often unpredictable—especially when there is real money potentially on the line. Unlike Massenet, Griffin doesn’t have a co-founder or limited partners. And her checks are sufficiently de minimis that her portfolio companies can almost certainly shrug off any headline risks regarding association. They can also likely return the money if they need to.

But will she be ostracized from the investment community, the modern version of good society? It’s hard to say. Griffin is a beloved character among her set, and one secret of the ultra-wealthy is that they’ve achieved their success through some form of ruthlessness. It’s usually a shared trait that makes media scandals seem like a rite of passage on the royal road to elitehood. The most common sentiment I heard in phone calls this morning was that she’s a good person, with good intentions. One newspaper story, in the increasingly popular eat-the-rich genre, may not change their feelings about her. Indeed, one reality of the widening wealth gap in America is that the truly rich are usually safe from absolute judgment.

New on the Ssense beat: The Atallah family plans to bid on the beleaguered company they founded in a sale process, according to a new report from Malique Morris. Also, they are planning layoffs. Should you buy anything from Ssense right now? Do what you will, but it feels like Russian roulette. [BoF]

No surprise that Larry Gagosian wears Jacques Marie Mage sunglasses, although I was hoping for Maison Bonnet. [Wall Power]

I subscribed to the Substack run by 1 Granary, the independent journal for young people working (or hoping to work) in the fashion industry, so that I could read their list of London-based businesses that are poorly reviewed on Glassdoor. Spoiler: The list includes basically every place you’d want to work if you lived in London and worked in fashion. The highlights have been shared widely on Instagram, but I’m not going to name names here. I rarely reference Glassdoor in my reporting because people who choose to air their grievances on the platform tend to be unreliable narrators, and while I’m sure there’s plenty of truth to their missives, you need more than an untraceable paragraph of writing to prove it. (The internet really blows sometimes.) I appreciate 1 Granary’s desire to hold fashion employers accountable, but I wish there was more rigor in the way they approached this. Anyway, my big takeaway from their findings was that lots of folks are miserable. [1 Granary]

Would you rather have dinner with Greta Gerwig or Kim Kardashian? Marina Abramović’s answer is better than yours. [YouTube]

LVMH is set to fully acquire the French business magazine Challenges, which it already holds a stake in. [Fashion Network]

If you’re more of a play person than a musical person (most musicals are awful…), the tide is turning in your favor. [New York Times]

Until tomorrow,
Lauren

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Puck sports correspondent John Ourand and a rotating cast of industry insiders take you inside the executive suites and owners boxes where the decisions that shape the entire sports business are made. You’ll hear interviews with players, network execs, and everyone in between. The Varsity is an extension of John’s private email for Puck by the same name. New episodes publish every Wednesday and Sunday.

Puck’s daily art market email, anchored by industry expert Marion Maneker, offers unparalleled access to the mega-auctions and galleries, elite buyers and sellers, and the power players who run this opaque world. Wall Power also features Julie Brener Davich, a veteran of Christie’s and Sotheby’s, who provides unique insights into how the business really works.

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