Hi, and welcome back to Line Sheet. Gucci!!! Sabato!!! What a journey. Glad we’ve been on it together.
For our extra-special, First-Day-of-New York-Fashion-Week Inner Circle issue, I dig into what’s really happening behind the scenes at Kering— and LVMH—on the back of this Sabato De Sarno departure news. I also have a fun Vogue scooplet, so many thoughts ( haha, get it?) on the Kate Middleton fashion gag order (thanks to the hosts of Jam Session for bringing it to my attention), and a persuasive argument to prevent L’Oréal from once again trying its hand at ready-to-wear now that designer Casey Cadwallader is out at Mugler.
Meanwhile, back in New York, last night was fun. I got to hug Maria Cornejo on the 65th floor of Rockefeller Center (thank you, CFDA, for bringing us together), and took a peek inside the new Tao Group–managed Crane Club, where Saks Global’s Marc Metrick and Emily Essner were holding court. Finally, I landed at Bridges for a Gabby Katz–organized dinner celebrating Aligne, a British label that sells TikTok-viral blazers and is run by Ginny Seymour, who got her start 20 years ago in the executive training program at Saks. (Guests included online stars Arielle Charnas, Tara Moni, and Jalil Johnson—plus newish, young editors like Marie Claire’s Nikki Ogunnaike. All in all, it was an affiliate marketing platform fantasy come to life.) Today, the shows really got going, starting with Brandon Maxwell and ending with Christopher John Rogers.
🚨🚨 Programming note: Tomorrow on Fashion People, I’m thrilled to welcome podcasters Cynthia True and Dennis Golonka, hosts of Blow-Up: When Liz Tilberis Transformed Bazaar. We discuss life at Harper’s Bazaar in the 1990s, what the modern fashion industry would be like if Liz were still around (she tragically died of cancer in 1999), and why they wanted to tell her story. Liz and her magazine were a huge inspiration for me growing up—the primary reason I wanted to be a fashion journalist—and I’m grateful to Cynthia and Dennis for sharing so much. I hope you enjoy listening here or here.
Mentioned in this issue: Sabato De Sarno, Gucci, Kering, Virginie Viard, Chanel, François-Henri Pinault, LVMH, Marco Bizzarri, Hedi Slimane, Alessandro Michele, Bally, Jil Sander, Simone Bellotti, Delphine Arnault, Dior, Jonathan Anderson, Loewe, Kim Jones, Maria Grazia Chiuri, Marc Jacobs, Saint Laurent, Anna Wintour, L’Oréal, Kate Middleton, Michelle Obama, and many more…
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Three Things You Should Know…
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- Who should be Vogue’s next guest editor?: I hear that Vogue’s fabulous December 2024 issue, guest-edited by Marc Jacobs, has inspired the brand to make the shtick an annual thing. But as his recent show at the New York Public Library demonstrated, Jacobs is a tough act to follow. Not only was he deeply involved in the decision-making around the issue, he had a close collaborator in Alastair McKimm, an actual magazine editor. Jacobs is also a shopper and fashion fan, which means he’s in the good graces of pretty much every other designer-slash-advertiser. (The way Jacobs wears Anthony Vaccarello’s Saint Laurent, for instance, has made me view that brand completely differently.)
Whomever Anna annoints this year needs to be willing to put in the work, entice advertisers, and also be well liked. Jonathan Anderson is my leading designer candidate: He has the whole industry behind him. My actual unsolicited recommendation to Vogue, however, would be to select an artist, actor, or a filmmaker instead. No, not Sofia Coppola — she’s too connected to Jacobs. Not Baz Luhrmann because… no. Luca Guadagnino? Yeah x10! I also like the idea of Chloë Sevigny (too obvious?), Pharrell (too busy?), Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen (too tired?), or Nora Ephron (too dead?). Who would nail it? Timothée Chalamet. Rihanna. Tom Ford. Please send me your nominations.
- The Mugler misfire: Yesterday, WWD reported that American designer Casey Cadwallader was leaving Mugler. Of course I wasn’t totally surprised, and neither were you. For years, the fashion house has been owned by beauty groups without expertise in fashion—first Clarins and now L’Oréal, which acquired the brand in 2019. It never made sense to me why L’Oréal would choose to operate a fashion line without a partner, especially since it pretty much never works. (See: Rochas.)
Mugler’s signature perfume, Angel, has remained so popular that perhaps L’Oréal continued to justify its runway expedition as a way to burnish fragrance sales. Still, this is not a riskless strategy, either. Kenzo has a thriving fragrance division, but even mighty LVMH hasn’t been able to meaningfully scale the brand’s fashion business. On the beauty side, the only conglomerate to have any real success operating fashion is Puig, but even its track record is mixed. The Tom Ford experiment at Estée Lauder is still proving itself out, but they have a great operational partner in Zegna.Arguably, it’s easier for fashion brands to move into fragrance rather than the other way around. (This was the case at Dries Van Noten after it was acquired by Puig.) Although that’s hard, too. If L’Oréal is smart, Cadwallader’s exit will mark the end of their Mugler fashion ambitions, unless they decide to partner with a strategic group that can take over the operations for them. As for Cadwallader himself, I’ll admit to a certain level of bias, but he’s one of the smartest, savviest, most talented designers working today, and would thrive at a larger group with more resources. An obvious choice is Mayhoola-owned Balmain, where Olivier Rousteing has been the creative director for 14 years—both sides could probably use a change.
- On Kate Middleton’s fashion gag order: Over the weekend, The Times of London reported that Kensington Palace will stop sharing information about Kate Middleton’s wardrobe as she ramps up her public duties and charity work following her recovery from cancer. Understandably, the palace ostensibly wants the media to focus on the princess’s charity work rather than her outfits. But my first reaction was: Is Elizabeth Holmes going to be okay? No, not that Elizabeth Holmes, but rather the former Wall Street Journal fashion reporter who has made a second career out of tracking royal and politician fashion via her newsletter, So Many Thoughts, and bestselling book, HRH: So Many Thoughts on Royal Style.Yes, I’m kidding: Holmes will be fine and her work arguably more relevant than ever. Also, this measure seems sort of appropriate—Middleton is reaching the threshold in her life when people are going to start caring less about her clothes, anyway. And she was never an adventurous dresser, like Michelle Obama. Instead, she wears the same silhouettes, colors, and styles over and over again, and eventually someone younger and more interesting will come along to attract the online chatter. (Meghan Markle and her wrinkled trousers certainly took plenty of attention away from Middleton’s skinny jeans.) If anything, the statement will pique the interest of people who haven’t considered Middleton’s fashion choices in years.
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The long-expected ouster of Gucci designer Sabato De Sarno has finally come to pass, albeit somewhat more brutally than anticipated… and without anyone on deck to replace him. Is it Maria Grazia Chiuri’s turn? Hedi Slimane’s? Or is Kering going to surprise us all?
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At around 11 a.m. in Milan on Wednesday, Gucci sent an internal H.R. memo that a new designer would be joining the studio and reporting to creative director Sabato De Sarno, who was slated to present his next collection in Milan on February 25. But that show—which De Sarno was already pre-casting in New York last weekend—will be his last. A few hours later, around 2 p.m., De Sarno was informed that his brief, slightly tortured, disappointing, not-even-two-year run at Gucci had come to an end. That news hastily hit the wires first thing the next morning.
Executives uninvolved in the decision were left scratching their heads. Why had the internal team disseminated the first memo, intimating that everything was business as usual, only to reveal publicly the next morning that De Sarno had been fired? The disconnect, and the lack of a named successor, suggested that a delicate plan had been upended. Perhaps De Sarno had come across a piece of unpleasant information prematurely. And perhaps he’d been reluctant to smile and fake it for the upcoming show, knowing that his time was up, and so he pushed forward the timing of the announcement—a scenario not unlike what happened with Virginie Viard at Chanel. Indeed, Gucci C.E.O. Stefano Cantino offered a milquetoast statement. Notably, there was no quote from De Sarno in the press release.
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Adding to the confusion, I’m told that the group has yet to sign a new creative director for the house, which is Kering’s cash cow but has been mired in declining sales and shrinking profits since before De Sarno, who was appointed by former C.E.O. Marco Bizzarri. On one level, this void is a potentially negative development ahead of the conglomerate’s earnings call next week, which is expected to confirm a tepid recovery from the company’s slump last year. After all, now it’s going to take another two years, at least, for Gucci to bounce back. On another level, just as Bizzarri’s firing in the summer of 2023—two months after De Sarno’s arrival—was a signal to the market that Kering and its C.E.O. and chairman, François-Henri Pinault, were serious about turning around the business, the De Sarno announcement, made just days before Kering releases its fourth quarter results, might show that Pinault and his deputy, Francesca Bellettini, are really , really serious this time.
Anyway, De Sarno himself couldn’t have been surprised; his challenges have been an open secret almost since he started. He might have even been relieved. In retrospect, he was the wrong pick from the beginning—a longtime number two at Valentino, skilled in dressmaking, who was elevated to lead a historic fashion house before he was ready. And, of course, there were external headwinds, too. Cantino, who replaced Bizzarri, officially assumed that position only in January, and the intervening leadership vacuum was filled with all sorts of bad ideas. Gucci’s “Who is Sabato De Sarno?” propaganda documentary, and the media blitz that the group engineered prior to his poorly received inaugural show, set him up to underperform expectations.
In the end, though, De Sarno’s failure at Gucci came down to product and merchandising: At a time when global luxury markets were softening, De Sarno’s cute-clothes concepts were practical but never inspiring. Meanwhile, rather than continue to explain away his inability to drive sales, Kering made a clean break. Upon his arrival, some in the industry wondered how much latitude Cantino would afford De Sarno. Now, it seems clear that he was appointed to the position, in part, to manage the designer transition all along. De Sarno has presumably been paid handsomely to discontinue his services. At just 41 years old, his career has barely started.
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Slimane, Vitale, Bellotti, Oh My…
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It’s easy to say that Kering should have moved faster to course-correct following De Sarno’s first collection, but it’s not that simple. First of all, it would have been awful publicity bordering on corporate malpractice to dump Alessandro Michele’s successor without giving him a few seasons to finesse his ideas and gauge the market reaction. Moreover, they needed to find the right person to replace him, which I believe has been harder than one might expect.
The succession speculation includes all the usual suspects, plus a few less obvious choices. There’s Hedi Slimane, of course, who made magic with Kering at Saint Laurent before shoving off to LVMH. Slimane would be an investor-friendly pick: You know what you’re going to get with him, and you know that it’s going to sell. (What’s more, he’s such a serious person that bourgeois brands like Gucci and Celine are a good foil.) If he’s already gotten the nod, it might explain the mystery surrounding his new Milan apartment.
There are some out-of-left-field options, too. Former Miu Miu design director Dario Vitale, who seems almost certain to head to Versace, would be a practical no-name. He worked with Cantino and his comms head, Valérie Leberichel, at the Prada Group, so he’s a known quantity… at least to them. Everything I’ve heard about Vitale suggests that he is an incredible talent ready for the spotlight. But, again, I’m not sure Kering can afford to take that sort of risk right now—especially when the company has lost more than half its value in the past five years.
I’d love to see Bally’s Simone Bellotti return to Gucci, where he designed menswear for more than a decade. But all reports, including my own, point toward Bellotti heading to Jil Sander after he finishes up his tenure at Bally. And while, yes, he would be an inspired choice that could result in a tremendous upside, appointing him would also be a big risk, one that I’m not sure Bellotti himself would even want to take.
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Another, more subversive path would see Kering following the lead of Hermès by not hiring a star creative director at all, placing the brand itself at the forefront, and thereby eliminating some of the ego-related sensitivities that made this latest era drag on longer than necessary. Kering’s overreliance on visionaries, like Michele, is part of the reason it’s in this predicament in the first place. At LVMH, Louis Vuitton and Dior maintain a status quo even when the runway shows don’t hit. At Hermès, the runway is in service of the core vision. And there’s no key man risk when a talent like Michele walks out the door.
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One designer I can confirm has interviewed for the Gucci job is Maria Grazia Chiuri, the outgoing womenswear designer at Dior, who asked Kering whether the design studio could be moved to Rome. That request was denied, I’m told, but Kering may have no choice but to be flexible if they want to signal to the market that they’re serious about resuscitating the brand. (Again, a rep for Kering had no comment.) Chiuri’s Dior might feel dusty, but she is a skilled accessories designer, and her prim $6,000 dresses sold incredibly well for many years. At Gucci, she’d be a sort of Frida Giannini to De Sarno’s Alessandra Facchinetti. (Giannini, as you undoubtedly recall, stabilized the business after Facchinetti’s swift, failed stint designing womenswear from 2004-2005.)
Meanwhile, Chiuri’s current employer, LVMH, would surely be relieved to see her go, noncompete notwithstanding. I’m told Chiuri is blocking the announcement of Jonathan Anderson’s appointment to Dior until after her final show in Rome, in May, which is causing a frenzy within the group. Initially, they had planned to communicate Anderson’s arrival right after Couture, hence the news of Kim Jones’s exit. But right now, they are in limbo: Anderson has not signed off on the next Loewe collection, to be shown in March in Paris, and Loewe can’t announce Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez as its new creative directors until he leaves.
The whole thing is a mess. In one scenario I’ve heard, Dior has considered at least announcing Jonathan taking over menswear in order to get the ball rolling. The chaos is testing the patience of Dior C.E.O. Delphine Arnault, who needs Anderson to refuel her business and who was integral in recruiting McCollough and Hernandez. A rep for LVMH did not comment.
The clumsy handling of all these cascading announcements and designer moves ought to be a wakeup call for an industry where information moves faster than the fashion executives behind the scenes. As it happens, I was told about the Sabato news earlier this week by someone totally unconnected to the brand. I declined to publish that tip until I received confirmation more proximate to the source. But the chatter turned out to be 100 percent accurate, as is often the case in a business where this sort of intel moves markets.
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Is there any contemporary magazine editor with better timing than Mel Ottenberg? Also, the man made Bill Gates look cool! [ Interview]
In a Soderbergh-esque turn, Simon Porte Jacquemus shot his latest campaign on an iPhone. [ Instagram]
I thought Anna Wintour looked great in this McQueen skirt suit. [ CNN]
The funny thing about this story on Andrew Rosen’s deepening relationship with Guess Inc. is that it fails to mention that the Marciano family already invested in Rosen-backed CO. [ WWD]
Jacob Gallagher on A$AP Rocky looking like such a cutie at his court appearances. These images will be on mood boards for decades. [ NY Times]
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And finally… Can we chill on the announcements for, like, a week?
Until tomorrow,
Lauren
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