Welcome to the Thursday edition of Line Sheet, where I bring you the news behind the news. I’ve returned to California, but I did want to quickly say how wonderful it was to see so many friends, new and old, in Paris this past week. I appreciate your encouragement, support and growing understanding that Puck is “not Air Mail.” If you haven’t signed up yet, use my code LINESHEET for a special discount.

I’m publishing a truncated issue on Monday since many of us Stateside will be enjoying a four-day weekend. If there’s something you desperately need me to write about and it can’t wait, reply to this email.

Today, I’m coming at you with a very L.A. story about the business bromance between Ye and Dov Charney (it’s happening). But first…

• What’s up with this Tiffany fire?: It was reported this morning, by multiple news outlets, that an electrical fire started in the basement of the LVMH-owned jewelry brand’s iconic 5th Avenue flagship, the one that the group just spent an estimated $500 million-plus renovating. (I heard that could have very well been closer to $1 billion, definitely if you include the artwork.) The fire was extinguished by noon, according to reports, and many workers in the vicinity of the building, which is right next to Trump Tower, were sent home by their employers. Here’s hoping everyone is safe.

  I reached out to Tiffany for comment and will keep reporting on this, but I think one good thing to remember is that New York City is old, that Tiffany building is very, very old (118 years), and these sorts of fires happen in old buildings, no matter how much time, effort and money you put into upgrading them. Still, it’s a blow.

• Philo 3.0: There hasn’t been much gossip about the LVMH-backed Phoebe Philo collection as of late, and this recent Miles Socha story in WWD doesn’t add a ton to the existing narrative, but it’s still worth your time. What you need to know: September release, more than 150 styles across categories, Daria Werbowy is reuniting with Philo as the face of the campaign, and there won’t be a fashion show. Those who register will be able to shop from the website if they live in the U.S., Europe and the U.K. What I can add from my own reporting: Philo is obsessed with the way the Paris-based Cristaseya sells product through limited-window drops online, so that seems to have influenced her approach. I’ve also heard that this is the third iteration of the Phoebe Philo collection, with a new team in place since the beginning of the year. If you know more, message me!
• Something Old, Something New, Something Navy: I hear that Business Insider is planning to publish yet another Something Navy “exposé,” this one focused on layoffs and the potential sale of the company, which is currently a part of the Naadam Group, that hodgepodge of D.T.C. brands run by minor Line Sheet celebrity Matt Scanlan. I get why BI is focusing on Something Navy—it was founded by Arielle Charnas, a super-successful influencer, and is therefore the most notable brand in the group. However, as someone who could devote this entire newsletter, every single week, to reporting on Scanlan and Naadam but am too busy with Bernard Arnault to do so, I fear there is some not-seeing-the forest-for-the-trees happening. I welcome the competition, believe me!

• Experiential luxury: Yet another global luxury brand is staging a big LA event in hopes of capturing the hearts (and wallet share) of the city’s wealthiest consumers. This time, it’s not a one-off fashion show or a private shopping event. Instead, Hermès is setting up in the Barker hangar at the Santa Monica airport—home of Frieze this past February—starting July 15, for an eight-day run of a play. If you haven’t seen outtakes of On the Wings of Hermès online, I suggest you do some light Googling. There are opera-singing Kelly bags.

  The Best Brand in the World (according to me) famously doesn’t have an official marketing department, although its live experiences—almost always designed with the public, not the fashion industry, in mind—are singular. And the Los Angeles stopover is particularly well-timed around F.Y.C. (For Your Consideration, for my fashion people) events in the lead up to Emmys voting in August. My plan is to take a friend who runs a boutique advertising agency.

But of course they did! LVMH is the economic engine of Paris now. And while the event certainly inconvenienced (and irritated) some locals, it also put a focus on the area around the Pont Neuf that could use a little zhuzhing. The neighborhood, if you could call it that, also happens to be the home to the still-new Louis Vuitton corporate offices, and an LVMH-Cheval Blanc hotel, the scene of the now infamous Musk-Arnault family luncheon. (Musk was promoting a Dior ad on Twitter the other day, by the way, so maybe they were talking biz, not just comparing personal assets?)

Okay, now to Dov and Ye…

So, of course, I wasn’t surprised to hear that the two men were spotted in Tokyo this week, shopping together at Don Quijote, shortly after The Sun reported that West had hired Charney to serve as the new C.E.O. of Yeezy. No, you can’t believe everything you read—The Sun is only occasionally reputable—but you can believe this.

After talking to people in Charney’s camp and also on the Yeezy side, I can confirm that West has asked Charney to run the Yeezy business, which recently set up shop at 8025 Melrose Ave. in West Hollywood, right next to an Adidas store. The two men have worked together, on and off, for years, and while I couldn’t get a direct answer on whether Charney is being paid a salary, it’s clear that the former American Apparel boss is currently committed to West, and sees himself as playing a newly created role in the never-ending piece of performance art (or accelerating mental health deterioration, depending on how you look at it) that is Ye’s life.

Like many cultural forces of nature, West has long been surrounded by enablers: people who won’t say no, or who excuse his behavior in order to allow for that one “spark of creative genius,” as one former employee described it. Pre-cancel culture, there was a path to redemption for clearly unwell people like West. Especially when those people were in a position to make a lot of other people money. Of course, that was before West’s latest, possibly unforgivable transgressions. His lucrative, eternally fraught deals with Gap and Adidas were terminated last year after his October “White Lives Matter” show in Paris degenerated into weeks of racist and anti-Semitic rants that rendered him a pariah. Adidas considered burning $500 million worth of remaining Yeezy inventory. In the end, company executives resigned themselves to selling the shoes off for cheap, and donating a portion of the profits to anti-defamation organizations.

West may have gone too far for society at large, but not for Charney, a controversial figure in his own right whose unorthodox way of working (yes, he was accused of sexual harassment, but it’s more complex than straight-up gross behavior) resulted in the loss of American Apparel, the company that he founded in the late ’90s as a wholesale apparel operation. The company’s deep-Vs and disco pants exploded in popularity in the 2000s as the apotheosis of hyper-sexualized indie sleaze, but the real cash cow was American Apparel’s high quality blanks: the t-shirts and and sweatshirts that Charney sold to corporations, other fashion designers, concert promoters, etcetera, who would use them to screen print their own designs. It can be a great business, and has made many people, including the guys behind Alo Yoga, very rich.

If you ask Charney why American Apparel failed, which I have in the past, he has a whole convoluted explanation, mostly having to do with bad business partners. You could argue for hours, perhaps even days, with Charney over who was really to blame at every step of American Apparel’s demise. All I can say is that Charney may be a complicated character, but he is good at making t-shirts. His successor company, Los Angeles Apparel, has had plenty of challenges as well in recent years, as has Charney, who lost his house, a big mansion in a gated community in Silver Lake that used to serve as a sort of commune for corporate employees. He now lives in his factory.

Through it all, though, Charney has somehow managed to keep the lights on. And his own transgressive, controversy-stoking instincts are undiminished. Charney, who is Jewish and also an atheist, is apparently unbothered by West’s hateful comments, which he views as an artistic meltdown ungrounded in reality. Indeed, according to people familiar with Charney’s thinking, he seems amused by West’s pattern of behavior, and also enthralled by it.

But the multi-million dollar question remains: After all that’s happened, can this Odd Couple actually get a new fashion company off the ground?

As for what they will actually make? According to one person, it won’t be hoodies or slides. (West is vehemently rejecting both at the moment.) However, West has never been an original designer—he can identify brilliant design, but he’s not the brilliant one. He’s cycled through dozens of insidery fashion talents, many of whom stayed with him longer than they would have liked because he paid them so generously. Most of those folks, though, are long gone. Who’s left, other than Charney?

And really, what’s the appetite at this point? West still has fans, but the sort of mass adoption needed for mass success is likely out of reach. I keep thinking back to those puffers he did for Gap in electric blue and red. Lots of different types of people bought them because they were so good. Alas, I’m not sure there’s anything that he could design at this point that would override the fact that he has not only spewed hate, but appears mentally unwell. It feels irresponsible, and groupthink is real: People are increasingly embarrassed to drive their Teslas these days. The social pressure to stay away from Yeezy may be too great for him to overcome.

In other Arnault-kid news, Alexandre Arnault, wife Geraldine Guyot-Arnault, and Ivanka Trump (who’s traveling with husband Jared Kusher) all seem to have been hanging out in Ibiza, the perfect kickoff to Yacht Season. [Instagram]

Paco Rabanne has become Rabanne, just in time for the launch of the Puig-owned label’s first makeup collection. I am not sure this is a necessary change, although I do think ready-to-wear designer Julien Dossena is very talented. [Inbox]

Paris-based luxe streetwear label Casablanca raised some new capital, and founder Charaf Tajer hired Frederick Lukoff, the former C.E.O. of Stella McCartney, to manage the whole thing. [WWD]

A friend of mine recommends the 2016 Peter Lindbergh doc, The Eye. [Amazon]

Fortress Investment Group is set to acquire Vice, the media company that also owns i-D and Refinery29. Let’s see what happens next. [NYT]

Everyone who likes to bitch about how expensive Desert Vintage has gotten should read Kaitlin Phillips’ column, which is so cutting and so good. I’m a fan. [Google Docs]

I get so many story ideas from talking with Leandra Medine. If you’re in the business, this newsletter is essentially a free trend report that you would pay an agency thousands of dollars to produce. If you simply like fashion, it’s wonderful inspiration. [Cereal Aisle]

Law Roach: “I’m like, ‘I’m an entrepreneur,’ but at the end of the day, I was no different from a housekeeper, or a nanny, or whatever. I get paid to pack that bag and bring that bag, period. I want to be in service of myself.” [Interview]

An explainer on why so many companies that recently went public are being taken private again. [Financial Times]

Louis-Gabriel Nouchi of LGN is the winner of the 2023 ANDAM Grand Prize. He’s getting €300,000 and a year of mentorship from Chloe C.E.O. Ricardo Bellini. [Style Not Com]

Authentic Brands Group raised another $500 million from General Atlantic. The future of fashion! [WWD]