• Join Puck

    Directly Supporting Authors

    A new economic model in which writers are also partners in the business.

    Personalized Subscriptions

    Customize your settings to receive the newsletters you want from the authors you follow.

    Stay in the Know

    Connect directly with Puck talent through email and exclusive events.

  • What is puck? Newsletters Authors Podcasts Events Gift Puck Careers

Reciting Virgil

LVMH’s unsentimental decision to sell Virgil Abloh’s Off-White to a brand management chop shop, only years after his death, is the latest evidence of the economic pressures on an industry in transition.

Virgil Abloh
Selling Off-White to a subprime brand chop shop will almost certainly damage the legacy of Abloh. Photo: Francois Guillot/AFP/Getty Images
Lauren Sherman
October 3, 2024

Soon after I sent the Monday edition of Line Sheet, an American fashion industry executive who tends to play Switzerland in most scenarios replied with an unusually blunt note regarding the news that LVMH was selling Off-White to Bluestar Alliance, a brand-management firm, just three years after taking a majority stake in the late Virgil Abloh’s company. “Bluestar is a bottom fisher,” this person said. “They buy up bankrupt brands, or license dying brands, then they re-license them to every product maker they can think of.”