Hi, and welcome back to Line Sheet. Happy 30th anniversary to 0FR, where I’ve probably spent more money over the past 20 years than anywhere else in the world.

In today’s issue, Malique “Malique@puck.news” Morris is running the show, starting with the tale of Victoria’s Secret’s battle against an activist investor desperate for a board seat. Up top, Malique sheds light on an online campaign trolling the Satisfy x Adidas collab, shares what Chanel’s 2025 numbers foreshadow about the Year of Blazy, and checks in on Mytheresa, Net-a-Porter, Yoox, and parentco LuxExperience.

Also, here’s an in-real-life programming note for British Line Sheet readers, Fashion People listeners, and consumption addicts willing to cross oceans or channels: On Thursday, May 28, at 5 p.m., I am conducting a live taping of Fashion People with the one and only Alex Eagle in the Apartment at Bicester Village, the most famous shopping destination in the world. (If you’re a fashion person, at least.) If you’re interested in attending, email Eric@puck.news for more details.

Also mentioned in this issue: Martin Waters, Donna James, Adam Selman, Brice Partouche, Ed Razek, Choupette, Christine Leahy, Swatch, Mariam Naficy, Brian Cornell, Mango, Chip Wilson, Hillary Super, Les Wexner, Lululemon, Brett Blundy, Scott Sekella, Vince Adams, and more…

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Malique Morris

Three Things You Should Know…

Satisfy gets bullied by poorly dressed marathoners who spend too much time online: Perhaps no one could have anticipated the online vitriol that was unleashed on Monday when Adidas and Satisfy Running—the bougie upstart backed by a Wertheimer scion—posted an Instagram video of a competition held last weekend in the Sonoran Desert. “Wow, nothing embodies punk rock more than a $200 t-shirt,” one follower commented about the event, where professional runners wearing the soon-to-be-released Adizero Adios Pro 4 Satisfy ran around a track with a live band playing in the background. YaBoyScottJurek, a popular running-themed meme account, posted a carousel featuring a “would you rather” comparing the event to the Epstein files.

The reaction feels enormously outsize—nobody is fretting over District Vision’s collaboration with New Balance. But Satisfy founder Brice Partouche, who has been the subject of online teasing before, tends to add fuel to the fire by responding to comments and calling out other brands for copycat behavior.

Alas, Satisfy made a choice to put tiny holes in $140 running tees. Adidas’ decision to co-sign the look—there are big holes in the sneakers!—just made this all a more target-rich environment. This isn’t Balmain circa Christophe Decarnin, after all. “Gentrifying running,” is how one industry insider described Satisfy.

Anyway, again, not sure why people are so hung up on this, but at least people are talking about it? What else could Satisfy, or Adidas, ask for?
Remember, Chanel was always better than good: The first Chanel products from the Matthieu Blazy era didn’t hit stores until March of 2026, but the designer’s appointment—and the hype around his early runway shows last fall—may have inspired customers to jump on the Chanel 25 hobo bag, which is a certifiable hit, per C.E.O. Leena Nair. In 2025, Chanel’s revenue rose 2 percent year over year, to $19.3 billion, after falling 4 percent in 2024, the company announced on Tuesday. Operating profits grew 5 percent, to $4.7 billion.

Nair attributed much of the growth to investments that included store openings and manufacturing. Chanel also capped its price increases at around 3 percent following consumer backlash to post-pandemic hikes. And yet, free cashflow increased by 44 percent year over year, to $2.7 billion. With all that cash lying around, it’s no wonder the company loves to boast how much it’s spending on improving the business. (It invested $700 million alone in the métiers d’art, or the specialized factories that deal in everything from leather goods to watches and fine jewelry.)

The results were in line with the rest of the market, and better than most of Chanel’s competitors. One important thing to remember: Even during the ho-hum Virginie Viard era, Chanel’s product in-store was good. People were still very into it, even if the runway shows were dreary. And yet, there’s no way that Matthieu’s magic dust didn’t help a bit in 2025, too. In recent months, new clients have been bum-rushing stores for Blazy’s $1,375 two-toned, square-toe flats and $9,300 maxi flapbags from his inaugural collection. So much is already sold out, and now pieces from December’s Métiers d’Art show in New York City will hit stores in a few weeks.

The company has been smart about populating the stores with capsule collections—like Coco Beach—that scratch the itch of the runway shows as they debut. Of course, the Fall/Winter 2026 and Cruise collections won’t arrive in boutiques for some time. Speaking of which, Chanel is opening 30 new locations this year, giving Blazy more real estate to express his vision. At this point, it’s not a question of whether sales growth in 2026 will be insane, but merely how insane.
LuxExperience takes a dip: On Tuesday, LuxExperience—the jazzily named parent company of Mytheresa and Yoox Net-a-Porter—reported fiscal third-quarter net sales of €618 million, down 5 percent for the period that ended in March. At Mytheresa, its strongest division, sales rose 6 percent, to €256 million, down from a 9 percent year-over-year jump the previous quarter. Meanwhile, Net-a-Porter and its menswear offshoot, Mr Porter, posted a 12 percent decline, to €232 million, while Yoox sales fell 11 percent, to €131 million.

The choppy numbers probably drove LuxExperience’s stock down 11 percent despite beating profit estimates and reinforcing its full-year guidance. LuxExperience C.E.O. Michael Kliger’s whole M.O. has been responsible, profitable growth: Mytheresa came out on top in the online luxury wars because it never relied too heavily on growth marketing to scale but rather focused on building one-to-one relationships with top-spending clients, who drive the majority of revenue anyway. Net-a-Porter’s customer is still luxury, but the average basket size shrank in recent years as they tried to capture more of the contemporary market share, which is probably the right move to ensure scale. But the years of issues—with everything from its tech stack to its ownership—got it off track. (Remember when Farfetch was going to buy YNAP?!)

Kliger is going to have to stick to his guns and let Net-a-Porter C.E.O. Heather Kaminetsky and Mr Porter head Toby Bateman continue to perform surgery, and it’s going to require some patience from the public market, which doesn’t like multibrand retail companies.

And now, onto the main event…

The One-Man War for Victoria’s Secret

Victoria’s Secret just escalated its proxy battle with billionaire Brett Blundy, an ugly fight over who’s done worse on sexual harassment. But the sideshow is distracting from a crucial point: The new Victoria’s Secret is working.

Malique Morris

It’s proxy fight season in retail. Lululemon’s estranged founder, Chip Wilson, has been pushing for a board shake-up for months. Last week, activist investors rallied to oust members of Target’s board, including former C.E.O. Brian Cornell and lead director Christine Leahy. Both cases, which feature depressed stocks and a powerful stakeholder seeking change, speak to the continued fragility of the sector.

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Something very different is unfolding at Victoria’s Secret, which is facing a proxy battle despite doubling its valuation over the past year. Since 2022, BBRC, the private investment firm founded by Australian billionaire Brett Blundy, has amassed a 13 percent stake in the lingerie brand. But Blundy has repeatedly been denied a board seat despite his experience building and scaling retail brands in Australia. In June 2025, he started calling for the removal of chair Donna James, a business consultant who’s been on the board since 2003.

Last week, the fight escalated. Victoria’s Secret released a proxy statement explaining why it had blocked Blundy’s appointment, citing allegations that he had a history of hiring executives accused of sexual harassment. (BBRC countered that Victoria’s Secret was “diverting attention” from Blundy’s call for “accountable governance.”) At the same time, the company announced that tech entrepreneur Mariam Naficy, a board member since 2022, would not seek reelection because of the “time and attention required to engage with BBRC’s proxy contest.” On Monday, Victoria’s Secret urged shareholders to support James ahead of the June shareholder meeting. “We have the right board with diverse expertise, led by chair Donna James, and the right leadership team to continue delivering value to shareholders,” the company said in a letter. “Why disrupt what is working?”

It’s all pretty ironic given Victoria’s Secret’s own sordid history: the Wexner–Epstein connection, former marketing chief Ed Razek’s discriminatory public comments and alleged misconduct, etcetera. By the time Victoria’s Secret split from L Brands and Razek exited, the company’s sexy-and-thin motif was hopelessly outdated, and its belated embrace of body diversity wasn’t enough to compete with challengers like Skims, Parade, and Savage x Fenty.

Blundy has seized on that history to target James directly, pointing to her being named as a defendant in a 2020 shareholder lawsuit that alleged the board failed to address sexual harassment at Victoria’s Secret. (The litigation resulted in a $90 million settlement.) So it’s no surprise that the board is throwing Blundy’s hiring record back in his face. BBRC re-upped its critiques of James in a Tuesday statement.

It’s true, as Blundy notes, that James is one of the last remaining board members from the Wexner era. But she also helped stabilize the company after the split from L Brands and oversaw the appointment of retail veteran Hillary Super, formerly of Savage x Fenty, as C.E.O. in August 2024. (Super replaced Martin Waters, a well-liked caretaker executive who lacked the product expertise needed to reconnect the brand with consumers.) Under Super, Victoria’s Secret has returned to growth, with revenue up 5 percent in 2025 after stagnating in 2024.

Meanwhile Blundy, who built his fortune as owner of Australian intimates seller Bras N Things, hasn’t really offered a vision of his own. Most activist investors come up with an alternative turnaround plan: Wilson, for example, has already proposed replacement directors and released proxy statements outlining how Lululemon can regain cultural relevance. Blundy has yet to name any prospective board members beyond himself—which almost certainly will not happen—or presented a strategy for Victoria’s Secret’s next phase of growth.

On one level, this proxy fight seems personal. But from the board’s perspective, the conflict ultimately isn’t between Blundy and James—it’s about the board’s effort to shield Super and her team and allow them to focus on what the company is already doing right.

Let Her Cook?

So far, Super seems to be fulfilling her remit of modernizing Victoria’s Secret. Last year, she hired former Savage x Fenty designer Adam Selman as creative director. (He’s since been promoted to chief creative officer.) She’s also pushed to orient Victoria’s Secret’s product releases around legible, and often empowering, themes. Releases for Valentine’s Day are centered on the idea of a woman buying herself lingerie instead of waiting for a gift from a partner. Internally, she’s refined the VS proposition and engendered goodwill among staffers by holding monthly “Ask Me Anything” town hall–style meetings.

All of that appears to be translating to the top line. In the final quarter of 2025, the company’s bra sales were up for the first time since 2021; its beauty arm generated over $1 billion; and its youth-oriented offshoot, Pink, which has refashioned itself for a generation of social media–native teens, saw its highest sales growth in a decade.

Blundy does have one valid criticism about Victoria’s Secret: its $400 million acquisition of Adore Me in 2022. On an earnings call in March, C.F.O. Scott Sekella announced that the company had discontinued Adore Me’s subscription service, closed its distribution centers in Mexico, and was doing a “strategic review” of DailyLook, another subscription service it inherited in the acquisition. Those certainly aren’t markers of success, but they also don’t justify a board overhaul when other areas of the business are trending upward.

Still, Victoria’s Secret will have to appease Blundy in some way to get him to back down, lest this proxy fight evolve from distraction to detriment. I’m told there’s a feeling among staffers that some would follow Super if she ever left the company. Amid a noisy battle like this, she might. Blundy is already making some inroads with his flashy theatrics: Naficy’s disclosure that Blundy’s campaign made her leave is an atypical admission for a board member; they usually cite the standard euphemisms of “personal reasons” or “other professional opportunities” when exiting. Victoria’s Secret says it will allow shareholders, including BBRC, to weigh in on Naficy’s replacement.

What We’re Reading…

Somehow, here is a profile of Choupette. [The Atlantic]

J.W. Anderson sponsored London Craft Week. [Instagram]

The Swatch x Audemars Piguet pocket watch collab inspired mosh pits and fistfights at Swatch stores around the world, and people are now buying the entire collection on StockX for 257 percent higher than retail. Who said hype culture was dead? [StockX]

The Mango heir was arrested in the death of his father. [The Guardian]

Gap Inc. poached PVH’s American C.E.O., Donald Kohler, to run Banana Republic. Kohler spent over a decade at Gap back in the ’90s. That should be a plus. [Inbox]

Apparently, a proxy war settlement between Chip Wilson and Lululemon blew up just days before the athleisure giant released a scathing letter urging shareholders to ignore Wilson’s provocations. [WSJ]

Until tomorrow,
Lauren

P.S.: We use affiliate links because we are a business. We may make a couple bucks off them.

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