Hi, and welcome back to Line Sheet. Thanks to everyone who came out in the rain last night for our private dinner with the very glamorous team behind nuevo shopping emporium Belmont Park Village—you should take a peek next time you go see Bruce Springsteen or Shakira at the stadium next door. Of course, the dinner was off the record, but there was a lot of productive yelling and everyone loved the food (steak and chocolate cake!), presented by Annie Shi, co-owner of King, Jupiter, Lei wine bar, and now, Dean’s. (I went to Dean’s on Tuesday, and I promise, it’s worth the trip for the fish and chips alone.)

I’m excited to visit the O.G. Value Retail spot, Bicester Village, in a few weeks for something very special. More soon. Special thanks to Corey Tuttle and the team at Value Retail and DLX for making last night so fun for everyone, and to Alex Bigler, Eric Van Gelder, and everyone else at Puck for making it so easy for me.

For my final dispatch from New York, I’m surveying the progress at Gap Inc., where Richard Dickson has made a string of hires—some unconventional, some not—that are almost all paying off to varying degrees. Regardless of what you think about Dickson, you have to hand it to him: People are talking about Gap Inc. brands these days, and you can’t say that about many other American fashion companies at the moment.

Up top, I investigate the mysterious deletion of Butt magazine’s Instagram page—two accounts have been shut down!—and evaluate The Hollywood Reporter’s latest Most Powerful People in New York Media list. Plus, Sarah Shapiro and Malique Morris are here with a useful summation of this week’s earnings reports from Revolve, Tapestry, and Warby Parker.

Tomorrow on Fashion People, my guest is Francis Belin, the C.E.O. of Mytheresa. We had a great conversation about collecting versus buying, what the luxury customer wants in 2026, the resilience of the U.S. market, and plenty more. Listen here and here.

Also mentioned in this issue: Victoria Beckham, Alastair McKimm, John Demsey, Mark Guiducci, the Venice Biennale, David Haskell, Chloe Malle, Haio Barbeito, Emily Sundberg, Roger Lynch, Anna Wintour, Pieter Mulier, New Yorker profiles, Mickey Drexler, Kendall Jenner, Sara Moonves, Stella Bugbee, Mel Ottenberg, Christopher John Rogers, Reed Krakoff, Neil Blumenthal, and many more…

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And now, a clear-eyed look at the Zac Posen phenomenon…

Strikingly, there aren’t really that many American fashion brands left—at least not ones that people talk about. Most of the chatter around the Met Gala was about the big European luxury names, whose reliance on the North American market is greater than ever. As Emily Blunt’s Dior executive character said in The Devil Wears Prada 2, “Twenty years ago, a hundred-dollar handbag was considered a splurge. … Now, there’s housewives in Banff who wouldn’t dream of going out without one of our $3,000 totes.”

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But one American company remains top of mind, perhaps surprisingly: Gap Inc., and not just because its co-founder Doris Fisher died this week at 94. Doris and her late husband, Don, famously brought in Mickey Drexler, who helped turn the company into a global phenomenon decades ago. For years, even after the Fishers fired Drexler, in 2002, he remained synonymous with the brand. But these days, articles about Gap Inc.’s reinvention don’t mention Drexler. We’re firmly in the Richard Dickson era now.

Dickson, who stepped into the C.E.O. role in July 2023, has proved himself to be a capable operator: Shares are up slightly year over year, even if they’ve fallen by about a third in the past five years. He’s managed to increase gross margins to 40.8 percent, a 25-year high—an unheard-of scenario in a market where rampant discounting, compounded by increased business costs, has made profiting on affordable clothing nearly impossible.

And yet, so much of the fuss around Gap is due to the fact that he’s recruited top executives who understand the value of the brands in the portfolio but aren’t wedded to the old way of doing things. The result is an organization that increasingly resembles LVMH or Kering, with a focus on individual brands rather than mega-streamlined operations such as PVH or Tapestry. This week, for instance, he appointed the well-known Michael Francis as chief customer officer at Old Navy—even as Francis is also the head of the parentco’s still-new Marketing Shared Services division. Many of Dickson’s other significant hires—Reed Krakoff for accessories, John Demsey for beauty—sit at the group level, but they’re also involved in public-facing, brand-specific projects. Dempsey, of course, is singularly connected with the revival of Gap Beauty.

None of Dickson’s recruits have been more heralded, or surprising, than Zac Posen, who was hired in February 2024, about six months into his tenure. Posen was appointed to serve as the creative director of Gap Inc. in addition to chief creative officer of Old Navy. According to the company, he maintains both of those titles while also heading up Gap Studio, which is meant to be an elevated capsule collection that informs the development of the main line.

When Posen landed at Gap Inc., I predicted he would last about 18 months. It’s been more than 2 years, and he’s fared better than I ever thought. That’s a credit to both him and Dickson, who had the rare operator’s gift of understanding that his own success was dependent on people talking about his company all the time. And Posen has certainly helped in that regard. At a time when the worst thing for a brand is to go unnoticed, Gap is at least being acknowledged—and in recent months, the chatter has been pretty positive.

Anyway, despite Gap Inc.’s very public return-to-office mandates, Posen isn’t the only executive whom people are keeping tabs on: Old Navy C.E.O. Haio Barbeito famously lives in Miami. Banana Republic, which has been without a president since 2024, is instead, for now, being overseen by Dickson himself.

Posen’s main job, it seems, is serving as a sort of blanket spokesperson in New York for Gap and Old Navy, scoring New Yorker profiles and making TV appearances. If Old Navy is launching a collaboration with Christopher John Rogers, or Victoria Beckham is promoting her Gap partnership, Posen is inevitably in the picture, regardless of his prior involvement in the project. (People say he had a lot to do with the Rogers deal, just a little to do with Beckham.) In some cases, he also serves as a sounding board for Dickson: He recruited the creative director Alastair McKimm, for instance, to work on Gap brand campaigns and various projects, but not Demsey or Krakoff, even though he was looped into those conversations.

His biggest contributions, however, seem to be red carpet appearances and his work with Gap Studio. The Met Gala is Posen’s ideal playground. And even if people were down on Kendall Jenner’s look on Monday (I certainly was), you can’t deny his ability to construct a gorgeous dress. Gap Studio, on the other hand, seems rockier. While he may wear double denim in his professional life at Gap Inc., he appears far more comfortable in a purple suit, and nowhere is that unfortunate tension more obvious than in the fussy Studio collection, which should serve as the Uniqlo U of the brand—a testing ground for special ideas before they’re rolled out to a broader audience. (The Victoria Beckham line, designed without Posen, is what Gap Studio should be.)

But the truth, as Dickson knows, is that what works best for all of his brands are practical clothes. After all, the Gap logo sweatshirt is popular with teenagers again. Does that have anything to do with Jenner’s Met Gala appearance on Monday night? Not really, obviously, but that may be the price of doing business these days.

Hailey Bieber is looking quite good in her new Alaïa campaign, a remnant of the Pieter Mulier years. Not sure how this works with her Yves Saint Laurent contract, but happy for everyone involved. [Instagram]

Verneek, a software firm that helps brands integrate A.I. into their operations, added Philippe Schaus, former Moët Hennessy C.E.O.; Dave Kimbell, former C.E.O of Ulta Beauty; and Nils Smedegaard Andersen, former Unilever chairman to its board. They join Geoffroy van Raemdonck, current Saks Global C.E.O. There aren’t many A.I.-powered software companies with that kind of endorsement from fashion and beauty. [Verneek]

My Instagram feed is flooded with people at the Venice Biennale having a great time, even though there also seems to be a ton of political strife. It does feel like the end times at the moment, I know, but it always does in a way! [Artnet]

That time at Rosewood Miramar when Chanel’s Leena Nair met Nancy Silverton (or at least ate her food), per Dylan Byers. [X]

Until tomorrow,
Lauren

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