Hi, and welcome back to Line Sheet. For this preholiday issue, available only to
Inner Circle members, we’ve got a one-two punch. First, an update on the
Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy costume drama on the set of Ryan Murphy’s American Love Story. Then, for the main event, I’m tackling twin succession sagas: Giorgio Armani and Ralph Lauren, two independent companies facing the reality of father time.
Programming note: Tomorrow on Fashion People, my guest is Katie Sturino, body-acceptance advocate,
fashion designer, founder of important beauty brand Megababe, and author of the new novel Sunny Side Up. We chat about it all, and plenty more, including the impact that GLP-1s are having on the culture. Listen
here and here.
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Mentioned in this issue: Giorgio Armani, Ralph Lauren, David Lauren, Patrice Louvet, Michael Rider, LVMH, Hedi Slimane, Bernard Arnault, Prada Group,
Burberry, Angela Ahrendts, Ryan Murphy, C.B.K., American Love Story, Leah Katznelson, Rudy Mance, and many more… |
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One Thing You Should
Know…
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The (costume) drama never ends: We know from my interview with American Love Story creator and producer Ryan Murphy that he was aware of the outrage over the costumes for Sarah Pidgeon, the actress who is playing Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy in his new FX series,
American Love Story, which will premiere in early 2026. Murphy insisted to me that his team was on the case, and rattled off a list of items procured to ensure they got the wardrobe of the ’90s style icon just right. (He also said that he was working with an expert advisory board.) By all accounts, on- and off-set, Leah Katznelson’s costume department worked diligently to get the right pieces together in the weeks since filming began in New
York.
Alas, something has gone awry. I’m told that Katznelson is no longer with the production, and that much of her team has exited as well. Costume designer Rudy Mance, who has worked with Murphy on plenty of shows, is now leading the charge, and I’m told there’s been a “hard reset,” with production pushed back slightly. Whether that means the scenes that were already shot will be reshot… who knows? A rep for Murphy did not respond to a request for
comment.
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Time waits for no man, even the billionaire patriarchs of major fashion brands Giorgio
Armani and Ralph Lauren. These days, succession questions are swirling more than ever. |
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A couple of weeks back, the Armani P.R. team sent out a statement noting that the company’s founder,
Giorgio Armani, would not be taking his bow at the menswear shows in Milan—the first time in his 50 years in business that the designer, who turned 90 last year, would be absent. They were smart to get ahead of the story, noting that he was recovering from an illness, and explaining that he was determined to be present for the Armani Privé show in Paris on July 8, during Couture. But it nevertheless became a headline, picked up by the BBC and The
Guardian.
Meanwhile, just a few days later, Ralph Lauren announced that former Burberry C.E.O. and Apple S.V.P. Angela Ahrendts, who has been on his company’s board since 2018, would serve in an expanded role as the lead independent director. Ostensibly, it was a standard promotion, but it came at a moment when people both inside and outside the company were asking what happens when its own 86-year-old founder and patriarch eventually
can’t make the show.
Despite the best efforts of billionaires, Silicon Valley biohackers, and the medical community, time still waits for no man. And, much to the surprise of the fashion industry, that includes Armani and Lauren, who have lived somewhat parallel lives. Both are self-made, financially independent, and control the fates of their companies. Founded in 1968 and 1975, respectively, Ralph Lauren and Giorgio Armani are pristine brands that were built to become global
organizations. And yet both have struggled to become leaders in luxury handbags and shoes. They also rely more than most luxury players on more-affordable sub-brands. Most significantly, of course, there’s a tremendous amount of speculation and intrigue around what will happen when the namesakes decide to step down. |
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A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR |
26 tabs open, 12 carts going and no idea where you saw that cute jacket…
This was us. Maybe it’s you too? Online shopping can be messy. Notes app chaos. Screenshots in your camera roll. Carts you forgot existed. You need a smarter way to organize and track your must-have pieces. You need one place to keep everything you’re eyeing, across any
store. Beautifully curated. Effortlessly organized. Smart and always on. You’re going to love Carted. More than just a (very) cute wishlist. Carted is your personal shopping assistant, working overtime to send you
price drop notifications and back in stock alerts on the pieces you actually care about. Game on, shopping.
We live for shopping wins. And we all deserve more of those. To celebrate the Carted x Line Sheet week, download Carted for free and you’ll go in the draw to win a $500 voucher to shop your wishlist.
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The question is most significant at the privately held Armani, which generates well north of $2 billion a
year in sales. Mr. Armani, as everyone calls him, is also the sole shareholder, and he set up a foundation to manage the transition after his exit—it stipulates, among other things, that the group cannot I.P.O. for five years. Armani has no children, but plenty of the family is involved.
That said, in the decade since Armani established the foundation, the luxury market has transformed, and the ever-frank designer has publicly acknowledged in recent years that he isn’t opposed to
some sort of merger. “Independence from large groups could still be a driving value for the Armani Group in the future, but I don’t feel I can rule anything out,” he told Bloomberg in 2024. “What has always characterised the success of my work is an ability to adapt to changing times.” Like many luxury brands, Armani experienced a down year in 2024, with profits shrinking 24 percent amid declining sales. |
At Ralph Lauren, the future is a little clearer. In 2017, after fits and starts with other
executives, Lauren hired Patrice Louvet as C.E.O. of the group. A brand manager-type, Louvet successfully reconstituted the brand by simply making it feel even more like itself. Lauren continued to go into the office several times a week, and involved himself in the decision-making, but he trusted Louvet—and new design collaborators like Michael Rider, who was recruited from LVMH-owned Céline by then-fashion head Valérie Hermann to head
up Polo in 2018, before eventually moving to back to Celine (now sans accent aigu) earlier this year.
They struck a balance that has generated enviable financial returns, and a nearly 290 percent increase in share value over the past five years. At a time when most fashion companies are warning that things may not pick up anytime soon, RL’s recent fiscal-year outlook was so positive that the stock crept up again—49 percent this year. And investors have chosen to
ignore what my go-to retail analyst, BMO’s Simeon Siegel, has pointed out time and again in his reports: that Ralph Lauren makes a lot of EBITDA adjustments. “Is it really one-time if it happens regularly?” Simeon recently noted. Apparently, nobody cares. The stock just keeps rising.
Anyway, last year Ralph Lauren’s family sold nearly half a billion dollars’ worth of shares, bringing their stake in the business below 10 percent. Lauren, who controls 85 percent of
the voting rights, sold between $70 million and $80 million in stock this year. The company’s executive leadership is unlikely to change upon Lauren’s inevitable exit, but there is the matter of creative leadership. Rider once seemed the closest to a definitive successor, but now he’s gone. David Lauren, Ralph’s son, leads marketing for the business as the chief brand officer, but he is not the heir to the design throne. The brand does employ an incredibly deep design bench,
filled with folks who live and breathe the business. Much like Chanel after Lagerfeld, this is a machine that could run itself for many years—especially with talented designers like John Wrazej and Karen Brown leading the way. |
Given the global reach of each brand, the industry naturally views them as ripe acquisition targets,
especially for LVMH. There is a fantasy in Milan that LVMH has already worked out some sort of handshake deal with Armani—fueled further by Arnault family members occasionally sitting front row at his shows—and that the designer’s successor will be Hedi Slimane. My understanding, however, is that this is pure fantasy. |
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Ralph Lauren also comes up in LVMH conversations every few months. The argument, simply put, is that
Bernard Arnault would be the only buyer worthy of the family’s standards, if they ever decided to end its run as a stand-alone public company. For LVMH, owning Ralph Lauren would embed the conglomerate further in the U.S. Plus, the brand’s position in the culture—its value beyond the products it sells—aligns with what Arnault obviously believes is the future of the industry. (He wants his brands to stand alongside Coca-Cola and Nike, and Ralph Lauren fits the
bill.) Finally, if LVMH were to further prune its fashion portfolio—as investors have suggested—it could make sense to offload several of the middling-to-underperforming labels to focus only on megabrands.
However, neither company—not Ralph, not Armani—has a business model alignment with LVMH. Fundamentally, Ralph Lauren is not a luxury play, and Armani is not a leather goods business. I’m not sure, given the way the luxury market is developing, that it even makes sense for LVMH
to invest so heavily in clothes. Most likely, these will stay family-controlled businesses in the end, and all the speculation will be for naught. Another scenario is that the companies become acquirers themselves, in the style of the proliferating Prada Group. You know two businesses that really would have synergies? Ralph Lauren and Burberry—just ask its ex-C.E.O., Ralph Lauren board lead Angela Ahrendts. |
Bill Cohan explains, in terrific detail, exactly what this new debt raised
by Saks Global means. [Puck]
Dan Frommer (who happens to be my husband, don’t hold that against him) wrote an extensive, must-read review of Daydream, Julie Bornstein’s A.I. shopping play, which Sarah
covered so smartly last week. Should we hire him? [The New Consumer]
Sukeban, the fashion-adjacent Japanese female wrestling league, is back in Los Angeles and so are the Le-Tan sisters
and Alex Detrick. See you Saturday? [Hollywood Reporter]
Friend of Line Sheet Scott Sternberg did a cute interview, where he once again tried to claim the food at Speranza is “good.”
[East Side Rag]
Another Friend of Line Sheet, Alyssa Vingan, subscribes to over 100 newsletters! [Embedded]
My guys Tim Blanks and Jonathan
Anderson on J.W. Anderson. [BoF]
Delphine Arnault was named a Knight of the Légion d’Honneur, while her father’s advisor Jean-Paul Claverie was “elevated to commander on the list of the French Ministry of Culture,” alongside Maryvonne Pinault, wife of
François Pinault (the dad). [WWD] |
Until tomorrow,
Lauren
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