Hi, and welcome back to Line Sheet. If you, too, were wondering why Coach is doing so well right now, Sarah “SShapiro@puck.news” Shapiro is here to explain. (It cannot be all about the Brooklyn bag.) Up top, a Line Sheet star invests in ShopMy, Sarah assesses the value of department store foot traffic in 2025, and I have some crucial updates regarding Mark Guiducci’s Vanity Fair, from new hires to advertising performance. More later this week from Europe, where I’m told the new Balmain designer could be announced as early as tomorrow.

Perhaps I’ll see you tonight at Diesel (the book store) at the Brentwood Country Mart for my talk with Amy Larocca about How to Be Well. (Don’t worry, we will address peptides.) And tomorrow, November 12, at 8 p.m., I am chatting with Bobbi Brown about her life and new memoir—Still Bobbi: A Master Class in Resilience and Reinvention—at the Ann and Jerry Moss Theater at New Roads School in Santa Monica. (Get your tickets here.)

Mentioned in this issue: Coach, Todd Kahn, Tapestry, Scott Roe, Louis Vuitton, Ralph Lauren, Patrice Louvet, Vanity Fair, Mark Guiducci, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Adrienne Green, Vogue, José Criales-Unzueta, Lauren Santo Domingo, Saks Global, Nordstrom, Bloomingdale’s, Neiman Marcus, and many more…

Three Things You Should Know…

It’s okay to be jealous of José: Just as Mark Guiducci prepares to drop his first issue of Vanity Fair—the Hollywood issue, featuring an all-male cover—he has announced a slew of new hires, including Ta-Nehisi Coates as a staff writer, Adrienne Green as executive editor, and close friend Derek Blasberg grabbing the title of special correspondent. No surprise on that one.

Perhaps most importantly for our readership are the appointments of frequent Fashion People guest Marisa Meltzer as a senior staff writer—sorry, Styles section!—and Vogue fashion news writer José Criales-Unzueta in the coveted style correspondent role. I am not sure Guiducci could have made a better choice than Criales-Unzueta. He was utilized as much as possible at Vogue given the entrenched hierarchy there; now, he’ll have a chance to offer his opinion and have a little fun with direct access to higher-profile subjects.

These are very much choices that align with Guiducci’s personal taste and understanding of the current culture, and perhaps not necessarily what is expected of the Vanity Fair of the past 40-odd years, and especially not the last 10. For instance, I hear that he is going to be redirecting the royals coverage, long a bread-and-butter topic, to be more access-focused and less concerned with the daily comings-and-goings of the Windsor lot. (After all, website traffic is diminishing and no one really cares about these folks unless they are connected to Jeffrey Epstein.)

Meanwhile, there are early signs that advertisers are willing to give Guiducci a shot—partly, I presume, with soft pressure from Anna Wintour. I’m told the overall ad-page count for his Hollywood issue is up 22 percent year over year, with fashion pages up 50 percent. (Overall revenue is up, too, but that includes digital and other adjacencies.) A rep for Vanity Fair declined to comment. More TK, as they say.

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Sarah Shapiro

ShopMy LSD: Lauren Santo Domingo has cast a vote of confidence in ShopMy—her St. Dominique Capital investment firm was part of ShopMy’s $70 million raise at a $1.5 billion valuation last month. St. Dominique’s only previous known investment was in The Row in September 2024, in a round that valued the Olsen sisters’ outfit at $1 billion. While LTK clings to mass-market influencer commerce, ShopMy has been deliberately cracking the code on digital luxury and disruption, similar to how LSD’s Moda Operandi introduced a new way to shop trunk shows when it came on the digital scene in 2010.
Who’s shopping where: Between the department store turf wars and the challenges facing a merged Saks Global, we’ll be watching foot traffic closely this Q4. Nordstrom and Bloomingdale’s have already seen some positive gains. Bloomingdale’s traffic is up 4.7 percent year over year, according to Placer.ai, which uses machine learning and data from tens of millions of devices to measure foot traffic. Unfortunately, foot traffic at the retailer is still down 7.5 percent from 2019 (a.k.a., pre-Covid). Nordstrom’s 3.4 percent year-over-year gain shows similar strength, giving both retailers some solid momentum heading into the holiday season. (Nordstrom’s drop since 2019, at 14.8 percent, is more pronounced due to more store closures.)

Meanwhile, foot traffic at Saks Fifth Avenue is down 6.5 percent year over year and 8.4 percent from 2019, but it’s Neiman Marcus that is struggling the most—down 2.8 percent this year and a whopping 35.9 percent since 2019, also mostly due to store closures.

Now, the main event…

Coach Upgrade

Coach is back. Revenue is way up and the Brooklyn and Tabby bags seem to be everywhere. Is it a passing viral episode or something to build on?

Sarah Shapiro

Coach is having a moment: Every store that I walk by is bustling; my Instagram feed and favorite style Substacks are flooded with the brand’s bags; Gen Z seems to have a clear thirst for the ubiquitous Brooklyn and Tabby silhouettes; and the company’s Q1 numbers showed robust 21 percent year-over-year revenue growth. Meanwhile, Coach has grand ambitions. During their September investor day, parentco Tapestry shared its $10 billion goal for Coach annual revenues in the not-too-distant future.

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On his earnings call with analysts last week, Coach C.E.O. Todd Kahn reeled off a hit list of current bestsellers and nodded at the “One Coach” strategy, which puts the same handbags in outlet stores alongside discounted goods and outlet-only merchandise. “The consumer comes in, whether it’s Woodbury Common, Sawgrass—they want to buy the Tabby bag,” he said.

But there’s a wide gulf to bridge between customer acquisition and longer-term loyalty. So what happens when those handbags eventually stop selling? Naturally, when long-term sustainability came up on the call, Kahn offered some McKinsey-esque “proof points.” He rattled off four operational metrics—store count, marketing spend, price points, and staffing—that helped the brand acquire some 2.2 million new customers last quarter. His fifth pillar evoked the ephemeral nature of the business. “The innovation pipeline is remarkable,” he said.

Management also appears to be hedging. The company raised full-year guidance from $7.2 billion to $7.3 billion in revenue—a modest bump following a double-digit growth quarter. “We’re 25 percent through the year,” Tapestry C.F.O./C.O.O. Scott Roe said on the call, so “it’s prudent to maintain” a conservative outlook. But it’s reasonable to wonder if Coach’s momentum is really attributable to a One Coach playbook and Kahn’s proof points, or if the brand is simply riding a wave created by some viral bags hitting a nostalgic sweet spot.

Accessible luxury only works if there’s some aspiration—some reason to pay $450 for a Coach bag instead of $80 for one by Zara. And as the brand welcomes millions of new customers, it might consider mimicking the recent Ralph Lauren playbook if it wants to convert them into longer-term brand loyalists. In 2017, Ralph Lauren hired Patrice Louvet as C.E.O. amid a sales slump. In the span of five years, he executed a deft turnaround by pulling back from department stores, focusing on customer experience, and demanding sharper heritage storytelling, strict channel discipline, and a defined brand architecture.

On some level, all he really had to do was dust off Ralph Lauren’s original proposition—American preppy with a Brit royal accent, aspirational but inclusive, selling clothes to the new-money crowd that was storming the beaches of patrician East Hampton and Nantucket. The company maintains distinct tiers: Purple Label for luxury, Polo for accessibility, RRL for vintage-inspired heritage. Each knows its lane. This structure lets Ralph Lauren weather cycles. The brand goes in and out of fashion—but when it’s “out,” it’s still Ralph Lauren. A similar strategy-driven infrastructure certainly might entice all the new Coach customers to stick around.

What We’re Reading… and Looking At…

One amazing thing about Kris Jenner’s 70th birthday party: She invited Line Sheet hero Dr. Steve Levine, who did her facelift. [Instagram]

If you, too, refuse to put a cover on your iPhone, the Apple–Issey Miyake iPhone pocket may offer a solution. It’s made from one piece of 3-D knit, features the classic Miyake pleats, and nods to the longstanding conversation (to put it in Charvet-Chanel terms) between the two companies. Remember that Steve Jobs wore Issey Miyake turtlenecks. You can buy it on November 14, and there are two versions: a $149.95 short-strap style and a $229.95 long-strap version. [Apple]

Ashlynn Park won the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund. I’m not sure there was any other way it could have gone: Ashlynn has real potential, as a designer and a business. Congrats! [Vogue]

Zara collaborated with Ludovic de Saint Sernin, who is incredibly talented. [WWD]

If you still eat, The Infatuation just dropped its best new restaurants in America list, with more granular lists for New York and Los Angeles, plus a fun 2026 trend report.

The talent manager Delphine Del Val does a gift guide on her Instagram every year. It’s very good. She has kindly taken her private account public for a few days so you can read it and use it. [Instagram]

Until tomorrow,
Lauren

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Puck fashion correspondent Lauren Sherman and a rotating cast of industry insiders take you deep behind the scenes of this multitrillion-dollar biz, from creative director switcheroos to M&A drama, D.T.C. downfalls, and magazine mishaps. Fashion People is an extension of Line Sheet, Lauren’s private email for Puck, where she tracks what’s happening beyond the press releases in fashion, beauty, and media. New episodes publish every Tuesday and Friday.

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