Aug 5, 2025

Hi, and welcome back to Line Sheet. Wow, a lot of you are on vacation. Speaking of, I’m going on one of those soon, and plan to leave you with an end-of-summer mailbag issue. Send me your burning questions by replying to this email. Subscriber queries will be prioritized!

Today, Sarah Shapiro is answering one of my burning questions: Who’s winning the premium denim wars? A conversation about jean shorts (never call them jorts) prompted Sarah to investigate why some brands stand apart in this forever-crowded market. (Here’s one part of the answer: Ever heard of a guy called Benjamin Talley Smith?) Up top, Sarah has a Nantucket retail report (beyond Murray’s). She also explains why white ribbed tank tops have become as big of a requisite this season as flip-flops, and which brands actually benefited from the Devil Wears Prada 2 pap dump. Mentioned in this issue: Sydney Sweeney, Citizens of Humanity, Agolde, Karen Phelps, Elyse Winter, Frame, Erik Torstensson, Jens Grede, Staud Denim, Nantucket, Skims, J.Crew, Anne Hathaway, and many, many more…

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Sarah Shapiro

Three Things You Should Know…

White tank top theory: Gen Z girls on TikTok are currently obsessed with “the white tank top theory”—I’ve traced it back to this video from March—which asserts that those who look great in nothing but a ribbed white tank top have style. Sure, it’s a facile and self-serving proposition, but there’s also no question that a white tank top does go with everything, and particularly the items that people seem to be wearing on repeat this summer: jean shorts, athletic baggies, poplin maxi skirts, and flip-flops.Here are a few options for those who want to see whether they have it: Hanes’ pack of 5; the Skims tank that made Lyst’s top 10 items in Q2; a 4.7-star version from J.Crew; a Toteme iteration to be worn under blazers (à la Anne Hathaway in DWP2); and, for those in the chips, Alaïa’s designer version. Meanwhile, several brands carry a white tank with a little logo front and center, like Loewe and Abercrombie.
Nantucket retail gridlock: Nantucket’s shopping scene is keeping pace with the stock market. Despite the island’s compact size (you can walk the entire downtown in 10 minutes), ever more brands are setting up shop, raising questions about market saturation in a place where parking is already a hot mess.Activity from fashion brands has been notable this season: Dôen launched their first Nantucket outpost with a frothy influencer event; J.Crew had a summer club pop-up in mid-July; and Jenny Bird also popped up. Later this week, Crescent Collective is orchestrating trunk shows for Marfa Stance, La Ligne, Lingua Franca, and others. Success with the pop-up model in the Hamptons clearly inspired this migration. Of course, it’s unclear whether Nantucket—which notably does not want chain stores—can absorb more retail. The infrastructure certainly can’t handle much more, but a summer population with excessive money to burn keeps brands interested in getting a foothold on island, as they say.
Devil in the details: Based on social chatter and insights from Launchmetrics, the social media and paparazzi infatuation with the Midtown filming of The Devil Wears Prada 2 has conferred the most media impact value on Gabriela Hearst ($1.4 million in MIV so far). Chanel came in second, driven by the dad sandal that Anne Hathaway wears, which might be a callback to the line from the original DWP: “Are you wearing the…” “Chanel boots? Yeah, I am.” Meanwhile, Hathaway’s Jean Paul Gaultier suit helped the brand break the million-dollar mark.

devil wears prada 2 media impact rankings

The MIV rankings around the movie, which doesn’t hit theaters until next May, also highlighted several less-chattered-about brands and items, like a simple Toteme tank top, which tracks with the latest Gen Z TikTok trend. Golden Goose, Agolde, and Re/done also made the top 10.

Now, the main event…

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Jeanius

In this summer’s crowded premium denim market, brand success hinges on securing top design talent. Pro tip: size up!

Sarah Shapiro

With apologies to Sydney Sweeney, whose American Eagle ad somehow landed her an unwitting role as a right-wing Republican avatar—good luck!—the premium denim market is better, and more crowded, than ever. You can walk into almost any department store, or multibrand retailer, and find every silhouette imaginable—barrel jeans, straight legs, relaxed fits, boyfriend cuts. Instead, brands looking to differentiate their denim today need to compete on fit: the ability to make jeans that flatter the widest range of body types, feel genuinely good to wear, and turn first-time buyers into loyalists. But increasingly, this expertise isn’t a brand asset—it’s a talent asset, living within the creative directors and designers.

Indeed, in an industry where design talent moves fluidly between brands, the success of a denim label has become precariously tied to the individuals shaping their collections. And as trend cycles get faster, it’s not enough to have institutional knowledge, or to be first to market with a new cut. Citizens of Humanity and Agolde (both under the Citizens of Humanity umbrella) were two of the first brands to crack this code: At Agolde, Karen Phelps has overseen creative direction for nearly a decade, and at Citizens of Humanity, Marianne Gallagher McDonald has led creative direction for their men’s, women’s collections for the past ten years. Agolde’s jeans, in particular, have become synonymous with superior fit, capturing consumer attention where trend-chasing brands faltered.

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Meanwhile, the talent race extends beyond individual in-house hires. Benjamin Talley Smith, the consultant behind those coveted old Khaite jeans (the O.G.s miss the original button!), is reportedly working with Madewell to rework their denim assortment and hone in on fit. He’s bringing fit-first design to a lower price point, democratizing the expertise that was once exclusive to the premium brands—which are, themselves, starting to get worried about being undercut on department store floors. “Blazer brands” like Veronica Beard, Favorite Daughter, A.L.C., L’Agence, and Staud Denim, which launched last week, are all trying to undercut premium denim brands’ prices in department stores.

Frame of Reference

The recent success of Frame, which was co-founded in 2012 by creative director Erik Torstensson and Jens Grede, illustrates how talent acquisition has become central to denim strategy. The brand has reportedly had double-digit growth for two years running—timing that aligns with former Phelps acolyte Erin Meehan’s tenure as the women’s denim creative director. Meehan’s influence is evident in Frame’s latest hits, including the Hang Short and the Timeless Short, which compete with Agolde’s versions. Other top sellers this year include Le Slim Palazzo, with its ’70s-inspired styling, and the Loose, with a low-slung baggy look. Alas, I’m told Meehan left Frame last month…

Meanwhile, stylist Elyse Winter told me that her go-tos include Agolde’s ’90s crop (she noted the wider leg makes them amazing to wear with loafers and sneakers) and Citizen’s Ayla (“one of the best jeans ever made”). Winter, who used to work at Farfetch and now has a roster of private clients, admits that she secretly loves that Agolde runs large, because she wants clients sizing up anyway for a looser fit. For full length, Winter chooses Frame’s Pixie Ruler, her preferred stretch jean, thanks to its skinny-but-not-too-straight fit.

For premium denim brands, the nature of competition is no longer about who has the best manufacturer, material, etcetera. Instead, the market rewards the companies investing sufficiently in talent acquisition to ensure their businesses stand the test of time.

What We’re Reading… and Looking At…

A new biography of Claire McCardell, by Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson, tells the story of the designer who revolutionized the American fashion industry by prioritizing women’s comfort and freedom over restrictive standards, and demanded fresh designs instead of copies. (That was even more of a thing in the 1930s.) McCardell created timeless pieces that still influence designers like Calvin Klein and Tory Burch. Perhaps even more strikingly, she built an empire, complete with licensing, during an era when few women reached the top in the fashion industry. [Claire McCardell: The Designer Who Set Women Free]

Saks Global is not shying away from its Amazon association. This summer, they seem to be hosting some sort of something—A pop-up? An event?—at The Hedges Inn in East Hampton, which just reopened after Andrew and Sarah Wetenhall, who own the Colony Hotel in Palm Beach, bought it in March and installed a Swifty’s outpost there. [Instagram] Congrats to Friend of Line Sheet Madeline Hill, whose very good podcast, The Sports Gossip Show, is now a part of The Athletic’s network. [Instagram] Skims launched their Back to Campus campaign and new products—a territory once fully owned by Victoria’s Secret’s Pink. [Skims]

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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