A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR

For over 90 years, we have defined Italian elegance. As a family-owned brand across three generations, we celebrate heritage, craftsmanship, and timeless style. Made in Italy is more than a label— it’s our promise of quality, responsibility, and enduring design. Blending tradition with modern sensibility, we shape men’s style worldwide with understated luxury that transcends trends, generations, and borders.

Discover our collection at Canali.com

And now, the main event…

Dr. Barbara Sturm, the founder of the skincare line bearing her name, surely didn’t plan for her recent Wall Street Journal interview to become such a thing. Of course, Sturm is no stranger to controversy, given her unorthodox credentials (she’s an orthopedist, not a dermatologist) and signature invention: a “blood cream” that cost more than $1,400 a jar. But this wasn’t a hatchet job or investigative report. It was a breezy “My Monday Morning” Q&A, a format that’s supposed to let a subject control the narrative over something as innocuous as their daily routine. And yet, Sturm still managed to step in it.

For starters, there was the German doctor’s MAHA-coded take on sunscreen. She said it’s something she wears when she goes skiing or when she’s “on the top of the mountain,” but doesn’t recommend its daily application like basically every other medical professional. (I imagined dermatologists the world over cringing when they read, “You need daylight, girl.”)

A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR

For over 90 years, we have defined Italian elegance. As a family-owned brand across three generations, we celebrate heritage, craftsmanship, and timeless style. Made in Italy is more than a label— it’s our promise of quality, responsibility, and enduring design. Blending tradition with modern sensibility, we shape men’s style worldwide with understated luxury that transcends trends, generations, and borders.

Discover our collection at Canali.com

Then there was Sturm on retinol, which studies have shown works to thicken the skin. Sturm doesn’t think people should use it because it “causes inflammation and makes your skin thinner.” (Medical professionals are vehement that the claim is flat-out wrong.) And the high note in the Sturm operetta: She said she believes that people really only need two skincare products, an at-best unusual thing to say as the founder of a skincare brand that counts dozens of SKUs (including sunscreen).

Sturm’s lack of dermatological expertise was somewhat overlooked when the brand was at its peak and she wasn’t spreading misinformation in interviews. Celebrities like Kim Kardashian, Gwyneth Paltrow, Hailey Bieber, Oprah (also an investor), and Victoria Beckham all endorsed Sturm’s gimmicky blood cream, even if most derms will tell you that any of the theoretical benefits of one’s blood would almost certainly disappear when applied topically. But the scrutiny ramped up in 2024 when Puig, the Spanish beauty and fashion conglomerate, acquired a majority stake in Sturm’s business. And as the brand began to lose altitude, more experts began to publicly question her bona fides. (This Air Mail piece, by my pal Brennan Kilbane, is the best Sturm story that I’ve ever read and feels more relevant than ever.) Asked about her credentials for this story, a spokesperson for Sturm said, “Dr. Barbara Sturm is a qualified medical doctor who studied Medicine and Sports at Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf.”

Now, as the brand’s heat continues to dissipate, Sturm’s public persona has also invited questions for its still-newish corporate parent. What does all this mean for the Dr. Barbara Sturm business, and what does Puig do with it next?

Prior to the Journal scandalette, Dr. Barbara Sturm—both the brand and the person—had been relatively quiet since the Puig deal. No financials were released at the time, never a great sign, but I later reported that Puig paid around $250 million for 65 percent of the brand at a $400-ish million valuation. The Spanish company is locked in to buy the remainder of the company for an adjustable price within a five-year window, which it has yet to do. (Puig did not respond to a request for comment on its ownership stake. Sturm’s spokesperson declined to comment.)

From the outset, it seemed like an odd deal for Puig, which had previously acquired brands like Charlotte Tilbury and Byredo in their prime (the common thread was that all three were founder-led). By the time the conglomerate got involved with Dr. Barbara Sturm, it had arguably already peaked. The company missed its 2023 targets (hitting about $70 million in net sales and not the $80-ish million it had projected), growth had slowed, and the brand felt increasingly of another era. The Covid skincare boom, when a surfeit of smaller brands helped to prove that astronomical prices don’t necessarily equate to superior product, didn’t help Sturm either.

Alas, it doesn’t seem like Puig has done much with the brand since acquiring it—beyond closing its L.A. boutique and spa (although I hear a Palm Beach store will open later this year). “Sturm is kind of like Nina [Ricci]––it’s so small that people don’t talk about it in the company,” said one person close to Puig’s business. Sometimes, they explained, Puig acquires a brand with plans to course correct but then remembers that its megabrands are the priority. “They need to focus on strengthening the men’s business for Paco Rabanne and on building Carolina Herrera,” this person said. “Smaller brands like Sturm are in a holding pattern, and even if they flop a little it’s fine because the rest of the company is okay.”

Perhaps Puig simply didn’t have the right people to plug into Dr. Barbara Sturm to scale at the rate they wanted to. Or Puig may have allocated its top in-house talent to larger brands. For example, Charlotte Tilbury’s new C.M.O. is Jérôme Leloup, who spent several years at Rabanne, and time at Dior and L’Oréal before that. Dr. Barbara Sturm is too small for Leloup, even though he’s exactly the sort of pedigreed executive the brand probably needs.

In any case, there appears to be a mismatch between Sturm’s value proposition and its parentco’s expertise. The person close to Puig suggested that the company “bought Dr. Barbara Sturm based on vibes” and the image Sturm was selling, similar to the reasoning behind the conglomerate’s acquisition of Byredo (Ben Gorham) and Charlotte Tilbury (Charlotte Tilbury, the person). “But behind her persona, Barbara is selling science, which is relatively new for Puig and an added component that they’re not used to holding up to a certain standard,” this person said.

And so what do you do when a founder, who is ostensibly selling science, advances a handful of unscientific claims to a national newspaper? “Who is managing what Barbara is saying and doing in these big interviews?” the person close to Puig continued. “What are the guardrails that are being put into place?”

The fashion trade organizations in Paris, Milan, London, and New York are pushing Saks Global to make good on payments to independent designers prior to its Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection filing. Traditionally, small designers owed small amounts of money would not get paid in full in a restructuring. (The big brands are prioritized, and they also hire lawyers to lobby for them.) Perhaps this plea will help a bit—the people running Saks Global these days are reasonable—but it’s not going to change the harsh reality that these types of defaults are going to happen every year or two and young brands need to bake the likelihood of that into their business plans. (Disclosure: Saks Global has sued Puck over our coverage of its debt management.) [Vogue Business]

Friend of Line Sheet Chris Chang wrote a short film for Zegna that stars Stellan Skarsgard. It’s cute. [Instagram]

American-born, British-based designer Conner Ives is picking up momentum. Lauren Santo Domingo, Dree Hemingway, Emily Ratajkowski, and Selby Drummond all wore his dresses to the Vanity Fair party (which he attended), and Sara Moonves is a big fan, too. [Vanity Fair]

Here’s a really excellent take on a niche beauty drama. You won’t be disappointed. (Substack recommendation from Julie Schott and Annie Kreighbaum.) [Trucco Journal]

Rickie De Sole is leaving Nordstrom! More soon, to be sure. [WWD]

Until tomorrow,
Lauren

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