{{ 'now' | timezone: 'America/New_York' | date: '%b %d, %Y' }} |
|
|
|
Hi, and welcome back to Line Sheet. Thanks to everyone who came out to The Apartment at Bicester Village
tonight for my conversation with Alex Eagle. The chat will run on the Fashion People feed sooner than later. Thanks to Alex, the team from Bicster Village, the legend Jess Christie, and of course to our very own Eric Van Gelder and the rest of the Puck team for making it
all happen.
In today’s Inner Circle issue, Malique “Malique@puck.news” Morris has the story on the challenges facing Jerry Lorenzo’s Los Angeles brand, Fear of God, as it attempts to gain ground in luxury. Lorenzo is hugely respected, and the brand’s B.U.M. Equipment–style Essentials line could buoy them for decades. But to play on the
luxury stage, Fear of God will need to improve its operational capacity… and finally find an external investor. Malique explains what’s happening behind the scenes. Be sure to join the Inner Circle for this one—and for eternal salvation, of course.
Up top, I’ve got a minor T magazine update, some scuttlebutt regarding the Bergdorf men’s store lease, and news regarding how people inside
Condé Nast are feeling about the union’s win against Stan Duncan. And as an F.Y.I., tomorrow on Fashion People, my guests are David and Kavi Ahuja Moltz, co-founders of D.S. & Durga. We discuss entrepreneurial couplehood, what it means to be a “nose,” and plenty more. Listen here
and here.
And there’s more! Last week at the Air Mail newsstand, Malique sat down with Bandit co-founder and C.E.O. Nick West and Swap C.M.O. Juan Pellerano-Rendón to chat about how A.I. is dramatically transforming commerce. (We all know it’s happening, but now we know how.) You can peruse the conversation
here.
Also mentioned in this issue: Stella Bugbee, Dean Baquet, Nick Haramis, Jo Ellison, Barbara Werschine, Complex, Peter Copping, Pattie Gonia, Elizabeth Herbst-Brady, the National Labor Relations Board,
Derek Guy, Sam Dolnick, PacSun, Kathleen Maloney Ritz, and more. |
|
|
|
A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR |
|
|
|
Three Things You Should
Know…
|
- A
non-update update from the T search: Things are progressing, but how far, and how fast, is unclear. The chatter inside the Times is that top candidates are being presented to executive editor Joe Kahn while Sulzberger scion and deputy managing editor Sam Dolnick and former executive editor Dean Baquet continue to lead the search. While I don't know everyone who made this cut, internal candidates
Nick Haramis and Stella Bugbee were still in contention as of last week. Externally, one person of interest is Jo Ellison, the deputy weekend editor for the Financial Times and mastermind of its enviable How to Spend It magazine.
Haramis, who is well-liked both within T and the broader industry, is the house favorite. But Bugbee, the Styles editor who I was originally told wasn’t interested, is
extremely competitive. Who knows why she ended up in the mix, given that her perch in Styles wields far more power than running T—at least in its current form. (More likely than not, she was encouraged by Baquet and Dolnick.) The Times is sort of like the State Department: You have to apply for the posts the people in charge tell you to.
All this could take weeks or even months. Or days? However, I’m told there is a big change afoot in the arts and culture section, and
that will likely be sorted before T gets its new editor. As one Times person noted to me: If someone sent a great memo today, there’s a chance everything could change. Perhaps. As I said, a non-update update! - About that Bergdorf Goodman menswear store lease: For years, there’s been speculation about the fate of the Bergdorf Goodman menswear store at 745 Fifth Avenue, which is owned by Rithm (which acquired its previous owners,
Paramount Group, at the beginning of 2006; Paramount bought the building in 2002). For a time, the rumors held that Paramount was going to sell the building—maybe even to LVMH or Chanel. Now, I hear there’s a chance that Saks Global, which owns Bergdorf and is in the midst of a bankruptcy restructuring, could break its lease some four years before the contract is up. A rep for the company said they don’t comment on rumors or speculation, but one thing to remember is that during a restructuring,
the company has to be very aboveboard with everything it does, and that means if they were actively trying to break the lease they would have had to disclose that to investors. Still, there are people involved that think it’s a good idea. If it were to happen at some point down the line, Bergdorf would absorb the men’s floors into the original building. There’s an advantage to that, to be sure, but it could also mean fewer vendors overall.
I haven’t been to the Bergdorf men’s store in
years, but I did stop by the flagship in early May, and my biggest criticism was that the racks were… too full. That may simply reflect an eagerness to display the breadth of available product after a year of dwindling inventory. But what makes a department store great is a sense that every single item was chosen. Perhaps combining the men’s and women’s stores would force the team to do a bit more editing. - Now we know what the Condé Nast union is
good for: I have to say, I was very surprised when Condé Nast announced that it was technically reversing the firing of three employees who stormed the ramparts of H.R. chief Stan Duncan’s office last November, amid another round of layoffs, and paying them a $400,000 settlement to go away. (The fourth employee, who was on probation when he was terminated, has filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board.)
Of course, the Condé Nast union views
this as a victory, which it is, but not everyone is as jazzed about it as I assumed they would be. The primary sentiment is that, while it’s nice that the company is taking some responsibility for what happened, they aren’t doing anything to make sure it doesn’t happen again. One person noted that chief revenue officer Elizabeth Herbst-Brady just did a terribly nice interview in Adweek about the strength of Condé Nast’s events, and yet the events team is dwindling. For
instance, Kathleen Maloney Ritz, who was a big part of the events team at GQ and Vanity Fair, just fled for W.
|
|
|
|
The sui generis luxury basics founder recently eliminated his C.E.O. and took over strategic
and operational direction of the business himself. Profits are up, but can a creative director with aspirations to be the next Armani actually will himself to become a C.E.O., too? |
|
|
|
Jerry Lorenzo has never run Fear of God like a typical fashion brand. In 2023, he told
The Wall Street Journal that “most companies run on cash; we run on faith.” In April, after he eliminated the C.E.O. role at his company—booting Bastien Daguzan, who joined from Jacquemus in September 2024—the company’s announcement was comically self-serious for a brand that mostly sells $150 hoodies to suburban teens (my 16-year-old brother included). “Our responsibility extends beyond the successes and failures of the tangible,” it read. “We are committed to
an eternal vision guided by alignment, intention, and consideration. We are grateful for everyone who has contributed to moving Fear of God closer to the vision and purpose of the organization.” |
|
|
|
A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR |
|
|
|
Still, there’s no doubt that Lorenzo, the handsome and, yes, pious, son of former MLB player and manager
Jerry Manuel, has built a real business. He founded Fear of God in 2013 and leveraged his affiliation with Ye—he used to design the rapper’s tour merch—to scale the business, which generated around $250 million a year at its peak, around 2022, mainly driven by an Essentials line of logoed hoodies and sweatpants that, at one point, drove just under $100 million in sales at Ssense alone. He also claims to own almost 100 percent of the company and has proudly
boasted about never accepting a cent of outside capital. But I’ve heard that might change: He recently told his team that he’s open to outside investment in the near future. Indeed, his sudden willingness to take on a financial partner is likely the next step in Lorenzo’s quest to become the Black Brunello Cucinelli, as Law Roach once called him. (Reps for Fear of God didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment.)
That ambition has been complicated by
a shake-up that extends beyond Daguzan’s ouster—and shifting consumer habits that created tension between Lorenzo and his first C.E.O., Alfred Chang, whom he poached from PacSun in 2023. At the time, the brand’s sales and profits were already slipping as consumers moved on from streetwear, and I’m told that Chang’s mass-market sensibilities ran up against Lorenzo’s luxury aspirations. Chang left the following year and was replaced by Daguzan, a well-known brand operator who had
scaled small, distinct labels including Rabanne, Lemaire, and Jacquemus, and whom Lorenzo first hired as a consultant in February 2024. (A representative for Chang declined to comment.)
Daguzan was tasked with making Fear of God look and feel more luxurious, returning the company to profitable growth, and putting it on a path to $450 million in sales in three years. The job also required jettisoning certain bad habits: The brand was a quintessential L.A. operation with a lackadaisical
approach to operations, known to spend seven figures on campaign shoots that could have been done for six or less. And, like so many fashion upstarts, the business was overexposed in wholesale and wasn’t investing enough in D.T.C., where it has greater control over image and margins.
To his credit, Daguzan made a number of changes that positively impacted the business. He installed other luxury operators: Catherine Jacquet, who worked with Daguzan at Rabanne, was hired as
C.O.O.; Mimi Fukuyoshi, formerly at Tom Ford, became the head of retail and wholesale; and Aurélie Mougenot, from Amiri and Chloé, landed as communications director. The team also reduced Fear of God’s inventory levels at retail partners, which increased full-price sales, and created shop-in-shops at Galeries Lafayette and Harrods, where they had more control over pricing and could present precise visual storytelling. The brand also revamped its website and
improved demand planning so there would always be enough hoodie inventory. (Essentials remains the biggest part of the business.) In November 2024, the brand launched a dedicated website in China, where consumers are still taken with Essentials, which brought in nearly $10 million over the last year. By the end of 2025, Fear of God’s online D.T.C. sales and profits had doubled.
And yet, perhaps because operations have improved and profits are up, Lorenzo now seems to believe he
can steer the brand on his own. At the same time, his team has gotten smaller. After Daguzan’s exit, Jacquet departed earlier this month for the top job at Isabel Marant. Fukuyoshi and Mougenot remain in place (for now), but the exits of more luxury executives could imperil the business in unforeseen ways—to say nothing of the growth in the brand’s main line, which outpaced Essentials last year. |
Whatever comes next will fall almost entirely on Lorenzo. There’s no doubt that he’s an
unflinchingly talented creative director—and probably no more obstinate than any other founder who’s built a nine-figure company in his own image. But he wants to be the next Armani, and has perhaps been too slow to adopt the legendary Italian designer’s playbook. Fear of God has only staged one runway show in its 13-year history; the company took forever to create a retail footprint; and only opened a flagship in 2024 in Seoul. I’m told a sprawling outpost on Melrose
Avenue is coming next year, but I’ve also heard that Daguzan had pushed for more store openings while Lorenzo was comfortable moving at a slower pace. |
|
|
|
Lorenzo has also had his share of missed opportunities. Fear of God’s partnership with Adidas, which began in
2020, ended last December. The collaboration could have turned Fear of God’s Athletics line into a cash cow, but it never really took off. Lorenzo blamed Adidas for the split, telling Complex in December that the activewear giant shuffled through six leaders for the project. (Adidas didn’t respond to a request for comment.) If Lorenzo actually wants to get to $450 million in sales, he probably needs an experienced C.E.O. at the helm.
For now, Fear of God is pretty far off its
revenue goals: I’m told that its 2025 sales were somewhere between $150 million and $200 million. The question, now that Lorenzo is seemingly open to outside investment, is whether an LVMH Luxury Ventures or a Zegna is keen to take on a sub-$200 million label so reliant on hoodies. In any case, it looks like Lorenzo is willing to take that chance. |
The new C.E.O. of Lanvin is Barbara Werschine, who was most recently at
Eric Bompard and Zadig & Voltaire. Peter Copping is staying. [Inbox]
People are very into the Celine Pre-Fall campaign, especially the toe poking out of a pair of sliced-up lace-ups. I posted the photo on Instagram, and received multiple responses of, simply, “Toe.”
[Instagram]
Patagonia is suing the drag queen Pattie Gonia. Seems unnecessary! [Instagram]
Derek Guy, a.k.a. the Twitter menswear guy, explains why there aren’t a lot of
great mid-priced clothes for men. [Bloomberg]
Gap Inc. logged nearly flat year-over-year sales of $3.5 billion in the first quarter of 2026. The Gap brand was up 10 percent—those dancing commercials are working—but Old Navy only grew 1 percent as demand for women’s dresses lagged.
The parent company reduced its full-year guidance, sending the stock down more than 14 percent in after-hours trading. [Gap] |
Until tomorrow,
Lauren
P.S.: We use affiliate links because we are a business. We may make
a couple bucks off them. |
|
|
|
Puck founding partner Matt Belloni takes you inside the business of Hollywood, using exclusive reporting and insight to explain the
backstories on everything from Marvel movies to the streaming wars. |
|
|
|
The industry’s go-to source for unflinching reporting on the trillion-dollar business of artificial intelligence - perhaps the single most
important technology of our time. Ian Krietzberg, the powerhouse journalist behind The Deep View, delivers twice-weekly insights into the latest dealmaking and breakthroughs in A.I., and how the intersecting worlds of finance, entertainment, media, and politics are being transformed in its wake. |
|
|
|
Need help? Review our FAQ page or contact us for assistance. For brand partnerships, email ads@puck.news. You received this email because you
signed up to receive emails from Puck, or as part of your Puck account associated with {{customer.email}}. To stop receiving this newsletter and/or manage all your email preferences, click here. |
Puck is published by Heat Media LLC. 107 Greenwich St., New York, NY 10006 |
|
|
|
|
