Hi, and welcome back to Line Sheet. Congrats to the team at i-D (and Bedford Media) for finally putting out a magazine! It’s been a journey, as we like to say. More from me in the coming weeks on how they did it. In the meantime, curious to know what you all think about the anonymous cover star idea.
In today’s issue, exclusive to Inner Circle members (upgrade here), I check in on Marchesa, a favorite brand of mothers of the bride across America and a curious remnant of the Harvey Weinstein catastrophe. On the fashion-entertainment beat, I consider how Saint Laurent Production’s bet on Emilia Pérez helped establish the luxury label’s film offshoot as a legitimate player in Hollywood— Karla Sofía Gascón tweets notwithstanding. I’ve also got news on another round of layoffs at Condé Nast, a readout from the LVMH Prize semifinalists presentation, and thoughts on the two biggest debuts of the week so far: Dries Van Noten and Tom Ford. (I’ll have more from Paris in Friday’s email.)
🚨🚨 Programming note: Tomorrow on Fashion People, I’m joined by New York Times reporter Misty White Sidell to discuss one of our shared passions: The Row. We’ll get into what has made the brand—now backed by Mousse, the Wertheimer family office; Natalie Massenet and Nick Brown’s Imaginary Ventures; and others—so successful for so long, and the challenges ahead in this next phase of growth. It took me forever to find the right sparring partner for this episode, and luckily Misty has been reporting on The Row for almost as long as I have. I hope you enjoy it. Listen here and here.
Mentioned in this issue: Georgina Chapman, Adrien Brody, Marchesa, Molly Sims, Daniel Roseberry, Condé Nast layoffs, Keren Craig, Mfpen, Vera Wang, Notte, Torishéju Dumi, Naomi Fry, Dover Street Market, Saint Laurent Productions, Julie Gilhart, LVMH, Sigurd Bank, Anthony Vaccarello, Virginie Montel, Emilia Pérez, Zoe Saldaña, Francesca Bellettini, Steve O Smith, Martin Margiela, Tom Ford, Canada Goose, Timothée Chalamet, Beyoncé, and many, many more…
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- Groundhog Day is behind us, but Condé Nast layoffs never end: After a hefty restructuring at the end of last year that resulted in the exit of several longtime team players, Condé Nast is once again thinning out its staff. This morning, the union was informed that layoffs were imminent. I’m told the reduction will hit commercial-side folks and some editorial operations types, and that budgets are being slashed across the board. (So far, only three union members have gotten the ax, so I’m assuming it’s a pretty small round.) Interesting that Condé management decided to pull the trigger a week before sales bonuses would be paid out, and immediately after they started requiring everyone to come to the office at least four days a week. In an email to her staff, chief revenue officer Elizabeth Herbst-Brady offered a litany of reasons for the layoffs, which all coalesced around the corporate pablum that “transformation is an ongoing process.” As she’s dug into the role, it sounds like she’s found a lot of duplication among roles in the sales side.
Certainly it hasn’t helped that the commercial business around the Oscars wasn’t great. A person with firsthand knowledge told me that the combination of the L.A. wildfires and the less commercial slate of Academy Awards nominees—Anora is one of the lowest grossing films to ever win best picture—weighed down Q1 media and entertainment advertising opportunities. There are also the macro challenges in the advertising market, which I wrote about earlier this week, that are affecting the entire media ecosystem. Vanity Fair’s big Hollywood issue was moved up to December partly to boost Q4 numbers and hit annual sales goals. A rep for the company did not respond to a request for comment regarding the layoffs.In far more petty Condé Nast news, I recently got a tip about a Wikipedia scoundrel named Butterfly3232, who has been messing with the bio pages of best buds Jonathan Newhouse and Edward Enninful. The edits, which were made in September 2023 but apparently noticed only recently by associates of the men, portray Enninful’s stint at British Vogue as “not widely seen as a success.” Curiously, the only other edits Butterfly3232 made were to the bio page of Nicholas Coleridge, a real dandy who ran Condé Nast International prior to its merger with the parent company in 2018.Anyway, why anyone would care about this beats me, but it feels like the old-school, for-no-good-reason Condé scheming that almost never happens now—mostly because people in corporate environments are incentivized to act far more professionally, but also because the
company is no longer any fun.
- The kids are all right: I spent a chunk of yesterday afternoon meeting with semifinalists for the LVMH Prize, the most prestigious and consequential young fashion competition operating today. Not only do the winners receive money and mentorship from LVMH executives and other industry leaders, but the entire group is given an entrée into the LVMH system. It is, more than anything, the biggest networking opportunity of their lives.
Legendary fashion director Julie Gilhart, a judge and advisor on the competition, has spent the past two days at the show venue at 22 Avenue Montaigne introducing fellow judges, journalists, and others to the talent—some of whom traveled from as far as New Mexico (this was designer Josh Tafoya’s first time in Paris), Saudi Arabia, and South Korea. Beyond the imaginative designs, I was struck by the fact that nearly every designer I spoke to used deadstock fabrics to make their clothes. It’s about so-called sustainability, sure, but it’s also about cost. Copenhagen-based Mfpen designer Sigurd Bank, whose ticking stripe shirts and roughed-up corduroys stand apart from the more art-school-adjacent collections in the competition, explained that deadstock—or partnering with a textile factory—can keep costs fairly accessible. It’s surprisingly scalable, he said.London-based Torishéju Dumi, who shows in Paris once a year, was another favorite: Her wares, already sold at Dover Street Market, are so elegant, and I love how she leans heavily into her Catholic upbringing for unexpected inspiration. As for who might win? My money is on Steve O Smith, who essentially paints on couture-like garments to create actual wearable art. Smith did his undergrad at the Rhode Island School of Design, so there is an American pragmatism in the way he approaches his business. He could easily put his Rorschach test–like illustrations—his “drawings,” he calls them—on t-shirts and sell them en masse, but instead is choosing to focus on a custom, made-to-order model, where he sells individual pieces for as much as $15,000, sometimes more. I suspect it will become more difficult to resist the allure of the cool stores that want to showcase his creations, but in the early days, it’s crucial for these designers to get their pacing right. Best of luck to all of them.
- A tale of two debuts: I’m not sure there is a more challenging designer succession scenario than replacing a house’s namesake, especially when the person is still relatively young and, most importantly, active. In a recent episode of designer Bella Freud’s excellent podcast, Haider Ackermann told the story of Martin Margiela approaching him to join Maison Martin Margiela when the namesake designer was ready to leave fashion. Ackermann, as we know, declined. He suggested to Freud that the idea of replacing Margiela was too great a burden to bear. After all, Ackermann had idolized Margiela and even attended (and been expelled from) Antwerp’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts, from which Margiela graduated.
Tom Ford, on the other hand, is the right place at the right time for Ackermann. After being appointed creative director of Canada Goose last year, he needed a splashy project in order to reenter the high-fashion conversation after a fast and furious exit from LVMH-owned Berluti in 2018. (A one-off collection with Jean Paul Gaultier was a start.) And to be sure, the Estée Lauder–owned, Zegna-operated Tom Ford needed someone like Ackermann, who has a relationship to the Tom Ford brand—both as a peer to the namesake and a customer—but is not a sycophant.The collection, shown on Wednesday night in front of Ford and his longtime business partner (and Zegna board member) Domenico De Sole, was exactly what Estée Lauder and Zegna needed after the unnecessary disaster of the Peter Hawkings era. Both Ford and Ackermann trade in tailoring, and the men’s proposal was particularly strong: sensual and confident, but in Ackermann’s own way. (His work leads with color and has a louche quality. Ford is incredibly precise.) An industry friend referred to the new work as “Tom Ford with less gloss,” apropos for the times we’re living in—and for the changing needs of Zegna Group’s customer, whose desire for suiting is less connected to necessity than ever.It’ll be interesting to see how they merchandise it. (My guess is that there will be perennial O.G. Ford silhouettes that Ackermann’s work is layered over, to make customers new and old happy.) It will also be interesting to see how Ackermann uses his relationships with celebrities like Timothée Chalamet and Tilda Swinton to carefully market the brand. Ford, of course, had plenty of those relationships—including with Julianne Moore and Beyoncé. What’s important, I suppose, is that they’re all A-listers. Again, same, but different.
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Photos: Courtesy of Tom Ford & GoRunway
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- As tough as Ackermann’s remit may be, there’s also plenty of room for improvement, thanks to the inadvertent Hawkings drag. At Dries Van Noten, the namesake retired at the top of his game, both creatively and commercially. I’d argue that new Dries creative director Julian Klausner’s task was harder, because the business—while growing fast in beauty and accessories—is still driven by ready-to-wear. How do you make over something that doesn’t need making over?
There’s something very gentle about how the Dries succession went down. They chose a young, internal talent who reveres Van Noten, maybe even worships him, but, again, is not a sycophant. Klausner, who’s been with the brand in Antwerp for seven years, had a life before that. This morning, I stopped by the showroom to say hello to the Dries team and meet with Klausner, who seemed generally grateful for all the positive feedback on the collection, which was at once totally Dries, but also totally not. The codes that make Dries Dries were there (the fabrications, the mix of textures and prints, the menswear touches on womenswear), but I’d say Klausner’s approach leans less masculine and more bohemian. It was, to be honest, a great relief that it didn’t simply feel like a copy of Van Noten’s work. (Given the depth of the Dries archives, I once argued that the brand could go for years without a designer, simply by reissuing old patterns.) Klausner will likely spend the next few seasons revealing more of himself, but for now, everyone can breathe easy. The retailers, in particular, were raving.
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Designer and Harvey-ex Georgina Chapman makes a red carpet comeback in Marchesa, accessorized by Oscar-winner Adrien Brody, while Saint Laurent Productions proves it’s a Hollywood player despite the Emilia Pérez ouster.
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On Sunday night, as Adrien Brody ascended the stage of the Dolby Theater to accept the best actor Oscar for his role in The Brutalist, he extracted a piece of gum out of his mouth and tossed it to his girlfriend, the fashion designer Georgina Chapman. It’s unclear whether this disgusting gesture was a planned bit, or a nervous reaction to his anticipated win. (Brody went on to insufferably ramble for more than five minutes, breaking the record for the longest Oscars speech in history.) Anyway, I found the gesture tacky, obviously, but also curiously insulting to Chapman, especially given her complex history as a plus-one. The strangest thing to me about Brody’s relationship with Chapman, whose ex-husband is the convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein, is that they both are products of the Miramax machine. You have to wonder whether the relationship is a trauma bond.
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But enough armchair psychology from me; we’re here to talk about clothes. After Sunday’s bizarre incident, I got multiple queries regarding Chapman’s still-going fashion brand, Marchesa, which she’s been wearing throughout Brody’s awards season run. The company has been mired in a Better Business Bureau scandal during the past year, with dozens upon dozens of reports of customers returning items and never receiving a refund. (Waiting on refunds has become a recurring theme in my reporting as companies who perhaps don’t have the infrastructure—or the liquidity—to provide them ramp up on e-commerce.) The Better Business Bureau gave Marchesa an F due to “failure to respond to 128 complaints against the business.” As recently as February, customers have reported such occurrences. In some cases, the company has promised to wire refunds to customers, but never did so.
A rep for Marchesa didn’t respond to questions about the refund problem, but one source close to the company blamed operational hiccups—now fixed—including the switch to a new payment processor last year. The person also noted that the company processes something like 12,000 orders each year on its website, which means that the number of complaints represented a fraction of the transactions.
Of course, you wouldn’t know any of this from Marchesa’s Instagram account, which relies heavily on images of Chapman arm in arm with Brody. I first clocked Chapman’s attempts at a full-blown comeback in January 2024, at the Emmys, where she dressed British actress Hannah Waddingham and television personality Padma Lakshmi. This year, though, perhaps because of her increased visibility alongside Brody’s own resurrection, the focus has been on her looks—for the most part. (The model and entrepreneur Molly Sims did wear a gold Marchesa dress to the VF party.) Per usual, Chapman’s “couture” gowns, as she refers to them, were glamorous in a nondescript way: clearly influenced by Schiaparelli’s Daniel Roseberry, whose exquisitely sculpted wares are dictating much of what’s happening in the gown market these days.
In some ways, it’s remarkable that Marchesa is still going. The company, long managed by her brother Edward, always seemed on the edge of precarity. Its funding was always uncertain (and very reliant on Weinstein), and it was always endlessly in debt—like most fashion businesses, really. Keren Craig, Chapman’s co-founder and co-creative director, who was often spoken of as the “real designer,” left in 2019.
But Marchesa is also a licensing factory in the vein of Vera Wang, with bridal, jewelry, and the lower-priced sub-brand, Notte, which undoubtedly drives the majority of sales. And yet, the refund issues—whether they had to do with lack of liquidity or simple technical problems—simply underscore how hard it is to run one of these businesses. Now that Chapman’s gotten her life back on track, perhaps she doesn’t need all that hassle. Although, when has hassle ever stopped a fashion designer?
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The Rise of Saint Laurent Productions
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Looking back on the 20-plus-year history of Marchesa, you have to give Chapman and Craig credit for foreshadowing the full-blown integration of the fashion and entertainment industries. On that beat, I’m still thinking about Saint Laurent’s increasingly significant presence in Hollywood, and not just on the red carpet or at star-packed private dinners.
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The Kering-owned brand has been running a true-blue production company for several years now, and the entity received more exposure than ever this past week on account of its involvement in the Jacques Audiard film Emilia Pérez, whose co-star Zoe Saldaña won the Oscar for best supporting actress. (Saint Laurent designer Anthony Vaccarello also consulted on the film’s artistic direction and costumes, as I discussed with the movie’s costume designer, Virginie Montel, at a Puck event last November.) A month and a half ago, there’d been a chance that Emilia Pérez was going to take it all, before ancient tweets from lead actress Karla Sofía Gascón surfaced, wiping away much of the already polarizing film’s legitimacy.
In The New York Times, Vanessa Friedman wrote about how the film’s implosion was dangerous for Saint Laurent Productions. I’m not so sure. Of course, it would have been fabulous for Vaccarello, Francesca Bellettini, and co. to get the photo ops that the Anora team got on Sunday night, but Emilia Pérez credentialed Saint Laurent Productions as a real option. In Hollywood, you absolutely cannot win them all, and in some ways this makes Saint Laurent’s endeavor feel even more legitimate.
Independent filmmakers need money; Saint Laurent has it. And they also have taste. In the end, there aren’t so many consumers who will make the connection that the company that helped finance the movie is the same one that designed Saldaña’s plum-colored dress. But these behind-the-scenes machinations reinforce influence.
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What I’m Listening To… Because I Have No Time To Read…
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In case you didn’t read my notes on Haider Ackermann’s Tom Ford debut, I once again implore you to listen to Bella Freud’s interview with him. Freud is so good with fashion designers because she is one. They’re very open with her in a way they would never be with a journalist other than Tim Blanks. [ Fashion Neurosis]
Naomi Fry and company on The Pitt! [ Critics at Large]
The script from Marc Maron’s interview with HBO regular Carrie Coon could be optioned, I think? [ WTF]
I have to say, I also prefer these when it’s only Chris and Jason. [ How Long Gone]
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And finally… Jack Dorsey slinking out of Rick Owens: totally expected, yet totally satisfying.
Until tomorrow,
Lauren
P.S.: We are using affiliate links because we are a business. We may make a couple bucks off them.
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An essential, insider-friendly Hollywood tip sheet from Matthew Belloni, who spent 14 years in the trenches at The Hollywood Reporter and five before that practicing entertainment law. What I’m Hearing also features veteran Hollywood journalist Kim Masters, as well as a special companion email from Eriq Gardner, focused on entertainment law, and weekly box office analysis from Scott Mendelson.
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