Hi, and welcome back to a very California edition of Line Sheet. Malique Morris has news from Los Angeles on District Vision, the eyewear turned full-fledged running gear brand started by two fashion guys, Max Vallot and Tom Daly. I’ve known Max since he was on the comms team at Saint Laurent—Hedi Slimane always hires nice P.R. guys—and Tom since he was working on Createthe Group (sic). I’ll never forget going to visit them at their office in New York when they were about to launch sunglasses at Barneys. They’ve come a long way.

Up top, Sarah Shapiro shares an on-the-ground report from Disneyland—what people wear there, beyond the merch, is a litmus test for the brands Americans are actually buying. And Malique has a postmortem on San Francisco shoe brand Allbirds, which recently sold for $39 million. (It was once valued at $4 billion.) Finally, I’ve got an honest take on the British Fashion Council’s strategic plan to fix the country’s broken fashion system.

Mentioned in this issue: Hedi Slimane, Phoebe Philo, Allbirds, T magazine, A-Rod, Marc Lore, Chanel, The RealReal, Disneyland, Laura Weir, Tomorrow Ltd., Elsa Hosk, Barneys New York, Edikted, Jonny Johansson, Ray-Ban Meta, Filip Pagowski, WDD, British Fashion Council, Joey Zwillinger, Joe Vernachio, Mytheresa, Max Vallot, Tom Daly, and more…

Three Things You Should Know…

An attempt to save fashion in Britain: Anyone who’s been to London recently knows that it’s not just Tomorrow’s brand incubator that has been struggling to keep things going. As the options for multibrand retail continue to dry up, it’s more expensive than ever to manage an independent fashion label—from the cost of producing samples to establishing a direct-to-consumer business. As I wrote in yesterday’s issue, young designers coming out of Central Saint Martins don’t typically aspire to create the next Dior anymore; now they just want to work at Dior, which is fine, too.

But Laura Weir, the magazine editor turned retailer who joined the British Fashion Council as C.E.O. last year, seems determined to resuscitate London’s indie designer system. Weir is universally respected and well-liked in the city; the great energy she’s brought to the B.F.C. is invoked constantly. She’s a doer, not a philosopher, and this morning she presented her strategy to improve conditions for designers and increase the revenue of her own business over the next five years.

Unsurprisingly, the council’s 2030 plan reads like a consultant’s case study, but let’s not knock it for that. The underlying proposals make sense: position London Fashion Week as the place to once again discover young talent; Vogue World-ify the Fashion Awards (position it as the Oscars of fashion, essentially); and make it easier for designers to find gainful employment, either by scaling their own brands or building stronger connections with the big groups. Some of the more localized initiatives—pushing domestic production and campaigning to revive the high street—feel inadvisably retrograde. Still, with focus and concentration, Weir could theoretically rebrand British fashion. Unlike the Council of Fashion Designers of America, the B.F.C. receives government support. And lobbying campaigns can work. (Why do you think we all eat avocados and pistachios?)

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Malique Morris

R.I.P. Allbirds: Allbirds, the maker of Silicon Valley’s once-favorite yet always-super-lame sneaker, announced on Monday that it was being acquired by licensing firm American Exchange Group for $39 million. The deal is expected to close in the second quarter, pending shareholder approval in April. It’s a spectacular fall for the erstwhile D.T.C. darling, once unavoidable on the soles of the 2010s-era founder set, that was valued at $4 billion at its 2021 I.P.O.

Then again, it’s been a steady decline since those heights. In April 2024, Allbirds risked delisting after its share price fell below $1 following a failed attempt in the running market. The company never recovered. Co-founder Joey Zwillinger had left his C.E.O. post a month earlier, and operating chief and Nike veteran Joe Vernachio was promoted to the helm. Alas, the real lesson here was that Allbirds never created any sort of moat around its unattractive and sexless sneakers. Nike, Adidas, et al. could just as easily create footwear for wannabe founders and I.T. guys. Much like BuzzFeed and other Web 2.0 businesses, Allbirds helped pioneer a behavior and distribution channel but was unable to keep up with its peers as material capital exploited the opportunity. The fact that it was ever valued at $4 billion is the sort of financial comedy that defined the unicorn era—you know, the time and place where WeWork was worth $50 billion.

American Exchange Group, which owns cheap mall brands like Aerosoles and past-their-prime names like Ed Hardy, will probably take the company private and license it to smithereens. Such is the fate for an overcapitalized brand that probably wasn’t a good idea to begin with. Remember there will be another one of these very soon. There always is.

Sarah Shapiro

The happiest place on Earth to look at depressing fashion: If you’re willing to pay the vertiginous price of admission and log 50,000 steps in a single day, Disneyland remains one of the best venues for real-time retail trend reporting. During a family trip to Anaheim this weekend, I took note of what people were actually wearing—especially on their feet, where pre-Disney trip dollars tend to go. Hoka and On were clear winners, alongside Nike Dunks, particularly the “Panda” black-and-white colorway. Guggenheim Partners has been flagging excess Dunk inventory (as well as Air Jordan 1s and Air Force 1s) as a North American revenue risk; their ubiquity at Disney suggested both ready availability and continued discounting. (Foot Locker has plenty on sale.) Among Gen Z, I noticed more Vans than usual, especially the Old Skool and chunkier Knu Skool.

Beyond footwear, polka dots—primarily black-and-white, and not just in Minnie Mouse cosplay—outpaced stripes. There were spaghetti-strap polka-dot tank tops, like this version from PacSun, and miniskirts from Princess Polly and Edikted. (Edikted alone lists more than 200 polka-dot items on its e-commerce site.) Gingham ran a distant second, showing up in shorts and pants. Gen Z women wore tiny, ruched bloomers or micro-shorts, styles also stocked at Edikted, PacSun, Free People, and Shein. Activewear was quieter than expected—a few Alo sets and a smattering of Vuori among Gen X and Millennials, but almost no Lululemon. The dominant look in the category skewed toward generic Amazon athletic dresses and bike shorts.

When I last visited Disneyland in 2023, Uniqlo crossbody bags were everywhere, especially among international tourists. This time, I was the only person wearing one. Disney flagged “international visitation headwinds” in its February Q1 2026 earnings, and that shift appeared to register in the clothing, too, with less Uniqlo in circulation. Lastly, I spotted someone wearing Ray-Ban Metas when I first arrived, suggesting maybe the tech-cessory had finally found its natural habitat. It was the last pair I saw.

And now, the main event…

District Fever

The vaguely hippy running brand District Vision, helmed by two fashion lifers, has built a cult following as it’s grown at its own, modest pace. With its first store opening and a continued skepticism toward outside investment, can it stay in the race?

Malique Morris

When word spread that Max Vallot and Tom Daly, the duo behind District Vision, were opening their first store next month in Los Angeles, the location struck many as yet another unorthodox move from the pair. The 2,700-square-foot flagship will be kitted out with what you might expect from the founders of the male-focused, wellness-driven activewear brand—coffee service, a hydration bar, non-alcoholic Japanese beer, space for in-store meditation sessions, etcetera. But the store will be in L.A.’s Arts District, a slightly downtrodden neighborhood that had been gaining traction before the pandemic wiped it out. It seemed like a risk for a company that hasn’t taken outside capital since launching its first product, a line of sunglasses, at Colette and Dover Street Market in 2015.

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Vallot and Daly aren’t concerned, and they’re not inviting people onto their cap table anytime soon, either. “It hasn’t felt right for the brand. We’re growing at a healthy rate. We are comfortable,” Vallot recently told me. The guys, both longtime fashion people, have been friends for 21 years. Vallot is a former model and Hedi Slimane acolyte; Daly worked at Createthe Group, which made a lot of high-fashion e-commerce sites in the early days, and then with Jonny Johansson at Acne Studios. They started District Vision as a consultancy—doing branding for Balenciaga, Byredo, and Camper—then pivoted to a running brand that launched with water-repellant sunglasses but now sells everything from $200 nylon training shorts to $280 running sneakers co-designed by New Balance.

The duo married their fashion sensibility (the logo was designed by Polish graphic artist Filip Pagowski, who also works with Comme des Garçons) along with their outdoorsy philosophy (Vallot is a yogi and Daly is a dedicated runner). And they were early to the community-building shtick that’s become essential to modern brand-building, hosting lectures and mindfulness sessions. In the early days, they would host a meditation, followed by a group run: a precocious precursor to the running club trend that led to a pandemic-era boom for the sport.

Vallot and Daly moved operations from New York to L.A. in 2021. A year later, they launched womenswear. The line, which includes $135 high-neck interlocked bras, $150 fitted waffle tees in Japanese cotton, and $275 ultralight windbreakers with input from Daly’s fiancée, designer and former Victoria’s Secret model Elsa Hosk, makes up 35 percent of their apparel business and is the fastest growing segment of the company.

In some ways, District Vision was emblematic of the post-Nike, performance-as-style, ur-athleisure trend that gave rise to Rhone, Vuori (sigh), Ten Thousand, etcetera. But the District Vision guys have actively resisted the urge to scale, prioritizing cool and scarcity over saturation—and leveraging their lack of investor pressure. Their closest comparison is probably the Wertheimer spawn–backed French running label Satisfy, which bills itself as a cult (tongue in cheek, I think). District Vision sells at functional specialty retailers like Backcountry and Huckberry, as well as on Ssense and in Japan’s menswear emporium Beams.

Backcountry distribution or not, it’s still niche. While Hoka and On have become household names, and coastal elites have tilted toward upstarts like Bandit Running, District Vision remains relatively less known to activewear consumers. Vallot and Daly insist this is, to borrow a term of art, intentional. They’re happy doing this at their own speed, like it or not, true to their très European C.V.s. The business generated a modest $10 million a year in sales in 2025, according to a person familiar with the numbers. (The brand declined to comment.)

Sweat Equity

And yet now seems like the time to grow. “There has been a general level of enthusiasm for smaller, independent brands in the activewear space, some of which is coming from the spending being shifted from larger to smaller brands,” Vallot said. The store, funded by the brand’s “organic cashflow,” in Vallot’s words, carries inherent pressure to perform. “We need stores to grow commercially. That’s one motivation,” he added.

The company currently generates half of its sales through its online store, with the remainder coming from retail partners. Vallot and Daly naturally want to increase the share of D.T.C. business to protect margins and increase cashflow. But District Vision’s version of experiential retail could succeed in an activewear market that is no longer purely about function. Increasingly, customers want to feel like they’re part of a tribe defined by shared experience and status.

As an independently owned and profitable company, Vallot and Daly have the flexibility to evolve District Vision on their own timeline. That strategy won’t deliver cultural ubiquity. But in an overstuffed market, where consumer confidence has softened, there are far worse positions. “In a space that is very much driven by fierce competition, our question is, how can we bring more soul, more old-school values back into the game?” Vallot said. “That’s what we feel is missing.”

What We’re Reading… and Looking At…

P.S.A.: Mytheresa is now selling Phoebe Philo online. This is new. Previously, it was a “secret shop” for V.I.C. customers. I’m excited about this development. I would suggest the phantom plaid shirt, pink jeans, and the suede belt (which I personally own). [Go!]

A new issue of L’étiquette is out! [Buy It Here]

The deal between Kering and L’Oréal closed. [Inbox]

Chanel won a significant victory in court this week, when the Southern District of New York dismissed most of The RealReal’s antitrust counterclaims. But the court left an opening for TRR to argue that Chanel has been trying to squash the secondhand luxury market. [The Fashion Law]

Italian regulators are investigating whether it’s okay to market beauty fridges to 11-year-olds. [Reuters]

We are losing our ability to think deeply. This is the real crisis. [N. Y. Times]

LVMH has been reorganizing its human resources department for more than a year, since Chantal Gaemperle got ousted. [WWD]

The base range for the T magazine editor-in-chief job is $260,000–$290,000. [NYT Job Board]

And finally… Readers have requested that I address this, so here goes. There is a tiny-furry microphone epidemic among fashion and lifestyle journalists. I fear I am, too, going to succumb, because video is how the kids consume everything these days. But just a reminder—not everyone is meant to be onscreen. And they are especially not meant to speak directly into the screen.

Until tomorrow,
Lauren

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