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One of the year’s most interesting beauty appointments was announced in September, when Gap Inc. brought on John Demsey, the controversial veteran executive, to help oversee the group’s ambitious plans. The company has spent the better part of the last two decades trying to recapture the magic of the Mickey Drexler era—and, from a purely talent perspective, Demsey might have seemed like the ideal candidate. The gig was also basically a formality: After all, Demsey has been working behind the scenes on Gap and Old Navy’s respective beauty businesses for the last year and a half.

And yet it was also a somewhat extraordinary culmination of a professional rehabilitation arc. Over three-plus decades, Demsey had risen to prominence at The Estée Lauder Companies by overseeing most of its top brands and transforming MAC Cosmetics—which, for a time, was the top prestige makeup brand in the U.S.—into a multibillion-dollar business. The company became a cultural lodestar; championed HIV and AIDS awareness and prevention (the MAC Viva Glam Fund has raised $540 million since 1994); and was the first scaled beauty brand to collaborate with stars like Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Lil’ Kim, Mary J. Blige, and Missy Elliott. Along the way, Demsey even became somewhat of an industry celeb himself, with a four-figure photo count on BFA.

However, these accomplishments were largely overshadowed by an embarrassing and highly public scandal. In early 2022, Demsey was very publicly dismissed from The Estée Lauder Companies after posting a racially offensive and remarkably tone-deaf meme on Instagram. The incident arrived at the height of cancel culture, and some wondered whether his internal E.L.C. rivals had finally found an excuse to get rid of an executive who potentially undermined them.

Despite his cancellation, Demsey never entirely disappeared, perhaps because large swaths of the industry seemed to excuse his transgression as the work of a Boomer with underdeveloped social media skills. And maybe because, as someone recently pointed out, it would be a stretch to compare Demsey’s cancellation to the high-profile industry scandals that befell, say, Kanye West or Alexander Wang. “He treated Instagram like a private group chat where he would send memes to his friends,” said one former Lauder executive. “Except hundreds of thousands of people were watching.” (There are, of course, plenty of people in the business who would put a finer point on this incident. Demsey declined to comment for this story. E.L.C. did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

Gap Inc. C.E.O. Richard Dickson is betting on Demsey’s comprehension of the zeitgeist to produce viable commercial ideas. Next year, Demsey’s version of Gap beauty will start to hit shelves—I’m hearing the focus will be on fragrance—although it’s possible that there’s an even greater opportunity to develop the nascent beauty division at Old Navy, which has a far larger business than Gap.

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Demsey has also consulted for Puig, where his focus, according to a person close to the business, has been twofold: advising recent additions to the portfolio, like Charlotte Tilbury, Byredo, and even Dr. Barbara Sturm, while also trying to expand Carolina Herrera’s makeup business. He’s also worked with Manzanita Capital, the boutique fund that almost exclusively plays in fragrance; Elm Biosciences, the skincare line created by Martha Stewart and Dr. Dhaval Bhanusali; Kenvue, Johnson & Johnson’s spinoff beauty and personal care division; and Shinsegae International, a division of South Korean retail conglomerate Shinsegae Group.

In other words, Demsey is back on the scene, and I’ve spoken with numerous fashion insiders—including current and former Lauder executives and employees—to gauge their impressions. No one said they believe he’s overtly racist, although some pointed out that his decision to post the meme was indicative of… something. I’ve also heard that certain members of the Lauder family tried to lure Demsey back to the GM Building earlier this year, and an extremely reliable source close to Lauder told me that the company “recognized their mistake and sought John out to see if he’d be helpful” in an advisory capacity.

With the Gap appointment underway, Demsey now seems to be fully out of the professional wilderness at this point—although he’s maintaining a much lower social profile than he once did. His Instagram these days is populated largely with pictures of his dogs.