Hi, and welcome back to Line Sheet, coming to you live from King’s Cross St. Pancras. I had a great time tonight at Photo London chatting with Plum Sykes and Bella Freud about Steven Meisel, the 1990s, and plenty more. It all left me feeling like I was born 10 years too late. We’ll release the conversation on the Fashion People feed soon, and be sure to check out the exhibition if you’re in town.

In today’s issue, Rachel Strugatz is back with a sequel of sorts: the tale of Jones Road, makeup artist extraordinaire Bobbi Brown’s second act that has turned out to be even more valuable than her first. Plus, for close observers of Estée Lauder, Rachel also has a crucial Fabrizio Freda update. Also, a (virtual) tour of Asia with Bernard Arnault and Team Louis Vuitton, and the jacket—yes, jacket!—of the season. (Hint: It’s not Chanel.)

P.S.: Enjoy Dior tonight! If you’re out there, I encourage you to read Full Service, Scotty Bowers’ smutty Hollywood tell-all, which Jonathan Anderson pulled out of his new American Psycho book tote in a teaser for the show. More tomorrow.

Also mentioned in this issue: Hailey Bieber, Cody Plofker, Delphine Arnault, “daigou,” Donna James, Sarah Creal, Molly Sims, Palazzo Parigi, Les Wexner, Roger Lynch, Brett Blundy, Shimmer Bricks, Pietro Beccari, Damien Bertrand, Jo Ellison, Steven Plofker, and more.

Three Things You Should Know…

Arnault & Co.’s grand Korean tour: People keep asking what I mean when I say Dior is working, since it’s not exactly popping off like Chanel. Well, based on the intel I’m getting, the brand is selling well in Asia and the U.S. But it’s not a phenomenon, especially not in Europe, where people just aren’t spending like they once were. Maybe that’s okay: Jonathan Anderson’s gift is that he makes us think. And even if his more intellectual Dior might never explode like Chanel, LVMH will do everything it can to support his vision—especially in Asia, which remains the place for future growth in the luxury sector. (The U.S. market will eventually mature to resemble Europe, but we have time...)

That reality was demonstrated by Bernard Arnault’s recent visit to Korea, where he was treated like a celebrity or major politician. He was joined by his daughter, Dior C.E.O. Delphine Arnault; Louis Vuitton C.E.O. Pietro Beccari; and deputy Louis Vuitton C.E.O. Damien Bertrand—a Line Sheet rising star who proved himself screenshot-worthy while hanging out in the backdrop of videos circulating online. In the Korean media, the Arnault visit was positioned as a testament to the importance of the market to the luxury sector. It’s true, and really that simple, but it was still fun to watch.
You bought it, too?: In a group chat where we almost exclusively discuss buying Phoebe Philo, a friend made an observation yesterday that surprised me. “This blazer has taken over the Westside of Los Angeles,” she said, sending a screenshot of a woman wearing Phoebe’s cinched-waist Kick tailored jacket in “salt and pepper” viscose, with an irresistible check (which Rachel owns in solid brown wool). I contemplated buying the checked one, too, but How to Spend It editor Jo Ellison and others wore it during the last round of shows, and I don’t want to be a follower. And yet, the matching trousers, which a lot of my friends own, are even better.

It’s a healthy sign for Philo’s U.S. strategy (which I covered last month) that one of her pieces is becoming ubiquitous among a certain set of wealthy people. After all, the nice thing about the jacket is that it can be worn many different ways: super high and tight on the waist, or lower and more relaxed. As my friend noted, “It’s lightweight, flattering, and fashiony.”

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Rachel Strugatz

Fabrizio Freda’s Palazzo intrigue: Last week, The Estée Lauder Companies settled a class-action lawsuit alleging it had misled investors in its 2023 revenue forecast. The mess largely stemmed from the company’s reliance on “daigou,” the phenomenon of buyers purchasing products outside China and reselling them inside the country—a gray-market practice that former C.E.O. Fabrizio Freda was notoriously bullish about. Lauder, which denied any wrongdoing, agreed to pay $210 million last week.

Meanwhile, Freda is in the clear and living his best life in Milan, where he’s enjoying the spoils of remaining on E.L.C.’s payroll. People familiar say that Lauder’s been indirectly footing the bill for Freda and his wife’s extended stay at the five-star Palazzo Parigi. Executives who worked with Freda at the GM Building during his 15-year tenure told me it’s the only hotel he would stay at in Milan, which he visited often, since it’s home to Lauder’s Italian HQ and Intercos, one of the company’s leading makeup manufacturers. (Estée Lauder declined to comment, and Freda didn’t respond to a request for comment.)

Yes, it’s not unusual for companies to keep a former C.E.O. on payroll for six months to a year in certain instances… but it’s been well over a year since Freda’s exit. Either way, Freda has reason to be in Milan: Ferragamo Finanziaria, the Ferragamo family’s holding company that owns more than half of its namesake brand, recently named Freda as a strategic advisor. (He could also potentially join Ferragamo’s board one day.)

But perhaps the biggest perk of Freda’s relocation is the Italian non-resident tax on foreign income for high-net-worth residents. People familiar with the matter suggested that Freda is now only required to pay a flat fee of about €200,000 annually in taxes—much lower than other European countries.

And now, notes on Bobbi Brown’s revenge tour…

How Bobbi Brown Beat Bobbi Brown

A decade after exiting her original namesake brand, Brown has achieved an extraordinary second round of success with Jones Road without private equity, Ulta, or Sephora. It must be keeping the Estée Lauder Companies executives up at night.

Rachel Strugatz

Earlier this week, the O.G. makeup artist turned founder, Bobbi Brown, appeared on her first-ever TikTok Live to showcase her newest product for Jones Road—the brand she launched in 2020 on the very day that her 25-year noncompete with Estée Lauder expired. For two hours, the youthful 69-year-old faced the camera and demonstrated her innate ability to connect with beauty shoppers—many of them, in this case, one-third her age. That magnetism has fueled her wildly successful career, which now spans four decades, and helped her original namesake brand achieve mainstream fame and a $74.5 million acquisition by The Estée Lauder Companies in 1995.

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Brown exited that line in 2016, and many observers credit her departure as the catalyst for its nearly decade-long identity crisis. In April, I reported that the brand’s business had dropped to a fraction of its $1 billion peak, and would exit almost every U.S. department store this month. While it’s a necessary pivot, it’s also a remarkable fall from grace for what used to be one of Lauder’s most consequential lines. The symmetry between Bobbi Brown’s decline and Jones Road’s meteoric rise is surely not lost on Lauder leadership.

Jones Road’s distribution model was also, in many ways, a refutation of the Lauder Way. For her second act, Brown rapidly built a profitable, high-revenue, direct-to-consumer business—much like the other major beauty launch of its era, Hailey Bieber’s Rhode. Last year, of course, Rhode abandoned D.T.C. for a Sephora partnership that wound up being the retailer’s most successful launch of all time. But whereas Bieber rewrote the celebrity brand playbook with her spin on a streamlined assortment and the scarcity drop model, Brown leaned on her credibility. From its early days, Jones Road offered a fully realized product lineup before opening intentional retail stores that, as many insiders I speak to like to point out, always have people inside. I’m told the brand will do well over $200 million in revenue this year.

While Jones Road and Bobbi Brown have never been sold alongside one another, the former seems to have cannibalized the latter’s business. “It’s very confusing,” said a person close to E.L.C. “What happens is Bobbi Brown’s name and brand looks like old stuff. It’s like, That was then, that was the year 2000. I’m not interested in that anymore.” In other words: What customers want from Bobbi Brown, the brand, is what Brown, the entrepreneur, is now selling at Jones Road.

Jonesing

Intriguingly, Jones Road appears uniquely disinterested in selling at Sephora, which could presumably grow the business. Brown declined to chat with me for this piece, but I know from previous conversations that she, along with Jones Road C.E.O. Cody Plofker (the middle of Brown’s three sons with the entrepreneur and real estate mogul Steven Plofker), has made a deliberate decision to keep the operation almost entirely direct-to-consumer, with the exception of Liberty London, where I’ve heard that Jones Road is the top-selling beauty brand. Both Sephora and Ulta have reached out multiple times about a potential partnership over the years, I’m told, but Brown is simply not interested.

It’s a bold decision in a world where almost every other brand in the category is dying for a partnership with the LVMH-owned beauty giant. But a person familiar with the business put it bluntly: Brown doesn’t need Sephora at this point. In fact, some have argued that Sephora probably needs Jones Road more than the other way around. “They need an anchor for Gen X that is actually meaningful,” a person close to the retailer told me. I’ve heard that Sarah Creal’s makeup and YSE Beauty, Molly Sims’ skincare line, have both done a decent job catering to this demographic, but the retailer has yet to bag the Millennial and Gen X version of Rhode.

I also know that big private equity has been eager to get involved with Jones Road—most notably Blackstone and the LVMH-affiliated P.E. firm L Catterton. While flattering, the person familiar with the business told me that Brown has no need for these kinds of investors. The company isn’t seeking to raise outside capital right now, and it’s not trying to open stores faster. The brand already operates 12 locations, a number I’ve heard could hit 20 by the end of the year, including several new doors in California.

When consumers enter the new stores, they’ll find plenty of new and popular items, from the line’s bestseller, Miracle Balm, to a handful of modern interpretations of products Brown originally conceptualized for Bobbi Brown, like a gel eyeliner. (I still can’t believe Lauder sunsetted Shimmer Bricks, but I’m holding out hope that Brown will introduce her own Jones Road version.) As one person who knows Brown intimately put it to me: “What’s ‘Bobbi Brown’ without Bobbi Brown? It’s called Jones Road.”

What We’re Reading… and Watching…

Condé Nast C.E.O. Roger Lynch said that Met Gala content reached 3.1 billion video views, up 60 percent year over year, in the week following the fundraiser for a public institution. I believe it, but how much money did Condé Nast actually make? If you know, call me. [TBPN]

The former C.E.O. of J.W. Anderson shares some intel on how it all went down the first years in business. [1 Granary]

On Tuesday, Victoria’s Secret inflamed its proxy war with Brett Blundy, founder of BBRC, which owns a 13 percent stake in the intimates giant, when it published a statement outlining why the board denied Blundy a seat—including an accusation that he routinely hired known sexual harassers. On Wednesday, Blundy redoubled his calls to oust longtime board chair Donna James at the forthcoming annual shareholder meeting, citing years of stock declines, management turnover, and James’ alleged oversight failure regarding Les Wexner’s ties with Jeffrey Epstein. We’ll have more on all this soon! [BBRC]

Rent the Runway co-founder Jenn Hyman is stepping down as C.E.O. [LinkedIn]

The new Issey Miyake store opened in New York and it is pretty special. This is destination shopping. [New York]

And finally… I want the Ralph Lauren stamps to be actual Ralph Lauren stamps! As a former stamp collector (from ages 5 to 5.5), I care about stamps! We need a stamp with Ralph on it, a Polo pony stamp, a ranch stamp, etcetera. U.S.P.S., let’s go.

Until tomorrow,
Lauren

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