Hi, and welcome back to Line Sheet. I landed in New York this morning for a long-planned, perhaps ill-timed, Terrific Lady Weekend. If you see Rachel and me at the nail salon tomorrow afternoon for a Very Important Meeting, come over and say hi.
Speaking of the one and only Rachel Strugatz, she is making a special Thursday appearance in today’s Inner Circle members–only issue (trade up here), with some hard numbers on the successes and failures of the Kardashian beauty empire. Up top, I have a fun scoop about a project that the theater producer, performer, and designer Jordan Roth is working on, timed to the next couture season, and a note on the return of Terry Richardson. Finally, Sarah Shapiro has an analysis of Sephora’s ambitious sponcon documentary series for Hulu, and what it says about the future of brand marketing.
🚨🚨 Programming note: Tomorrow on Fashion People, I’m joined by Bella Freud, the designer and host of her very own, very excellent podcast, Fashion Neurosis. I’m a fan. Listen to our conversation here and here.
🛍️🛍️ For those of you with The Shoppies: I spent way too much time yesterday figuring out what to wear in sub-30 degree Fahrenheit weather. I landed on an Old Céline double-breasted coat with a Uniqlo puffer underneath. If I still lived in a four-season city, I would already own this Alaïa puffer, no doubt. A Prada down puffer feels right, too. (And there are plenty of options on resale sites, including The RealReal and Vestiaire Collective.) I love outerwear.
Mentioned in this issue: Paris, rich kids depressed, Kim Kardashian, Kylie Jenner, Skims, Kylie Cosmetics, Timothée Chalamet, Khloé Kardashian, Kourtney Kardashian, Lemme, Target, Ariana Grande, Jay Sammons, Khroma Beauty, KKW Beauty, SKKN, Coty, Sue Nabi, TikTok, Cosmic, Rare Beauty, Jordan Roth, Anna Wintour, Bruce Weber, Sephora, and many, many more…
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Three Things You Should Know…
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- Jordan Roth takes Paris: You’ve probably heard about the exhibition opening today at the Louvre—the museum’s first major show featuring couture and its relationship to a series of masterworks from the museum’s decorative arts department. (“See that chest of drawers? See that Lagerfeld design? See how they connect?” is how one insider explained it.) There are three big moments to look forward to during the rollout: today’s opening; a gala in March (something like 30 fashion brands bought tables); and then the series of live performances that Jordan Roth will stage in the galleries and the Cour Marly (the glass-roof indoor sculpture garden where Louis Vuitton has staged shows) timed to the July couture season.The son of billionaire real estate developer Steven Roth and Broadway producer Daryl Roth, Jordan is best known for his theater accolades: He’s won a bunch of Tonys as a producer, including for his revival of Angels in America starring Andrew Garfield. But he’s also close with Anna Wintour, and has embedded himself further and further inside the fashion world as he’s risen in prominence and become a performer in his own right—not to mention someone whose party and event looks are tracked closely. I suspect, for the series, Roth will wear a mix of designers with whom he’s formed relationships, and maybe some of his own custom designs. I also suspect he’s only going to get even closer to the fashion industry.
- He’s baaaaack: People have been threatening the return of Terry Richardson for years. A while ago, I heard he was doing a Supreme shoot! (Didn’t happen!) Then it was a Louis Vuitton shoot! (Didn’t happen!) The reality of the industry’s favorite canceled photographers—not only Richardson, but also Mario Testino and sorta Bruce Weber—is that, unlike their counterparts, they can still earn a nice living while in cultural hibernation. They take private commissions and shoot campaigns on the down low, with no prints. Richardson’s hard flash style is easy to imitate, so if there were a photo that looked like his, it would be hard to know if it were actually done by him or someone else.Richardson, who was dropped by several fashion brands in 2017 after allegations of sexual misconduct, has laid low for nearly a decade. (He was also accused of sexual assault in a 2023 lawsuit. Richardson has denied any nonconsensual behavior.) However, he recently resurfaced with a campaign for the Paris-based line Enfants Riches Déprimés, which translates to “rich kids depressed.” According to my friend who sent me a link to the campaign, this is an “awful, expensive brand, but still.” Anyway, it makes you think that we may be seeing more of Richardson soon.
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Sarah Shapiro |
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- Sephora’s supersized sponcon: Sephora’s new Hulu documentary series, Faces of Music, featuring musicians Becky G, Victoria Monét, and Chappell Roan, got us thinking about the state of brand marketing and how far brands should (and are willing to) take it. While some beauty and fashion brands are winning on Instagram and YouTube (we loved the Loewe x Ssense spelling bee with Aubrey Plaza and Dan Levy), they’re largely missing the moment in streaming and longer-form content that goes beyond product placements à la Emily in Paris.Sure, there have been some experiments—like Savage x Fenty on Amazon Prime, and most recently Victoria’s Secret’s switching from CBS and then ABC for Amazon Prime last year, after a long hiatus. The fashion marketer Brian Phillips wrote about this opportunity in BoF four years ago and little has materialized since. Most brands have ostensibly been put off by the incredible capex costs, the need for entertainment partners (who have their own headaches), and the marketing expertise and talent required. (These sorts of executives are not currently sitting inside their companies.) And then, of course, there’s the lead time. These ventures require a seasonal industry to ponder business many quarters beyond the horizon.
And yet, all that said, after years of pure play status, the global advertising industry is only beginning to reallocate their budgets to streaming. So while traditional 30- and 60-second C.P.G. spots will continue to dominate the landscape, this is an apt moment for a format innovation—particularly as brands look to weave product placement more naturally into compelling storytelling. Not only would they own the story and control the narrative, but they’d also have a powerful discovery tool for acquiring new customers without the challenges of a social media algorithm controlling who sees the content, even if the streamers control the ultimate flow of distribution.
Sure, this Sephora sponcon doc isn’t going to light the world on fire, and fashion brand Ami’s Emily in Paris storyline last season might be more effective than an entire show about Ami. But it seems directionally right, and will hopefully lead other brands to make even more inspired gambles in the space. Amazon seems intent on creating shoppable opportunities on Prime, and one can only assume that Netflix and others will inevitably contemplate the opportunity.
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As entrepreneurs, the first family of Calabasas makes a lot of beauty bets, from Kylie Cosmetics to SKKN. Now, enough of them are starting to pay off—including the dark horse hit that is Kourtney’s supplement line—to raise the question: Are the Kardashian-Jenners finally reaching their business potential?
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The millionth season of The Kardashians premieres in two weeks, and the family remains as relevant as ever, simultaneously working the media— Kim Kardashian’s Santa Baby video, Kylie Jenner and Timothée Chalamet’s Golden Globes appearance, etcetera––while sitting atop some ultra-serious businesses. So while I’ve been reporting on Kim and Kylie’s respective beauty brands for close to a decade, it’s only recently that Kourtney and Khloé Kardashian realized just how lucrative the industry can be. Kourtney launched Lemme, a supplement brand, in 2023, and Khloé just debuted a fragrance with Luxe Brands, the group behind Ariana Grande’s scents and not much else.
The Kardashians do place a lot of bets––for every Skims or Kylie Cosmetics there’s a SKKN by Kim or Kylie Swim––and seeing which brands hit is always surprising. For the most part, though, the Kardashian-Jenner beauty machine is blossoming: Kylie Cosmetics is in the midst of a comeback and had a strong 2024. Lemme, I’ve heard, is generating a strong eight figures in annual revenue.
Interestingly, Kim’s beauty endeavors have been rare flubs, especially juxtaposed with the mega-success of Skims. Business of Fashion reported today that SKKY Partners—the consumer-product-focused P.E. firm that Kim started with ex-Carlyle exec Jay Sammons and “quietly” stepped down as co-manager from a month ago— just did its first beauty deal, taking a “significant” minority stake in one of Lauren’s favorite skincare brands: the U.K.-based 111Skin, which I know has been trying to raise for some time.
Kim and Sammons announced the launch of SKKY in 2022, but an inability to raise a reported $1 billion fund was said to be the reason for Kim moving into an “advisory” role. Several insiders told me that potential L.P.s saw Kim’s involvement as a “liability,” and perhaps they also worried that she was running the fund in name only. Either way, given her wealth and varied interests, Kardashian was probably more equipped to be an L.P. herself, rather than manage a fund.
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Despite all her success, Kim has been befuddled by the beauty space. A year ago, she relaunched her beauty brand for an impressive third time—or, technically, a fifth time, counting her fragrance licensing deal with Lighthouse Beauty in 2009 and the journey of Khroma Beauty, a makeup and hair line she started with Khloé and Kourtney. Anyway, Kim’s first real standalone beauty line, KKW Beauty, debuted in 2017 with makeup and then fragrance. In 2020, the beauty conglomerate Coty made a $200 million investment for about 20 percent of the company at an absurd $1 billion valuation, and remains a minority investor. Two years later, it relaunched as SKKN by Kim, a skincare line. But ultimately, people weren’t interested in a $630 nine-step skincare routine in 2022, so she relaunched makeup in early 2024, which was also a flop.
Last year, I heard that SKKN by Kim was only about a $20 million business. “They realized early on that Skims was absolutely killing it. Her attention completely switched to Skims, and the relationship with Coty became hard. Everyone disengaged,” said my source, who’s close to Coty’s business.
Around this time, Coty presumably realized it was illogical to waste time and capital on a small line that Kim had lost interest in. And so the company pulled the plug on the Sephora partnership. Multiple people, including Kim herself, had told me that the plan was to launch at the retailer—but Sephora rollouts are expensive, and Kim, a self-proclaimed perfectionist, was uncompromising when it came to expensive ingredients, custom packaging, etcetera. For Coty, a deal with Sephora meant giving up 50 percent of already lean margins, and it couldn’t afford to do that.
In fact, Kim has reportedly been trying to get out of the Coty deal since 2023, and I’m told the situation is now at a “standstill.” Coty can’t reach an agreement on price, and probably doesn’t want to admit failure. “Coty won’t sell it because they’ll have to publicly write it down. No one wants that headline,” a person with knowledge of the matter said.
It does seem that no amount of relaunching could save this brand, but for now, SKKN by Kim will live on. For Coty, it’s a write-off, and any proceeds are de minimis for Kim. (Quite literally, it’s not worth her time to post about it.) All of that said, I think beauty could have worked for Kim had she made it part of Skims. Maybe sixth time’s the charm?
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In retrospect, an 18-year-old Kylie Jenner’s decision to launch Kylie Cosmetics, in 2015, was a genuinely historic moment in the beauty industry. Jenner helped popularize the direct-to-consumer “drop,” whereby products would sell out in minutes, break websites, and then create absolute frenzies online. Surprisingly, it was the youngest Kardashian-Jenner, not Kim, who would ultimately spark the celebrity beauty brand free-for-all that we’re still living through.
It wasn’t long before conglomerates saw an opportunity. In 2019, Coty paid around $600 million for about 51 percent of Kylie’s brand before realizing that Jenner’s existing formulas weren’t approved by some regulators outside the U.S. “They bought this business to globalize, but they couldn’t sell the products overseas, especially in Europe. They had no choice. They had to reformulate,” my source said. I heard the line eventually relaunched to some success, but the brand lost momentum in the time it took to reformulate and repackage everything, and many people still preferred the original formulas—a common occurrence in beauty.
An insider told me that Sue Nabi, who inherited the venture (as well as the commitment to invest $200 million in Kim’s KKW) when she was named Coty’s C.E.O. in 2020, would “never would have invested in the brand herself.” Nabi’s priority, I’ve been told by at least three high-level industry types, has been the growth of her own brand, Orveda, a small, high-end skincare line that sells $520 serum. (More about that another time.) As a result, Kylie Cosmetics always had a lot of autonomy, which turned out to be great for business. Against all odds––the reformulation of everything, an almost two-year lag between investment and relaunch, fierce competition, plus the usual challenges that celebrity brands face (founder “scandals,” etcetera)––I’m told that the brand was doing about $280 million in revenue heading into the holiday season last year.
The comeback is due in part to Cosmic, a fragrance that launched last March, and TikTok-fueled momentum for newer, multiuse products and franchises like the Lip & Cheek Glow Balm and Lip & Cheek Blush Tint. (For what it’s worth, these S.K.U.s look and feel like a necessary evolution from the Kylie Lip Kits of years past, but also kind of look like Rare Beauty.) Kylie Cosmetics’s evolution serves as a case study of sorts in the fickle nature of celebrity-driven beauty brands, and I’m curious to see what the next few years look like as Kylie enters her thirties.
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As for Lemme, sales of Kourtney’s supplements are “insane,” according to a number of sources, ranging from other founders to people close to Target, where the brand launched a year ago. (I recently saw a photo of a Lemme display at a Target in Eagle Rock, California, that was nearly picked clean.) Several months ago, someone with knowledge of the business said that Lemme was doing “eight figures” in revenue; more recently, I heard a number as high as $100 million. “I’ve never gotten a straight answer,” said a person with deep knowledge of the beauty M&A landscape, who estimated revenue to be about $30 million.
Either way, Kourtney is selling a lot of “Lemme Purr,” a probiotic gummy that supports vaginal health and “freshness,” at Target, where I heard the brand did about $27 million at retail in the past year—equivalent to about $13.5 million in revenue, after the distributor takes its cut. A spokesperson from Lemme declined to comment.
As I’ve said before, I try to stay away from the supplement conversation, both as a consumer and a reporter, because it’s unregulated and feels scammy––but I understand why people are drawn to Lemme and its competitors. These products tap into our collective obsession with being skinny, de-bloating, looking younger, etcetera, though it’s widely accepted that a cute, fruit-flavored gummy can’t possibly affect any of the above.
Still, people will keep buying supplements because they’re inexpensive and usually not bad for you, and because the ritual of taking them regularly means partaking in some sort of self-care. I’m not sure if this is a forever brand, but it doesn’t have to be; Lemme is capitalizing on the wellness trend of the moment and throwing lots of creative and marketing dollars behind it.
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Kenvue is going to be a company to watch in the next few years, especially if they start playing in M&A. The J&J spinoff just named Penelope Giraud as president of skin health and beauty in Asia-Pacific and Latin America, and she comes from CeraVe, which I love. [ WWD]
I feel like all I’ve read this week are Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni’s texts, so I was happy that Eriq broke down the 179-page complaint more intelligently. [ Puck]
The line for the Glossier pop-up at the Mall of America wrapped around two levels. Wow. [ Feed Me]
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That’s it from Line Sheet. By the way, a doctor who runs a research center at Yale just proclaimed that “we may look back on [GLP-1s] as the greatest medical breakthrough of the 21st century.” Things are getting serious!
Until tomorrow,
Lauren
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