Hi, and welcome back to Line Sheet. I’m back in Los Angeles after my briefest stint in New York City in years. And yet, I somehow managed to eat at the Odeon twice (making up for that Beyond burger by ordering a steak the second time), hung out with Alison Roman at an Hermès runway show (spared her from photos of my rendition of the carrot cake), and avoided the use of an umbrella (baseball caps are miraculous).

The highlight of the trip, though, was undoubtedly having breakfast with jewelry designer Brooke Garber Neidich at Sant Ambroeus on Madison, right next to her store. (We both ordered the avocado toast, and she was wearing a cream cashmere button up from The Row thrown over her shoulders like a sweater.) Kate Young stopped by our table to say hi and I saw Thom Browne ordering something from one of the cases upfront. Apparently he is there “three times a day.” (Haven’t confirmed, not bothering Jonathon with that.)

I already admired Brooke’s bracelets and bangles and domed cuffs, but I am now also obsessed with her, and this current iteration of the Upper East Side, where there is evidently a Picotin epidemic. No wonder my friend Marisa just moved there. It isn’t just her apartment’s herringbone parquet floors!

🚨🚨Programming note: Tomorrow on Fashion People, Marie Claire editor-in-chief Nikki Ogunnaike joins me to discuss all things Nike, why designers keep erasing their Instagram grids, and, of course, who might be next at Chanel. Subscribe here, thank you very much.

Also, I had a great time last week chatting onstage with the talented costume designers behind six Emmy-eligible HBO and Max Originals series. If you couldn’t make the event, which took place in Hollywood, you can find a transcript of our conversation here.

Today, I’ve got the requisite H.R. fodder (an executive change at The Row, all the big P.R. switcheroos), some more thoughts on Chanel succession, and a deepish dive on Karlie Kloss’s enigmatic Bedford Media, which owns i-D and now, Life.

Mentioned in this issue: Karlie Kloss, Bedford Media, Josh Kushner, i-D, Life, Derek Blasberg, Edward Enninful, Hermès, Rihanna, Nadège Vanhée, The Row, Trish Donnelly, Virginie Viard, Chanel, Thom Browne, Javanka, Emily Bode, Anna Wintour, tri-blend t-shirts, Lila Staab, Peter Utz, Ben Cercio, Rachel Janc, Ferdinando Verderi, Nicole Muniz, Sara Moonves, and more.

• Hermès show notes: Hermès last staged a women’s show in New York City a little more than 10 years ago, in a giant lofted space near Wall Street. A few months later, Christophe Lemaire announced he was leaving to work on his own line, and Nadège Vanhée, who had been designing for The Row, was named the house’s womenswear designer. A decade later, Vanhée returned to New York to show what they’re calling Part 2 of her Autumn/Winter 2024 collection, and to celebrate the milestone. It was also an important moment for Hermès, more broadly, marking the first time the house debuted a new ready-to-wear collection outside of Paris.

  The clothes were as advertised: a sequel to what was shown in the Marais in March, with lots of cinched waists, pin-straight trousers, and another round of cowboy boots. Only this time, there was more color (red, mustard, cerulean). Everything was a little bolder, including the very supermodel casting—Paloma Elsesser, Karen Elson, Irina Shayk, Julia Nobis. Of the roughly 600 people who walked through the doors of Pier 36, near South Street Seaport, plenty were clients, and everyone stayed afterward for the party. As I was about to do one last spin around the room, I clocked three clients sitting on one of the benches, bobbing up and down as they watched the crowd. They looked satisfied.

  I liked it, too. I’ve always been a fan of Vanhée’s work, which modernized over the past couple of years with tighter leather pants, sharper shoulders, and sexier silhouettes. (She seems to be having fun with stylist Jodie Barnes.) The New York show, in particular, put Hermès in the context of current times without surrendering too much to obvious marketing tropes. A lifetime ago, right before that last Lemaire show, I profiled Bali Barret, Vanhée’s former boss, for Elle.com. I read the piece again to get me in the headspace to write this up, and was struck by Bali’s final thoughts: “The fact that [Hermès] makes money is great luck.” Of course, this is a for-profit organization, meticulously run. But the fact that the family has managed to keep it going for over 187 years, through the best and the worst of times, is undeniably remarkable. When people talk about the magic of Hermès, that’s what they’re talking about.

• A quiet exec exit at The Row: Trish Donnelly, who previously enjoyed long tenures at Urban Outfitters and J.Crew, left her role as president of The Row in April, less than a year and half after taking the job. One factor may be that, as I’ve reported previously, more of the team is based in Paris these days; perhaps there is a desire to have an operations leader there. Also, no one has ever stayed in that position for very long. Just facts. No word on who is replacing/replaced her.
• I forgot Thom Browne!: I feel like I gave you quite a bit of good, original stuff in my Virginie Viard exit analysis last week, but yes, I did neglect to propose Thom Browne as a potential Chanel successor. He could do it—he has the creative and commercial sensibility and enough discipline. He also probably wouldn’t insist on meddling with the fragrance and beauty campaigns.

  All that said, I still think it should be Hedi, but I’d be intrigued and excited if it were Thom. Also, you know who is definitely not in the running but maybe should be 15 years from now when we’re talking about this again? Emily Bode. She posted a video on Instagram yesterday wearing a small cross-body Chanel bag, and it reminded me how good her own Karl Lagerfeld-inspired pieces were at last year’s Chanel Karl-themed Met Gala. In some ways, perhaps, that event was an audition for the next designer. Also, if we want to get all conspiratorial, now it’s even more intriguing that Anna Wintour didn’t wear Chanel to this year’s gala.

• The P.R.s are having a musical chairs moment, too: Lots of comms movement at the big houses. In the celebrity-slash-V.I.P. world, Gucci’s Lila Staab moved to Calvin Klein to run the whole P.R. operation, and Celine’s celebrity whisperer, Peter Utz—a Hedi Slimane person—resigned just before Cannes. Gucci is announcing a new global head of communications soon while everybody waits to see where Ben Cercio, who formerly occupied that position, is headed next. Meanwhile, on the publishing side, beloved GQ and Vanity Fair publicist Rachel Janc announced on Friday that she was leaving Condé Nast, so no use in begging her for an invite to Men of the Year.
• Finally… What’s up with these creative directors erasing their Instagram grids?: First, it was Kim Jones. Now, John Galliano. Sheesh, what a way to get people talking when you have nothing to say.

Both properties had nebulous value in the current culture, one could argue, but presumably their real cachet and financial opportunity lay in business extensions beyond their core print products. (Life, for one, stopped publishing on a regular cadence in 2000.) And I imagine that the Bedford Media brain trust—Kloss, Kushner, Thrive and Klossy alum Lauren Bray, Patrick Ehrlund, and newly appointed C.E.O. Nicole Muniz—have some views about what those business extensions might be. Kushner, of course, was one of the geniuses who made a fortune on OpenAI and even once temporarily had Bob Iger reporting to him as an advisor during his Disney sabbatical. So… what are they going to do?

For the past few weeks, as I’ve posed these very questions to various interested parties, I’ve surmised that Kloss and her team understand that the old way of doing things obviously doesn’t work anymore. Kloss, a number of these people said, seems to be feeling things out in the meantime—an approach most publicly evident in the initial handling of i-D, the British-style publication founded in 1980 by Terry and Tricia Jones as a punk antidote to Vogue.

As was the case with brother-in-law Jared Kushner’s stewardship of the New York Observer, Kloss also discovered that editorial types can be mercurial. Mckimm, who oversaw a period of creative success and significant commercial growth, was outwardly positive about his new partnership with Kloss. He and his team got to work on a May 2024 pseudo relaunch, even commissioning contributors for specific stories. But that issue was soon canceled, and Mckimm split in February. I was told Mckimm and Bedford could not agree on the terms of the contract. “I truly believe this is the best thing to do for i-D, Karlie and my own sanity,” Mckimm said in his departing note to staff on Valentine’s Day.

Soon thereafter, Bedford essentially initiated a full rethink to pay off vendors, restaff, and build a new infrastructure for its $10 million acquisition. (Bedford declined to comment on the reported sales figure.) i-D stopped publishing stories on the website and halted print. Then, in March, there were more staff layoffs. The search for a new editor-in-chief surfaced names like Kloss’s close friend Derek Blasberg, as well as Edward Enninful. (I’m told by several people that Enninful has had discussions with Bedford about various projects, but that he isn’t interested in an editor-in-chief role, per se. He wants to do his own thing, even if he doesn’t necessarily possess an entrepreneurial spirit.)

Meanwhile, there have been multiple conversations with, and some offers made to, several top fashion editors to lead the publication, and even some guest editor requests, none of which have materialized. Talks with creative director Ferdinando Verderi, best known for his work with Prada, have been on and off. Mckimm’s deputy, Olivia Singer, left the business a couple of weeks ago, and Holly Shackleton, the former editor who remains close with the founders, quietly joined in a new role.

All the while, i-D has continued publishing on social media, with the intention to revive its print product. There will be more developments by the end of the year, I hear, although I don’t know whether that will include a traditional website. Even if it had been relatively simple, the folks behind Bedford don’t want to get back into the habit of feeding the beast, as producers of online content like to say. Perhaps that’s why Kloss hired Muniz, a longtime video producer and the former C.E.O. of Yuga Labs—the N.F.T. company behind Bored Ape Yacht Club—to serve as C.E.O. of Bedford Media. (Kloss, who formerly held that title, remains chairwoman.)

Muniz happens to be married to Ehrlund, another Bedford executive. The couple met Kushner in 2016, when their creative agency, Something Special, began working on projects for Oscar, his healthcare business. These people definitely understand the value of brand. There’s a decent amount of talk in the office about first-principle thinking—don’t make assumptions based on how things worked previously—and how that can help create a strong brand. Whether they understand how to make a compelling, disruptive editorial product, remains unproven. And the company has done nothing yet publicly to quiet skeptics. After all, the thing about the old i-D was that it was working from an editorial perspective—memorable imagery, thoughtful ideas—and the industry, collectively, was incredibly supportive of Mckimm’s vision.

With Life, there are clear paths to revenue generation: an untarnished name with a nearly unmatched archive of historic imagery. There’s a photo licensing opportunity, an exhibition opportunity, and yes, an editorial opportunity. However, the owner of the Life I.P., Dotdash Meredith, owns the photo and archive rights, so even if they’ve brokered some sort of deal, the path to making money might be a little more rugged than if Bedford straight-up owned it.

As for why Kloss and Kushner wanted to do this? Well, this is not Kloss’s first foray into media. She is, after all, an investor in W magazine, although I’m told her stake in the business has decreased as BDG, a partner in the enterprise, has become more engaged. Perhaps Kloss got a taste of what media could be with W and decided she wanted to roll up her sleeves again. There were discussions with W editor-in-chief Sara Moonves and BDG’s Bryan Goldberg regarding partnering on i-D, but in the end, they decided not to move forward.

Whatever happened, Kloss chose to go it alone. The realities of what that means in this current economic environment are beginning to take shape. Perhaps Prada’s Verderi will actually say yes, and maybe, someday, Mckimm will return. Mckimm has enough to do, sure, but the honest truth is that the fashion industry wants i-D to succeed, and wants Kloss to succeed, too. After all, who else reads magazines?

Rihanna on the cover of Katie Grand’s Perfect is one of the first instantly iconic images I’ve seen in years. (There are actually three covers, and they are all very good, but that initial one will burn the brain like a cigar.) Styled by Jahleel Weaver, photographed by Rafael Pavarotti. [Pre-Order It Now]

GP went to the Jacquemus show. [Vogue]

This Grand-styled young-designer spread, also with Raf, is pretty spectacular, too. [W]

Another LVMH exec change: The company has appointed Cécile Cabanis deputy finance director. She’ll eventually take over for Jean-Jacques Guiony, the longtime C.F.O. As for whether he’s retiring… well, none of these guys actually retire. [WWD]

No one is covering this WaPo story better than Dylan. [Puck]

For all you Nasties, former and current: David Remnick said Roger Lynch has done a “stunning job” as C.E.O. of Condé Nast, and that he is a great “partner.” (What did you expect him to say?) He also said that he doesn’t think writers should have to think about how their publication makes money if they don’t want to think about it. (Look how well that worked out…). [I Figured It Out, This Podcast Should Just Be Called The Full Bleed]

I understand the mass interest in Katie Holmes’ wardrobe, but I also never find myself coveting something she’s wearing. And yet, I really like her collaboration with A.P.C. I want everything: the deep-V knits, the wedge sandals, the jeans, the organic silk camisole, the navy cotton miniskirt. If you don’t know what to wear and can’t hire Becky Malinsky, you should just buy one of each item in this collection. [A.P.C.]

There are people who are thin and have a healthy relationship with food. There are people who are fat and have a healthy relationship with food. There are people (thin and fat) who claim a healthy relationship with food, but judge everyone else’s relationship with food. Then there are the rest of us, always trying to lose 10 pounds. This Mounjaro story is for us! [Air Mail]

Inside Kanye’s “violent” Malibu house. [The New Yorker]

For those of you not on Mounjaro (or in the maintenance phase), this book is really great. The recipes are easy, but the flavors are right on the money. [Big Night, the Book]

Guys, please don’t wear these shoes, I’m begging you. [Twitter]

Who needs scripted anything when this exists? [Twitter]

Until Wednesday,
Lauren