A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR

Quietly powering the best in luxury.

LEARN MORE

And now, on to the main event...

Last fall, at the Financial Times’s luxury summit in Hong Kong, the British designer Kim Jones leveraged both the platform and locale to recast his career. After 15 years inside the LVMH machine, at Dior and Fendi, Jones was embarking on a new journey as a philosopher-king of the Asian luxury market—a vision befitting his still-new post as creative director of Areal, the premium line of Bosideng, the Chinese outerwear giant that specializes in down jackets. “Whenever I’m designing, Asia is always one of my main priorities,” Jones said in a social media video promoting the event. “I think about their craft, their history, and the talent of local craftsmen and how we can entwine them with what we do. I’m loving working with Asia at the moment because the factories are so new and they have so much new technology. … For me, it’s like looking at the future.”

Jones may have been unfurling a rehearsed and choreographed talking point, but it also happened to be true: During his LVMH era, he understood the Asia opportunity earlier, and better, than many of his peers. In his post-Arnault life, however, Jones has contemplated several scenarios: designing for another house, establishing a branded studio that could spit out collaborations at high velocity, or working on a series of consulting projects to meet an income threshold established at the peak of the luxury fashion bubble—a.k.a. money jobs. For now, he seems to have chosen the latter, betting on his immense talent to persuade men in Asia to buy stuff. In addition to his gig with Bosideng, Jones partnered last year with Aman Essentials, the product line offshoot of the wildly upscale resort chain. Jones is an Aman obsessive, and said in October that he had visited more than 30 of its 33 locations.

A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR

Turning influence into ROI.

LEARN MORE

Of course, these types of consulting gigs may also be his only option for now. Jones never cracked womenswear like Jonathan Anderson or Raf Simons, who both also started in menswear, which somewhat limits his opportunities. At LVMH, where he was revered by Bernard Arnault, his vision for Fendi womenswear never quite materialized. Perhaps he didn’t understand what women wanted, or maybe he was enmeshed in a tricky situation with heir and menswear designer Silvia Venturini Fendi. (It also simply could have been the wrong fit.) Regardless, it’s unlikely Jones will get another big position in womenswear again.

At only 52, Jones is at a fascinating career inflection point: He exited his fat-check corporate job in time to have a second or even third act—a new trend among a certain generation of designers. Just this past week, the aesthetically disgraced former Gucci creative director Sabato De Sarno relaunched his career with a design project in Italy. John Galliano, the former Dior and Maison Margiela enfant terrible, signed a two-year deal with Zara.

Yes, these vanity endeavors are partially about restoring relevance—an ego-stoking antidote to the post-wunderkind blues that befall creative directors after they leave their multibillion-dollar projects. But more often, they’re about piecing together the $2 million to $3 million-a-year, all-expenses-paid lifestyles that they grew accustomed to during their heyday. A handful of designers are still being compensated like that, or even more generously—but generally, I’m told, rates have declined as the market for soft luxury goods has… softened. It’s not entirely unlike what’s happening with Hollywood talent as the film industry shrinks.

Of course, once you are making a certain income, expenses often increase, and in order to maintain that lifestyle, you’ve got to diversify. That’s why Jones’s Bosideng gig might be the most consequential deal of his post-LVMH era. I’m told by multiple sources that the designer negotiated a fee of €2 million per look for his first collection with the company, which launched at Galeries Lafayette this past February. (I reached out to both Bosideng and Jones to ask about this and did not receive a response.)

That number might sound nuts, but I understand the logic. Bosideng, which is valued at about $6 billion on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, has been trying to move upmarket and abroad for about a decade. The company has shown collections at various fashion weeks across the world—not that anyone noticed. In 2024, Bosideng took a 30 percent stake in Moose Knuckles, the Canadian outerwear brand led by former Coach C.E.O. Victor Luis, in an effort to further embed itself abroad. And yet, the partnership with Jones—and especially seeing it on display in the windows of Galeries Lafayette a few weeks ago—was the first time that Bosideng had registered with me.

To be honest, I’m not sure there’s a better post-conglomerate option for Jones. He may fancy himself an expert on the Asian markets, but the once symbiotic relationship between China and Big Luxury has decoupled. Similar to Hollywood, the Chinese market is now increasingly supplying its own cultural products—aided, in part, by the long-term interests of the C.C.P. I’m not sure if Jones will legitimize Bosideng for Western consumers, but that may no longer be the point. All that really matters is whether he can understand the modern Chinese market, where consumers aren’t going to overpay for Fendi and Dior logo slaps.

For Jones, the gig offers him more direct access to the customer who made him rich in the first place, and proximity to an evolving market that few brands can crack. Sure, it may not offer the same prestige with the insular European fashion community, but that’s what the money is for. Jones isn’t wrong when he says that working with Asia is like “looking at the future.”

I found this mostly one-sided explanation of what happened (with killing cats and other weird stuff) at shuttered Los Angeles restaurant Horses deeply satisfying; there was a ton of detail and what felt like a lot of honesty. I’m not sure why this story is such a fashion industry fixation other than the fact that there were a lot of fashion parties at Horses, and that the restaurant was nice and looked more like a New York restaurant. People keep asking me if the food was any good. The cocktails were great, and yes, the Caesar salad, the bread, and the tiramisu were very delicious. The off-menu pasta was fine. The people who worked front-of-house were also really nice. Life is weird. [Air Mail]

Everyone in Paris is talking about the sudden, unexpected death of aesthetic doctor Antoni Calmon, who was based here. Be good to one another! [Instagram]

A Prada shoe factory in Venice was robbed on Thursday. According to reports in the Italian press, 600 pairs were stolen. That’s hundreds of thousands of dollars. Of course they stole the shoes! [La Milano]

Vanessa Friedman, Nicole Phelps, Rachel Tashjian, and Rian Phin on the state of fashion criticism. [10 Magazine]

If you want to see the future of press trips, consider what Highsnobiety and editor-in-chief Noah Johnson just pulled off. They hosted a group of pseudo-influencers (Chris Black, the chef Frederik Bille Brahe, Laura Reilly) at the Kulm Hotel in St. Moritz and got the tourism board, Audemars Piguet, and Maserati to chip in. They skied. They went to Rolf Sachs’s Olympiahaus! (Apparently, Sachs was wearing an Extreme Cashmere sweater over an Oxford shirt for the visit.) Chris did interviews to run across social media, Maddy Rotman shot for Instagram, Louise Chen D.J.’d one night at the Kulm Country Club. Designer Nicholas Daley and his girlfriend D.J.’d the final night at the hotel. My feeling is… the new GQ is gonna have to work hard not to feel boring. [Highsnobiety]

I love skirt suits. If you are still looking for your skirt suit, and also feeling the new Chanel, you may want to consider Melissa Ventosa Martin’s pick, handloomed by textile artist Julie Rose Clapton. [Old Stone Trade]

I’m not sure there are going to be any more fashion stories to be told about The Devil Wears Prada 2 by the time the film is actually released later this spring, but I liked reading about the rise of Sasuphi, a 5-year-old Italian label, anyway. [N.Y. Times]

Loewe hosted a fun dinner with Bergdorf Goodman at the Odeon. Everyone looked well-rested, rich, and fully paid up. Be jealous you weren’t there! [Vogue]

Run-A-Muck, Pam Drucker Mann’s new media platform, edited by Justin Moran, is getting good advertisers. Hermès—more experimental than you’d expect when it comes to new media—framed itself around this feature starring chef-restauranteurs Rita Sodi and Jody Williams. [The Draft]

Zegna released its full-year financial report late last week. Revenues were down a bit overall, while profit margin widened. Brand by brand, Thom Browne was down a lot, Tom Ford was up a little, and Zegna was up a little more. [Inbox]

Until tomorrow,
Lauren

P.S.: We use affiliate links because we are a business. We may make a couple bucks off them.

Need help? Review our FAQ page or contact us for assistance. For brand partnerships, email ads@puck.news.

You received this email because you signed up to receive emails from Puck, or as part of your Puck account associated with {{customer.email}}. To stop receiving this newsletter and/or manage all your email preferences, click here.

Puck is published by Heat Media LLC. 107 Greenwich St., New York, NY 10006