Hi, and welcome back to Line Sheet. What are you wearing to Thanksgiving? If there was any occasion to break out vintage YSL, this is it.

Today, Rachel Strugatz is here with news of a major change at Glossier (one of the brand’s chief architects is departing), plus the latest on Goop, Violet Grey, and an executive who’s been brought in to fix both businesses. Meanwhile, I’ve compiled a by-request, reading-between-the-lines, fashion-mag specific analysis of the recent Hearst layoffs. I also have news from the LVMH H.R. department regarding the future of the Fashion Group, the demotion of a No. 1 to a No. 2, and a promotion of another Arnault kid. Plus, a scoop on the Old Navy C.M.O. search.

Apologies in advance to Line Sheet fans in Europe and beyond—especially those eagerly awaiting my take on Bernard Arnault’s courtroom testimony this Thursday. (He’s being summoned in a case involving a former spy hired by LVMH, Bernard Squarcini—the former head of French intelligence under President Nicolas Sarkozy—who is being charged with corruption and illegal surveillance, among other things.) Alas, I am taking tomorrow off to celebrate everyone’s favorite holiday. (Yes, I will be wearing vintage YSL.) With the break in mind, I’ve included a special reading, listening, watching, and shopping list to tide you over.

🚨🚨 Programming note: This Friday on Fashion People, I’m joined by Aaron Levine, the former Club Monaco and Abercrombie & Fitch designer, Aimé Leon Dore model, and founder of a just-launched namesake label. (So much has already sold out! It’s very good.) We discuss shadow plaids, Ohio, male vulnerability, Jon Tietz, Aaron’s mom, and why in the lord’s name he would want to start his own fashion brand when he makes very good money consulting. Subscribe here or here not to miss it. I’m also on The Powers That Be on Friday with Puck legend and recent Steve Bannon interlocutor Peter Hamby to discuss holiday shopping and Trump tariffs. Listen here and here.

🎄🛍️ While we’re on the subject of holiday shopping: My annual guide to gift guides is coming soon, but if you need help this week, my best advice would be to not buy much, if anything, at all. (Becky Malinsky gave her readers permission to disengage.) The worst mistake people make is buying stuff because it’s on sale. Don’t do that! Now is the time, however, to buy the major fashion item you’ve been eying for months that’s suddenly 30 percent off (like these square-toe pumps, which I own and are very comfortable and very “old Prada”). Personally, I’m restraining myself from purchasing anything sparkly (like this Comme sweater, which reminds me of the one Natalie Portman wore on Charlie Rose when she was a little girl) because I’m not a sparkly top wearer. (I do like this one also, but again, no metallics for me.) Anyway, if you have the shoppies, Laura Reilly has organized special discounts for Magasin readers, which is very savvy. Also, if you are aching to get rid of some stuff before you buy more, remember that you can resell your items for Mytheresa credit. (They have an interesting deal with Vestiaire Collective.) Sign up here.

And don’t forget, the best gift you can get your coworkers is a subscription to Puck. It’s tax deductible and a treat.

Mentioned in this issue: Gwyneth Paltrow, Cassandra Grey, Goop, Jean Godfrey-June, Sarah Brown, Westview, Julia Hunter, Emily Weiss, Glossier, Marie Suter, Willa Bennett, Jenni Kaye, Derek Yarbrough, Old Navy, Debi Chirichella, Violet Grey, Ulta Beauty, Phoebe Philo, Celine, Jonathan Anderson, Loewe, Tory Burch, Delphine Arnault, Dana Thomas, Domenico De Sole, and many, many more…

• Rachel on the exit of one of Glossier’s most important executives: In non-perfume-related news, Glossier’s creative team is about to look very different. Marie Suter, Glossier’s enormously talented creative director of close to seven years, and her No. 2, Adriana Deleo, both recently announced internally that they’re leaving the company. Suter, one of the few creative directors in beauty with industry recognition, plans to stay until April, and Deleo, who has been at the company for over a decade, until mid-January. “Marie made Glossier ‘sexier’––it became more grown up,” said a person with knowledge of Glossier’s business. “A lot of the cutesiness fell away to a style of photography that felt a little more modern.”

  While I heard that Glossier doesn’t plan to “replace at Marie’s level,” I do think that whoever is hired in that senior creative role––whatever it will look like––will have a really important job, responsible for how Glossier will look and feel as the brand charts out its next decade. I’ve heard that Suter is at last going to do “her own thing” and open an agency. —Rachel Strugatz

• The revolving door: And the next (interim) C.M.O. of Old Navy is… Derek Yarbrough, former C.M.O. of J.Crew. He starts on Monday, so I’ll share more then.
• Reading the LVMH tea leaves: The news from Paris is that everybody’s favorite (?) conglomerate is about to announce a new Fashion Group C.E.O. after months of speculation and confusion. A refresher: Longtime Bernard Arnault deputy Michael Burke abruptly stepped down just a few months into his official appointment, requiring predecessor Sidney Toledano to step back in to help out. LVMH decided not to announce the Burke change publicly, causing stress and confusion among executives, as well as several press leaks.

  Now, I’m told that a “reputable individual” will take over the once-thriving group, which has diminished in importance within the LVMH ecosystem as Dior and Louis Vuitton have gained individual market share. (The Fashion Group includes Marc Jacobs, Celine, Loewe, Givenchy, Kenzo, Patou, John Galliano, Berluti, and I’m sure one or two others I can’t remember. It does not include Loro Piana, Rimowa, or Fendi.) The big takeaway: The Fashion Group used to be where LVMH would place emerging talent in the hopes that they would develop commercially, like Phoebe Philo at Céline or Jonathan Anderson at Loewe. Brand C.E.O.s are not feeling supported in the way they were during the time of Pierre-Yves Roussel (the current C.E.O. and husband of Tory Burch), who led the division during its heyday and was obsessed with sourcing new talent on both the design and executive sides.

  As for who the new Fashion Group boss may be? There have been murmurs that Dior C.E.O. Delphine Arnault, eldest child and definite “reputable” individual, could be moved into the role, but that would be something of a demotion. The current challenges at Dior are a major test for her, and it would be a big signal if she were not given the time to see it through. In other Arnault kid news, I’m told one of the two youngest children, Jean or Frédéric, is about to get a major promotion, and that one of Arnault’s longtime deputies is being downgraded from a “No. 1 to a No. 2.” I’m sure I’ll have more on all of this next week.

• On those Hearst layoffs: Nearly 200 people were laid off from Hearst’s magazine division last week, according to New York’s Charlotte Klein. From what I’ve been told, that’s the biggest reduction since the Great Recession. People are sad, and with reason. Hearst tried to message its way through the downsizing via a strategic leak to Axios noting that the company is more diversified than ever. (There will be new roles added across the company after these existing roles are deleted.) In reality, Hearst faces all the challenges of a later-stage, immensely successful, family-controlled private enterprise: It doesn’t want to be in the media business, but it sort of has no other choice than to bow to its own legacy and manage the transition slowly. I hate to be callous, I really do, but these businesses are changing—and not as fast as they should—which means their staffing needs are changing and mass layoffs are inevitable.

  I heard mostly about editorial cuts, although they were spread across functions, obviously. At Cosmo, new editor-in-chief Willa Bennett let go of the features director, shopping editor, and an astrology editor. (This was Bennett’s opportunity to clean house.) At Harper’s Bazaar, cuts included a managing editor and a visuals director. Shop Bazaar lost at least two people from a skeletal staff. (At some point soon we’ll get into Hearst’s head-scratching e-commerce strategy, but not today.) Esquire lost a few editors; Elle’s visuals team was gutted. Everyone is getting paid through the end of the year on top of severance.

  One “Hearst insider” told Klein that the company “has forgotten the power and allure of brands and wants the easy route of selling to a low-cost audience.” Oh man, I’m sorry to tell you, but that happened decades ago! Hearst’s competitive advantage was the fact that it was less precious than Condé Nast, and it openly managed the unit economics of the business. While Jim Nelson was ordering reshoots on inside images, David Granger was at least vaguely aware of his per-page budget. The brands have suffered and been diminished, yes, but Hearst’s unemotional culture explains why the company has managed the transition to irrelevance better than Condé Nast.

  Meanwhile, president Debi Chirichella may not have the vision of her predecessors, but she was smart to promote Lucy Kaylin, a real words person, to run content. Kaylin, the former editor-in-chief of O, is a big reason Bennett is there, and a big reason why Stellene Volandes and Town & Country have thrived amid the ruins. (That’s mostly Stellene, but you know…) So, I know it feels really bad right now, but if you’re still working at Hearst, you should remember that this company has never promised to be anything more than it is, and there is something refreshingly honest about that.

I have no doubt that Violet Grey’s assortment––including Augustinus Bader, Westman Atelier, and Lyma’s nearly $3,000 at-home laser––will be a hit with the Hirshleifers crowd. The shop-in-shop is Violet Grey’s second offline retail space (a Melrose Avenue boutique opened in 2013), and Paltrow… well, she got wrangled in because this collaboration commemorates the first time Goop Beauty will be sold via Violet Grey.

At face value, none of this is terribly interesting. Goop has been unwilling to share revenue figures or projections, but a spokesperson has said on multiple occasions that various verticals are growing by double-digit percentages. It’s far bigger than Violet Grey, which I heard is doing about $7 million in revenue, down about 75 percent from its peak. But Grey and Paltrow’s operations are more intertwined than one would think. In fact, the two companies share many commonalities––plenty of downsizing, including the layoffs of their senior-most editorial employees (Jean Godfrey-June at Goop and Sarah Brown at Violet Grey); publicized restructurings; and a rethinking of existing business models, which for both include opening a lot of freestanding stores. It’s no coincidence that Goop Beauty is just now launching at Violet Grey, which seems like an obvious pairing that should have taken place years ago.

Another commonality they share is the services of Julia Hunter, the former C.E.O. of Jenni Kayne. Hunter has apparently become the go-to advisor for turning around a business subgenre known imprecisely as challenged luxury ventures built on editorial and “curation” that also specialize in beauty. It’s a niche skill set, but her experience suggests she’s up for the task: Hunter took Jenni Kayne from a real estate heiress’s vanity project to a true lifestyle proposition with multiple stores, a robust home line, and a range of well-priced basics that fed into the California minimalism aesthetic washing over media in the mid-2010s. In other words, a real and investible business.

As Jenni Kayne started generating close to $100 million a year in revenue and prepping for a potential sale, Hunter launched beauty through Oak Essentials, which recently announced a ~$10 million fundraise led by Silas Capital to help fuel an Ulta Beauty expansion. (The company is apparently on track to make about $20 million in revenue this year.) My understanding is that Hunter is a talented operator and an early expert in paid marketing who was at one time maybe going to be the C.E.O. of Line Sheet’s favorite hair care line, Roz. Either way, that didn’t happen, and Hunter instead became a trusted advisor to Paltrow and now sits on Goop’s board.

Hunter has been working with Goop in an executive role to restructure and reimagine the 16-year-old company, which started as a newsletter and has since expanded to making its own beauty products, clothing, food, and so on. The problem for Goop, as I’ve written, is that there’s no central product driving the majority of the revenue. “There’s a plan in place to grow the business substantially in some way,” a person with knowledge of the matter said. Another person familiar with both businesses said of Hunter: “She’s the fixer.”

Hunter’s also now the managing partner of Westview Ventures, a newly formed advisory that, in addition to Goop and Violet Grey, is working with Aimé Leon Dore and Flamingo Estate. “We believe that you can do really beautiful, elevating, creative content––and be really performance-driven with your storytelling,” Hunter said. She assured me that Goop is definitely not doing away with its editorial arm, although the content may start to look different over the coming months.

As for Grey, herself, the founder is said to have a renewed focus on “the edit of brands,” an area she’s been less involved with the last few years. “This team was very quickly able to engage with me and the different areas and really learn the values of the company, what we want to do, and the vision behind all the initiatives,” Grey explained. She also confirmed that Hunter does not currently sit on Violet Grey’s board.

Still, Hunter’s role at the two companies is befuddling many gossip-hungry industry-watchers, who are fixated on her Jenni Kayne playbook, her advisory, and the fact that she can simultaneously advise both Violet Grey and Goop at once and nibble from both. (No conflict, no interest, people.)

On some level, though, Goop and Violet Grey do have plenty of overlap beyond the Hunter playbook. They are purveyors of luxury beauty and boast “curated” assortments, but mainly, their recommendations matter. Each business has always maintained a clear brand identity and ethos. Goop is the physical manifestation of Paltrow’s whims and longtime fascination with wellness, absurd cleanses, and beauty treatments. Violet Grey has, since day one, been a destination for highly produced editorial shoots, celebrity-approved products, and old Hollywood glamour online. (Grey is the widow of former Paramount C.E.O. Brad Grey.)

But Hunter’s task at each will be slightly nuanced. Goop’s business is driven by its own product lines—beauty, fashion, and now, food––while Violet Grey still maintains a multibrand retail model. Alas, Violet Grey’s post-Farfetch situation is pretty serious (although not beyond repair); Goop is mostly just unfocused. And so it’s unlikely that a partnership will yield more than a fleeting moment in their respective attempts at turnarounds. “Two wrongs don’t make a right,” said the insider familiar with both businesses.

I can envision scenarios where a Goop and Violet Grey marriage wouldn’t be a terrible idea. Maybe Goop dissolves most of its edit team so Violet Grey can serve as the editorial arm of a joint entity. That way, Goop could keep doing its thing selling wannabe Jones Road makeup, decent clothes that are too expensive for what they are, and food that’s tasty but makes Lauren’s fingers swell, and still maintain the strong editorial lens that led it to gain a cult following in the first place. Hunter clearly has expertise in building retail networks, and, hopefully she can translate this in a way where all parties win.

Saks Potts is closing. I love those girls. [Vogue]

Here is Law Roach giving sweet advice to young people. [Teen Vogue]

Ozempic et al. will soon be covered under Medicare and Medicaid, as long as Trump and anti-seed-oil crusader Robert F. Kennedy Jr. don’t stop the train. [New York Times]

“The internet as an archive provides us with such a treasure trove of things past that addressing the future is almost forgotten. We carry a lot of dead weight with us.” I loved this conversation with the Real Jil Sander. [HURS]

Sam Hine’s dispatch from Kiko Kostadinov and Telfar store openings is great. [GQ]

Peter Copping will show his first Lanvin collection in January. [Inbox]

I pinky-swear that I will share my guide to gift guides next week, but if you need early inspiration, please take a look at my friend Michael Williams’ best-in-class selections. (He commissions another friend, the stylist Laurie Trott, to pick the stuff for women, and she has great taste.) I almost always end up buying something from Michael’s list. This year, he recommended a Snoopy cassette player for kids, which led me to the Snoopy Polaroid camera. But there’s so much good stuff in there. Someone please buy this melange pea coat. [A Continuous Lean]

This weekend, I highly recommend watching Kingdom of Dreams, the four-part docuseries about the rise of LVMH and Kering that owes a lot to two of journalist Dana Thomas’s books, Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster and Gods and Kings: The Rise and Fall of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano. Line Sheet stars including Dana, Tim Blanks, and Domenico De Sole all appear. It’s great, but you should read Dana’s books first.

On that note, Happy Thanksgiving and see you next week,
Lauren

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