Hi, and welcome back to Line Sheet. In today’s issue, Sarah Shapiro is here with the week that was in shopping, from Tuckernuck’s curious entry into New York City retail to the Hermèsification of everything. Speaking of New York City, Sarah is going to be in Manhattan early next week if you’d like to meet or schedule a store visit. Her email is SShapiro@puck.news! I have a crucial Saks Global update for you, and Rachel Strugatz is also back with more proprietary intel on the Rhode-e.l.f. deal—including (but not limited to) what it means for the future of Glossier, which is also seeking an exit. As you know, Rachel has been breaking news left and right these past few weeks, but what you really can’t get anywhere else is her brain. It’s been so fun seeing her work through this story. Programming note: Today on Fashion People, I’m joined by Dry Powder kingpin Bill Cohan to talk all things Saks, LVMH, and Paris restaurants. This is an extended version of the conversation that ran in yesterday’s issue of Line Sheet, accessible to Inner Circle members only. I’m sure you’ve been keeping up with Bill’s coverage, but if not, read his latest before listening to this. For those of you with the Shoppies: Yesterday, after the annual art show at my kid’s design-sophisticate preschool (there are pink linoleum floors and a geodesic dome), I drove over to the Oliver House in Silver Lake (look it up) to check in with Net-a-Porter C.E.O. Heather Kaminetsky, who was in town to celebrate the retailer’s summer capsule collection with Isabel Marant. While I do love torturing myself in measured doses, I really wouldn’t have gone out last night if it wasn’t for the combo of Net and Marant. This was, after all, Kaminetsky’s first event since being promoted into the role five weeks ago from her perch at Mytheresa, and Marant herself only ventures to Los Angeles once or twice a year. What a night! Luella Roche, who I first saw perform at Avenues when she was a teenager during one of her mom’s NYFW presentations, sang The Cranberries. There were zero annoying influencers, plenty of butter consumed, and the collection is lovely, too. (Besides Marant herself, no one looked better than the brand’s creative director, Kim Bekker, who was wearing the paisley top.) I’m not sure there’s a more perfect summer dress than this silk voile mini. Wear sunscreen! Mentioned in this issue: Hailey Bieber, Rhode, e.l.f. Cosmetics, Glossier, Emily Weiss, Saks Global, Marc Metrick, Parker Posey, Beyond Yoga, Jessica McCormack, Zendaya, Tom Holland, Zoë Kravitz, Bally, Simone Bellotti, and many, many more…

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Four Things You Should Know…

Saks’ new money: Minutes after we published Thursday’s Inner Circle issue of Line Sheet, featuring a new report that some brands sold at Saks Global’s various retailers have received what they categorized as “unexpected” payments over the past couple of weeks, C.E.O. Marc Metrick sent an email to vendors noting that the company had secured “$350 million of financing commitments.” The backer is SLR Credit Solutions, whose C.E.O., Michael Gross, was one of the early partners at Apollo, as my partner in all things Saks—and Apollo expert—Bill Cohan informed me. This new commitment indicates that the company has about $700 million in liquidity on a “pro forma” basis, meaning it’s based on certain financial assumptions and projections. Bill wondered if the new money was “expensive,” but the company declined to share the terms of the deal with me. (If you know them, feel free to hit up Bill and me—his email is William@puck.news.) For what it’s worth, Saks Global has maintained throughout that the group is paying vendors just as it always planned to, and there have been no surprises since the Valentine’s Day memo drama—and that there won’t be any this summer.Perhaps this financing will assuage vendors who were getting jittery about shipping once again, given the uncertainty in the market. One party described a feeling of “tremendous relief” upon receiving the letter. That said, the company also just announced in a meeting with creditors that it lost $100 million last year, according to a Bloomberg report, and that it owes $275 million in total to vendors. Also, Bill just sent me an update on the Saks Global bonds, which earlier today were trading at as much as 45 cents on the dollar, up from 36 cents earlier this month. (It’s now trading at 44 cents.) Bill cautioned me to look at the yield though, which is 37 percent. All you need to know: That’s still not good.

Sarah Shapiro

If you get caught between D.C. and Maine: Tuckernuck, the Jackie O.–inspired, MAGA lady–beloved brand you never thought you’d see outside the Beltway, is opening a store at 84th and Madison Avenue at the end of the summer. It’s replacing Everafter, where Upper East Side parents could spend $80 on a “vintage” band t-shirt that their kids would outgrow in three months. Parker Posey name-checked Tuckernuck at Puck’s recent Stories of the Season event, noting that she shopped there for the kind of caftans a Southern matriarch would wear, in preparation for her role in The White Lotus. But do New Yorkers (or tourists shopping in New York) want Tuckernuck? According to Google Trends, the five states with the most searches for Tuckernuck are Alabama, Massachusetts, South Carolina, Connecticut, and Georgia. New York comes in at number 15, although a source told me that New York is one of Tuckernuck’s top three metro markets. (Which includes places like Rye, New York, and Short Hills, New Jersey, ya know.) The Manhattan expansion will test whether suburban retail strategies can translate to a market drowning in options.
Birkin on board: The Boatkin is the latest reinterpretation of the Hermès signature Birkin bag, following terry cloth and straw versions. Hathaway Hutton took an L.L.Bean Boat and Tote bag and Birkin-ized it, using old canvas bags for the material and sourcing hardware to get the look. So why would anyone spend $1,600 on a pre-scuffed Boatkin when the original L.L.Bean model costs around 40 bucks? Well, it’s certainly on the spendy side, even allowing for the handmade factor. Maybe it’s best to think of it as functional luxury, like a jacket made from Hermès blankets. You can also use a Boatkin as a spot to hang your growing collection of Labubus.
Openings, collabs, and more!: The British jeweler Jessica McCormack, the source of the engagement ring that Tom Holland gave Zendaya—after getting her father’s permission—has opened her first U.S. store on Madison Avenue, in a 3,200-square-foot space in an 1879 Beaux Arts building. The jeweler, embraced by celebrities and model-influencer types like Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, has tapped Zoë Kravitz as her first spokesmodel.For the bougie mom crowd, Levi’s activewear acquisition Beyond Yoga continues to drift east, moving beyond the West Coast and the Midwest and into Greenwich. The slightly edgy Australian basics brand St. Agni has a summer “residency” in SoHo through July 6—a nice workaround for shoppers bewildered by the confusing ins, outs, and what-have-yous of U.S. trade policy these days. Loeffler Randall has opened a store on Bleecker Street, an apparent bet on West Village weekend foot traffic and the neighborhood’s population of young singles whose parents are “helping out with the rent.” Co-founder and creative director Jessie Randall told me the small store will be a testing lab for new products. (I hear this mesh shoe is doing well.)Finally, the Bally store in the Meatpacking District just closed, as Lauren predicted way back in October 2024, after the new owners hired a firm to (ahem) “rationalize” its real estate holdings. This doesn’t bode well for Bally in a post–Simone Bellotti world, but I do hope your online sale orders—whose deliveries were apparently delayed due to overwhelming response—are starting to arrive.

And now, Rachel on the Rhode-Glossier smackdown…

Billion-Dollar Bieber

News and notes on e.l.f. Beauty’s $1 billion acquisition of Hailey Bieber’s Rhode, and the collateral damage to Emily Weiss’s Glossier.

Rachel Strugatz

I can’t remember a beauty deal in recent history that’s generated more buzz, excitement, and overall intrigue than e.l.f. Cosmetics’ planned $1 billion acquisition of Hailey Bieber’s Rhode—its largest deal to date, news of which I broke this week. Of course, that’s mainly because of Bieber, who catapulted herself into the tiny stratosphere of celebrity founders who’ve secured 10-figure exits. Meanwhile, e.l.f. Beauty, the parentco of e.l.f. Cosmetics, Naturium, Well People, etcetera, is on its way to becoming a less dysfunctional (albeit less glamorous) Estée Lauder Companies for the new era. But perhaps the most impressive aspect of the deal was how fast Bieber was able to pull it off. In less than three years, she meaningfully scaled Rhode without the help of a major retailer, built a profitable business, and managed to cash out. I’m told Rhode’s talks with e.l.f. began last October, a little more than two years after the brand launched with two skincare products and a lip gloss. Congratulations to everyone involved.

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And yet I can’t help but feel like this should have been Glossier and Emily Weiss’s deal. Obviously, the two brands are different, and the M&A market isn’t zero sum, per se. But there’s no question that the Rhode acquisition reflects poorly on Glossier, which is currently trying to raise a down round, as I reported last month, at around half its previous $1.8 billion valuation. Alas, despite having a strong fragrance business (more than half of its sales come from perfume), Glossier has steadily lost momentum since its reset and successful Sephora rollout, due to a brutal combination of brand fatigue, competition, lack of differentiation, etcetera. One insider suggested that Glossier belongs to a “previous generation,” and would look weak to a potential acquirer. Rhode’s big exit, along with its upcoming Sephora launch, risks making Glossier appear more irrelevant than ever. “It’s crazy that Rhode sold for $1 billion, and there’s literally nothing revolutionary about it, and Glossier can’t sell itself, [even though] it defined an entire generation of beauty products—including Rhode,” a beauty executive told me. Another person close to the brand suggested the issue is brand identity. “They need to figure out what Glossier is,” this person said. “Are they a makeup company? Are they a fragrance company?” All fair questions, but I’d argue that what has really set Rhode apart is its best-in-class marketing—inspired in part by Skims, but also Glossier in its earlier years. The truth is, momentum is one of those lightning-in-a-bottle qualities that only the most disciplined and innovative brands are able to sustain. Most beauty products are basically interchangeable, so marketing and relevance are the only things that really matter. That’s why, at least in part, Rhode managed to achieve in a few years what Glossier still hasn’t in over a decade, and now probably never will.

Key Man Risk

Whether Rhode is actually worth $1 billion is another worthy question. E.l.f. Beauty has a solid balance sheet, but the strategy that the company has leaned on for growth—paying influencers to push content while running on-brand, culturally relevant, and timely campaigns (basically, a ton of affiliate marketing)—is getting more expensive all the time. Since last year, e.l.f. Cosmetics’ growth has decelerated, and the company’s stock is down approximately 25 percent year to date, although Naturium, which the company acquired for about $355 million in 2023, is performing well. That’s why it makes sense for e.l.f. to shell out for a brand with a founder like Bieber. They only have to pay Bieber once, and they get the mouthpiece forever—or for however many years the contract stipulates, which is probably many. Rather than paying thousands of micro-influencers, they now have someone who can move millions of dollars of product with one Instagram post. It’s a smart play, but it also signals that the team is rethinking what future growth looks like.

Meanwhile, e.l.f. gets to do what it does best, which is plug an existing brand into its retail distribution networks. And Rhode is expanding e.l.f.’s footprint, too. Come fall, Rhode’s Sephora launch will make it the first e.l.f. brand to be carried by the store. I doubt this means much beyond Rhode simply being sold there, but I’m curious to see how e.l.f. expands Rhode’s distribution at the end of the Sephora exclusivity period. (Soon, you’ll be able to buy those ridiculous lip gloss phone cases in the CVS checkout aisle…) Of course, the same key man risks that apply to any celebrity brand also apply to Rhode—the founder being canceled or losing relevancy, trends and culture moving in a different direction, etcetera—but I don’t think e.l.f. will wind up losing money by throwing a billion dollars at a Bieber. Rhode made about $200 million in 2024, doubling original projections, thanks in part to moving an estimated $90 million worth of product last November and December alone. Moving into physical retail with shelf space in thousands of Sephora stores will make Bieber ubiquitous. By the time e.l.f. inevitably puts her brand in Walmart and Target, she’ll be inescapable.

The Week in Feedback…

On LVMH’s F1 bet: “I must take issue with your characterization of F1 as plateauing in the U.S.! They just had their biggest-ever ratings for Monaco—2.3 million average audience for a 9 a.m. broadcast. Season to date, ratings are up 18 percent, at all-time highs, and 2025 will almost certainly achieve record ratings, perhaps by a large margin. F1 has the best audience trend of any sport in America!” —An investor type who really likes F1 On Bernard Arnault’s jeans at the Monaco Grand Prix: “I suspect he was wearing either Quarona or Doccio Loro Piana jeans, based on the cut and the wash.” —A marketer On Rhode-e.l.f.’s other winner: “Justin can be a stay-at-home dad now!” —An entrepreneur who knows too much On the new Bottega campaign: “It’s a bridge campaign and the genre has built-in limitations (hard to be exciting when you can’t say much), so I’m more than willing to make concessions. But if you are the nth brand to mine Bruno Munari’s dictionary of gestures for inspiration (been there, done that), you’d better put a great spin on it.” —The only person who doesn’t love this campaign

Have a great weekend, Lauren P.S.: We are using affiliate links because we are a business. We may make a couple bucks off them.

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