July 22, 2025

Hi, and welcome back to Line Sheet. Thanks for all the thoughtful responses to yesterday’s email. I’ll include as much as I can in Friday Feedback.

Meanwhile, for your reading pleasure, Sarah “SShapiro@puck.news” Shapiro is here today with Molly Howard, co-founder and C.E.O. of La Ligne. I met Molly a decade ago when I wrote the brand’s launch story, and am even more impressed with her now: She’s managed to perfect the art of the margin driver while still imparting value. As we know, high-net-worth consumers are increasingly convinced that they’re getting hoodwinked by luxury, so it’s no surprise that La Ligne is a hit in America’s wealthiest enclaves.

Another brand benefitting from Big Luxury backlash is Ralph Lauren, which we write about almost weekly these days; up top, Sarah shares how Ralph conquered Wimbledon. In other news, Anne Hathaway started filming The Devil Wears Prada 2 in New York, and the internet has a lot of opinions about her wardrobe-so-far. Finally, Sarah has the details on what happened to Paravel, Indré Rockefeller and Andy Krantz’s luggage startup that quietly filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy a while back.

Mentioned in this issue: Molly Howard, La Ligne, Meredith Melling, Valerie Macaulay, Anna Wintour, Ralph Lauren, Anne Hathaway, The Devil Wears Prada 2, Meryl Streep, Arianne Phillips, Paravel, Indré Rockefeller, Andy Krantz, Jen Rubio, Dianna Agron, the French girl aesthetic, and many more…

A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR

The refined BMW 7 Series is all luxury. With the ability to define your design, the ultimate glamour is yet to be. Learn more at

BMWUSA.com.

Sarah Shapiro

Three Things You Should Know…

The court of King Ralph: Ralph Lauren, a brand that’s made billions appropriating the Eastern seaboard analogue of British aristocracy, scored big at Wimbledon this summer, generating $22.5 million in brand-marketing value, per Launchmetrics—more than half the brand’s total impact during that period, and a 20 percent jump year-over-year, even though they didn’t dress a single player.

As Wimbledon’s official outfitter since 2006, Ralph Lauren uniforms the ball crew, umpires, and tournament staff. They also created preppy spectator collections for the stands, which generated social media buzz, such as when Monica Barbaro was photographed with Andrew Garfield in coordinating off-white looks, or when WAG influencer Morgan Riddle (tennis player Taylor Fritz’s girlfriend) showed up courtside in Ralph. So while competitors spent millions sponsoring players on the court, R.L. focused on the sidelines, and didn’t need to push heavily into performance gear. That’s how they won without having to play a single match.
The mysterious case of the ‘Devil Wears Prada 2’ costume designer: Social media addicts, gorging on paparazzi shots and Anne Hathaway’s posts, are dissecting first looks from The Devil Wears Prada 2. And they have opinions—some nice, others not so nice—on what we’ve seen so far of the updated wardrobe of Hathaway’s Andy Sachs, who seems to be back working at Runway magazine in some capacity. On Monday, Hathaway shared a “heading to werk” [sic] TikTok wearing a cerulean blue sweater, brushing her teeth like in the original opening scene. In other shots from the set, she’s wearing a Gabriela Hearst dress reminiscent of stained glass, a pinstriped vest and trousers, and a cobalt blue Valentino flightsuit.

Oddly, the identity of the costume designer has not been revealed. Usually, the costume designer is listed on IMDB with the rest of the crew. Not this time. Perhaps that’s a tactic. You’ll recall the recent internet furor over the costumes worn by Sarah Pidgeon, the actress playing Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy in Ryan Murphy’s upcoming American Love Story. Murphy was so taken aback by the response that he talked to Lauren about it for nearly an hour; read her interview with him here. In the end, the American Love Story costume team was, uh, reorganized, and people are still upset with the new looks.

Photos: James Devaney/MEGA/James Devaney/GC Images/Courtesy of Valentino/Getty Images

The scrutiny over Hathaway’s wardrobe will likely be muted compared to what Pidgeon is enduring. While the fashion in The Devil Wears Prada was important to a generation, original costume designer Patricia Field’s leading legacy is Sex and the City. There were hopes that acclaimed costume designer Arianne Phillips, who worked on the Broadway musical adaptation of the film, was taking the reins from Field for the sequel, but we’ve been told by multiple people close to Phillips that she has zero involvement in the project and passed on it very early on in the process. What’s the deal? We’ll keep you updated.

Paravel loses its luggage: Recently, peak D.T.C.-era travel brand Paravel disappeared from Instagram and shut down its website; customers reported that their unshipped orders were canceled. It turns out that Paravel quietly filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection on May 19, and though it hasn’t publicized the filing, it did participate in a hearing last week about storing inventory in Mexico. The next step would be liquidation.

The brand, founded by Indré Rockefeller and Andy Krantz in 2016, promised what a lot of luggage startups promised at the time: something less utilitarian than Samsonite and more affordable than Rimowa. As a former assistant to Anna Wintour at Vogue and creative director at Moda Operandi, Rockefeller brought bona fides. Paravel raised a $3.2 million seed round in 2018 led by 8VC and Fitz Gate Ventures (plus notable individual investors like Rent the Runway co-founder Jenny Fleiss, Zola founder Shan-Lyn Ma, and Jonathan and Lizzie Tisch). For the past year, Rockefeller has been leading The Circularity Project, which she launched in early 2024, and Krantz stepped back from his role as Paravel C.E.O. in January.

The premium travel and luggage market remains fiercely competitive, with similarly priced brands struggling to differentiate beyond aesthetics. Paravel tried to do this with “carbon-neutral” messaging, but that evidently wasn’t enough to keep it solvent. Lawyers for Paravel did not respond to a request for comment.

And now for the main event…

The Right Stripes

A wide-ranging conversation with La Ligne’s Molly Howard about how she and her partners turned the French girl aesthetic into a legit business.

Sarah Shapiro

When three fashion insiders decided to launch an entire brand around the Breton stripe in 2016, it seemed like a gimmick. Certainly Molly Howard, who worked at Rag & Bone, and Meredith Melling and Valerie Macaulay, both Vogue veterans, had taste, but could the French girl aesthetic—Breton tees, jeans, and a baguette in the bike basket—sustain a direct-to-consumer apparel brand that requires a ton of upfront investment?

So Howard, a former Credit Suisse analyst, devised weekly product launches that drove repeat behavior to the e-commerce site and helped manage inventory. Since then, the company, which has raised only $4 million, has built out a diverse business across retail (its eight stores make up 25 percent of the business), e-commerce (60 percent of revenue), and wholesale (15 percent). Its latest location opened this week in Nashville, with another planned for New York later this year. Their tiny, 650-square-foot Madison Avenue flagship is projected to hit nearly $3 million in sales this year. Howard declined to share annual revenue figures, but considering the company operates eight physical stores and has a small wholesale business, you can guess.

A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR

The refined BMW 7 Series is all luxury. With the ability to define your design, the ultimate glamour is yet to be. Learn more at

BMWUSA.com.

In the almost 10 years since their launch, La Ligne has evolved beyond its signature Marin stripe sweater (which Anna Wintour wore while W.F.H. during the pandemic), though that remains a bestseller, along with the solid Ben v-neck sweater and multiple fabrications of the Colby pants. Howard has pursued a friendship-first approach to partnerships, including with close friends like Dianna Agron and Jen Rubio, the co-founder and executive chair of Away luggage. Howard and I spoke about the company’s evolution in the hybrid fashion ecosystem. As usual, our conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.

Beyond the Marin Sweater

Sarah Shapiro: Does it surprise you that La Ligne has such big fans? I’ve spoken with influencers and Substackers who have seen a single post generate $20,000 in revenue for the brand.

Molly Howard: I don’t think we anticipated that we would have the kind of customer loyalty we have now. It’s a lot harder with women than it is with men.

We talked so much about this when we were starting, because I worked at Rag & Bone, which is both men’s and women’s. With men, it’s, I find a style that fits me, I’m just going to keep on coming back and buying it. But with women, you need to constantly reengage them, reexcite them, bring them newness, but also hold true to who you are. So it’s a delicate balance to try to keep these customers for life. I can’t say how many emails we get every week from customers sharing that they bought their first Marin sweater eight years ago, and still wear it every day and have it in many colors, but are now obsessing over the Colby pants or whatever it is.

Why did you introduce the Colby pants, and how do they fit into the brand’s stripe-focused identity?

It was something we were definitely missing; the beauty of being mostly direct-to-consumer is that you have so much feedback, because the customer is tagging us or emailing us. Obviously, the first collection was designed in isolation, but as we evolve, we get to see how our customer is wearing our clothing: She’s wearing these things as her everyday go-to pieces—the kind of things you pick off the closet floor because it was there from the day before, and you just want to wear that again. We’re not going to be the most fancy, special-occasion look most of the time.

How important is wholesale to your business?

I love wholesale. Wholesale really has value, and it’s an important balance for any brand—we launched with wholesale partners. It has maintained a consistent overall percentage of the business, around 20 percent, so it grows every year as the brand grows. We are at Shopbop, Net-a-Porter, Revolve, Neiman Marcus, Saks, and then we have a bunch of specialty stores. There’s a lot of discovery through our wholesale partners, which is the biggest reason to be in wholesale.

What did you learn about the retail industry from your father, John Howard, co-managing partner at Irving Place Capital?

What drives people to the business, what makes them choose your brand over another brand, and how all of these different pieces work together. All these inner workings that are super unsexy and unglamorous—production and warehousing and retailing—I grew up in a family where that was always celebrated. I had this ritual with my dad, where we would walk up and down Madison Avenue, window shopping, and he would be like, “Oh my god, look at the doorknobs on the Bottega Veneta store that are covered in woven leather. It’s so beautiful.” And then, “Oh, look at the dirty carpets at La Perla.” He was focused on attention to detail. I feel like I have a good eye for that, and I definitely brought that to La Ligne.

What We’re Reading… and Looking at…

J.Crew has done a good job choosing brand partners that vary in both price and provenance. To wit: its latest collaboration with Rouje, the French influencer and model Jeanne Damas’ decade-old, mostly D.T.C. label. [Instagram]

The NYFW schedule just dropped; Calvin Klein Collection is back, Michael Kors is opening, the closer is a surprise. [CFDA]

Julia Garner’s new iridescent Gucci look has whiffs of Demna, even if it’s a total coincidence. [Red Carpet Fashion Awards]

Phoebe Philo released images of her fourth collection, which begins trickling into stores at the start of 2026. It’s strong. There are shadow plaids, shawl-collar leather jackets, and a simple top-zip bag that, if priced right, will sell fast. Also, the shearling diaper is funny and will look great on Leandra Medine Cohen. [Phoebe Philo]

Skims is partnering with League One Volleyball. (Smart, given that volleyball is the number-one girls team sport for high school and college students in America.) Oh, and where’s NikeSkims, guys? [CNBC]

Until tomorrow,
Lauren

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

Puck fashion correspondent Lauren Sherman and a rotating cast of industry insiders take you deep behind the scenes of this multitrillion-dollar biz, from creative director switcheroos to M&A drama, D.T.C. downfalls, and magazine mishaps. Fashion People is an extension of Line Sheet, Lauren’s private email for Puck, where she tracks what’s happening beyond the press releases in fashion, beauty, and media. New episodes publish every Tuesday and Friday.

Puck’s daily art market email, anchored by industry expert Marion Maneker, offers unparalleled access to the mega-auctions and galleries, elite buyers and sellers, and the power players who run this opaque world. Wall Power also features Julie Brener Davich, a veteran of Christie’s and Sotheby’s, who provides unique insights into how the business really works.

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

SEE THE ARCHIVES