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| Hi, and welcome back to Line Sheet. I hope you had a great weekend, wherever you are in the world. And if you’re in the U.S., I wish you a meaningful Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
Today, I’ve got all the legacy fashion-media news you need (you don’t need much, I promise), plus, a look at what’s going on—and what’s not going on—behind the scenes at Farfetch. Finally, by popular demand, I attempt to vivisect those Blake Lively and Taylor Swift outfits. And if you’re wondering: I will indeed dig into what’s happening at the men’s shows… on Thursday. (Send me your thoughts.)
Before we get started, though, I have some pretty big news. Line Sheet is expanding to three days a week starting February 7! I’m thrilled to announce star reporter Rachel Strugatz, inarguably the most knowledgeable and well-sourced beauty writer on the planet, is joining Puck as our contributing beauty correspondent. Every Wednesday, we’ll be sending a beauty-themed edition of Line Sheet featuring a dispatch from Rachel on what’s happening in her world. She’ll also be contributing reporting and insights on a rolling basis throughout the week.
Why are we doing this? Well, as you know, I have a lot to say, and adding a third email will give me more room for those shorter updates at the top so I don’t feel like I’m cramming so much into two issues. More importantly, though, the beauty industry is woefully undercovered—it’s even more opaque than fashion—and I want to clear it up for you. As I mentioned last week, 2024 is going to be a huge year in beauty M&A, and a pivotal moment for the strategics. There is no one better placed than Rachel to document it all. We also happen to be good friends who spend a lot of time texting about shopping and surgical procedures, so I promise I won’t shy away from (appropriate) buddy-comedy content.
All that said, I know you have a lot of emails coming at you right now, and I want this to feel good. Line Sheet has an 80 percent open rate with its thousands of paying subscribers—I didn’t even know that was possible. I promise we will make this as gripping and essential as you and I both need it to be. If you are a brand that wants access to Line Sheet’s elite readership—and more broadly, the Puck universe—simply email richie@puck.news about sponsorships and alexandra@puck.news about events. They’re ready for you.
Mentioned in this issue: Tara Donaldson, Penske, Jim Fallon, Roger Lynch, Congress, Andrew Robb, Taylor Swift’s ill-fitting boots, Blake Lively’s platform heels, José Neves, drained fortunes, Phoebe Philo, Lucali, Richard Dickson, Sam Hine (don’t worry!), Derek Lam and Jan-Hendrik Schlottmann, Greta Lee again, Rosamund Pike and Leith Clark, Lauren Sánchez and Jeff Bezos, and many, many more… |
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- Layoffs in WWD land: About 20 people were laid off from Penske Media-owned Fairchild Media last week. (The division includes fashion-retail-beauty trades WWD, Footwear News, Sourcing Journal, Rivet, and Beauty Inc.) Employees were told on Thursday during an all-hands meeting. “There was a lot of kumbaya talk about working together,” I hear.As for who was affected at WWD, employees have deduced that it was two reporters and executive editor Tara Donaldson, who was also named head of diversity, equity, and inclusion for Fairchild when she joined WWD from Sourcing Journal in 2020. (That part of her job is now apparently being handled by Tonya Alexander, who leads “talent acquisition and inclusion” at Penske.) Most employees figured out who was laid off because their Slack accounts were suddenly deactivated, “which was like people getting raptured.”
Donaldson’s surprising exit comes just as former SheKnows editor-in-chief Eugenia Miranda Richman takes over as editor-in-chief of WWD. (The group also has a new head on the business side, Celine Perrot-Johnson, who joined Penske in October 2023 to oversee the company’s fashion, luxury, art, and women’s interest brands.)
Fairchild, led on the editorial side by longtime WWD-er Jim Fallon, is staging a town hall on Tuesday, where remainders hope to get more clarity on who got the ax, and why. Seems like a pretty straightforward, this-is-going-to-happen-every-year-now bloodletting, but if you feel differently, let me know.
- What’s gonna kill journalism first, A.I. or bad management?: I didn’t watch Condé Nast C.E.O. Roger Lynch testify about A.I. and journalism before Congress because I was having lunch with another, more interesting media executive. (Thanks to those who did watch, though, and sent me a play-by-play account.) Anyway, I was gonna let Lynch off the hook on this one—the commentary from the peanut gallery, dare I say, was almost too mean. Then I heard from a couple of people legitimately upset after Lynch sent out a company-wide email on Thursday touting his appearance and all the great coverage it received from the likes of The Hollywood Reporter, CNN Business, Time, and (Condé-owned) Wired.Given the budget cuts, layoffs, and union battles, plus the fact that some magazines have yet to receive their annual budget plan—despite being a quarter-way through the production year for magazines—it probably wasn’t the right moment for Lynch to reveal that he “personally” enjoys “leading companies through times of great technological change,” as he testified. He continued, “Generative A.I. is certainly bringing about such change and is already demonstrating tremendous potential to make the world a better place. But Gen A.I. cannot replace journalism. It takes reporters with grit, integrity, ambition, and human creativity to develop the stories that allow free markets, free speech, and freedom itself to thrive.” Definitely agree with that last bit. Very true. Now, where are those budgets? A Condé rep did not respond to a request for comment.
- Taylor, Blake, and the end of the “good taste” era: My Instagram Story from last week, linking to a Just Jared photo of Taylor Swift and Blake Lively in their rushing-a-sorority-at-Vanderbilt-circa-2008 outfits, had about four times the number of views I usually garner. I also received well over 100 direct messages about it. (Thank you to the person who came up with the Vanderbilt joke.) I can contribute nothing to the conspiracy theories that Swift’s look is “Reputation-coded”—I barely know what that means—and I’ll leave it to Eater or Grub Street to explain why celebrities still enjoy picking at pizza at Lucali’s in Brooklyn. (As a former Carroll Gardens resident who prays at the altar of Tuddy Balsamo, I haven’t been to Lucali since 2007 or 2008, but I will never forget this incident. Or this one.)However, I will declare that these looks mark a turning point in the fashion cycle, and not because they are trendy in any way, but rather because they are not. Many of your messages to me were about the styling, or lack thereof, evidenced in these ensembles. Lively famously does not have a stylist. She has a person who helps her procure looks from brands, but she doesn’t employ someone who tells her what to wear. Swift works with Joseph Cassell on the red carpet—her turn in green Gucci at the Golden Globes was notable—but I’m not sure who has been helping with these increasingly outrageous dinner-promenade ensembles. (I’m still convinced that her clothes-horse boyfriend, Travis Kelce, and his cadre of personal shoppers are offering gentle guidance.)
The result—Lively in a suede miniskirt and red-orange suede platform pumps with sky-high holographic block heels; Swift in a green crushed velvet dress and ill-fitting Jean Paul Gaultier x Jimmy Choo thigh-high boots—is a pure expression of these women’s personalities. There is nothing false about these looks, so why pooh-pooh them? At least Lively’s clothes, even if you are appalled by them in theory, fit her well. She also knows which brands to wear to amplify her own image at this point in her career: all-American, fairly accessible labels like Michael Kors and Ralph Lauren.
Also, relatedly: I am sick of good taste. And by that, I mean I am sick of celebrities being dressed in so-called classy clothes that don’t reflect who they are as human beings. It’s not smart branding, and therefore, it’s not smart business. A fashion-aware friend asked me recently if we have reached Peak Toteme: the height of Carolyn Bessette-referencing, Cabmate Instagram account-liking, ’90s minimalist throwback style. For me, that look is not a trend, it’s just what I’ve always liked, probably because I was young and impressionable when it initially happened. But for the people who are buying into the subtle, minimalist look (I really cannot even think about calling it qu**t l*x**y at this point) because they haven’t spent any time figuring out their personal style, it’s starting to feel hokey.
Toteme as a business is going to be more than fine: I’ll keep buying their trousers. Zoë Kravitz, who met Swift and Lively for dinner, will continue looking cooler than everyone else in The Row. Sofia Coppola will never stop wearing Chanel ballet flats. However, we are at a turning point in the cycle, and you know who has managed to express this better than anyone else? Phoebe Philo, with her harsh, jarring, debut collection. Would Blake or Taylor ever wear Phoebe? Lol, no, pretty sure Taylor has never heard of Phoebe Philo, unless Travis filled her in. But I do think that she, and these two terribly dressed women, have something in common. Keep it coming.
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| So Farfetch Away |
| An examination of the online luxury retailer’s headaches—past and future—as it navigates the purgatory of Coupang’s bridge loan. |
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| Last week, executives from Coupang, the Seoul-based e-commerce company that bailed out Farfetch in December, paid a visit to the luxury marketplace’s headquarters in the glossy Bower building on Old Street, the onetime epicenter of London’s tech scene. Silicon Alley, it is not, and Silicon Valley, it never was. At one point, though, when Google’s British headquarters were also on the traffic circle, across the way from Farfetch, they called it the Silicon Roundabout.But back in 2016, Google moved down the road to King’s Cross, closer to the City. Then Brexit happened. Then the pandemic. In 2021, Alphabet, as it’s now known, closed down its remaining operations on the traffic circle. Meanwhile, Farfetch moved into The Bower just as Google was heading out.
Perhaps it was an omen for Farfetch, whose trajectory would mirror that of the Silicon Roundabout all too neatly. At this point, you know the story: Farfetch raised hundreds of millions of dollars to be the “Amazon of Luxury.” A 2018 public offering on the New York Stock Exchange valued the company at $6.2 billion. Spectacular performance early in the pandemic increased the valuation to more than $20 billion. Then, reality set in that the business—a luxury goods marketplace, a wholesaler, a technology provider, a clothing manufacturer, a reseller, and a beauty distributor—was a better story than a business, and the story itself no longer made sense. Farfetch was too unwieldy, too convoluted, to reach the heights that founder and C.E.O. José Neves had once promised, let alone to turn a profit.
According to Farfetch partners with whom I’ve spoken, the company line remains that everything is business as usual. But the $500 million bridge loan that Farfetch recently received from SoftBank-backed Coupang, a publicly traded company with a $30 billion market cap, presumably comes with all sorts of anticipated benchmarks, ratchets, and interest protections that comprise the hallmarks of short-term rescue financing. If you look at Farfetch’s cash burn, this money isn’t going to last forever and could be viewed as punting the inevitable. Neves is under the gun to restructure the business under Coupang’s guidance, and come out on the other side or risk losing it all. If Neves is lucky, he will sell the remainder of the marketplace to Amazon, really the only company that could take what is there and make it into a stable business. (Amazon tried to buy Net-a-Porter years ago, but the offer was never high enough, and Farfetch might be the right price.) But it depends on how badly Amazon wants access to that customer segment, which they’ve previously pursued in-house through failed projects like Amazon Luxury. It also depends on Neves. |
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| Investors and employees do feel deceived by Neves, a mild-mannered engineer from Portugal who developed the Adam Neumann hype gene and promised them the world. Even this summer, when analysts were warning that Farfetch may not make it through the year, he was telling the team that everything would be okay. Neves, of course, suffered, too. Much of his own fortune was wiped out when the company was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange.Many investors—including but not limited to Richemont, Groupe Artémis, and Alibaba—will never see a penny. But it was the employees, some of whom became millionaires on paper with the I.P.O., who have suffered most, by losing what might have been their only opportunity to create generational wealth. (Employees are generally prevented from selling shares until investors, who have preferred equity, have liquified.)
Last week, as Coupang was making its way through the Farfetch offices, I asked some people close to the situation what they really thought went wrong. They trace it back to the I.P.O., and to Neves’ own governance. While he only owned 15 percent of the company by then, he controlled 77 percent of voting rights, through the sort of dual-class structure popularized by Google and Facebook. This allowed him unrestrained power (over the objection of investors and board members) to, say, acquire New Guards Group or invest $200 million in Neiman Marcus Group in 2022—even though Farfetch was doing work for NMG by re-platforming Bergdorf Goodman, not vice versa.
Investors can put up with this for a hot company, but they don’t stick around if the founder turns out to be over their skis. As I have documented before, many concepts Neves talked up, like the Store of the Future, simply never happened. He just kept piling new things on, and every time he did, the core of the business suffered. Farfetch could have become a centralized database for inventory management, but Neves never figured out how to get more eyeballs on that inventory without paying handsomely for them. Some people think he could have, if he wasn’t constantly layering on new distractions.
The real catastrophe, however, was Neves’ insistence on building proprietary tech, out of Portugal. A decade ago, Neves seemed like the tech-savviest out of the luxury goods sellers. But he failed to see that technology was almost always better outsourced, especially with the rise of Shopify and app-based commerce. The 2020 exit of chief operating officer Andrew Robb is viewed as a consequential turning point. (Robb joined the company 10 years prior, in its very early days, and was a key driver of its success behind the scenes; he was the practitioner to Neves’ dreamer, and without him there was no one putting Neves in his place.)
Then there was the whole foray into beauty, dismantled a year into its existence. No wonder Richemont and Groupe Artémis, the family office of Kering C.E.O. François-Henri Pinault, decided to wash their hands of the whole thing when Farfetch needed bailing out over the summer. (LVMH glanced at it, but Bernard Arnault has always been wary of multibrand commerce.) This idea that Farfetch would become a one-stop shop for luxury e-commerce technology, a platform anyone could use—an idea also trumpeted by Richemont chairman Johann Rupert—began to seem downright naive.
Farfetch isn’t the only shadow of its former self. The fate of the Richemont-owned Yoox Net-a-Porter Group, which lost $137 million in the first half of last year, is far from determined. There are rumors in London that Mr. Porter, the men’s site, might be shut down. (A rep for Richemont did not respond to a request for comment.) And there is no guarantee Net-a-Porter will keep going if Richemont can’t find a buyer. (One person described YNAP to me as like watching a dead body get passed around à la Weekend at Bernies.) There is also a worry that Matches, now owned by the cheapo-retail conglomerate Frasers Group, is going to lose its luxury credentials on top of being an unprofitable business.
All I know for sure is that small and mid-sized brands will suffer the most as the e-luxury industry shakes out. Direct-to-consumer sales are more profitable, but the channel takes significant time and money to build. Not only do multibrand retailers help with raising awareness, but they also help with driving volume. Once upon a time, Farfetch had a great idea. It just never had a great business. And really, none of these companies do. They need to be focused on Retail 101: selling fashion you can’t get anywhere else at full price. It’s actually pretty easy, except when it’s hard. Everybody is looking for a shortcut. |
| What I’m Reading… and Thinking About… |
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| Three best-dressed people at the Critics Choice Awards: Tough. A lot of bad looks. I’d have to go with Carey Mulligan in Armani (s/o Andrew Mukamal), Cillian Murphy in Zegna (louche; his stylist, Rose Forde, is nailing it), Greta Lee in a glittering Loewe men’s shirt and trousers (she is the reigning queen, congrats to Danielle Goldberg). [Vogue]Lauren Sánchez’s son walked in Dolce & Gabbana’s men’s show over the weekend, so she and Jeff Bezos sat front row. This is the world we live in and we just need to accept it, okay? [South China Morning Post]
GQ’s Sam Hine is doing a nice job of covering the men’s shows in Europe. I especially liked this and this. [Sign up for his newsletter]
Whatever you thought about Saltburn (lmao), Rosamund Pike is great in it, and I’ve enjoyed her red-carpet run this season, too. (Stylist Leith Clark can be a bit too precious in her choices, but Pike has such a strong personality that it cuts through any cloying sweetness in the clothes.) Of course, she still comes in second place to the unrivaled Wearer of Clothes, Greta Lee, but A for effort. [Leith Clark’s Instagram]
Derek Lam, a maker of great pants, is now the creative director of Câllas, launched in 2020 and run by his husband (and the former C.E.O. of his namesake brand), Jan-Hendrik Schlottmann. He’ll be presenting a capsule collection at New York Fashion Week. [Inbox]
After months of worried-employee speculation, Gap Inc. C.E.O. Richard Dickson made a couple of big changes at the top, poaching his former H.R. head from Mattel to be the group’s chief people officer, and the C.F.O. of the L.A. Clippers (!!) to lead strategy. [Inbox]
Seems like Ayr makes the best beginner jeans for guys. Who would’ve thunk it? [A Continuous Lean]
My friend (and former colleague) Laure Guilbault is launching a podcast to accompany her Instagram show, Sunday Night Live. Huge congrats. [Instagram]
Some of the furniture from Tiina the Store, including that cobalt blue Peter Lassen bookcase, will be part of a Wright Auction on January 25 [Instagram via Kelsey Keith and many other people who sent it to me]
Might need to do a little thing about fashion people starting kid’s clothing stores/brands. (Or, if you want to steal this idea, honestly go ahead, I have millions more.) There’s Catherine Newell-Hanson and Rebecca Calavan’s Milk Teeth and now, Mugwort Mugwort from Jayne Goheen and Joy Yoon. [Brain]
Everyone I know is trying Leandra’s “shirt sandwich” styling trick. This may be her greatest contribution to fashion since the #armparty. [The Cereal Aisle]
If you are a voyeur and want to know what I dress like on a normal day, this outfit is it. (My pants are Carhartt WIP, though, because I’m not as clever or resourceful as Becky.) [Five Things]
And finally… Why doesn’t British Vogue put “British” on the cover logo anymore? Has globalization gone too far? |
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| Until Thursday,
Lauren |
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| FOUR STORIES WE’RE TALKING ABOUT |
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| A.I. & Its Times |
| On OpenAI eating the internet and a blueprint for a media-Silicon Valley detente. |
| BARATUNDE THURSTON |
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| Hollywood’s Dude Slump |
| Female-skewing films dominated the ’23 box office. So why are studios still banking on so much superhero I.P.? |
| SCOTT MENDELSON |
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| Lionsgate's Lifeline |
| The studio is trying to catch the eye of a streaming suitor, but first it need to drop the Starz dead weight. |
| MATTHEW BELLONI |
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