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| Hi, welcome back to Line Sheet. Thanks for all the birthday wishes. In return, I’d like to recognize some of the early August babies in the Line Sheet community: Amanda, Delphine, Josh, Alex, Beejoli, Rudy, and of course, J.D. Vance. I hope you all enjoyed yourselves. If I forgot you: It wasn’t on purpose—stop being such a leo.
🚨🚨 Programming note: Tomorrow on Fashion People, Ssense’s Steff Yotka calls in live from Copenhagen Fashion Week. We also discuss Olympian fashion, possible replacements for Peter Hawkings at Tom Ford, and brat-summer fashion (my teeth are clenched). Listen here!
Thanks for all the great feedback on last week’s emails, by the way. Up top, I have a bit of additional intel on what’s happening at Nike, a look at fashion brands backed by wealthy scions that have been successful, and, by popular demand, my thoughts on People’s Choice Award winner Blake Lively’s new haircare line. Also, we take a very short stroll down Outdoor Voices memory lane. This is truly the sort of intel you can’t get anywhere else, so don’t forget to subscribe.
Mentioned in this issue: Tom Ford, Peter Hawkings, Gucci, Domenico De Sole, Kering, Nike, John Donahoe, Phil Knight, Fforme, Ssense, Haider Ackermann, WSA, Pierpaolo Piccioli, Gabriela Hearst, Khaite, Nina Khosla, Phoebe Philo, Blake Lively, Blake Brown, Estée Lauder, Outdoor Voices, Croissant, Rihanna, Jahleel Weaver, Zuck, and many more… |
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- You can’t just do it: I’ve received a lot more information on what’s happening at Nike, much of which I’ll incorporate into future issues as the story develops. One thing to note, in the meantime, for those of you in the cheap seats: All of Portland whining about C.E.O. John Donahoe is not going to force his exit. For one, this isn’t middle school: A $100 billion market cap company isn’t going to fire its very pedigreed C.E.O. over a viral LinkedIn post. Any sort of change would come from Wall Street analyst rumblings, an institutional investor, an activist, or the board. Also, the company’s revenue has skyrocketed since Donahoe’s arrival, in 2020, hitting $51 billion in its last fiscal year, up from $39 billion in 2019.Also, Donahoe and Phil Knight, Nike’s co-founder and chairman emeritus—a.k.a, the Shoe Dog—are really good buds and serial business partners. Knight has publicly stated multiple times this year that he believes in Donahoe. Plus, there’s not an obvious successor. Donahoe’s deputy, Heidi O’Neill, may not have agreed with Donahoe’s initial strategy, as some executives believe, but she’s behind him now and has thus “made her bed,” as one source put it. (Disagree and commit, in the lingua franca of modern management theory.)
Internally, people love Craig Williams, the former president of Jordan Brand who was promoted last year to oversee both the wholesale business and supply chain and logistics. But he’s only been with Nike for six years and hasn’t run a public company, and certainly not one that makes twice as much money as Kering. The bottom line: A lot of people have been pushed out of Nike in recent years, they’re upset, and they’re even more upset now that the company has made some missteps. But the sum of Donahoe’s tenure thus far is greater than the last year of turmoil. That may change, but for now, it’s a matter of, You get what you get and you don’t get upset.
- What the global stock market freak-out means for you: Two weeks ago, they were worried about China. Now, it’s the slowing U.S. economy. The Dow was down about 1,000 points today. Let’s do a survey of some of the luxury and retail stocks of interest. LVMH is down 20 percent over the past six months. Abercrombie & Fitch is up 23 percent over the same period. Kering is down 30 percent. Gap Inc. is up 6 percent during that time, but down 5 percent over the past five days. Hermès is even down a bit! The takeaway may be that if your business is reliant on the U.S. or Chinese markets (or a combination of both), these next few months leading up to the election are going to be tough. One of the big mistakes fashion companies (and, I presume, other companies) make is that, when things are good, they hire way too many people and start spending too much money. Then, when things are bad, they have to do layoffs again. Well-run companies (like LVMH) operate leanly at all times. It’s best to always be prepared for the worst, which probably won’t be that bad.
- More on Fforme: Last week, I said I couldn’t think of a brand backed by a wealthy person that got anywhere real. Someone responded and mentioned Gabriela Hearst (funded by the designer’s husband, Austin Hearst) and Khaite (originally supported by Adam Pritzker). I guess I should have clarified and said I’m bearish on brands backed by a benefactor.On G.H.: Gabriela previously had another fashion brand before her namesake, called Candela, which she operated with her ex-husband. It was very successful for a time. She herself is an operator. It’s not as if Austin Hearst was just like, Hey honey, take my money and launch a cute brand. As for Pritzker, once again, this wasn't just a rich person giving money to a designer he liked. He is a serial entrepreneur who was already operating a whole fashion business—Assembled Brands, which at the time included e-commerce site The Line and its in-house label, Protagonist—before he launched Khaite with Cate Holstein and Vanessa Traina, both of whom had years of industry experience.
The lesson here is that you have to really want to get in there and gain operational knowhow, otherwise all the money in the world won’t guarantee success. Let’s hope that is Fforme owner Nina Khosla’s intention. I also got some input from a person connected to the brand who is rooting for C.E.O. Joey Laurenti: “I’m hopeful he can turn it around by making clothes a bit more wearable, a bit more special, and a teensy bit less expensive.”
- On the Blake Lively haircare line, Blake Brown: As Rachel Strugatz will tell you, a celebrity-backed beauty brand only works if the product is good and the pitch is convincing. And even then, it’s not guaranteed without exactly the right distribution and marketing strategy. Lively’s mermaid-waves, reminiscent of Dolly Surprise, are the best thing about her image, and I wasn’t as offended by the advertising campaign as some people, who complained that her hair looked dry. (Well, um, it is.) It’s yet another example of Lively being real in a very unreal, Hollywood way. As for the Chiquita Banana outfits she’s been sporting on her It Ends With Us press tour? Look, it gives us something to talk about. I hope the young New York brand Dauphinette sold some dresses in the following days.
- Before anchovies were Lisa Says Gah-worthy: My reporting last week on Croissant and its C.M.O., Outdoor Voices employee No. 1 Andrew Parietti, conjured plenty of mid-2010s nostalgia. One person wrote in to remind me of a 2016 O.V. event at the St. Patrick’s Youth Center gym in SoHo, where there are a lot of fashion shows and sample sales. Los Angeles-based Sqirl catered, passing out mini versions of their sorrel-pesto rice bowl (still the best meal in America), O.V. gave away color-blocked leggings (I wore them out, they were so good), and then-Bon Appétit editor-in-chief Adam Rapoport delivered a “very weird, try-hard speech,” as the reader recalled.It was a fun event. (Check out the lead image on this party coverage from The Daily Front Row featuring Sweetgreen co-founder Nicolas Jammet, Condé Nast outgoing chief revenue officer Pam Drucker Mann, Sqirl chef Jessica Koslow, and Rapoport.) Speaking of: When is the Bon Appétit book coming?
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| The Talented Mr. Hawkings? |
| So what really led to Peter Hawkings’ sudden ouster from Tom Ford, the brand he’d help his mentor create and eventually sell for $2.8 billion? Was it just declining sales? Vanilla Sex? New penny-pinching overlords? Or what if Hawkings desperately wanted to be Ford, and tried to be Ford, but just simply wasn’t? |
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| Last week, I was catching up with a designer who worked at Gucci in 2004, back when Tom Ford and Domenico De Sole famously and semi-acrimoniously left the group, which is now part of Kering. At the time, Gucci C.E.O. Giacomo Santucci put three people in charge to replace Ford: John Ray ran menswear, Alessandra Facchinetti designed women’s, and Frida Giannini looked after accessories. (There was also Karen Joyce, responsible for image and advertising.) Within two years, both Ray and Facchinetti were gone—Mark Lee, the former YSL C.E.O., was now in charge of Gucci, and did away with the complicated structure. Giannini had won, and would remain the creative director for nearly 10 years. By the time she got fired at the end of 2014, the brand message was severely watered down, allowing for one of her longtime, long-repressed deputies, Alessandro Michele, to step up and unleash his maximalist id.
This former Gucci designer very incisively compared that experience with what is currently going down at Tom Ford, the brand, referring to the abrupt exit of creative director Peter Hawkings, the lackluster sales for both women’s and menswear, etcetera. All those years ago, this person told me, the designers put in charge had to adjust quickly to life after the wunderkind: smaller budgets, fewer extravagances, and less tolerated eccentricity. For instance, this person recalled the Spring 2005 men’s runway show, where butterflies from the famous taxidermy store in Paris, Deyrolle, were fastened to the lapels. “I just remember, at the end of the show, going backstage and seeing the butterflies scattered on the floor” as if they were cheap sequins falling off a dress, the former Gucci designer said. It was excessive, wasteful: the remnants of a time of incredible wealth creation for Ford, De Sole, and the Gucci Group. |
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| Peter Hawkings, who was fired last month after only one year on the job, had only known life under Ford. He learned from the master at Gucci and then joined his namesake brand in 2006 to continue to work under the tutelage of the original merchant-designer, who knows how to sell a pair of loafers as well as he designs a splashy runway collection. Just like the trio of Gucci designers back in the day, this person suggested, perhaps Hawkings was used to certain budgets and treatment that, maybe, were wiped away when Ford exited.The only problem with that theory is that Ford and De Sole were not running the Tom Ford fashion brand in excess. Beauty, not fashion or accessories, was the profit center, and the duo adhered to tight budgets. And from what I’ve been told by several people in and around Tom Ford Fashion, Ford and De Sole did everything in their power to ensure that Ford’s exit would be as painless as possible. When the news broke that they planned on selling to Estée Lauder Companies, in late 2022, the duo hosted a conference call with the entire company—employees in Los Angeles, London, New York, and Milan—explaining candidly why he wanted out (the personal and professional), and what would happen next. De Sole had been on the board of Zegna since 2005, and would remain there as that group became the official custodian of the fashion brand. (Remember, Estée Lauder owns Tom Ford, but Zegna runs Tom Ford Fashion, and an eyewear company makes the glasses.)
It was decided fairly early on in the process that Hawkings would be Ford’s replacement—a detail that Hawkings shared quite openly. This seemed like an obvious and brand-affirming choice. In fact, I wrote about it in the very first issue of Line Sheet since it was common knowledge among the London fashion set. And despite dedicating his entire professional life to the service of his mentor, Hawkings soon seemed to be serving a brand of his own. |
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| The bond between Ford and Hawkings was once, indeed, a very real thing. After the Lauder deal, I’ve been told, Ford gifted Hawkings a large sum of money out of his own payout as a personal thank-you for years of work. But as Hawkings began to assume more responsibility, tension grew between the two men. The dissolution of Ford’s Los Angeles womenswear design studio was unsurprising—Hawkings is based in London, and there is more design talent in Europe. However, I’m told that Hawkings made a faux pas by inviting Ford to his first womenswear show without sending a personal note, according to multiple people. (Ford, like everyone else, received an invite via email.) Still, Ford did try to attend, I’m told, but faced a logistical nightmare that made it necessary (and easy) to say no. (Ford didn’t respond to a request for comment. A rep for Hawkings declined to comment.)There were several decisions made during the Hawkings era that were brand damaging, and Ford noticed. Ford and his team long claimed that they never resorted to paying celebrities to attend shows because Ford, himself, was an icon and friends with many of the stars he dressed on the red carpet. Hawkings, without such a network, decided to pay celebrities to attend the shows, I’m told. (He understandably did not want to invite Ford’s friends.) But the mix of celebrities—the first season, it was Elizabeth Banks, the second, Iris Law and others—felt strange and unspectacular. |
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| As for the fashion? Combing through the currently for-sale pieces over the weekend, I continue to find the womenswear appealing, if generic: silky blouses, nicely cut trousers, body-skimming dresses. There were chic accessories, too, including the Whitney bag, named after Hawkings’ very involved wife and longtime muse, Whitney Bromberg Hawkings. To build the womenswear collection, the couple shipped pieces of Bromberg Hawkings’ own wardrobe to the studio to serve as a three-dimensional mood board.But executives and designers at brands including Saint Laurent and Celine, as well as several independent labels, whispered that Hawkings was too inspired by their work. Brands copy brands all the time—nothing is original in fashion—but the key is to bring something new to the table. Hawkings failed to do that in the eyes of many. And yet, he certainly wanted to distinguish himself from Ford, the man, at one point suggesting to the Zegna group and Estée Lauder that he wanted to change the name of the brand to TF by Peter Hawkings. (A rep for Zegna did not respond to a request for comment. A rep for Estée Lauder had no comment.)
In the end, it was likely a confluence of factors that cost Hawkings the gig. Here’s hoping he is able to share his side of the story one day. And more importantly, that he is able to move on, because everyone needs to do so. The question of who will replace him remains unanswered. One reader, a luxury exec, pushed back on the idea of Haider Ackermann, which I floated last week. His exit from Berluti was not good, and Canada Goose is doing a lot to make him happy, setting up a design studio in Paris and so forth.
Another doozy of an unfounded rumor concerns Pierpaolo Piccioli, who I’d sooner believe is going to Chanel. To be sure, it’s not going to be as easy for me to find out who is replacing Hawkings as it was for me to discover that he got the job—or that he was leaving, for that matter. On the subject of Ackermann, I get all those reasons that he wouldn’t be right, but what Zegna likely needs is someone who will make beautiful clothes and let the literal suits run the business. Perhaps he’s the best choice after all. |
| What I’m Reading… And Listening To… |
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| I finally got through the story about four writers writing about one affair that blows up their lives to varying degrees. I’d argue it’s worth the slog (was easier for me to read and follow in print), but if you don’t think you can make it, just do a search for “Zara” and read that one graph. [New York]Perfect is releasing a 40-page portfolio featuring Rihanna, the fall issue’s “lead” cover star, styled once again by Jahleel Weaver, this time shot by Carlijn Jacobs. (Those fab covers over the summer were just a taste—issue 6.5, a fanzine of sorts.) [Perfect]
My theory on why and how Mark Zuckerberg has gotten into “Buck Mason, Todd Snyder, and John Elliott”? Instagram ads! [WSJ]
If you’re a fatalist, this podcast might help you reframe your thinking. [Critics at Large]
Bob Lefsetz is very annoyed that Elliot Grainge, son of Universal Music Group C.E.O. Lucian Grainge, husband of Sofia Richie, is now the C.E.O. of Warner’s Atlantic Music Group. (This means he is effectively competing directly with his father. Like, say, if Alexandre Arnault became the C.E.O. of Kering.) Fascinating stuff. [The Lefsetz Letter]
The Ballerina Farm saga continues. [The Times]
Let this look be for a role? [Daily Mail]
Have you ever been to the Ssense store in Montreal? I have! Now, too, has James. [Throwing Fits]
If you, too, couldn’t stop thinking about that story in The New York Times that claims eating too much salami can make you more likely to get dementia, read this funny essay from my friend Sarah. [The Real Sarah Miller]
Why is everything locked up at CVS and Target? Amanda Mull knows the answer! [Bloomberg Businessweek]
Take a look at these uniforms Issey Miyake designed for Lithuania for the 1992 Olympics. [Instagram]
Brock Colyar is the party reporter we need! [New York]
Lane is on the WSA beat! [WSJ]
Becky did a great job explaining what makes Hermès special. [5 Things You Should Buy]
Phoebe Philo in 2002. [Instagram]
I love this guy’s outfit. [Twitter] |
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| And finally… Is this the beginning of the end for Alo?Until Wednesday,
Lauren |
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| FOUR STORIES WE’RE TALKING ABOUT |
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| Bankers for Harris |
| Charles Phillips reveals Kamala’s burgeoning Wall Street allies. |
| WILLIAM D. COHAN |
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| WaPo Tremors |
| A close look at the paper’s revived Will Lewis anxieties. |
| DYLAN BYERS |
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| Lazarus Lethière |
| On a major museum effort to resurrect a forgotten art icon. |
| MARION MANEKER |
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