Hi, and welcome to Line Sheet. We are in the home stretch of this Saks Global saga. (Or at least this chapter of it.) I do some reflecting, and projecting, below.

Up top, I examine another bankruptcy filing—that of the beleaguered indie mag Document Journal. I also look at how this awards season’s red carpet reflects what’s happening more broadly in the fashion biz, and share news of a significant executive exit from Dover Street Market.

As Lynn Hirschberg told me at her and Sara Moonves’s party for W’s Best Performances issue, Golden Globes weekend is fun because there’s still hope. (Oscar nominations won’t be announced until January 22.) On Saturday night, the rooftop bar at the Chateau Marmont was, as usual, filled with said hopefuls (Elle Fanning, Emma Stone, Jacob Elordi, etcetera). But I’m not sure there’s another magazine that could bring together Benicio Del Toro and Wolfgang Tillmans, Kendall Jenner, and Hailey Bieber, and Lisa Love (happy birthday), and Sara’s mom (who looked great in Jonathan Anderson’s Dior). Or get so many people to smoke. (I didn’t partake, but I did notice the Substack-branded lighters.)

My big fashion takeaway from the weekend? Everyone is talking about Demna’s Gucci right now. Who What Wear co-founder, Future Publishing S.V.P., and Substacker Hillary Kerr and I get into the Guccissance, the best and worst of the Golden Globes red carpet, and plenty more on Tuesday’s episode of Fashion People. Listen here and here.

Finally, a public service announcement: It’s the time of year when people’s lips start getting really chapped because it’s cold and they don’t take care of themselves. Every once in a while, I feel compelled to relay that Henné Organics lip balm—V2, no tint, $19—solves this problem. It’s the only lip balm I’ve ever used that works. I buy them in bulk and sprinkle them around the house—at my desk, on my bedside table—and in various handbags so I am never without one. They are also a great gift for people who have everything. I would invest in this company if I could. (But, as always, this is simply shopping advice, not investment advice.)

Mentioned in this issue: Saks Global, Richard Baker, Marc Metrick, Geoffroy van Raemdonck, LVMH, Bergdorf Goodman, Bernard Arnault, Nordstrom, Bloomingdale’s, Dover Street Market, James Gilchrist, Document, the Golden Globes, Jennifer Lawrence, Dior, Chanel, Louis Vuitton, and many more…

Three Things You Should Know…

End of an era at Dover Street Market: In early November, James Gilchrist, vice president of Comme des Garçons and Dover Street Market, sent an email noting that he was leaving the business after more than a decade. Somehow, this never got picked up in the trades—not sure why?—but it’s not nothing. Gilchrist ran a large portion of the business, and CdG is a tight-knit group that works in lockstep globally. When someone leaves, it’s noticeable. No word on where Gilchrist is headed. A rep for the group confirmed that “James left the business after 12 years,” adding, “We really wish him the best for the future.”
The final Document: When Document magazine filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection at the end of 2025, founder Nick Vogelson cited the $600,000 a judge had previously ordered him to pay former fashion director Sarah Richardson. (Richardson sued Vogelson almost two years ago, and a judge in New York ruled in her favor in March 2025.) Chapter 11 bankruptcy offers companies the opportunity to restructure with new capital and effectively start over. Vogelson’s lawyers have asked the judge in the case for an extension to the end of January to make his case for such protection. If his filing is approved, I would not be surprised if he attempted to relaunch Document. Brands are almost unbelievably supportive of indie magazines, partly because they charge so little, offer flexible pay-to-play rules, and reach an audience with ample time and generous trust funds. But Document was never good, anyway, so maybe the lesson here is to be a little more mindful about these investments, no matter how small. I do wish everyone involved the very best. Vogelson declined to comment.

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Reading the Globes red carpet tea leaves: The Golden Globes marks the first major awards show of the season, and while the looks were pretty random and unexciting, the execution said a lot about where we are in the fashion cycle—not only because Jay Penske hired Lisa Love and KCD to work on the show. As expected, both Chanel and Dior dressed best actress nominees, and wouldn’t you know it, they both won. Rose Byrne, who took home the award for best actress in a comedy or musical, wore a custom Chanel dress in a very Matthieu Blazy green. Jessie Buckley, who won best actress in a drama, was outfitted in Dior by Jonathan Anderson.

From left: Rose Byrne, Teyana Taylor, and Jessie Buckley. Photos: Amy Sussman/Getty Images; Taylor Hill/FilmMagic; Frazer Harrison/WireImage

For the record, I liked the Dior—especially the icy blue floral silk it was sculpted out of—but was less interested in the matching shoes. Out of the evening’s Chanel looks, I liked Byrne’s the best, although Ayo Edebiri’s and Maya Rudolph’s were strong, too. Since Venice, it has felt as though Dior has been flooding the market with red carpet looks, good and (mostly) bad. Last night, the lineup was tighter, with a big focus on Buckley and Mia Goth. It’s now Buckley’s race to lose, and it appears she’ll be doing it wearing Dior.

Jennifer Lawrence, another Dior ambassador, wore Givenchy. Her Garden of Eden–esque embroidered gown was generally well-received, although it didn’t quite do it for me. Lawrence left stylist Jamie Mizrahi for Ryan Hastings a little while ago, and while I’ve generally liked his sexier take (Lawrence is pliable when it comes to this stuff), as well as Givenchy’s red carpet approach since Sarah Burton’s arrival, I thought this was just sort of droopy.

Meanwhile, Louis Vuitton hit it big with Emma Stone and Renate Reinsve this year, but failed elsewhere (like with Chase Infiniti), reflecting the house’s schizophrenic red carpet strategy. Loewe’s choices—dressing Sorry, Baby’s Eva Victor, Severance’s Britt Lower, and Sentimental Value’s Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas—reflected the fact that new designers Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez have to cultivate a whole new roster of niche talent now that most of the Anderson-era Loewe folks are big stars, and have decamped with him to Dior.

Other notes from the evening: I loved that Stone wore Colleen Allen to the W party, and that Lower wore Dario-era Versace that same night. Colman Domingo was a favorite in a black Valentino suit with a diamond flock of Boucheron birds scattered on his left shoulder. (Hard luxury, after all, is what’s really working right now.) But perhaps the biggest winner, on stage and off, was best supporting actress Teyana Taylor in black Schiaparelli haute couture, complete with a diamante bow G-string. She looked incredible. I heard recently that Taylor stopped working with the stylist duo Wayman + Micah, opting to manage it mostly herself instead. We’re in an era where brands like Schiaparelli have more opportunity than ever to filch market share from the big names, and the fact that Taylor opted for this, rather than a fat contract look, says something about something.

Honorable mentions go to Robin Wright in Ralph Lauren, Elle Fanning in Gucci, Zoë Kravitz in Saint Laurent, Michael B. Jordan in Prada, Julia Roberts in Armani, Jeremy Allen White in Louis Vuitton, Kate Hudson in Armani, Charlie Hunnam in Saint Laurent, Kirsten Dunst in Tom Ford, Justine Lupe in Armani, and Laufey in Balenciaga.

And now, the latest on Saks…

Saks 3:16

This traumatic leg of the Saks Global journey is ending with a bankruptcy filing in Houston and the almost-guaranteed departure of Richard Baker. But accountability should be spread far and wide as whispers emerge about the next management team.

Lauren Sherman

When I named Line Sheet’s Villain of the Year at the end of 2025, I got more than one dispirited message asking why it wasn’t Richard Baker, then the chairman of Saks Global and the mastermind of its disastrous acquisition of Neiman Marcus Group at the beginning of 2025. That slow-moving trainwreck has defined the past 12 months in the industry, from the oversubscribed bond offering and the Valentine’s Day Massacre to the August debt restructuring and, now, a likely Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing in Houston on Tuesday morning.

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I say likely because the outcome is set to be determined at a board meeting on Monday night. The directors will vote on whether Saks takes new financing from PIMCO (said to be $1.5 billion), or Bracebridge Capital and Pentwater Capital ($1.25 billion), or starts prepping for a liquidation. Pretty much no one wants to liquidate the business, but it’s still not out of the question, I’m told. If the financing goes through, it’s estimated that roughly 70 stores will close across the business, including many in the off-price channel. (A rep for Saks Global had no comment.)

Baker, who is expected to exit Saks Global once the company is bailed out, is easy for fashion industry people to hate. (They can take some solace in the knowledge that he’ll get nothing out of this departure.) A consummate outsider with little operational know-how, the strip mall scion seemed to ruin every retailer he touched, in one way or another. First, it was Lord & Taylor. Then, Hudson’s Bay Co. These were troubled companies that would have gone down anyway, but he somehow made it worse. Or at least that’s what everyone thought.

Baker’s lack of sensitivity to the nuances of the industry was never more evident than at the February shows in Paris. Just days after Saks Global C.E.O. Marc Metrick sent his Valentine’s Day love letter to vendors noting that their hundreds of millions of dollars in payments would be further delayed, Baker showed up in the front row with his wife, who was accompanied by a security guard to protect her fine jewelry. There’s an argument that Baker, who long preferred to stay behind the scenes, was establishing himself as the public-facing mogul he always truly wanted to be—and that Saks needed. But brand executives found the behavior tacky, reinforcing his outsider status.

The truth is likely twofold: Baker was an easy target, but these stores probably would have failed no matter who was in charge. In fact, Baker’s greatest fault may have been that he wasn’t ruthless enough. Instead of optimizing the Saks Global real estate portfolio by selling off or subleasing once-cherished properties, he continually hired operators who ignored the reality that multibrand retail was in aggressive secular decline and had to be managed downward fast.

Baker isn’t the only one who was living in denial. When Neiman Marcus Group filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy during the pandemic, the company chose not to close several underperforming stores. Instead, NMG bought a tremendous amount of inventory, entrenching the business in yet another faulty cycle, where one offseason could spell doom.

In reality, the industry was complicit in continuing to operate this woefully nostalgic and anachronistic model that allows for scale at the cost of profitability. Sure, people had wanted this merger to happen for 20 years, but nobody has been brave enough to articulate that consolidation was never going to be sufficient to save this sector. Instead, most of the stores should close—maybe even all of the Saks Fifth Avenues—and the American luxury retail industry should adopt the European department store model, which is far more reliant on shop-in-shops and less on wholesale.

The Saks Bump

So, what happens to Baker now? Well, for one thing, he will likely never work in luxury again (and he doesn’t need to). I could see Metrick, whose fate was so intertwined with Baker’s, ending up working for him in some capacity: Maybe a family office?

In most Chapter 11 cases, the new owners would recruit a restructuring executive to manage the transition, but I’ve heard speculation it will be a more seasoned retail executive—perhaps even Geoffroy van Raemdonck, who ran Neiman Marcus Group from 2018 to 2024. Would van Raemdonck cycle out the current Saks Global team and bring back some of his own? Perhaps. I only wonder if van Raemdonck, or whoever it is, will have the courage to do what needs to be done to keep these businesses healthy. People still want to shop in multibrand retailers, yes, but far less frequently. In all likelihood, new leadership will not act as aggressively or swiftly as they should, and the company’s assets may need to be split up again.

There is, of course, one spinoff that could happen fast. The fantasy of Bernard Arnault and LVMH taking Bergdorf Goodman remains top of mind—and not only for me. And maybe he will end up being a winner in all of this. The other day, a friend of mine asked that very question: Who comes out on top here? One could argue that Nordstrom and Bloomingdale’s are benefiting from Saks Global’s fall, but that bump may only be short-term. The real winners will be those who learn their lesson, and choose to do things differently going forward.

What I’m Reading…

Filipa Fino, a longtime Vogue accessories editor who got fired in 2011 under a cloud of vague allegations, has reemerged with a tell-all novel (oxymoron?) set to be published in May, just in time for the Met Gala. Fino was in the Vogue crew when I started hardcore covering industry personalities, and I always found her a little less intimidating than everyone else. Who knows why? Maybe she can come on Fashion People to discuss? [Page Six]

Last week, at her store in what was formerly known as the Reg. Bev. Wil., Gabriela Hearst celebrated the launch of the limited-edition Ballet Book, which features a collection of frameable prints by photographer Nikolai von Bismarck capturing the San Francisco Ballet’s production of Carmen. (Hearst designed the costumes.) The most exciting part was that Hearst invited friends up to the penthouse afterward for a stand-up dinner. It looks nothing like it did in Pretty Woman, but fun anyway. [Gabriela Hearst]

The estate of former Vogue editor Grace Mirabella is being auctioned. Live bidding starts February 10. It includes everything from Helmut Newton photographs to Chanel jackets to a CFDA award. Thank you to Marisa Meltzer for the tip. [Showplace Auctions]

Hotel group MCR, which struck a deal to take Soho House private last year, says it doesn’t have enough money to fund the transaction. [Skift]

Until tomorrow,
Lauren

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