The Glossier-LVMH Ticklefest, Outdoor Voices Debts & Karlie Kloss’s Pink Slips

Hi, and welcome back to Line Sheet. I’m still in New York, which means I got to stop by the official launch party for The Varsity, Puck’s venture into SPORTS!, spearheaded by the one-and-only John Ourand. (Sign up here.) It took place at, you know, a sports bar. What’s that like? Well, there were TVs on (I think?), people were drinking beer (not me, ew), and I got to catch up with some friendly publicists (love you!). As one of those guys said, Puck covers every topic like it’s a sport, including fashion. Overall, a great success. Today, Rachel “Rachel@Puck.news” Strugatz writes the latest paragraph in the story of Glossier, which is rumored to be in talks with one of my favorite companies to cover, LVMH. (Wouldn’t it be great? Get all the details below.) I’ve also got an i-D update, some Outdoor Voices intel, and a tip for those tracking, and shopping, Phoebe Philo. Also, today I’m on Puck’s podcast, The Powers That Be, talking Gucci, Valentino, and more with my editor, Ben Landy. Listen here. Mentioned in this issue: Karlie Kloss, i-D magazine, Outdoor Voices, lawsuits, $5,200 leather jeans, Phoebe Philo, Proenza Schouler, LVMH, Bernard Arnault, Glossier, Emily Weiss, Kyle Leahy, Rihanna, Sephora, Sol de Janeiro, Tom Ford Vanilla Sex, Frank Voelkl, Stephane Bianchi, and more.

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Wednesday Thoughts…

i-D-Day: Yesterday, Karlie Kloss, who bought i-D magazine late last year, laid off a good amount of people in the London office, mostly editorial folks. (Kloss broke at least some of the news herself from New York, via Zoom.) There were eight cuts in total, and those people were offered the opportunity to stay on as contributors in a new configuration. The main thing to know is that global editorial director Olivia Singer is still there. But there will be more announcements soon—if they haven’t already signed an editor-in-chief, they are close to doing so.The team sentiment right now is downbeat. Like most British publications, i-D is very small, and also very close-knit. However, this also sorta happened like clockwork. U.K. employment regulations require new company owners to wait 90 days after purchase to fire anyone, and it’s been three months since the deal went through. The magazine, previously owned by a bankrupt Vice Media, was not profitable. Restructuring was inevitable. The other thing about i-D, though, is that unlike many indie publications, which are inextricably linked to their founders, it’s a pretty strong brand on its own. Can Kloss preserve the equity, convince advertisers that she brings added value, and build a business that is profitable and positive for fashion publishing at large? Print is set to relaunch this fall, I hear.
Outdoor Voices Death Watch: Remember when I told you Outdoor Voices wasn’t paying its vendors? Singapore-based apparel manufacturer MAS Amity Pte Ltd. is alleging in a New York court that Outdoor Voices owes them $1.8 million for goods that were shipped in 2023. “MAS has repeatedly demanded payment for the sum of $1,891,267.02, but Outdoor Voices has refused,” reads the complaint, filed on March 25. (The bill shows that MAS produced lots of exercise dresses.) Anyway, this once again points to an inevitable bankruptcy filing, but we’ll see.
Proenza P.S.A.: The big takeaway from the latest Phoebe Philo drop (which happened Tuesday) is that everyone wants the leather jeans, but they are $5,200, and even if one can afford them, it would be kind of embarrassing to own them. I’ll have a state-of-Phoebe’s-business update for you soon, but in the meantime, I did want to direct your attention to the leather jeans from Proenza Schouler White Label, which I bought with approval from Strugatz, Becky, Leandra, and another friend who works for a magazine I write about a lot so I don’t want to name her here. I am very anti-dupe—I didn’t escape the South Hills of Pittsburgh to wear dupes!—and also very anti-buying the next best thing. (It’s almost always worth spending on one expensive item rather than collecting consolation prizes.) But in this case, the Proenza jeans existed long before the Phoebe ones, they are appropriately priced, and look fab. Enjoy.

Glossier & LVMH: A Love Story?

The proto-millennial beauty brand is now in “deep” conversations about a sale to LVMH, as the French fashion conglomerate eyes Glossier’s expansion into fragrances.

RACHEL STRUGATZ

It seems like everyone in the beauty business has a banker these days: After all, Glossier, Rare, Summer Fridays, Merit, and Kosas are all exploring sales to capitalize on strong growth. But the market maker, of course, is Glossier—the once white-hot, once category-defining millennial-ish brand, which I reported last week had hired Morgan Stanley as a financial advisor. Now, I’m reliably told, Glossier is in “deep” conversations with LVMH regarding a potential acquisition. The French conglomerate—owner of Louis Vuitton, Dior, Celine, and Sephora—is particularly interested in Glossier’s expanding fragrance offerings, which includes its popular “You” scent. “It’s part of the hook that they’re presenting to LVMH,” a source said. “They have this number one fragrance––they’re not just selling Cloud Paint. That’s why they’re worth $2 billion.”Indeed, Glossier You was Sephora’s best-selling scent in 2023, no small feat considering the staggering, almost nauseating amount of Sol de Janeiro body spray the retailer moves—not to mention blockbusters from the usual suspects (Saint Laurent, Valentino, Dior, Chanel, etcetera). Sure, it only costs $72, a steal in a world where Tom Ford Vanilla Sex (not a joke) goes for $395 a bottle. But it also smells really good. Founder Emily Weiss, who doesn’t do anything half-assed, tapped master perfumer Frank Voelkl, the nose behind Le Labo’s Santal 33, to craft the scent.

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And Glossier is really leaning into fragrance. I hear a second scent is in development, and two others are planned, which in a short time could make Glossier a genuinely formidable player in the approachable-priced, prestige perfume market. The response from LVMH also helps to explain why Weiss, who was elevated to a board-level emeritus role in 2022, has recently immersed herself in product development, specifically fragrance. It’s a smart play: with additional scents in its arsenal and the global prowess of LVMH, Glossier could become a veritable triple threat in skin care, makeup, and perfume.Obviously, Glossier’s decision last year to go into retail through Sephora—as opposed to Ulta Beauty or Target—is paying off. To be fair, premium brands entering big-box beauty typically start with Sephora, if they can: it’s still the most premium of the three. But it may also have been part of a deliberate strategy by newish C.E.O. Kyle Leahy to embed the brand within the LVMH universe. “It’s not even going in the back door, it’s going in the front door,” a source speculated. An acquisition by LVMH would also allow Glossier to preserve a more direct connection with customers: Sephora is Glossier’s leading and only retail partner for now, and if LVMH were to acquire Glossier, the brand and retailer would share a parentco—as well as customer data, resources, and access to capital. (Glossier declined to comment. LVMH did not respond to a request for comment.)

The LVMH Way

The fragrance category, a surprise winner of the pandemic era, continues to be a massive growth driver for LVMH’s business—Dior’s perfumes are among the most popular in the world—as well as for the beauty industry overall. Last year, Kering paid close to $4 billion for Creed, a boutique perfume house, while Advent International closed a $700 million deal for Parfums de Marly and Initio Parfums Privés—niche fragrance lines that even some industry insiders hadn’t heard about. Richemont, the Swiss-based luxury holdco, recently created a new corporate division, Laboratoire de Haute Parfumerie, specifically to work with its brands that sell fragrance (Chloé, Alaïa, Cartier, etcetera).Naturally, LVMH is more focused than ever on fragrance as a source of future growth. Many of the company’s most senior executives come from the beauty world, including former Yves Rocher C.E.O. Stephane Bianchi, who is now No. 2 to LVMH chief Bernard Arnault. (Biachi’s predecessor, Toni Belloni, spent more than two decades at Procter & Gamble.) LVMH also recently appointed Stéphane Rinderknech as C.E.O. of LVMH Perfumes and Cosmetics, the first person to hold that title in nearly two decades. Rinderknech, previously the president and C.E.O. of L'Oréal USA, now oversees 16 brands, including Maison Francis Kurkdjian, Benefit Cosmetics, Make Up For Ever, Guerlain, and Fresh.

Glossier would fit neatly into the portfolio, since its positioning is luxury, even if its price is not. And LVMH is focused on iconic, billion-dollar-plus brands that can get much, much bigger—think Tiffany, Rimowa, or Loro Piana—not upstarts. LVMH’s beauty division is massive, having processed €8.3 billion in sales last year, so it needs to take larger swings, especially in its M&A strategy, to move the needle. While LVMH does invest in smaller companies, via its venture arm, it hasn’t had much luck incubating its own beauty brands, outside of Fenty.LVMH does buy the best brands, however, and if it thinks it can make Glossier work, that’s a major endorsement. Certainly they have the in-house expertise. One of LVMH’s most successful beauty lines—although certainly much smaller than Dior—is Benefit, an irreverent brand that, like Glossier, isn’t luxury per se but has a luxury sensibility. Plus, Glossier’s already shown staying power over multiple business cycles. It has faced plenty of obstacles—a makeup downturn, the collapse of the direct-to-consumer business model, a secondary brand that flopped, etcetera—and still fought its way back on top, which is more than can be said for other peak-millennial-era brands on the market. It goes without saying that this outcome would validate its investors’ beliefs and patience.

That’s it from Rachel and me. A big thanks to Amanda and Juliet over at the Ringer podcast Jam Session for their continued support of Line Sheet. This week, they link Rachel’s too-good-to-miss reporting on American Riviera Orchard and Flamingo Estate back to Tina Brown’s unmissable royal-saga coverage. What more could I want in life?Until tomorrow, Lauren

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