Hi, and welcome back to Line Sheet. Were you, like everyone else on my Instagram, in Paris this weekend for the Taylor Swift concert?

I wasn’t, but I am in London, currently posted up at the Tate Modern for Gucci Resort 2025. The show was slated to start at 9 p.m. Future me is still gathering her thoughts on the collection.

Anyway, I’m here for the next few days taking names and meetings, and then it’s off to the Savannah College of Art and Design’s annual fashion show. I’ll be back in your inbox on Wednesday with a report from Gucci and some fresh thoughts on the situation there. Until then, be sure to listen to the latest episode of Fashion People, which drops tomorrow morning. My very special guest is Luca Solca, king of the luxury analysts. We talk Kering, Tiffany, and Valentino, too. Download, like, and subscribe here.

On that note, today’s issue is filled with gems, real and proverbial: I’ve got the latest on the never-ending game of designer musical chairs—starring a Michael Rider scoop!!!!—final thoughts on the Condé layoff-listers as they say their farewells, plus some retail real estate news, and an interrogation of the growing rivalry between Tiffany and Cartier.

P.S.: Hooray for all the fashion people who made it to SoHo on Thursday night to get pierced at Fancy Studs on West Broadway: It ended up being a mini-reunion of sorts for the writers and editors who came up over the past decade (including plenty of my old Fashionista gang). We convinced Kate Young to get another piercing; Dora Fung needed no persuasion. Everyone was there! Nikki! Sam! Emilia! You! Thanks to Anna Harman and Lisa Bubbers for the good time.

P.P.S.: I hope anyone who celebrated Mother’s Day in America on Sunday had a nice time. On Friday, I was invited by the designer Clare Vivier to attend the Every Mother Counts annual luncheon. I usually find events like this excruciating (people talk too much), but this one was good. Not only because I got to sit by my Los Angeles neighbor Clare and Snap’s Rajni Jacques—Friends of Line Sheet Bonnie Morrison, Laura Brown, Leandra Medine, and Maria McManus were in the room, too—but also because the artist Michelle Browder and Dr. Milton Ochieng had smart things to say. Kudos to EMC founder Christy Turlington Burns, still the most beautiful woman in the world, for making this her life.

Oh, and if you’re an idiot and neglected to get your S.O. something nice for Mother’s Day, Puck makes a great I’m sorry gift. Sign her up now… or, if she’s already subscribed, upgrade her to the Inner Circle.

Also, a quick programming note: Sign up here if you’re interested in joining Peacock and Puck for an evening in celebration of the streamer’s hit series The Traitors. The event will be held Tuesday, May 14, at 5 p.m. in Manhattan, and feature a screening plus an exclusive conversation between our very own Julia Alexander and The Traitors’ host and producer, the very well-dressed Alan Cumming. Go!

Mentioned in this issue: Tiffany, Alexandre Arnault, Cartier, Nathalie Verdeille, Studs, Michael Rider, Polo Ralph Lauren, Karen Brown, Celine, the Bedale jacket, Pieter Mulier, Stüssy, Jacquemus, Zendaya, Pharrell Williams, Bulgari, Anthony Ledru, Jennifer Lopez, and many more…

• An American in Paris?: In New York last week, everyone wanted to talk about who was getting on and off the never-ending fashion house carousel. But the big news, the real news, the actual news, is that Ralph Lauren announced today that Polo women’s designer Michael Rider is leaving the company at the end of May. You might remember Rider’s name from a few weeks ago, when he was floated as a likely successor to Hedi Slimane at Celine. Then, things died down a bit, and Pieter Mulier started popping up. My first instinct on that potential matchup: Noooooo! I love Pieter at Alaïa!! Nooooo! Don’t take away my Alaïa! Look, Mulier has achieved the impossible at Alaïa, and Richemont should do everything in its power to keep him there. On the other hand, LVMH should also probably do everything in its power to hire him for something.

  Because it seems that, in all likelihood, Rider is headed to Celine. Remember, Hedi Slimane is still there and working, so perhaps Rider will get the summer off.

  Here’s what we have to look forward to when things finally materialize. Like Mulier at Alaïa, Rider has, in some ways, achieved the impossible at Ralph Lauren, a company so set in its ways that it has often gotten in its own way. But Rider, a veteran of Old Céline, won the trust of Ralph Lauren (the designer), and with the support of C.E.O. Patrice Louvet, managed to reinvigorate the women’s Polo business—so much so that it is now a top-selling women’s apparel brand for retailers, as well as a current-culture touchstone. From the marketing—still fresh and clean, less hokey—to the designs (also still fresh and clean, also less hokey), Rider made Polo cool again to both cool and uncool people. (At Ralph Lauren, the women’s Polo business will now be led by Rider’s right hand, Karen Brown, who has worked for the company for nearly 20 years and, I hear, just gets it.) Does this put a dent in succession plans at Ralph Lauren? Perhaps, but Ralph, the man, is not leaving until he leaves, and who knows where we’ll all be five years down the line.

  But back to the more immediate future. Ralph Lauren is why Rider is the right person for this next phase of Celine. At the moment, all I can think about is bourgeois dressing: fashion for the middle class, the upper-middle class, the new-money class. Slimane has perfected bourgeois dressing during his time managing the label, and Rider can take what he learned from both Phoebe Philo and Ralph Lauren and apply it to Slimane’s solid foundation. I also just love the idea of this youngish American guy from Washington, D.C., taking on one of LVMH’s most malleable houses. More soon, I hope!

• The latest in retail real estate news: Word is that Stüssy, the streetwear brand that LVMH should buy, is opening in the old, currently vacant McNally Jackson space on Prince, a stone’s throw from its original SoHo location. “It’s going to change the whole street,” a local told me. “More of a line than Aimé Leon Dore”—which, I hear, is in talks to lease 8746 Melrose for their first Los Angeles store. Meanwhile, I’m sure you’ve noticed that Jacquemus is opening its first U.S. store just a few blocks away from Stüssy, at 143 Spring Street. Keep the tips coming on this front, I love this beat.
• The Condé content rubber room disbands: Tomorrow, May 14, is the final day of work for the unionized folks who landed on the layoff list. They were told to come into the office to turn in their computers and sign paperwork. No word on what’s happening with all the “content” they’ve been “writing” while stuck in the pit. Meanwhile, union members are complaining about the terms of the contract. “A lot of realizations along the lines of, ‘Wow, this contract is not awesome for me, personally… Wait, this union is not about me?’” one bemused member relayed.

  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again (or maybe not, since it’s finally over): There were bad actors on both sides of this battle. I’m excited we all get to move on.

But perhaps more important than the necklace, itself, was the fact that it was designed by Nathalie Verdeille, Tiffany’s “chief artistic officer.” Until 2021, Verdeille was the not-so-secret weapon at Cartier, where she led design for more than 16 years—overseeing hit collections including the young-and-spikey Clash de Cartier (introduced in 2019) but also the expansion of the classic Love line, which she made as coveted and ubiquitous as a Chanel flap bag. Under Verdeille’s direction, Cartier became the foundation of many wealthy women’s jewelry collections, and a stretch goal for upper-middle-class types trading up. In Challengers, Zendaya’s bourgeois 30-something character wears a Cartier Panthère watch. (Zendaya wears a Panthère off-camera, too.)

So it was a big deal when LVMH poached Verdeille, who reports to Alexandre Arnault, the middle child of LVMH chief Bernard Arnault and the person in charge of ushering Tiffany into cosmopolitan relevance. Such a big deal, in fact, that Cartier sued LVMH in 2022 for stealing trade secrets, although the employee named in the suit was not Verdeille, and Cartier dropped its complaint a year later. The comparisons won’t stop, though: When Louis Vuitton menswear designer Pharrell Williams introduced a new studded collection for Tiffany a few weeks ago, it also had a whiff of Clash de Cartier.

Regardless of whether Verdeille is referencing her previous employer—she is, after all, a designer with her own signatures—there’s little doubt that LVMH is attempting to position Tiffany to unseat Cartier as the world’s leading jeweler. And while Cartier might be the entrenched category leader, Tiffany is gaining ground, thanks to a hefty investment of time, energy, and cash by LVMH since it acquired the business in 2021 for $15.8 billion.

During the past 15 years, LVMH’s acquisitions have been about amplifying premium subscale brands rather than building names up from near-scratch like the group did during its first 20 years. Arnault used this formula to build out Louis Vuitton, Loro Piana, and Rimowa, among others. Tiffany, like Bulgari before it, was an opportunity to apply the paradigm to the hard luxury space.

Alexandre, who oversaw the Rimowa refresh, was the obvious choice for Tiffany. At Rimowa, Alexandre and chief brand officer Hector Muelas took a merchandising cue from the direct-to-consumer luggage brands coming up at the time—in particular, Away—and reconfigured Rimowa’s look (less chrome, more color). They also employed the collaboration strategy popularized by Louis Vuitton and Dior to drum up interest—namely, take a brand or artist with pop culture cred (Murakami, Supreme, Nike, Pharrell) and layer the idea over the traditional product. Not exactly rocket science, but it’s effective.

The strategy worked at Rimowa, which may explain why Alexandre brought Muelas with him to Tiffany, where he was paired with C.E.O. Anthony Ledru, who’d bopped between Tiffany and Cartier before joining Louis Vuitton a decade ago. Nevertheless, Tiffany has proven a greater challenge for Alexandre. For starters, Rimowa is essentially without competition in the high-end luggage market, whereas Tiffany’s category is plenty crowded. It’s also a much bigger brand, with more preconceived notions held by consumers that position it, at least in the U.S., in the aspirational luxury category. (Silver heart bracelets trump gold Tiffany T necklaces.) And collaborations with Supreme don’t pack the same punch as they once did. Add in a tough trading atmosphere in the U.S. and China, and you have a slower-than-expected turnaround on your hands. The watches and jewelry segment of the business dipped slightly in the past quarter.

Of course, it’s a big test for Alexandre, who is being trusted by his father to associate the company with cool. And, in many ways, it’s his first real big-boy job. It’s great that he helped accelerate Rimowa, but that was a different project than providing an R.O.I. path for a $16 billion acquisition. If this Arnault son can’t make Tiffany into the new Cartier, he’ll likely find another one who can.

The challenge, to me, is that what makes Tiffany special is not the gold, or the high jewelry, it’s the humble silver. Loro Piana is still about Italian conservatism, Rimowa is still about German precision; Tiffany needs to be about silver as a dignified material. (Maybe not as expensive as gold or platinum, but just as beautiful.) When LVMH bought Tiffany, the idea was to make it the Cartier of the group, in the way Dior is supposed to be the Chanel of the group. But maybe they should be trying to make it the Louis Vuitton of the jewelry division instead. Remember, some of Louis Vuitton’s best-selling bags are made of coated canvas, not leather. It’s also the biggest luxury brand in the world.

My reporting that Mytheresa hired a banker is confirmed here (although they’re saying two bankers), as is the platform’s interest in both going private and maybe buying YNAP. Also, the Bain Capital interest in YNAP is mentioned as well, suggesting that the firm did put in a bid last week. [WWD]

Alina Cho profiled Stan Herman. [CBS Sunday Morning]

To crib my friend who sent this to me, I’m dying of embarrassment! [TikTok]

Tory Burch has a Substack, and like all Tory Burch editorial content, it’s as good (and often better) than pretty much anything published by pretty much any magazine. They included my kid and me in a sweet story this weekend. It was nice. [What Should I Wear?]

Willie Norris is leaving Outlier. It’s a moment. Willie is special, and so is Outlier. [Instagram]

Alyssa Vingan, the former editor-in-chief of Nylon and Fashionista, has launched a fun, new podcast. First guest is Dimepiece queen Brynn Wallner. [The New Garde]

The story of Nike, in podcast form. [Acquired]

For all you TikTok lovers: Have you noticed it getting Trumpier? [Puck]

Why everything is called an atelier, and why most things shouldn’t be! [Curbed]

This roundtable, mostly comprising Black designers (including Sergio Hudson and Aurora James), but also Law Roach, is worth your time. [YouTube]

More Law Roach. He also sat down with Recho Omondi and defended Annie Leibovitz. [The Cutting Room Floor]

I love Milan, but it can be tougher than Paris to navigate. Emilia did a great job here with recommendations. [Shop Rat]

And finally… The Noah x Barbour collaboration may have happened two years ago, but Brendon Babenzien’s 60/40 Bedale is the jacket of Spring 2024. I’ve spotted three in the wild across Los Angeles and New York, bothering to ask each wearer what they were wearing, only to be met with the same answer. The thing about a field coat (or a barn coat, if you’re a girl), is that they are pretty warm and never expire fashion-wise. I wear my classic Bedale every day for school drop-off. Becky did a fab roundup recently, which made me want her version from The Row. (I saw it I.R.L. at Outline in Brooklyn on Saturday, which made me want it even more.) Or you could get one of these Noah x Barbour guys. I went for red. They’re all over Grailed and eBay.