Dec 5, 2025

Hi, and welcome back to Line Sheet. I love New York. I came for Chanel, but I am staying for Marisa Meltzer’s holiday party. In today’s issue, Sarah Shapiro is here with a totally revealing survey of who is buying what this holiday season… so far, at least. Up top, Sarah’s got notes on fashion’s obsession with the quarter-zip, from Dior to Chanel, plus a heat check on Burberry’s merchandising strategy and an update on American retail legend Jenny Ming. Plus, my brief review of Hanover, Chris Black’s fashion brand.

I’ll be back on Monday with more details on Dario Vitale’s Versace exit. In the meantime, don’t forget to upgrade to the Inner Circle—send me proof once you do, and I will personally forward you yesterday’s edition.

Mentioned in this issue: Mark Zuckerberg, Ray-Ban, Matthieu Blazy, Chanel, Burberry, Joshua Schulman, Beth Buccini, Kirna Zabête, Chris Black, the Ritz Bros., Nour Hammour, Hollister, Lili Chemla, Margaux, Alexa Buckley, Sarah Pierson, Barry Diller, Rothy’s, Jenny Ming, Dayna Quanbeck, and many more…

Five Things You Should Know…

Dressing the Basic Bros of America: Yesterday, after I filed my piece about Dario Vitale getting fired from Versace, I headed up to the DLX offices to see Chris Black’s new line, Hanover, which he’s been working on with Vinod Kasturi and Paul Shaked for some time. It’s backed by my favorite former professional lacrosse players, Max and Xander Ritz, who run the platform The Loyalist.

Unlike all the famous people who go on his popular podcast, How Long Gone, and then invite him to their weddings, I am actually friends with Chris, whether he likes it or not. And I would be the first person to say that the world does not need another line of t-shirts and jeans, mostly for guys. But Chris has incredibly clear, straightforward ideas about how people should dress, and I happen to usually agree with him. Hanover, his new line of dry-cotton t-shirts, polos, button-downs (not ups), and jeans, is all rendered in the exact right proportions, colors, etcetera; made in America; and priced under $300. (That’s basically free.) People need to be told how to be, especially men, and I see the potential because of Chris’s authority on the subject of classic clothes. (As I was writing this, a male friend of mine who works in fashion publicity messaged about backpacks and said, “I have a longstanding outfit dilemma that I think only you can solve. Or Chris Black.”)

The great thing about Hanover is that it’s so clear and easy to understand that I think a lot of different types of guys (and women, too) will like it. And I like the idea of everyone looking better. It’s all about the fit. I got the red t-shirt and the Visualize New York merch.

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Sarah Shapiro

Spy vs. spy: Are Mark Zuckerberg’s second-generation Ray-Ban Meta glasses a contender for this year’s hot tech gift? While search demand for the glasses is up 113 percent quarter over quarter, according to Lyst, so far most of that traffic has been driven by voyeurs on the fence about actually plunking down between $300 and $800 for eyewear that allows you to surreptitiously snap photos and record video (with a voice command), roll calls, get questions answered by Meta’s A.I. assistant, and have a two-way video chat. A co-worker told me she’s been seeing more civilians—i.e., anyone not working at Meta—wearing the glasses. I, too, spotted them on recent trips to Northern California and Miami. But Katy Lubin, an executive at Lyst, told me most shoppers are probably taking time to research before committing.
Zipless luck: Thanks to TikTok, Brooks Brothers, and Chanel creative director Matthieu Blazy, quarter-zips are happening. Searches for quarter-zips, the corpcore mainstay, took off in early November, according to Google Trends, perhaps leading Brooks Brothers to smartly revamp its website nomenclature from “half-zip” to “quarter-zip” and give the trend its own landing page. Blazy just sent a quarter-zip down the runway in Chanel’s Pre-Fall 2026 show, held in the no-longer-in-use Bowery subway station. Last time I checked, J.Crew was still wandering around in half-zip territory.
Burberry’s ludicrously capacious Bloomies: If you’ve strolled past Bloomingdale’s 59th Street flagship in Manhattan recently, you’ve surely noticed that Burberry—the British heritage brand and maker of the “ludicrously capacious bag” that Tom Wambsgans mocked on Succession—has come to town in time for Christmas. A giant, illuminated checked scarf wraps around the building. Inside you’ll find the fruits of Bloomies’ hard launch of the partnership. The store has given Burberry an exclusive capsule across all categories. The Gund teddy bear wearing a Burberry sweater is already sold out, but you can still pick up the teddy bear charm. (Think of it as an upmarket Labubu for your Anglophile friend…) The partnership is part of Burberry C.E.O. Joshua Schulman’s turnaround effort and very ambitious £3 billion revenue target (read Lauren’s deep dive here).

So… what’s selling? Overall, according to Lyst, interest in Burberry is up 13 percent since September. Heritage trench coats and the classic check scarves are currently the bestsellers, no surprise. In a recent fireside chat hosted by Bernstein, Schulman said the first collection under his “Burberry Forward” strategy is selling through stronger than last year.
Rothy’s guard change: For the past decade, Jenny Ming and Dayna Quanbeck have been recruiting one another. When Ming was C.E.O. of mall-rat brand Charlotte Russe (R.I.P.), she hired Quanbeck, an investment banker at the time, to come aboard as her C.F.O. Later, when Quanbeck was C.F.O./C.O.O. at Rothy’s, she returned the favor and persuaded Ming to leave retirement and join as C.E.O. of the plastic-bottles-into-knitted-shoes brand. Now president, Quanbeck has spearheaded major initiatives, such as launching wholesale with Nordstrom, expanding internationally, and adding menswear and sneakers.

Now succession is in store. Earlier this year, Ming told the board she’d be ceding the C.E.O. role to Quanbeck, effective January 1. Industry executives I spoke with speculated that Quanbeck had turned down other opportunities to wait for her buddy to pass her the torch.

And now, the main event…

The Week in Shopping: A Totally Unscientific, Still Telling Holiday Retail Survey

According to early indicators, spending and foot traffic are both up in the post-Thanksgiving holiday crush—but that can mean different things to different retailers.

Sarah Shapiro

Now that we’ve entered the Super Bowl season for shopping, let’s take a completely unscientific, somewhat random stroll through the retail landscape to find out what’s selling and who’s buying. For starters, how did things really go over the first Black Friday-to-Cyber Monday held under the influence of the second Trump administration and a robust but possibly overvalued market? If we go by the one-and-a-half-hour wait to enter the parking lot at the upscale Livermore Outlets mall outside San Francisco—just to drop off shoppers—Christmas might be Grinch-free this year.

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The refined BMW 7 Series is all luxury. With the ability to define your design, the ultimate glamour is yet to be. Learn more at

BMWUSA.com.

Getting down to business, there were almost 203 million shoppers over the Thanksgiving weekend, up 3 percent from last year, according to the National Retail Federation. The Cyber Monday haul was $14.25 billion, up 7 percent year over year, according to Adobe Analytics. Positive momentum, sure, but these numbers don’t tell us where people are shopping, and whether they’ll continue to spend through the all-important end of year.

A good place to start is high-end boutique Kirna Zabête, which saw its strongest sales in Miami, Palm Beach, and East Hampton, particularly among brands like Miu Miu, Saint Laurent, Gabriella Hearst, and Bottega Veneta. Founder Beth Buccini told me that Nour Hammour, a recent Line Sheet subject, is nearly sold out. While revenue was down from last year, higher margins strengthened the business, with in-store shopping outperforming last year. Ear cuffs and necklaces also sold well, both as gifts and guilty pleasures for oneself.

Over at Hollister, sales associates were running around with Apple devices, loading customers’ virtual carts with items that had already sold out on the floor, and reassuring shoppers that the cable-knit sweater or zip-up hoodie would indeed show up at their homes within a few days. Foot traffic at Leset was also strong, even though the brand was down to forecast leading into Thanksgiving weekend. (An online sale overperformed expectations by 25 percent, according to founder Lili Chemla, who told me, “It seems like the shopper was definitely waiting for the sale this year.”)

Inside the store, many shoppers were opting to try on items and figure out their size, then leaving empty-handed, preferring to buy them online later—perhaps when it would be easier to see Leset’s assortment of colors from their wardrobe basics of knit t-shirts, silk separates, and knitwear. In any case, shoppers stocked up on Margo t-shirts, the newer Nando slim-fit long sleeve, Kyoto carpenter pants, and Barb wide-leg silk pants.

Margaux, the D.T.C. shoe brand, runs one sale a year, always on Black Friday, per founders Alexa Buckley and Sarah Pierson, whom I ran into last night at their store opening on Fillmore Street in San Francisco. They use the 20 percent off sitewide sale as a customer acquisition tool, and saw customer acquisition grow by 80 percent this year. Last year, they told me, they acquired their most loyal shoppers during Q4—particularly through Black Friday and Cyber Monday. In other words, folks came for the deals and stuck around when they went back to full price.

In the Line of Beauty

Gen Alpha swamped Sephora, many with cranky moms (perhaps coming off ketamine highs?) or glassy-eyed divorced dads in tow. Signs at my local Sephora noted they were running low on pennies, surely turning a few cash purchases into tense dust-ups. The Retail Industry Leaders Association recently published a survey that found almost 25 percent of major retailers have more than 1,000 stores that are currently without pennies, and most are eating the cost by rounding down for customers—likely to show up in retailers’ bottom lines later.

Meanwhile, more weathered shoppers are buying those red facial lights, despite the high price point and waning novelty. “Red light masks” were a top trending search on the LTK platform, and the CurrentBody Skin LED Light Therapy Mask, Ziip Halo Microcurrent Facial Device, and Omnilux Contour Face Mask became the top three converting links for Black Friday through Cyber Monday on ShopMy, according to the platform. Have at it, gals! Retailers love big-ticket items, of course, and hundreds of creators linked to Lyma’s $2,695 “patented cold” Laser at Violet Grey, which was also in the top 10 for ShopMy for the holiday weekend.

When it came to social commerce, TikTok Shop rang up $570 million between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday, an increase of 73 percent versus last year, according to Charm.io, which tracks D.T.C. brands. Black Friday showed the strongest sales, while Cyber Monday was just the third-strongest day of the five, suggesting people aren’t yet willing to TikTok-shop at work or in school.

Nearly 20 percent of TikTok Shop’s business was driven by beauty and personal care, at an average unit price of $21.88—with impulse buys, not the more expensive items, converting via traditional affiliate platforms. Beauty’s top performer on TikTok Shop was QVC, the sleepy legacy shopping channel that Barry Diller turned into a TV-commerce retail phenomenon back in the ’90s, and which recently made the smart decision to meet Gen Z on the tiny screens on which they live.

Have a great weekend,
Lauren

P.S.: We use affiliate links because we are a business. We may make a couple bucks off them.

Puck fashion correspondent Lauren Sherman and a rotating cast of industry insiders take you deep behind the scenes of this multitrillion-dollar biz, from creative director switcheroos to M&A drama, D.T.C. downfalls, and magazine mishaps. Fashion People is an extension of Line Sheet, Lauren’s private email for Puck, where she tracks what’s happening beyond the press releases in fashion, beauty, and media. New episodes publish every Tuesday and Friday.

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