Hi, welcome back to Line Sheet, where we cover the politics of… the front row. Of course, we also have to talk about Hedi and Michael.

Paris Fashion Week is over. Mine ended with Louis Vuitton and dinner with friends—I sadly didn’t make it to the Coperni show at Disneyland Paris. (The opportunity to sleep a few more hours won out.) And yet, my head is still this close to exploding. You know what, though? We made it through! I am currently en route to Los Angeles and looking forward to hanging out with my family and waking up at 5:30 a.m. to go for a run around the Rose Bowl.

Our beauty correspondent, Rachel Strugatz, truly blows me away. Today, she’s back at it with a new report on Estée Lauder Companies, and in particular, why the heck they did this deal with Balmain. I’m also sharing my initial thoughts on the departure of Hedi Slimane from Celine (if you subscribe to Line Sheet’s SMS channel you knew about this yesterday) and the arrival of Michael Rider (which, if you subscribe to Line Sheet, you’ve known about for months). Plus, final thoughts on the shows, and a dissection of the awful new Vanity Fair cover. (Sorry, I cannot let this one go.)

By the way, if you work(ed) at Estée and you’re not reading Rachel, that’s wild. Fix that mistake now.

Mentioned in this issue: Phoebe Philo, Bernard Arnault, Off-White, Stella McCartney, Chanel (always), Miuccia Prada, Miu Miu forever, Gabriela Hearst, Balmain, Olivier Rousteing, Ralph Lauren, Ariana Grande, Balenciaga, Norman Jean Roy, molded-shoulder leather jackets, Chemena Kamali, Chloé, Chitose Abe, bumsters, Marilyn Monroe, and much more…

• Hedi!! Michael!!!: On Tuesday, the Celine studio was notified that creative director Hedi Slimane was no longer with the brand. That wouldn’t have been a shock to Line Sheet readers—I’ve been reporting for months on the speculation that Slimane, whose contract ended in June and has been eyeing other jobs, would likely be moving on. During his Celine run, Slimane made billions of dollars for LVMH. Despite early questions about whether his preexisting fan base would be enough to transform the business post-Phoebe Philo, Slimane effectively mined Celine’s bourgeoisie roots, creating a wardrobe of essentials (the perfect jean, navy blazer, collarless jacket, trench) that were downright irresistible. Perhaps, after seven years, he was simply ready for something new.

  The question among Celine employees, at least internally, was how long LVMH would take to communicate the news externally, especially given Monday’s non-surprise surprise announcement that the group had sold Off-White to a vulturous licensing firm. In a way, exiting Slimane is a less negative story than selling Off-White, so I guess it’s good to bury one with the other. It also helped that Celine had Line Sheet favorite Michael Rider waiting in the wings. His appointment was announced just hours after Slimane’s departure, bringing excitement to what could have otherwise been a day of uncertainty. I’m told Rider has already shot a campaign with the box-fresh model who is also on the cover of the latest Holiday magazine. (Her name is River.)

  Anyway, this doesn’t mean that Slimane is done with LVMH, or vice versa. It’s possible that Bernard Arnault did quite a lot to coerce him to stay in the group, including deploying family members to persuade him to stay past the summer, after his contract ran out. Could it be that he’s headed to Dior? Would be sensible, but seems unlikely. He may just be taking some time. (Of course, yes, we want him to go to Chanel.)

  For Rider, who worked for years at Phoebe Philo’s Céline, this is a homecoming. He also somehow made positive, noticeable change during his time at Ralph Lauren, a company that does not like change. (Rider has a very high taste level, according to many of his admirers.) My guess is that Rider will take the Hedi foundation and move it in a lighter, perhaps slightly more contemporary direction. I’m excited! And congrats to Séverine Merle, Celine’s C.E.O., too.

• Woof, that cover: Have you seen the new Vanity Fair featuring Wicked stars Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, who were photographed by Norman Jean Roy and styled by Patti Wilson? It’s very rough. Where to start: The lighting? The composition? The beyond-lazy coverline? The stiff poses? The confusing fashion? Why is Grande dressed like Marilyn Monroe? Why does Erivo look like she’s about to enter a bullfight? Besides all that, why are they so grim? (The frowning-on-magazines epidemic is real.) The real horror is that there are three covers.

  The covers featuring Erivo and Grande individually are better than the dual cover, and there are some nice photos inside the magazine, but generally, this ordeal perfectly encapsulates what’s wrong in legacy publishing. Wicked is going to be a giant movie, these two women are already huge stars, and people want everyone involved (including Vanity Fair) to succeed. In an era where a magazine cover’s role is not to sell actual magazines, but rather to ricochet around the internet, this isn’t achieving anything. A great photograph captures the essence of a moment. Yes, it’s harder today to create something that breaks across our algorithmic silos, but it’s possible. (New York does it every other week.) Let’s all, as an industry, collectively strive to do better. I’ll stop now.

• A funny thing about Chanel: The influencers were, for the most part, seated second-row this season. (Influencers who are paid by the brand to attend, or at least dressed by the brand, usually sit in the front row.) Likely a matter of formatting, but a choice nonetheless. As for the clothes: the consensus was that they were better than Virginie Viard’s final dour collection, but we could still use a creative director.

Maybe that’s why I liked Balenciaga: Its confidence reassured me. Whatever your reaction to the hip-bone grazing jeans, popped-collar polos, and molded-shoulder leather jackets—nostalgia, disgust, or a combination of both—they were communicating something uncompromising as the models walked down a gigantic, endless table, with celebrities and V.I.P.s sitting on either side, Last Supper-style. It was obvious, and not just because of the show notes, that Demna was drawing from early fashion memories. (He’s 43, and was in his late teens, early 20s when this commoner style became common.)

What was more interesting to me, though, were the trompe-l’oeil lingerie sets at the beginning, followed up by granny dresses tied up with thick satin ribbons, blatantly exposing the back half of the body. These looks were, uh, overtly sexual. Not a feeling typically ascribed to his work. I got the sense that Demna has let go of something—a desire to prove himself, or please others—and reached a new phase of his career. “I’ve never felt more in control in my life,” Demna said backstage, recalling a series of looks that he had to abandon because he couldn’t get them exactly right. It bothered him at first, until it didn’t.

Perhaps he’s also chilled out because Balenciaga is, by all indications, stable right now. Meanwhile, Gabriela Hearst, who showed her namesake collection on Monday afternoon, does have something to prove. After a short stint at Chloé, where her successor, Chemena Kamali, is getting heaps of praise, Hearst brought her New York-based collection to Paris as a signal that she can play in the big leagues. It was the wrong choice. Hearst is one of the biggest shows in New York, and people admire and respect her uncompromising tailoring, incredible fabrics, and original aesthetic. If she goes slow and steady, there’s a whole world of opportunity for the brand beyond clothes. But this collection felt unfocused (see: Look 29). And at the end of fashion month, editors and buyers are either looking for something brand new or utterly confident. I hope to see her in New York next season.

On the subject of the new, I enjoyed Kiko Kostadinov and Torishéju on Tuesday. They’re both designed by women with ideas and have piqued the interest of the fashion establishment, young and old. I admired the color choices grounding Kiko creative directors Laura and Deanna Fanning’s flight attendant shtick, and how Torishéju Dumi’s sophisticated garments had a liquidy, smooth look to them.

Miu Miu, of course, is tops. I’m not sure anyone is doing it as well as Miuccia Prada these days. Yes, the clothes were fresh as hell. I loved the simple navy blazer (no logo, no worries), the ’80s track jackets, and the weird styling tricks that were clearly a comment on the TikTok generation’s penchant for random layering. But the whole production, from the casting (Willem Dafoe, Hilary Swank, Alexa Chung, Cara Delevingne) to artist Goshka Macuga’s “intervention” (including a brilliant paper with fake advertisements, another meta moment) was sharp and energizing at the end of a long, exhausting week.

I liked the Louis Vuitton show with its whole Love Boat, sorta-’80s vibe. The stringy gold skirts and silky striped blouses got me. But yes, it was missing something. Ghesquière’s proposal could benefit from what I was talking about earlier: You can suggest a fantasy but still give it context that makes it feel right for the moment. That’s what Sacai’s Chitose Abe did on Monday, with a nostalgic collection—featuring her signature splices and stripes and shapeshifting garments—that somehow felt entirely new. They flew down the runway, and we all wanted to chase after them.

Balmain Beauty’s arrival comes at a fraught moment for Lauder, whose stock hit a seven-year low in September amid a long run of executive shuffling. (Earlier this week, Lauder finally confirmed the departure of Mark Loomis, the longtime group president of North America, the capstone of a much needed reorg.) Alas, some Lauder executives told me that they have been underwhelmed with the launch so far. Another former executive took the time to praise the line’s recent efforts in Paris, including the brand’s out-of-home advertising and an activation at Galeries Lafayette. “The launch was super well done in Paris, but it doesn’t seem like it’s launched [in the U.S.]—it’s just in distribution.”

Anyway, I’m hearing that the bestsellers are Ébène, a revival of Balmain’s “Africa-inspired” 1983 scent (described as a “woody amber”); Rouge (“electrifying floral fruity”); and Carbone (“maximalist musk” and “minimalist rose”). Dove Cameron, the 28-year-old singer, actress, and former Disney star with over 47 million Instagram followers, appears in Carbone’s ads. A $55 discovery set is also said to be generating sales.

Cameron’s involvement suggests that the target customer is Gen Z, but I haven’t seen that much about Balmain Beauty on FragranceTok. When I asked a top fragrance content creator what they thought of the brand, they replied, flatly, “This is the first I’m hearing of it.” Meanwhile, the line’s wholesale distribution in the U.S.––Bergdorf Goodman and Neiman Marcus––doesn’t seem to align with the younger customer Lauder seems to be going after.

Lauder also appears to be targeting the Asian market, with plans to launch a Balmain makeup line that executives hope will revive Lauder’s once-booming, now-sluggish, business in China, according to someone familiar with the company’s strategy. Meanwhile, in the West, fragrance has been identified as the more significant opportunity. “The plan was to build [Balmain] like Tom Ford, but with a quicker ramp-up period,” this person said. (Tom Ford started with fragrance in 2006 and introduced makeup in 2010.) An insider close to Balmain Beauty told me there could be a makeup drop “as early as next year.” (A spokeswoman for the Estée Lauder Companies declined to comment.)

It also seems possibly misguided. Getting people to buy in to a new line, even from an established name, is harder with so many options, especially when it’s from a fashion brand hovering on the edge of irrelevance. It’s possible that Balmain was hedging in case a few of the scents flopped, but Lauder probably should have spaced the launches out over the course of a year, at the least.

Today, I don’t think Balmain would be anyone’s first choice to create a beauty line––and it certainly wasn’t the Lauders’. The conglomerate’s original luxury target was Cartier, before parentco Richemont decided to focus on doing beauty in-house and hired Boet Brinkgreve as C.E.O. of their Laboratoire de Haute Parfumerie et Beauté. “They were trying to fill a hole with a designer,” said a person familiar with the situation. It’s too bad that didn’t work out, because Cartier or Van Cleef & Arpels, both of which are enjoying a resurgence, would have been great additions to Lauder’s portfolio.

Nevertheless, Rousteing seems extremely invested in the beauty piece (he wore a purse shaped like a Balmain perfume bottle to the Met Gala last May­­), and I appreciate his effort to marry two worlds that are logistically and conceptually kept separate, but in reality, deeply intertwined. The Paris fashion show was fun and irreverent, even if it was mostly a marketing ploy that probably won’t sell many actual clothes. What it could sell, however, is plenty of beauty products, which is exactly what Lauder is banking on.

Until tomorrow,
Lauren

P.S.: Puck is messing around with affiliate links, and may generate revenue if you click through and buy something. I will endeavor to make these disclosures funny!