Hi, and welcome back to Line Sheet. Rachel “Rachel@puck.news” Strugatz is here with a report from the hallowed halls of Estée Lauder, where still-new C.E.O. Stéphane de La Faverie is finding his footing as one of the company’s most pivotal brands readies for a potentially rainmaking launch. Rachel was also kind enough to explain how Celine’s Pilates collection—introduced by Hedi Slimane in 2024 with a leather-wrapped kettlebell in the
vein of Chanel’s surfboard—landed at Forma Pilates. (Rachel is an expert on Forma, the $65-a-session reformer class. It used to be $70.) And I’m here with your daily dose of LVMH—Trump’s proposed tariffs are not going to go away so easily—plus a look at what Macy’s might be thinking as it attempts to enter the world of scripted television.
🚨 A reminder that hunching over a computer while unethically forwarding this email will affect your posture so badly that even Forma
won’t be able to fix it. Sign up for Puck now to straighten out. And for those who obeyed me a long time ago, remember that tomorrow’s issue is for Inner Circle members only—upgrade now not to miss it.
Mentioned in this issue: The Estée Lauder Companies, Stéphane de La Faverie,
Jane Hudis, Too Faced, Better Than Sex, Jerrod Blandino, Jeremy Johnson, Sephora, Martha Stewart, Bobbi Brown, Fabrizio Freda, Tara Simon, Celine, Forma, Kendall Jenner, Bernard Arnault, and many more…
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Three Things You Should Know…
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Rachel Strugatz
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- Celine x
Forma: What’s known as the world’s most expensive group Pilates class is teaming up with the world’s most expensive… yoga mats. Forma Pilates, the referral-only studio frequented by Hailey Bieber, Kaia Gerber, Kendall Jenner, etcetera, is partnering with Celine to help launch its absurd Pilates line. I’m told that Forma hosted a “V.I.P.” class for Celine’s top clients at its Beverly Glen studio this week, where founder Liana
Levi taught a “Forma Flow” mat session in a matching Celine sports bra and bike shorts. Levi’s punishing abdominal exercises (I’ve taken her class several times) were performed in two neat rows of $1,150 Triomphe-branded yoga mats—the latest sign that we might need a recession. I have no idea whether attendees got to keep the mats, but I hope they did. Back in October, Celine started selling items like $2,700 dumbbells, $205 yoga bricks, what are essentially $820 Bala Bangles,
and a price-upon-request reformer.
Super high-end marketing partnerships like this are unusual—most of the boutique fitness workouts that partner with activewear or athleisure brands aren’t necessarily “exclusive.” After all, anyone can get into a SoulCycle class if they have $40, but not everyone can book a Forma class in one of its L.A., New York City, Dallas, Austin, Phoenix, or Miami studios. Normally, Forma’s classes cost $100 per session in the Hamptons, $75 to $80 in L.A.
(depending on the location), and $70 per session in its SoHo and new Dallas studios. But even more than price, there’s the fact that it’s impossible to even book a class unless you know someone. This is what makes the partnership with Celine so synergistic. After all, an LVMH-owned luxury house can’t just partner with any boutique fitness studio.
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- No more drowning your sorrows in alcohol?: It’s fun to speculate about LVMH’s succession process now that chairman and C.E.O. Bernard Arnault is proposing that he stay on for at least another nine years. But behind the scenes at the €330 billion company, the real stressor is Trump’s recent threat of a 200 percent tax on alcohol imported from
the European Union. Ostensibly, this would be retaliation for the E.U.’s proposed 50 percent tax on American whiskey, which is set to go into effect April 1.
The 200 percent tax would include French wine, champagne, and cognac… affecting a large portion of Moët Hennessy’s wine and spirits sales in the U.S., its largest market. Of course, the wine and spirits division made up just 7 percent of LVMH’s overall sales in 2024 and 7 percent of profits. (It used to be far more, but the
popularity of fashion and leather goods has overwhelmed the rest of the business over the past 15 years.) It’s yet another reason there’s analyst pressure for co-C.E.O.s Alexandre Arnault and Jean-Jacques Guiony to spin the division off into a separate company, allowing investors who don’t touch alcohol to take stakes in the larger org. Regardless, this is not a great situation for a company that believes part of its mission is to preserve and export French
culture—and employs thousands of French people. It’s also a reminder that Trump will engage in trade warfare wherever he sees fit, whether he is tight with the Arnaults or not.
LVMH can, however, put pressure on the French government and the E.U. to walk back the proposed tax. But there’s only so much the group can do. (The French love taxes.) A few days ago, Prime Minister François Bayrou said it was probably a mistake to tax American whiskey, and called for further
negotiations. But April 1 is less than two weeks away, and the decimation of France’s wine and spirits industry, however temporary, would undoubtedly impact LVMH’s bottom line and could threaten hundreds of thousands of jobs in France. Anyway, it’s not good, and will be a test of what the policy wonks at LVMH might do if Trump eventually imposes further tariffs on handbags and shoes, too. Good thing clients travel right to Paris to buy their couture.
- Another
miracle on 34th Street?: You may have clocked the curious news that Macy’s Inc. has acquired the “exclusive option” to adapt Julie Satow’s excellent book, When Women Ran Fifth Avenue: Glamour and Power at the Dawn of American Fashion, into a television series. If the show ever happens—always a big if—the adaptation will incorporate Macy’s executive
Margaret Getchell, one of the first women ever to hold a big position at a retail store. (Satow’s book zoomed in on Dorothy Shaver at Lord & Taylor, Hortense Odlum at Bonwit Teller, and Geraldine Stutz at Henri Bendel, so Getchell will be an addition.)
This scripted project was announced on the back of Macy’s signing a 10-year rights deal with NBCUniversal to air the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and the fireworks show
on its channels (including NBC, Peacock, and Telemundo), but is obviously a different exposure play. Of course, Macy’s is one of the early examples of a brand being written into a fictional narrative. In the 1947 film Miracle on 34th Street, Macy’s itself is a character, and the movie is a marketing lesson that could be taught in business school. (The premise is that a struggling Macy’s earns loyalty by recommending customers go elsewhere if Macy’s doesn’t have exactly what they want or
can’t beat a competitor’s price. The tactic is successful and Macy’s rebounds.) So, yes, Miracle on 34th Street is the proto–Emily in Paris, a soap opera about marketing in the fashion industry.
We know this kind of exposure in a television show or film can increase awareness and interest in a brand, not to mention sales. That said, given that it will theoretically be a period piece, it may not trigger the same sort of action that Emily Cooper and her boyfriend did on
the Ami episode. Alas, what this indicates to me is that Macy’s, the brand, is the marketable item here. In an era when stores like Macy’s don’t need to exist, and the number of its stores continues to decline (by 65 in 2025), the composition of its revenue will be less and less about actual retail, and more about
the idea of it.
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Estée Lauder’s mascara darling Too Faced is betting on innovative eyelash tech to gain
market share and gird itself for the clean beauty upstarts storming Sephora’s gates. Can mascara tech offset the baggage of the Lauder way?
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It’s been a pretty quiet few months for The Estée Lauder Companies as new C.E.O. Stéphane de La
Faverie and his deputy, chief brand officer Jane Hudis, work to stabilize a portfolio of more than two dozen brands, including some of the biggest beauty lines in the world. This week, I’m told, de La Faverie is hosting all of the group’s global heads in London to further discuss ELC’s ongoing Beauty Reimagined “action plan,” set priorities for its newly formed “clusters,” and, perhaps, finally identify who will lead the makeup unit. (Hopefully, someone will
also be held accountable for making this man Estée Lauder’s new “sleep ambassador.”)
Until then, all eyes are trained on Too Faced, an ELC makeup brand that will have its biggest ever mascara launch on Friday, in what Lauder hopes will be a blockbuster follow-up to its wildly successful Better Than Sex mascara. The new product’s name sounds like a Fiona Apple
lyric––Ribbon Wrapped Lash Extreme Length Tubing Mascara––but the formula hopes to capitalize on mascara’s fast-growing tubing subsegment. (For the uninitiated, tubing mascaras are lengthening, wrap around lashes like tubes, and easily come off when water touches them.) A person inside Lauder explained that while Better Than Sex is for volumizing, Ribbon Wrapped is for lengthening. “It’s not technically a tubing mascara, but performs in a similar way, which means it comes off with warm
water and doesn’t fleck on your face,” said a makeup expert. A former employee said Ribbon Wrapped is “objectively an incredible mascara product.”
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Lauder has a lot riding on these little pink tubes. Too Faced may not have the scale or cultural impact of
MAC Cosmetics, or even Bobbi Brown at its peak, but making this business work is a priority. ELC acquired Too Faced for a whopping $1.45 billion in 2016, its largest deal ever at the time. Perhaps Lauder overpaid, but Better Than Sex—which co-founders Jerrod Blandino and Jeremy Johnson launched in 2013—was a major disruptor in a category that had been dominated by Lancôme, Benefit, and Dior’s Diorshow. It was still the number one prestige mascara in the U.S. as
of 2024, according to Circana data, even if Better Than Sex has lost some altitude at Sephora in recent years.
Of course, the brand faces ongoing competition from established players, like Benefit Cosmetics’ idiotically named Bad Gal Bang mascara, and from the old-lady staple Lancôme, which is a perennial bestseller. But ultimately, it’s the rise of indie and “clean” mascaras that have upended the Sephora rankings. At the moment, Ilia is Sephora’s bestselling mascara, according to a
person close to Sephora’s business. (Tarte, Tower 28 Beauty, and Selena Gomez’s Rare Beauty are also strong sellers.) Meanwhile, I’m told that even dupes like L’Oréal’s Lash Paradise have started to meaningfully erode prestige market share.
All that to say, the success of Too Faced is integral to Lauder’s makeup business, which is a mixed bag these days. MAC Cosmetics, while creatively in flux since global creative director Drew Elliott departed
last month, is experiencing a mini resurgence, led by a recent “Nudes” campaign starring Martha Stewart. Bobbi Brown, meanwhile, has been stuck in a nearly decade-long identity crisis since its namesake founder left in 2016. (I’ve been told by several people that Bobbi Brown’s underwhelming performance at Sephora has led the retailer to cut the brand’s door count and in-store footprint. Ironically, Bobbi Brown herself went on to launch Jones
Road, one of the most successful makeup launches in the past decade.)
Then there’s Tom Ford Beauty, which, although not officially part of Lauder’s makeup cluster, is an especially tragic tale. The label’s lipsticks were ubiquitous 15 years ago, and arguably helped create a subcategory of luxury lipstick that normalized spending $55 per tube. Last summer, I reported that Tom Ford Beauty’s makeup was down close to 50 percent year-to-date at Sephora. That lipstick campaign with
Angelina Jolie might have been a get, but I don’t think it’s enough to save its Sephora business.
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Despite Too Faced’s handful of big, underachieving makeup launches—a Healthy Glow skin tint that provided
no actual glow, for example—and a failed expansion into skincare mandated by former C.E.O. Fabrizio Freda, current and former ELC executives say that the brand has maintained a pretty stable business. “They do a decent job of keeping pace versus other Lauder brands,” said an insider, attributing the stability to Tara Simon, a well-liked executive who previously headed up ELC’s West Coast brands, including Too Faced. Simon stepped in
after Blandino and Johnson departed in 2022 to start Polite Society. (They sell an eyeshadow palette called “Forget Social Media, I’m Dope In Real Life,” which should tell you all you need to know.)
Several insiders praised both Simon, now co-head of North America, and MAC’s Elliott, who took a gig at Kiko Milano last month, for Too Faced’s perseverance. But there were also a series of accidental wins that softened the blow when other makeup launches flopped. According to a person close
to the brand, Too Faced released a couple of products that were, in their words, “never supposed to be A launches,” but ended up being hits, which they quickly extended into product lines. Kissing Jelly Lip Gloss, for example, was so popular that Sephora asked Too Faced for an exclusive shade that it merchandised at the front of the store—a perch that few Lauder brands are offered. Despite its slow-moving corporate parent, “Too Faced has been able to expand these products quickly,” this person
explained. “It tried really hard to not get sucked into the Lauder machine and ride the momentum of these launches.”
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Mostly, the brand seems to have done better than other Lauder properties because about 70 percent of the
business comes from North America. This is a commercial landscape dominated by specialty multi-retailers like Sephora and Ulta Beauty, and Simon worked at both. In fact, she possesses a deeper knowledge of the specialty retail channel than nearly all of her colleagues and superiors. If anyone knows the nuances of American beauty retailing, as well as best practices when it comes to a retailer as demanding as Sephora, it’s her.
And though Too Faced may not need as much help as some of
Lauder’s other properties, creating a follow-up to a wildly successful hero product is near impossible. The brand may have a slight advantage in that it already skews younger, but we’ll have to watch and see whether Ribbon Wrapped is enough to help Lauder achieve its ambitions for Too Faced to become, according to someone close to the company, the “number one mascara brand, not just the number one mascara product.”
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Glossier’s Fleur fragrance––its third fragrance in six months––is almost here, and the brand promises it
won’t launch any more scents this year. This piece gives a fair assessment of the current state of Glossier’s business. [BoF]
The Gwyneth profile that we won’t stop hearing about until Marty Supreme, the movie she stars in alongside Timothée Chalamet, comes out on
Christmas. [Vanity Fair]
Dolce & Gabbana, which now operates its beauty business, is hoping to reach €1 billion in beauty sales “by the end of the 2027 financial year.”
[Fortune]
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That’s it from Rachel and me. On the beauty beat, I just want to say that the price of mirrors will
forever baffle me, no matter how many times an explanation is given. But if you buy this one, let me know how you like it.
Until tomorrow,
Lauren
P.S.: We’re using affiliate links because we are a business. We may make a couple bucks off them.
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