Hi, and welcome to Line Sheet, also known as the Bernard Arnault No. 1 Fan Club. (Sorry about that significant drop in the billionaires ranking, bud.)

Yesterday, Paris Fashion Week really got going. I’ll have more news and observations from the shows in Thursday’s email, but today is all about musical chairs: Pierpaolo’s (supposed) new job, what’s happening (and what’s not) at Chanel, and why megabrands have returned to hiring “real designers,” rather than product designers.

Most importantly, Rachel “Rachel@puck.news” Strugatz is back with a fascinating account of the sort-of secret company behind Blake Lively’s new haircare brand, among several other celebrity-fronted beauty lines. Blakelash-related or not, it seems that Blake Brown Beauty’s initial success was short-lived, and Rachel has all the details.

📢📢 One more thing before we get started: I wanted to tell you about two upcoming events. In just a few short weeks, my book—Selling Sexy: Victoria’s Secret and the Unraveling of an American Icon (please preorder it)—will be let loose into the world. Our first New York event is sold out, but if you’re in Los Angeles or Chicago, take heed: On Wednesday, October 16, at 7 p.m., my co-author Chantal Fernandez and I will be at Skylight Books in Los Angeles (Los Feliz, to be exact), in conversation with the one-and-only Hillary Kerr. There will be Las Jaras wine. R.S.V.P. for Skylight here. (I can almost guarantee we’ll eat at All Time afterward. Or before, since it is L.A.) Then, on Tuesday, October 22, at 7 p.m., we’re headed to Madison Street Books in Chicago for a conversation with Samantha Lim Achatz. (All of my husband’s high school friends better show up.) R.S.V.P. for Madison Street here. More events will be announced soon!

Mentioned in this issue: Jenni Kayne, the color of oatmeal, Laura Tedesco, Silas Capital, RŌZ, James Charles, Britney Spears, Give Back Beauty, Sandy Schreier, Fendi, Pierpaolo Piccioli, Silvia Venturini Fendi, Simon Porte Jacquemus, Chanel, Daniel Roseberry, Thom Browne, Kim Jones, Hedi Slimane, Marc Jacobs, Sofia Coppola, Luca Solca, generic luxury, Millie Bobby Brown, Karl Lagerfeld, Brat, Rick Gomez, and many more…

• Jenni Kayne’s beauty biz gets funding: Jenni Kayne may have defined the oatmeal, Scandinavian, hygge thing that happened—the Californian version of that, of course—but the 22-year-old brand is equally serious about growing its newish beauty business, Oak Essentials. Despite looking and feeling like an extension of Kayne’s existing lifestyle business, the brand was purposely not named after its founder; I’m told that the goal was always to spin out beauty into its own thing.

  Since debuting in 2021, the line has had success selling skincare, bodycare, and fragrance mostly through the company’s existing D.T.C. business (and in Jenni Kayne’s freestanding stores), but as everyone knows, it’s impossible to truly scale in beauty without a major retail partner. It just so happens that Oak Essentials is about to launch in Ulta Beauty, which is why the brand just raised close to $10 million from Silas Capital, an investor in Makeup by Mario and Line Sheet’s favorite haircare line, RŌZ, and Unilever Ventures. Annual revenue for Kayne’s main business last year was over $100 million, and Oak Essentials is said to be on track to do about $20 million in revenue this year. –Rachel Strugatz

• Pierpaolo at Fendi sounds like a fine idea: A few weeks ago, the fashion historian and couture collector Sandy Schreier wished her friend, Pierpaolo Piccioli, a happy birthday by posting to her Instagram grid. In the caption, she mentioned that there would soon be an announcement regarding Piccioli, specifically, “how and where the brilliant designer will be spending the upcoming years.” In the comments, Piccioli thanked her for her warm wishes.

  Now the word in Paris is that he’s headed to the most obvious house imaginable. Fendi was always a possibility for Piccioli, one of few designers whose life is already set up in Rome, where the LVMH-owned brand is based. (The designers who want to stay in Rome want to stay in Rome. There are about four of them.) The arrival of Piccioli to design womenswear at Fendi would mean the exit of Kim Jones, and I’m told there is slated to be an announcement within the next few weeks. A rep for Fendi did not respond to a request for comment.

  If a Piccioli appointment materializes, I doubt it’s come as a surprise to Jones, whose tenure has been dotted with near-constant speculation that he would be replaced. (Remember all that Alessandro Michele noise?) It doesn’t feel as though Jones, who followed Karl Lagerfeld as the women’s creative director after the Kaiser’s passing in 2019, was set up to succeed. But tides are turning at the brand, which was once the third-largest handbag seller in the group after Louis Vuitton and Dior. (Celine might have surpassed it by this point.) There is a new C.E.O., just in time for next year’s 100th anniversary.

  Piccioli, who worked at Fendi designing accessories prior to joining Valentino all those years ago, would be complementary to Silvia Venturini Fendi, the longtime menswear designer and accessories creative director, who is certainly staying through the anniversary. Piccioli gets the Fendi culture, and he also designs pretty dresses. And all anybody wants right now is a pretty dress.

• Is a Chanel announcement imminent?: Over the last couple of days, I’ve heard from sources in the U.S. and Europe that Chanel has suddenly “gone quiet” on the external communications front, with some speculating a decision has been made regarding the next creative director and that it will be announced following the show, as soon as the contract is signed. (Could also just be paranoia, you never know with these things, although it doesn’t feel that way in this case.)

  To recap: The names in the mix have been Simon Porte Jacquemus, Daniel Roseberry, Thom Browne, and of course… Line Sheet’s top two picks, Hedi Slimane and Marc Jacobs. I honestly hope it’s one of these guys… (Or Sofia Coppola, obviously.) If I was a betting lady, I’d bet on Jacquemus, although Slimane remains the Platonic ideal and I really hope it’s Marc.

• Luxury’s soft patch: Luca Solca has a good piece in BoF about the situation in the luxury sector. The stocks are getting obliterated, spending in China remains weak, and the global economy has slowed down. Luca says not to worry too much, though. This is less about luxury itself and more about macro headwinds, and spending will pick up again by mid-2025. I tend to agree (Luca knows what’s up), but there are two things that need to be accounted for by the industry’s puppet masters.

  First, on the megabrand level, much of the product looks generic, and the customer will no longer stand for that. (This helps to explain why luxury executives have returned to hiring “real designers,” rather than product designers, in this latest round of musical chairs.) Also, the spending habits of the luxury consumer have irrevocably changed. Twenty years ago, it was not common to own a designer bag. Today, it’s very common. What happens when the special thing is no longer special? Consumers are increasingly looking at fashion as a complement to their primary consumption motivation—a vacation, a special event, etcetera. (It helps to explain why everyone wants the aforementioned pretty dresses. They’re buying designer clothes and bags for dinner more than they are for day.) This was all in the works pre-pandemic and is picking back up again.

Blake Brown’s sales at Target totaled close to $5 million in the brand’s first three and a half weeks––a strong debut for any beauty brand, celebrity or not. “On launch day alone, Blake Brown had the five bestselling haircare items at Target,” the Target’s chief commercial officer, Rick Gomez, said in an August earnings call, referring to the line as “the most successful haircare launch that we have ever had.” Then, there was a significant decline. According to two sources who shared updated figures, weekly sales of Blake Brown Beauty at Target dropped more than 87 percent between August 11, when sales peaked, and September 15.

Are Blake Brown’s sales suffering because of the Blakelash or because Lively went quiet and stopped promoting the brand? It’s a chicken-or-egg question. The steepest declines took place in September—right around the time Lively took a break from social media, which also happened to be exactly when she should have doubled down on promoting Blake Brown. Even two years after Rhode’s launch, Hailey Bieber still floods fans with beauty-related content, whether it’s her own behind-the-scenes photos or sharing fan-generated posts. And I’m sure she’d continue at that pace from the center of any P.R. hurricane. “You have to keep your foot on the gas,” a beauty executive told me. “Selena [Gomez] and Hailey are on it all the time, posting stuff and showing up to events.”

Lively, however, last posted to her Instagram grid about Blake Brown on August 4, more than seven weeks ago, which is an obscenely long time to not talk about your very new brand in influencer culture, and particularly in the beauty influencer trade, where a largely undifferentiated project’s only chance at success is to draft off its founder. She should have been bombarding her 45 million Instagram followers with a near-constant stream of hair-related content (GRWM morning routine videos, washing your hair, styling your hair, etcetera) because the only way to get people to buy your stuff is to not let them sleep on your brand, even for a day or two. Basically, every celebrity should be treating their beauty brands how Charli XCX treated Brat.

Relatedly, I’ve been hearing a lot lately about Lively’s partner, Give Back Beauty, which once mostly worked in fragrance (it holds the license for Zegna and Tommy Hilfiger), but has started to play in celebrity beauty brands. In 2021, Millie Bobby Brown partnered with the incubator on her beauty line, Florence by Mills, after she bought out her original partner, Beach House Group. Currently, though, Give Back Beauty is in the news because it’s being sued by Revlon and its subsidiary, Elizabeth Arden. The beauty giant filed a lawsuit in August alleging that Give Back Beauty sabotaged its 20-year fragrance relationship with Britney Spears by hiring four Revlon staffers, who then took Spears’ business to Give Back Beauty. Heavy cake.

Anyway, it looks like Give Back Beauty may have bigger problems than Blake Brown. Meanwhile, in recent paparazzi shots, Lively’s hair is pulled back in a messy ponytail, which would be just fine… if she wasn’t trying to sell us a hair care brand.

Until tomorrow,
Lauren