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Welcome back to The Daily Courant, your
afternoon crib sheet featuring Puck’s latest reporting. 

First up today, Eriq Gardner gets on the blower with U.K. solicitor Mark Stephens to discuss the legal obstacles facing Prince Harry in his showdown with Rupert Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers. To wit: Even if the Duke of Sussex can prove his phone-hacking claim, does
the incident fall outside the statute of limitations? 

Plus, below the fold: Lauren Sherman, Rachel Strugatz, and Sarah Shapiro assess Line Sheet readers’ most burning end-of-year fashion world questions. Tara Palmeri traces the limits of Trump’s executive powers with conservative legal scholar John Yoo. Eriq estimates
the next shoe to drop in Blake Lively’s legal battle against Justin Baldoni. On The Grill Room, Dylan Byers and John Heilemann reflect on the year’s most significant media macro trends—and anoint its three biggest winners and sorriest losers. On Fashion People, Lauren huddles up with Sunita Kumar Nair, author of CBK: Carolyn Bessette Kennedy: A Life in Fashion, to consider the
never-ending CBK phenomenon. And on The Powers That Be, Lauren joins Ben Landy to take stock of Versace, Jimmy Choo, and Michael Kors in the wake of Capri’s failed $8.5 billion merger with Tapestry. 

MEDIA

Nearly 30 years after Rupert Murdoch’s News Group tabloid empire
allegedly hacked Prince Harry’s voicemail in pursuit of salacious stories, the Duke of Sussex is finally taking his case to court. So what kind of drama can we expect when the trial begins in January? In this roving and illuminating conversation with Mark Stephens, a U.K. solicitor from the London law firm Howard Kennedy, who has been closely tracking the proceedings, Stephens lays out the central question and dramas of the case—from the critical “time-bar” issue to the what, exactly, Harry will
be grilled about in the witness box—before candidly assessing why the son of the famously press-hounded Princess Diana seems so determined to see this through, even if, inevitably, he becomes the financial loser. 

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FASHION

Whether you’re a strategic-group advisor, a Blake Lively obsessive, or
simply betting on the date of the next Chanel price hike, there’s a little something for everyone in this end-of-year fashion mailbag issue, in which Lauren Sherman, Rachel Strugatz, and Sarah Shapiro address Line Sheet readers’ most burning questions. Why is the notion of an American LVMH so far-fetched? How has Blake Lively’s legal war with her It Ends With Us director and co-star Justin Baldoni affected sales for Blake Brown Beauty? And will Glossier finally
be acquired in 2025? 

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HOLLYWOOD

Last weekend, The New York Times published “Inside a Hollywood
Smear Machine,” the now-viral exposé detailing how Justin Baldoni’s publicists smeared co-star Blake Lively during the release of It Ends With Us. Eriq pored over the legal documents to identify some of the most critical revelations: Among them, an August 14 “strategy email” from publicist Stephanie Jones in which she recommended “flooding the zone” with positive stories about Baldoni, and mobilizing a “robust network of supporters and third-party advocates” to provide counternarratives
to Lively’s allegations. But now that Jones is filing her own lawsuit against Baldoni, accusing him of breach of contract, this messy saga is only going to get messier. 

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WASHINGTON

Donald Trump has promised to do many things on Day One: launch the
biggest mass deportation in American history, place tariffs on Canadian and Mexican imports, end birthright citizenship, pardon the J6 insurrectionists, etcetera. But during his first term, we saw how his executive orders—from “closing the border” to the so-called Muslim ban—got tied up in the courts. To discuss it all, Tara connects with conservative legal scholar John Yoo to examine the limits of the president’s powers—and explicitly lay out what Trump can and cannot do when he enters
office. 

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MEDIA

Greenroom machine John Heilemann joins Dylan to look back on this year in
media: the procession of entertainment and tech C.E.O.s kissing Trump’s ring, the headwinds facing Jeff Bezos at The Washington Post, the rise of Elon and the twisted power of X, the most significant media macro trends, the industry’s biggest winners and three sorriest losers, and why 2024 was the year of the podcast in politics.

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FASHION

On this fan-service episode of Fashion People, Lauren is joined
by Sunita Kumar Nair, author of CBK: Carolyn Bessette Kennedy: A Life in Fashion. They discuss how the former Calvin Klein publicist became a legitimate style icon (a description that should be reserved for only a handful of people in history). They also discuss CBK’s impact on the American fashion industry in the 1990s (it was big, hello Narciso Rodriguez) and how Nair, a creative director and stylist, ended up writing the book on one of Gen X’s most watched women.

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FASHION

Lauren Sherman joins Ben to dish about what's next for Versace, Jimmy
Choo, and Michael Kors after Capri’s $8.5 billion merger with Tapestry fell apart. Plus: How shareholders lost out on billions as Nordstrom, the family-controlled luxury department store chain, belatedly goes private after 50 years.

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Now

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