Hi, welcome to Line Sheet. Homestretch, people. Last time I wrote to you, the Ralph show hadn’t even started. How far we’ve come… (No, really. Many of us spent hours traveling to Bridgehampton and back!) I hope to catch you before the end of Tuesday, because after that I’m retiring to Puck’s Tribeca offices for our company’s on-site off-site. (I’ve been promised there will be zero trust falls.)

The good news is there are two more issues this week. My thoughts on the shows at large, starting with Proenza and ending with Michael Kors, will be featured on Wednesday. Remember, Thursday is a mailbag, so send those questions along A.S.A.P., either by responding to this email or texting me through Line Sheet’s super-duper SMS channel. Don’t forget to sign up. It works in the U.K. and France now!

🚨🚨 Programming note: Tomorrow on Fashion People, I’m joined by my B.F.F. Leah Chernikoff, who is also the executive editor of Harper’s Bazaar. Leah and I started working together in 2010, and for years we shared an apartment during Paris Fashion Week, where we developed our own language in the delirium of filing copy at 3 a.m. I hope you feel some of that, um, energy in this very special New York Fashion Week edition of the pod. Listen here and here.

No Ozempic jokes today. Saving for later this week. In the meantime, be sure to subscribe to Puck not to miss them.

Mentioned in this issue: Alaïa, Pieter Mulier, Myriam Serrano, Richemont, Sarah Burton, Givenchy, Rihanna, Jahleel Weaver, Y/Project, Glenn Martens, Renzo Rosso, John Galliano, LVMH, Ralph Lauren, Vogue, Condé Nast, Loewe, Jonathan Anderson, Katie Grand, Fabien Baron, and many more…

• We did it!: Seems like the fashion C.E.O.s want to give us what we want? I tried to figure out when I first wrote about Sarah Burton’s talks with Givenchy… and it appears to have been November 2023. Now, almost a year later, the deal is signed, and Burton is set to debut her… debut collection in March 2025. No mention in the release of whether her responsibilities will include a couture collection on top of the men’s and women’s ready-to-wear, but the rumor over the summer was that she wanted to do couture immediately, and that this was a sticking point on getting the deal done. Who knows if that’s true, but regardless, the appointment of Burton is more proof of an industry wave in favor of capital-D Designers, not marketers. (Haider Ackermann at Tom Ford and Pieter Mulier at Alaïa are two other great examples. More on the latter below…)

  It also says a lot that LVMH took so much time looking for a replacement for Matthew M. Williams, who wasn’t the right fit from the start. (It’s not his fault. And, you know, Jacob Gallagher is on the recording saying that he loved those collections.) Of course, the fact that Burton’s longtime creative partner, “Lee” Alexander McQueen, started his career in Paris at Givenchy offers the nice bit of symmetry we all crave. Can’t wait.

• Solving the Martens mystery: After Y/Project announced last week that Belgian designer Glenn Martens was stepping down from his role as creative director, people had questions. Wasn’t he the founder of the brand? (No, that was Yohan Serfaty, who died in 2013. The other founder, Gilles Elalouf, died last year.) I assume there’s a chance that Martens, who started as Serfaty’s assistant, was simply ready to move on. After all, that’s a lot of emotional baggage, and he has plenty to do in his other job as creative director of Diesel, the cash cow of Renzo Rosso’s fashion group, OTB.

  And yet, the current theory is that he is heading to Maison Margiela, also a part of OTB, and that John Galliano is headed back to LVMH, perhaps to revive the defunct John Galliano label. (I’d heard that Martina Tiefenthaler was already installed at Margiela, but perhaps that was on a project basis; perhaps she’s slated to work with Martens; perhaps it was B.S.) Anyway, Martens is a giant talent and it’ll be hard for Rosso to keep him on the OTB roster without offering something the bigger groups cannot. Margiela is that something.

• Thursday’s preppy face-off: As previously mentioned, I went to the Ralph Lauren show on Thursday in Bridgehampton. Yes, it took a long time to get there. Everyone was super annoyed because it was the first day of school for lots of kids, we are all busy, and people love to complain. I didn’t mind because I had a lot of work to do and phone calls to make, and, honestly, this man—who is 84, and somehow not a Leo—has done a lot for the fashion industry. (Also, people implored him for years to bring the show back on the traditional schedule to give NYFW some much-needed juice.) It was a time to suck it up and pay respects, even if I didn’t realize the ride home would also be so long.

  All that said, enjoy Vogue writer Elise Taylor’s very funny depiction of her four-hour shuttle ride from Midtown to Khalily Stables, the barn-slash-equestrian center. I’d argue it was all worth it for Elise, if only because it was the perfect opportunity for her to wear a patchwork Ralph Lauren maxi skirt, also reportedly worn by Mischa Barton—but in her aughts heyday. I’m sure Elise agrees.

  Was it worth it for the rest of us? Being at a Ralph Lauren show is as artificial as being on a movie lot. Upon arrival, we were greeted by polo players riding on horses. The celebrities—Jude Law, Rufus Wainwright, Tom Hiddleston—milled about, looking pleased to play extras in Mr. Lauren’s cinematic life. The show opened with Enya’s “Sail Away,” the car commercial/riverboat tour anthem that I swear I’ve heard on an RL soundtrack before. The feeling of déjà vu stretched to the clothes, which are indistinguishable from one season to another, though I did note a series of crinkled-silk suiting for women that looked new.

  Again, I’m not sure there’s a reason to complain about this. This is what the company does, and the company is not going to change until it has to. As I’m sure you’ve heard, they also reconstructed a version of The Polo Bar right on the property, down to the nailhead-studded leather chairs and butter dishes, all for a cost of $16 million, I was told. (The company did not respond to my request for comment on the number.) Honestly, not bad given everything that went into it.

  Now, here comes the unsolicited advice: When I mentioned how much money they spent, one friend (okay, it was Becky) kindly suggested that they throw an epic rager at The Polo Bar instead and hire Taylor Swift to perform (she was in town for Electric Lady Studios owner Lee Foster’s wedding to Karen Elson, after all). That might have been more expensive, sure, but also more effective. And I’ll never give up the dream of the destination show at Ralph’s Colorado ranch. Not only would I pay my own way to attend, I’d pay the company to attend. (How about like… 250 bucks? I’ll stay at an Airbnb nearby.)

  Back in the city, most people I knew were at the J.Crew dinner at the New York Public Library. I can’t help but compare and contrast: J.Crew was founded in 1983, 16 years after Ralph. If J.Press is preppy culture, and Ralph projects preppy culture, J.Crew reflects preppy culture. Or at least it did for a long time. Right now, J.Crew is more of a fashion brand than anything else, and every time I’m convinced their current approach is going to sputter out, they do better.

  Anyway, this dinner to celebrate the very clever relaunch of the catalog was pretty fabulous by all accounts: Relaxed, elegant, and a good mix of people, including (recent collaborator) Maryam Nassirzadeh, Amber Valletta, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Peter Sarsgaard. They also did a smart thing and had celebrity stylists attend and bring their clients as dates (Karla Welch with Sarah Paulson, Jamie Mizrahi with Riley Keough). Chefs Lee Hanson and Riad Nasr, who recently opened Le Veau d’Or in Midtown, did the food as an homage to La Côte Basque, an old Midtown society babes hangout infamous for housing Capote’s Swans. (I wasn’t there, but my guess is that they didn’t need the La Côte Basque reference…) I have no idea how much it cost, but it was not $16 million. My guestimate would be less than $1 million, given that there was no marquee musical performance.

  Obviously, it’s not a competition. One company is public and generates billions of dollars a year, the other is private and makes more like hundreds of millions. But on Thursday night, J.Crew won the sentiment race.

• Those Saks Fifth Avenue windows really work: On Saturday, Loewe and Saks hosted a dinner on the terrace at the Pace Gallery downtown to celebrate the LVMH-backed brand’s takeover of the flagship store’s windows, which I’m starting to believe are the world’s most effective physical marketing platform for luxury goods. (The foot traffic is arguably unparalleled.) Loewe and Jonathan Anderson, who flew in for the party, drew the cool celebrities, including Myha’la, Meg Ryan (!), the guy from Mare of Easttown, and fashion’s B.F.F. Greta Lee. Saks provided blankets. (It was chilly out there.)

  Anyway, I was happy for Saks chief merchandising officer Tracy Margolies and fashion director Roopal Patel, who have worked very hard over the past few years to build significant businesses for fast-growing, big-but-not-the-biggest brands like Loewe, which still rely on wholesale to make their numbers. It’s fun when something commercially successful can be cool and fun and creative, too.

• Vogue World’s next stop: The big rumor this week is Los Angeles. 2025. I have no other info. See you there!

But you could feel the difference inside the Guggenheim. People came early. Philippe Fortunato, the former LVMH executive and current C.E.O. of Richemont’s fashion group—comprising Alaïa, Chloé, Delvaux, and a bunch of other brands that you have probably never heard of—flitted around the room, greeting guests, his eyes smiling just a bit. Many of the late Azzedine Alaïa’s most adored supermodels—Stephanie Seymour, Naomi Campbell, Amber Valletta, etcetera—were there, too. Rihanna, who arrived straight from the Daily Front Row Fashion Media Awards with her stylist, Jahleel Weaver, was the last to arrive, and yet I have no idea how late she actually was. (Not very, I don’t think.) The energy in the room was very good—the crowd on the ground floor was so relaxed, and there was so much to look at, and so many people to talk to—that I’m confident not one person glanced at their watch.

Mulier is special. It was sacrilegious to change the house of Alaïa, and yet he did just that, and convinced everyone else it was a good idea. He also revved up a steady, but static, business in a market where, up until a year or two ago, medium-sized brands were all but dead. In the pre-Pieter era, the big LVMH and Kering brands had essentially boxed out Richemont’s two best-known names—Alaïa and Chloé—at retail. There was seemingly no way to fix the situation because the giant brands were prioritized on the shop floor, and they had more money to market and distribute.

The company has yet to do a big revenue reveal, but I suspect sales have tripled, maybe even quadrupled, since Mulier’s arrival. (Remember, in 2017, it was only about $55 million.) With this Guggenheim show, Mulier is now officially leading the fashion conversation. After working behind Raf Simons for so many years, he emerged as a natural star. He shares his thoughts publicly, without pretension. The close-knit team that followed him to Richemont appears devoted. I’m told that several of their parents flew in for the 200-seat show. (There were roughly 100 standing guests from the local fashion schools.)

The new Richemont formula (original designs + original product + increased distribution) is now being applied to Chloé, with the arrival of Chemena Kamali. (It’s still early, but all indications point towards it working well there too.) So while the increased speculation around a potential Mulier appointment at Chanel is exciting, I feel a pang in my heart just thinking about it. Surely, Mulier is more than capable, and who knows what he could do with unlimited resources. But the industry needs brands like Alaïa. How lucky are we that we get to be here for this?

I was seated next to Nara Smith at the Ralph Lauren dinner. She’s beautiful and lovely, and I did a very bad job of making small talk with her (and husband Lucky Blue Smith) because I was too busy discussing rumors of a famous person’s allegedly open marriage with the others at the table. I want a second chance! For more on Nara specifically and her interest in making toothpaste from scratch, follow her on Instagram. Then listen to this thoughtful podcast on the rise of the trad wife. [Instagram and Critics at Large]

Should I get the Bally boat shoes? [5 Things You Should Buy]

We. Are. Back. Fabien Baron on the best pod in town! [Liz Tilberis Would Have Hated the Name]

I’ve never been more embarrassed in my life. [Cosmo]

Chloe Malle is really trying to make Vogue.com funny, which I like. This time, it’s regarding Susan Alexandra and Rachel Antonoff’s spoofy dog (and fashion and accessories) show, hosted by the Poog podcast’s Kate Berlant and Jacqueline Novak at St. Ann’s Warehouse on Friday. The event was too long, but I forgive them, and I thank Chloe for her service. [Vogue]

Until Wednesday,
Lauren