Hi, and welcome to Line Sheet. On the subject of Republicans, most of my conversations last week—with media, retail, and luxury executives—were about the new administration in Washington.
Plus, as a treat, friend-of-Line-Sheet and Soft Power author Marisa Meltzer is making a very special guest appearance with a dispatch from the Willy Chavarria show in Paris. For the main event, I checked in on Phoebe Philo Limited—where, in typical startup fashion, change is almost always afoot. Listen here and here. The Arnaults, and several European executives who are more familiar with this style of politics, see Trump as a purely transactional businessman.
They believe business will be better, and everyone is tired of the hypocrisy of the left and the Democrats. And the woke movement went too far.
My biggest takeaway from two days in New York is that business is tough, tough, tough right now for most companies. If that requires C. Last week, as I watched many consumer outlets—including Vogue —near-breathlessly cover the wares of the Trumps and Vances , I wondered whether we might see Ivanka Trump or Usha Vance on a cover someday soon. Melania is a nonstarter. Wintour enlists her Vogue team to help her out on extracurricular activities, including the Met Gala and various political affairs, which indirectly means that many of them—although not all—are self-selecting Democrats.
Wintour is generally beloved by her current staff. Except at New York magazine. Of course, Elle could easily commission the writers itself—most of them freelance for a variety of publications—so you have to assume that Substack is testing a new distribution channel and Elle is just desperate to try anything. In the meantime, I guess the benefit to Elle is that the Substack writers will link to Elle. Most of the basics reading the website will have never heard of Substack.
