L.A. Story

0:04Hello and welcome to Fashion People. I'm Lauren Sherman, writer of Cuck's Fashion and Beauty Memo Line Sheet. And today with me on the show is Jacob Gallagher from the New York Times. We're talking Hermes, Xenia, shopping in Los Angeles, the upcoming menswear shows, and so much more.

0:22Happy Tuesday, everyone. Hope you're having a great week. I am back in Paris and here for the rest of this week, Monday online sheet, more from Los Angeles and Hermes and Xenia. I also weighed in on the Brian Boy Chanel discourse, which I find extremely fascinating. And as well as Frida Giannini's Renaissance, courtesy of Instagram. It's been fascinating. That's been fascinating to watch. And today Malik Morris is back with a big YNA update. So please subscribe, like, and subscribe. And I hope to see you around. And let's get going with Jacob.

1:00Jacob Gallagher, welcome back to Fashion People. Thank you for having me back. I'm happy to be back. Happy to have you. The fans are just going to go wild. They missed you. I guess we'll see. Yeah, we'll see. I had fun with you last week in Los Angeles. Yeah, it was good to see you so much. Back, I guess, on your old turf, but yeah. True. So what do you think about LA? Because you really did it. Every single day I saw you, you'd be like, I went to these 15 different places. I saw art. I saw 15, 18 different people. I was supposed to the only people to see in L.A. I saw you really worked hard. You got the New York Times money's worth on this trip.

1:40What did you what was your general observation of that city right now? So I would say I hadn't been to L.A. in two years. And so I was I was kind of just trying to fit in as much as I could. I think that it's interesting because I think from one perspective, we were at dinner. I'm actually I'm writing this right now. So hopefully by the time this comes out, my newsletter about this will be out. Like, you know, we were at dinner and a friend of yours kind of said that L.A. is a very bad shopping city for women, but a very good shopping city for men. And I think that I probably agree with that. Like, I think that the men's stores in L.A.

2:15are quite good. And I think you can tell that they're doing well and expanding. And, you know, like Mohawk General looked completely different. And that store is now pretty impressive. You know, everyone was talking about how Beams Japan is opening its flagship somewhere in downtown pretty soon. Departamento in downtown was in a new location. I just was like, oh, all this has kind of changed and everything looks nice and everyone's spending. And, you know, I mean, L.A. is such a bizarre place because on a random Tuesday, you can just be in a store and it's packed and people are spending money.

2:51And you're like, what do you what do these people do for a living? What is going on here? Why are they buying the row on a Tuesday afternoon? But, you know, I also just think there was perhaps a moment where it felt like there were brands that were maybe emerging out of L.A. I don't know if I feel that as much anymore. Like I did go out and see Eli in Venice and. Eli Russell Linitz. Eli Russell Linitz. He now feels like the one that's, that's kind of, kind of out there in terms of like a fashion brand that's out there. I guess, you know, Micah Miri of course is also still in LA, but it was more just for me, kind of getting the lay of the land of, of what people were buying and kind of LA as a shopping city.

3:28Cause I was also just interested in, you know, Xenia Nermez being there. where was the money being spent and how was it being spent uh that was kind of what i was trying to figure out yeah do who said that molly or amanda i think that uh amanda said that yeah yeah yeah i think it's interesting you mentioned mohawk general which i was with scott sternberg of entire world and band of outsiders fame quite a bit last week because i conveniently rented a house across the street from his. So I was like, he was basically my temporary husband for second husband for the week. But we were talking about Mohawk and he was just saying like, he will go there and drop money no matter what, because they do such a good job with it.

4:12And I shop for Dan, my actual husband there a lot. The women's no, no bueno. Like they have all the right brands, but everything I've ever bought from there, I end up selling and it's not the right stuff whereas the men's is great and it's um you know from the drees to the stucy like everything is just there's always something really good there and and discovery and all of that but yeah i tend to agree with that that there is there's good vintage in la for women but that's basically and the bodie store i guess the bodie store in paris i prefer over both of them but i think that the one in LA is really nice.

4:52And that whole kind of area around Melrose where Bodie is. But yeah, it's an interesting place because a store can be dead. The one that we discussed quickly was Maxfield, which is not dead. There's like tons of people in Maxfield all the time. It's amazing. And you understand why Phoebe Philo chose Maxfield over other options of where to sell. But I think it's such an isolating place. Everybody is just in their house all the time. So some stores are just totally empty, but they could do like$70 ,000 in shipping stuff to someone's house for them to try on. And that's the part of it. It's a hard place no matter what to sort of get your bearings but it's obviously such a huge uh driver of revenue for so many companies that they were willing to have like hermes and xenia two of the companies that are still performing really well in this market because their client tends to be that like very high high high end client for sure chose to and dior as well chose to have their off-piste shows there so what did you think of the shows this week maybe we can start with Hermes since that was that was like the big big reason we all went and then Xenia two months later was like we're also showing there which was very convenient for everyone uh yeah very very shrewd timing by Xenia uh I would say uh very canny of them to tack it on there um I found that to be a very good Hermes show I I thought you know I I definitely think that of the this the few women's Hermes shows that I've been to that was probably I think my favorite one.

6:37I think that was probably the best one. And I felt like there was something, you know, you get some level of anxiety, I think, or at least I do when you hear these destination shows, you're like, oh God, is this going to be some, is there going to be some corniness here? I always kind of have that concern in my head of, you know, how much are they going to lean too much into the LA of it all or wherever they happen, wherever these brands happen to be. And I felt like wisely that show felt like it could have been anywhere. And I think that it wore whatever it's kind of American coastal awareness.

7:11It wore that pretty lightly and it was just nice clothing. And I thought it was very well composed. And, you know, certainly I think you can I like an Hermes show where you can really tell the Hermes authority on craft. And it definitely felt like that. And there are a lot of I thought the leathers were kind of beautiful. I will say I did not love the I dream of genie style, like fringe leg pantsuit thing happening. Like I could not wrap my head around that one. It looked better on the runway than it did on the rack somehow. But it did. I was because I guess you kind of couldn't fully tell what it was on the runway to me.

7:46But I was like, that's not a good garment. I did not like that. But everything else I think did kind of work for me. And I felt, you know, definitely felt like a reflection of look at how big we are as a company to slap everyone to Bel Air, to build a pavilion on top of a hilltop where evidently Jay-Z and Beyonce had had a party previously. like every everything about it was just a very flexi setting and and that listen again good autumn it worked i thought people left and had a good evening and and you know it was a good collection yeah i i agree about the sequined one piece thing it's interesting because her last nadege van he or bonnie or however you say it um do you know since you speak french jacob I was going to say, I'm going to leave this to you.

8:39You're the Parisian resident now. I haven't started my classes yet. During your time there in Paris. I heard at the dinner the night before Diane, the US CEO, pronounced it in a way that I was not expecting. So I had always thought it was like Vani. But do you want to correct me? No, no, go on. Go on. Fine. Fine. Anyway, in her last collection, she had a one piece thing that was like maybe eel skin or something. like and it was also not good I don't know if it's the one piece of it all but I think look I thought the collection was great and I loved the colors I love I love the way she I was talking to someone at the show and essentially what she does with the with the bags which I forgot to include I think in my in my show notes but um is she goes to the bag people and she essentially shops their collection and says, I want this bag in this size with this color leather and the same with the shoes.

9:40And I love that there were like satin bags and I mean, satin shoes and satin dresses. And there was like a little bit of an eighties thing. And it felt to me way more in conversation with what's happening in fashion right now than it typically does. I really love her clothes. I think she's like super sharp and to the point. And this felt like, you know, if you look at Valentino or Chanel that are very sort of 80s inspired, but modern, there was something to it that there was a lot of sort of more embroidery than usual. There were a lot of textures. Our friend Becky is always saying that Hermes shows are too leather heavy.

10:17Obviously, they have to display the leather, but she feels like they go a little too far. I thought this was a really good example of using other textures and making the leather look more textured to kind of lighten it up like the velvet uh there was more color more print all of that stuff but yeah i thought it was i thought it was more in the conversation which was interesting the other thing is like that pavilion and all of that stuff what i wrote about it was like if you're gonna do something like that that was the chicest version of what you're gonna do correct build a structure you get kevin and charles the cool art directors to design it with you get a cool architect to build it they build it in three weeks.

10:58It was like this beautiful butter yellow, the invitation when I got it, because I was like, I'm not going to get an invitation because I'm not staying at the hotel. I was really sad. I get the invitation, the most beautiful invitation I've ever seen. It was like the lightest yellow ever with green writing and this little satin ribbon. And it was just so elegant. And the thing that I thought was interesting is they're doing, they're more in the conversation in other ways, too. Miley Cyrus was at that show. Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Nick Kroll, sure. These are people who have inherited wealth who would be Hermes clients.

11:35That makes sense. Ina Garten was at a show a couple of seasons ago, which was amazing. Miley Cyrus, that's like having a real celeb at your show. That, to me, is an indication that they're playing a little bit more in this fashion conversation. And I thought if you're going to do it, do it the way it still felt like it was the Hermes way, even though they're having they're not calling it a resort show, but it's a resort show. They're not, you know, all these things that they're like, it's we don't do it the same. They are doing it, but in their way. And I thought it was really nicely executed.

12:09And afterwards, there was a long line to get you had to take golf carts down to to the cars that they had for everybody and and to like get to if you wanted to go to the hotel to get your car or whatever and the line was very long and I ended up staying later with Alyssa Zachary from High Sport because she she knows Nadege and like I just she kept being like I have to talk to this person I have to talk to this person and I I ended up waiting with her and the thing Nadege said that I thought was interesting because I said it felt like a little messier. And she said, well, I would call it freer.

12:43And she said, you really have to be a sniper in Paris. You have to be so to the point. And here she could be a little more open. And I was talking to someone else who said they just find that these collections of hers tend to be better. And I always thought that about like Maria Grazia. I saw she did a collection where they I I feel like it was Calabasas where they built this. It was like somewhere and it was the New Mexico artist woman vaginas. What's her name? Georgia O 'Keeffe. Yeah. Georgia O 'Keeffe inspired. And it was great. It was like the best collection I've ever seen of hers. I always think Nicola Jaskier's resort collections are better.

13:26I think it gives them an opportunity to sort of play. And if you do it right, it benefits the client. It's something interesting for media to look at. So I thought they really hit it out of the ballpark or whatever that saying is. I thought Xenia was also good. But to me, the impressive thing was Villa Xenia at the Chateau Marmont, which was crazy. Tell us about your experience with Jodo Xenia at the Chateau Marmont Villa Xenia. Well, I just want to make one more comment about Hermes, which is that it is funny that we talked a lot about the pavilion being built. I'm going to go to Europe, what, in two weeks now, the men's show start, like less than that.

14:08And so many brands build things there for their shows. Like, it is funny. Like, it did feel like the European mentality of, yeah, we'll just build a thing and put it there. And it's a box on a hill, like obviously. But it was so much prettier than any of those, like, big things. It was so much prettier than the Dior giant boxes they make. You are correct on that front. But yeah. And I will just say, you know, my kind of walkaway thought with Nadege in a certain way was she's now, I mean, I asked her about it. Like, you can't not ask her about longevity because she has been there for longer than most designers now.

14:41And, you know, I think that you can read that in so many ways. I felt like I was reading this as, yeah, this is what happens when you have a designer there and they're settled in and they know what they're doing. and you give them the confidence to feel like they can do what they want to do in these moments. And that's why I think it's funny because we talk so much about, I mean, we talk all the time, who's going where and, you know, all these changes and everything like that. And then when you have someone that's stable and that has been there for a while, you kind of see the, you can see the fluctuations and what they do differently.

15:14And it makes it almost easier for us in a way, because we're not talking about newness all the time or debut or what have you. We're just talking about what is probably a mid-career show and, you know, where that fits into both her work and the brand itself. And I just I wanted to mention that because I just kind of walked away with that thought of like, oh, you know, we don't have that many, you know, and we certainly don't have that many women designers. We don't have that many designers that have had kind of a tenure like that anymore. And, you know, who knows? I mean, if she goes the route of Veronique over there at Hermes, she might be there for another couple more decades.

15:50But I guess I give her another 10 just from kind of getting a sense of her. I don't know if she wants to be there for 40 for 40 years. But but yeah, I also think of an important thing to note is that her first few collections were not well received. And she was not a person who people knew a lot about. All they knew was that she worked at The Row and she worked for Celine and she had worked maybe Margiela too, like all the cool brands she had worked in the studio and she had been at The Row for a long time, I think four years, which is pretty long for them in particular with designers. And I liked it from the beginning because I think she's cool and interesting.

16:32a lot of people really didn't like it at the beginning and it took i don't know at least five years for people to get on board and whereas you know the designers before her were christophe la mer who is a quiet designer but really highly regarded i don't think anyone ever pans a la mer especially now but like even back then i don't think people were panning la mer shows and then before that Gautier which was like and then before that Margiela so like any other place she wouldn't have made it and they kind of were just like you know what Hermes comes first and we believe in this person and they gave her the room to grow and now she's sort of coming into her own and she's gonna launch couture for them so I think definitely 10 more years but um but it's an interesting it's is kind of one another reason hermes is singular and and is not as much as my piece on monday is a lot about like they're starting to play in in these markets that they never had before they launched beauty color beauty they're launching skincare in 2028 grace wells bonner a person whose career you've probably followed closer than anyone else she's their menswear designer she makes hit items how are they going to deal with that like I was thinking about all the shoes that Nadege has done or commissioned the clog and the cowboy boots and things and and how that sort of changed the way our generation thinks about Hermes and so it's a really interesting moment for that company where they are still they sort of stand alone but they're trying to play more with with how the consumer consumes the other brands.

18:16And that's tricky. And it'll be interesting to see how the Dumas family balances that and manages it over the next couple of decades.

18:30Speaking of another family. Yeah. Not sixth generation, but I believe third generation. Well, fourth if you include his sons, but Gildo Zenia. What a guy. We both got to spend some time with him last week. Yeah, I mean, I've met with Gildo before. This was your first time meeting Gildo, correct? Yes, it was amazing. I'll never forget it. There you go. No, I also, there was a Villazenia here in New York, so I've seen this concept before, this kind of, I think I called it Universal Studios Italian Edition in my review. It's cute. It is very play acting, very theatrical, Very suited for L.A. in a certain way.

19:11I would say the gardener clipping the things, the butler greeting you. It's a lot of artifice and a lot of theatrics to lull you in to spend some money on expensive linens and silks. And I think that's brilliant. And clearly, it's a model that's working for them. They did take over a significant amount of the footprint of the Chateau Marmont, which I'm sure was not cheap whatsoever. I couldn't believe it. They even rented the pool area. I was like, how can you rent that for six days? It was amazing. Yeah. So, you know, I think that there on the men's side, there is just a client that does tend to want to shop like that in privacy.

19:54They want a real handheld experience. They want to be told that they look great and stuff. They want to be directed toward things that they should be looking at and buying. And I think that it's a smart model. It's not obviously see now, buy now in the sense of you get it. It's see now, buy now in the sense of you get it in six months. It's just a real made to order trunk show type thing that they just happen to stage at a very high production level. As I said, it clearly is working for them. They've done it now for several iterations. And I think, you know, I talked, I asked Gildo this. I said, why did you not do this in New York where I know your customer base is stronger than it is here?

20:35And he kind of funnily pointed up to the sun a little bit and was like, well, you know, it's also it's just nice here for one thing. And and two, I think that particularly for what they show, it does feel very and correct me if I'm wrong. You live there. It does feel very kind of L.A. rich guy and its sensibility, the linens and the kind of silk investment things and what have you. It's not really formal in any way, but it's expensive casual wear. And that feels very, you know, that feels like it has a customer base in L.A. And I think that probably as we speak, they're probably still taking appointments in Villa Xenia and doing quite well.

21:13Totally. Were you with me when that guy who was in like a linen Xenia suit and then had a giant ball gray snake necklace and I believe a bracelet as well? Who was I with that we talked to him? It was amazing. But I was like, this is why you do it here. Also, for these clients, that's a fun trip. If you don't live, you live in the Middle East. They've done it in Dubai as well, right? Dubai was a year ago that obviously the war kind of, I think, did really. He spoke a little bit about this. I think that they were really pushing in that direction and the war kind of made them back up a little bit.

21:51And I think America, as is the case with a lot of luxury brands right now, America looks relatively more, let's say, risk free. but they're not risk entirely free but i think there it's a safer place to put your your dollars right now yeah i i agree i i mean obviously that's that's the way to go and and we've seen that this whole sort of resort resort journey but i yeah i think also like these kind of people want to want a destination and they want a reason to take a trip and so if you're spending you know a lot of these clients are probably probably spending a million dollars in that thing or at least 500 i'm sure there are clients that are in the in the seven figures i would imagine probably a lot of six-figure clients yeah yeah so it's worth it you you take a little trip a lot of times the brands i don't know how xenia manages this but a lot of times the brands pay to fly these clients out especially if they are that in the seven figure and so yeah it it made a lot of sense to me i I thought that the Malibu pier was great.

22:59I got to Bell and Sebastian with plenty of time. It was easy to get there. Did you enjoy my driving on the way to Malibu? Were you afraid for your life? You can drive a car. I thought you got scared there for a couple of minutes. No. Okay. If I can comment though on the clothes themselves, which often get lost in these conversations. I think Alessandro Sartori, I always think of him as kind of a designer where the pandemic actually aided his design language quite a lot. I think he was moving toward this... I mean, obviously, Xenia Italian tailoring has always been about softer suiting and what have you.

23:43I think during the pandemic, he was one of those designers that really figured out how to get that alchemy of relaxed and easy feeling with something that looked a little proper, but not too proper. And it feels like the pandemic was when the boxy suiting, the super wide kind of very spongy trousers, like these kind of very tranquil color schemes that he's had that design language really since that period in particular. I remember there was a time when he kind of came back to Xenia where everyone was like his color sense and his color sense and they were really hitting on how good he was with color.

24:19I haven't necessarily felt that at Xenia in the past few years where I've been like, wow, these saturated colors, this is really like amazing. They're there, but they don't feel like they're the center stage anymore. I would say with this show, it felt like being taken out of Italy and them kind of in particular, I thought the colors, these kind of seafoam greens, these kind of, I would say like beach umbrella stripes that had a lot of saturation to them and almost pre-sun fading, they looked really nice and pleasing to me. And I'm very hungry for a little bit more color and softer color and kind of, I guess what you would call elegant color to come back in menswear.

24:58I think menswear is in even more than women's has kind of been spinning its wheels in the quiet luxury, you know, tan tasteful zone. And I, you can definitely see that in the clients that were there and in the audience, so much tan, so much Brown, so much sand color. But I think, you know, I'm, I'm going to be looking and maybe this can take us into the next topic here. like, you know, men's is coming up. I'm going to be looking for where that kind of color and pattern comes in. Men's has been so pattern averse post pandemic. And I think it's been seen as such a thing that like is hard to sell and maybe is not worth the risk.

25:33And I'm wondering like where, okay, are we ready for it again? Like, where is this going to come from? But yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think one of the things that I liked about the villa was that they had all these Xenia had some magazine called Top from like the mid 60s right up until 1980. And so they reproduced a bunch of them and they had them sort of as like mood boards and you could see a lot of the colors from that era were in his collection. My big takeaway from it, and maybe you could speak to, maybe this is just a menswear thing, but the entire operation is driven by material. material so it's like if it doesn't matter what you're doing whether you're framing it with color or silhouette or what have you it's all about those materials and and jilda was very proud of the vicuna room with with all the different suiting and and pants made and shirts made from vicuna which is a very fancy material but um that was a big thing and that and sort of the like quality of the material allowing that company in particular to move further up market, which it's done in the last, I don't know, 10 years, which is it's kind of amazing.

26:49Like you don't you when you think of businesses trying to move up market, it's pretty impossible to do that once you're established in a certain way. And they have I don't know if you think their ability to do that says something about the bigger menswear market. Well, I just think men in particular, they tend to often shop by touch and by hand feel. And I think that that is where, you know, the conversation often is less about like where something is made than what it's made from. And, you know, you can definitely see that when you go to these boutiques that, you know, are across LA that, you know, I was visiting stores and there is this kind of thing where the color palette in men's, again, is so, it feels very limited right now.

27:32And I think that retailers are almost fine with that because it's not, men don't, they're not looking for the color right now. They're looking for the texture. They're looking for the hand. They're trying to grab the garment and say, hey, this feels nice. And I think with Xenia, you know, you have those, you mentioned Vicuna, you know, Gildo was talking about this fabric they developed that is even finer than Vicuna and even more expensive. And, you know, he's telling me about$2 ,000 t-shirts and that people do buy them. And I have not seen that with my own eyes, but I do believe that when he says that.

28:02Like, I think, you know, there's, again, to go back to that, that I guess as much as I hate talking, referencing it now, it's like that quiet luxury conversation. It's like, you know, the money's got to go somewhere with the, with, with these rich guys. Like it's, it's like, they're going to spend and they're going to put their money on something and it's not going to be a loud garment. It's going to be something that is feels so nice that, you know, it's incomparable and what have you. Do I think that there, that's a hundred percent, you know, real or how much of that is placebo? I'm sure it is super fine, but how much you feel that difference on your skin, I don't really know, but yeah.