Nothing Lasts For Everlane

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2:35Hello and welcome to Fashion People. I'm Lauren Sherman, writer of Pucks Fashion and Beauty Memo Line Sheet. And today with me on the show is our very own correspondent, Malik Morris. We're here talking Sheehan's Purchase of Everlane, the Gucci and Dior cruise shows, Victoria's Secret's Latest Battle, and plenty more.

2:58Happy Tuesday, everyone. Hope you are having a great week. Last week was pretty nuts for me. It was my kid's birthday, and I went to London. I had tons of reporting. I did a bunch of other stuff, and then right after my kid's birthday party in a rainy park, I got a tip that Everlane had sold to Sheehan. It was crazy. This week in Line Sheet, you can read more about that, more about the Marc Jacobs sale to WHP. Got some numbers for you. As well as Malik's report on Victoria's Secret that we talk about a bit on the episode. Also hearing that Dario Vitale's next move could be announced pretty soon.

3:39So maybe I'll get into that later on this week or next week. if you know anything call me and of course you'll find my take on the Gucci show and all that stuff going to Disneyland in Paris tomorrow so wish me luck and let's get going Malik Morris welcome to fashion people thank you Lauren Sherman I'm so excited to be here and welcome to puck how long has it been now a month almost three months it just feels like it's A year. I know. It's growing by so fast. That's hilarious. Yeah. How could it be three months? I know. I know. Time flies. Me having fun, literally. It's true. We're having so much fun.

4:21So I wanted to talk to you today about a bunch of stuff, but I think the first thing we need to discuss is this Everlane Sheehan news. Wild, wild stuff. I mean, this is why you are who you are, but that scoop was crazy. Crazy. Look, if you... It's not, honestly, it's just because I'm old. I promise you, Malik. You always say that to me. I'm literally the only one. Who else would they tell? Who else cares except for me and you? I'm curious here. So just to give everybody like a little bit of a background, on Sunday, I learned that on Saturday, the board of Everlane approved a deal to sell to Shein, the Chinese ultra fast, well, they're based in Singapore now, but the ultra fast fashion group for$100 million valuation.

5:18I don't know what the actual terms of the deal are. I'm pretty sure no one got any cash. Maybe Al Catterton got a little, but given all the debt, my guess is that no one got cash. A few people got cash when they sold a majority stake to Al Catterton. So condolences to anyone who was an investor and didn't make any money on Everlane. But I'm curious to hear, there's obviously, we posted a story on Sunday and I have a bigger piece on Monday kind of going through a bunch of stuff and I'm still working on reporting. So there will be stuff in there. If you're one of those stingy people who doesn't subscribe to Line Sheet yet, there will be stuff in there that we don't talk about today because I'm still in the middle of reporting.

6:02But I'm curious to hear because you also have a lot of sources at Everlane and someone I'm talking to was actually like, I talk to Malik all the time. So I'm curious what you've heard, like what people have been saying to you since the news broke. Well, I haven't gotten a deluge yet. I too am still waiting to hear from people to see how they feel about this. But it's really interesting that it's come to this i mean you you're the one who breaks all these news but like i instantly thought about like parade and when oh yeah so obviously it was on a much smaller scale but like the fact that there was no money made in that deal and then obviously you know you had the far-fetched thing a couple a couple years ago but with everling i've been you know kind of looking at all the reactions and it really was sort of a bastion of a certain kind of brand for a certain kind of generation.

6:52But the trouble that they've been having in recent years, to me, really kind of echoes just problems across the industry, which is like, what does it mean to build a brand today, especially when you were just a product proposition and then people needed you to have a clear brand identity and you're doing it sort of after the fact? Can you ever get to that place? And obviously, we saw the same thing happen with Allbirds when they were just the ugly shoe with Silicon Valley, and they also tried to get it to the brand building mechanism, and we saw how that ended. So it's just so fascinating to see it come to this conclusion.

7:25Like, obviously, Everlane is not shuddering. It's just being sold to Shein, but it goes so against their proposition originally that I'm already seeing people online saying, I'm never going to buy Everlane ever again. So it's just such an insane conclusion. And Everlane is a pretty big business. I don't know if this year they'll do this much, but they were doing like almost$400 million in sales a year. So I don't know if that's what the situation is now, but they were getting up there. I think it's an interesting one because I sort of came up with all these direct-to-consumer brands like Everlane Glossier, Reformation, which is definitely the most successful out of all of them.

8:04And I think there are particular reasons why Reformation worked so well for so long. But when Everlane launched, their whole proposition was like, it wasn't even about sustainability. And that word gets tossed around a lot. It's so meaningless. But it was really about like, being honest. So like, we're going to be honest about how much it costs to make this shirt. We're going to be honest about the factories that we made it in. We're going to be honest about the margin that we're making on selling it to you. And then there was this whole thing with the direct-to-consumer rise of brands that they talked a lot about, like cutting out the middle man, even though Gap had done that 40 years ago and Victoria's Secret, which we're going to talk about later, other specialty retailers.

8:51The thing I liked about Everlane, and I always sort of bristled at the radical transparency stuff, and not because I didn't believe them, and I wrote this today. We'll see how it gets edited. but um I 100 % believed Michael the founder and the people around him believed what they were saying and and wanted to do it it wasn't just a marketing ploy like they thought they were making something better and I also think they it was a time when Gap and Gap wasn't doing really well Uniqlo had not become a big thing and there was sort of a lack of cool basics American Apparel had imploded it was like post-american apparel uh gap wasn't doing well it was pre-uni cloak really making it in the u.s and like to get a cool like a boxy they used to make this boxy pocket front pocket white t-shirt yeah i had quite a few of those yeah and like their jeans were cute they did a good job and the they made the stores when they finally opened stores they looked like old gaps from the 90s.

9:57There was a time when I definitely thought that they could get acquired by a bigger company, scale really fast and become the next gap. And in reality, commodity, Amazon, but Uniqlo and Gap as well, it just made that sort of business to have a basics brand and it be $400 million a year doesn't really make sense. Either you have a niche thing like Lissette and you sell higher end stuff or you have Uniqlo or Amazon or old or whatever or Quince exactly so can you talk a bit about how Quince factors into all of this because they are sort of the post post post version of Everlane and and I feel like in the last year have really cut into Everlane's business no for sure it's the it's so funny because the whole thing of Quince is like Quince as like an anti-brand.

10:52It's kind of like, here's just a product. It's coming straight from the manufacturer. It's at a price that's better than you'll get, but it's not fast fashion slop. And that's really cut through. I think, you know, a lot of the economic uncertainty of the past like three, four years has really helped them. You know, consumers are like, I just want things that are good. And also, I think, I don't know if this is like intentional on their part, but I think consumers have, with all the greenwashing, have kind of just been like, this is all crap anyway. like and so quince hasn't really like done marketing to say like you know because they have the same sort of radical transparency of like the breakdown of the margins and how things you know how much it costs versus how much the consumers are going to pay um but they haven't been like sustainability sustainability and like slapping it in the face of consumers i don't know if that's been working in their favor where customers are like okay i guess this is probably not the best quality t-shirt i can get but i like the price and it's not going to fall apart and like after like two washes, that sort of thing.

11:50And they've been really smart. But what's going to be fascinating is they actually just like what Everlane and a lot of other brands have been doing it. They're trying to get into like more brand building and get away from this sort of dupe image. So I wonder if that's actually going to start to work against them. So I'm going to keep a close eye on that because I think they have the right formula. Like consumers just want really good products that isn't going to fall apart really quickly. And they don't need to be like hyper sold to. They just need the mechanism to feel good enough. And Quince has been like the best at doing that.

12:19But now that they're getting into like doing like an ASAP Rocket collaboration and like getting into even more product categories like music vinyls, like I wonder if that's going to work against them or not. Yeah, I heard something. I just remember about them getting an artistic director who's an interesting pop culture figure. Let's see. I need to do more reporting on it, but stay tuned. It might be in line sheet later this week. That reminds me. What do you think about Quince? Have you bought anything from there? I've been I'm probably gonna buy some sheets from them because honestly I've heard their bedding is like where they really are Yeah, that's that makes a lot of sense like betting Anyone that I have talked to who have got anything in point to like know their bedding is like the truth like Brooklyn and goodbye.

13:03Yeah, they're like the best so I'm flirting with with with buying that but I haven't like bought the product I'm I'm a snob i only buy like secondhand designer clothes well why well this is the thing like why would you own why would you buy anything else because you can get especially in menswear i bet the prices are really good on the real or whatever like i live on the real real so yeah you can you can get amazing clothes for not that much money why would you buy junk like even if quince isn't junk it's you know it's like yeah that's you and I are not the target customer for a Quinn's a Quinn's just for like the person who kind of cares about what they look like and want to look clean like like what Everlane was who Everlane was appealing to that's who Quinn's appeals to today yeah yeah well you know whatever happens with Everlane I don't know I'm not like upset about it obviously like a lot of people are I just the only thing I'm upset about is that I really liked it and I liked everyone who worked there I went to their offices a million times And they got kicked out of their offices or whatever.

14:06They claimed that they were moving their, relocating their headquarters to LA. But I know someone who knows about the deal. And I know you did reporting on the real estate stuff. That office was awesome. It was in the Mission in San Francisco. It was like the one place that you could go work if you wanted to work in fashion and not work at the Gap in San Francisco. And like everybody who worked there was cool. and smart and I don't know. They weren't, the thing I will say is they weren't like, it wasn't fraudulent. It was like they believed what they were doing, whether or not it was ever going to work.

14:46I don't know, but like they really believed in it. And it's just, I don't know, most of those brands I really don't care about, but I do, I have a soft spot for Everlane. So whatever happens, best of luck to the five people who still work there. Don't fact check me on that. But Malik, moving on to a different sort of direct-to-consumer brand, you are working, you have a piece coming out on Tuesday afternoon, so many people will have read it already, some won't, on Victoria's Secret and their latest challenge in the market. So they've been doing well. I think they finally got the marketing on track.

15:24They hired this guy, Adam Selman, who I'm a big fan of, to be the new Ed Rasick, essentially. He's a designer, but he's doing all their like brand image stuff. He came from Fenty and their CEO, who also came from Savage by Fenty, Hillary Super. I think she has, you know, it seems like she's kind of done a pretty good job with it. It's one of these two big to fail businesses that just has such a strong armor in the market. But they've recently, they always just have something going on. Like someone in their board is, has to leave or they have some activist investor. And I'm curious, there's been this latest battle.

16:03Can you tell us a little bit about what's happening with them and what they're battling against right now? Yeah. So earlier this month, one of their largest shareholders called BBRC, founded by this Australian billionaire named Brett Blundy, has been like launching this like in really aggressive sort of proxy contests calling for the removal of the board share. Donna James has been on the board. So can you explain what a proxy contest is to the people listening to this who really want to know what I thought of Taylor Swift's peplum top? You probably can describe it better than I can, but it is like you have an activist investor that's calling for like an overhaul of leadership changes, usually to the board of a public company.

16:46And usually there's like support for that. So like one of the biggest ones that's been happening in the last year or last couple of months has been one with Lululemon and the founder, Chip Wilson, who's really calling for a board overhaul because the company's not doing as well. Like growth is slowing. You know, it's not as culturally relevant. And he's been incredibly correct in his assessments. And we've written about that. What was really interesting about this particular one with Victoria's Secret, Victoria's Secret, as you pointed out, is doing well. Like they return to sales growth, like in their recent earnings, their last earnings for the fourth quarter of 2025.

17:18It's up by the fact that like Pink, this sub-brand, has like the highest growth in like over a decade. Bra sales are finally growing again since like 2021. So like Killary Soup is doing a pretty like bang up job there. So it's like it doesn't make any sense that you have this activist investor because like what is your activism about? Like the company is doing so well. But a lot of it has come down to this person, Brett Blundie, wanting a seat on the board and them constantly denying him a seat. And so it's been getting really loud and really, really messy. And it's been super interesting because part of what I was kind of, again, we'll see, you know, how this is edited.

17:58But like I'm getting in the pieces like. In this sort of fractured retail landscape, like even these strong brands can become targets, you know, And it's just so interesting to see how Victoria's Secret is going to get over this distraction because that's ultimately what it is. Yeah, I find that it's also funny and looking forward to reading your piece when you file it. But I find it funny. There's just always men going after people at Victoria's Secret. It's like so, even though this is, they're trying to kick off a board member who's a woman, right? Who's been there for like 20 years. which is interesting i obviously wrote a book about victoria's secret um there are very few people on the board i think she might be the last one that is like of the les wexner era maybe one other because it was like a cronyism board and all these retail boards so many public boards in america just like your roommate's cousin is on the board like it's just so they're so um not objective like they're supposed to be so look maybe she she should go but it does just feel like it's strange.

19:08It's just an odd, especially because like, right now it isn't, it's fine. Like the business is fine. Whether or not that's going to be the case long term, I have no idea. But like, I don't know. There's just something weird about it. Once I read your piece, I'm going to look more into it because you really took over this line of reporting. And so I haven't been following as closely as I normally would. But yeah, it just feels odd. I don't know. Like the Lululemon thing, the Chip Wilson thing, that makes more sense to me. Very much more sense. Yeah, he has a, first of all, he owns a lot of the company.

19:47And second of all, he may not be able to fix it at this point, but he knows what's wrong with it. And I think, I don't know, some of these proxy battles make sense. Some of them are just drama for drama's sake. And I have no idea where the Victoria's Secret one lands, but I look forward to reading your piece in line sheet on Tuesday and everyone should subscribe.

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22:01So the other thing I wanted to chat with you about was, did you check out the Dior and Gucci shows from last week that happened in America? What did you think? So there was Dior in LA on Wednesday at LACMA and the new galleries. And then on on Saturday night. You know, Malik, you should have gone. I didn't think about it. Next time you need to say something. You know, I will. Next time I say something. I was on my couch on Saturday. Oh, my God. You could have gone. I feel so bad. Watching the live stream being like, this is so cool. OK, so I am a Demna apologist. I think he's a spectacular designer.

22:45Honestly, when he, the Vetements thing I thought was cool. I, his early stages at Balenciaga, I was like, this is a little too, you know, street wear for me. Like that's just whatever my style. So on a personal level, I didn't connect to it. But when he started doing couture, I was like, oh, this person is extraordinary. He understands culture. He understands like guys better than like, I think, any designer around. And I think that the Gucci show was such a perfect example of that. Like something that's been happening in fashion shows recently, the casting has been like pitch perfect in terms of like the ages.

23:23Like you have people who are like young. At Gucci, he had like Amelia Gray, you know, obviously Lisa Renner's daughter, who's an eight girl. But he also had like Athena Calderon, who was like one of the chicest women to exist. Oh, I didn't notice Athena was cast. That's hilarious. the best makeup it was it was fabulous oh that was her yes oh my god wow that's very cool it's so cool and but it but everyone who was cast like it it it was perfectly calibrated you could see all these people wearing these clothes and even like the celebrity they pick like i'm like obsessed with laura harrier and she's obviously styled by daniel goldberg who is literally the goat of styling um one of them um and she's just wearing this like sharon she wore to the show this white Sharon Stone inspired dress, like really form-fitting, six-inch heels with a white bag.

24:14And I'm like, who looks cooler than that? Like you wonder, you'll see somebody walking down New York City, a girl like that in Soho wearing that outfit. It's funny, I was going back and forth with a friend of mine who was also a fashion journalist who was like, I don't know if this is going to get people in America to want to buy. And I'm like, I disagree. I feel like this type of show is like, it's so product forward, so product focused. It's built around these characters that you want to be. And like, you have people who are aspirational, but who feel real. Like and Athena Calderon? Like, I don't know.

24:39I'm all in on that. I was a big fan of, you know, I thought her name was pronounced Sabina, but it might just be Sabine Getty, who is, I don't know, she lives in, she lived in London for a long time. She might live in LA now. She's a socialite and she does do other things as well. But she's very chic and cool and she's, she, I loved her look. I loved so much of it. I thought the casting was on point. I think the interesting thing about what he's doing with Gucci is like a Cindy Crawford. He would have never used for Balenciaga. And I think what you're saying about him understanding. Yeah. What you're saying about him understanding like exactly right getting in the zeitgeist.

25:22That's exactly it. Like he knows that Cindy Crawford is right or Tom Brady is right for Gucci and not right for Balenciaga. And I think the product is great. The boots are going to sell like crazy. They're amazing. I want that. They're so good. The bags look great. He really understands product. He's an amazing product designer. My only thing, I really like the show. Dior, I felt a little FOMO not being there because I lived in LA for a long time. It was at LACMA. I haven't been to the new galleries. I kind of felt sad that I wasn't there. Gucci, I felt it. It was funny, the next morning, fewer people messaged me, whereas Dior, everyone had an opinion.

26:07Fewer people messaged me about Gucci. The one thing that people said that I kind of agree with is, and it's hard to articulate this, but Demna is Demna. And he's never going to be anyone but Demna. It doesn't mean that he isn't getting Gucci right, because I think he is. But I think what his Gucci is, is sort of what I expected it to be. I think what people are looking for right now are to be shocked. And I hate to bring up Chanel because everyone's sick of talking about it. But the way that Matou Blasi has shocked everybody by making pretty clothes that everyone from, you know, everyone, there's something for everybody.

26:55There's something for the basic B, but there's something for the really sophisticated customer, that sort of thing. and no one expected Chanel to be so great. So everyone's like very delighted by it. I think that Demna is delighting people, but I think that the expectation of what it would be is not far from what he has delivered. And so there's a feeling, and I think it's going to go away because I think the sales are going to be good, especially with this collection. It was really sharp. and it felt great. And I was like, yeah, this is wonderful. But people are so sort of jaded. And a friend of mine was messaging and said, they're basically making up that not only do they need to have a new proposition that excites people, they need to get people to trust them again, all these companies.