LOOSE THREADS
Front row fashion show guest and Met Gala funder Jeff Bezos laid off 300 of the 800 journalists on his Washington Post staff this week. This tweet from Peter Baker has been making the rounds:
Bernie Sanders called out the cost of Bezos’s wedding and Lauren Sánchez’s engagement ring:
I revisited the first of Vogue’s two puff pieces on Sánchez, which described his “10,000 Year Clock” (“a subterranean engineering feat,” quothe Vogue) that Sanchez said “represents thinking about the future.” She also said, “Wouldn’t it be cool to have a Halloween party here?” It sure is going to be an interesting Met Gala this year — my prediction about it still stands.
Pieter Mulier’s creative directorship of Versace has been confirmed.
Did the luxury industry make a big mistake leaving aspirational shoppers behind in their all-out effort to court Very Important Clients? LVMH’s Q4 results seem to suggest as much. “Weak sales growth shows that LVMH’s collections aren’t appealing to clients and that the group is still contending with a slowdown in spending for luxury goods that has plagued the industry for years,” reported the Wall Street Journal. “Demand weakened considerably after a postpandemic boom, especially among less affluent shoppers.” If all these new designers can’t save luxury brands, what can?
Ballerina Farm discontinued raw milk sales after inspectors found it contained high levels of bacteria. Raw Farm, a brand that Gwyneth Paltrow likes, which sells its raw diary products at what I guess you’d call the luxury grocery store Erewhon, previously recalled its products in California after bird flu was found in a retail sample. And yet! Axois reminds us that the state of Utah is considering loosening regulations on raw milk even further.
Ahead, today’s big story…
Retail Confessions: The Row
In December 2023, Vogue ran a story comparing The Row’s Margaux bag to Hermès’s Birkin, calling it “an heirloom in the making.” Soon after, The Business of Fashion stated it more bluntly with the headline, “The Row’s Margaux: A Birkin in the Making?”
A waterfall of similar stories followed. After these pieces started coming out, The Row couldn’t keep the Margaux in stock. “We weren't selling a Margaux every day,” said a former employee of a The Row boutique in a London department store. “Whereas once this Vogue article came out, we were adding 10 people a day to the waitlist.”
A Margaux tote. (Photo: Moritz Scholz/Getty Images)
To get the job, this former employee had to be approved by both the store and The Row. Once they met management in person, they looked them up and down and said, approvingly, “You are The Row.”
“The aesthetic of the sales associate is obviously important to their image as a brand,” this person recalled. After a few years at this particular The Row boutique, which was selling only leather goods, they moved on to Prada.
In this installment of “Retail Confessions” — in which Back Row Premium members hear about what it’s like selling the world’s most expensive and sought-after fashion to the world’s wealthiest people — the former employee talks about both experiences.
Did the Olsens come into the store?
No. I definitely remember someone from The Row saying, “Don’t call them ‘the twins’ or ‘the girls”’ in front of the clients.”
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