LOOSE THREADS
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Hermès’s fourth quarter sales rose nearly 10 percent, and ended 2025 up nearly 9 percent. Despite tariff-related price increases, the U.S. market “is doing very well,” said chief executive Axel Dumas. The brand plans to raise prices by 5 to 6 percent this year. The markets liked this report!
If Hermès’s results were the Birkin bag of reports, Kering’s were like a marked down sneaker of reports — but the markets liked it anyway. Their fourth quarter drop of 3 percent was smaller than analysts’ expectations of 5 percent. The group’s success rests heavily on Gucci, which saw a 10 percent decline, beating expectations of a 12 percent dip. No pressure, Demna.
Edward Enninful has a correction for British Vogue.
New York Fashion Week is underway! It feels pretty quiet this season, but, quick highlights:
Rachel Scott’s inspiration for her Proenza Schouler collection was “the working woman.” Per her show notes, “Today, she was in a rush.” Relatable.
Tory Burch’s show was inspired by her father and Bunny Mellon. Ten years ago, she bought and refurbished her Antigua house, and it looks just as nice as that sounds.
Marc Jacobs’s collection, which hinged on stiff and roomy waistbands, is getting rave reviews.
Lana Del Rey and husband Jeremy Dufrene kissed on the lips on the step-and-repeat at the Ralph Lauren show. Anne Hathaway was also there, but didn’t kiss anyone.
Well, That Was Awkward
When Grace Mirabella was fired as editor-in-chief of Vogue in 1988 to make way for Anna Wintour, she learned the news from her husband, who had seen it on TV.
She famously told The New York Times, “For a magazine devoted to style, this was not a very stylish way of telling me.”
But it worked out for Anna because, when Grace was gone, she was gone. The same was true of Anna’s predecessors at her two previous editor-in-chief jobs for British Vogue and House & Garden. Legacies were hers to rip up and throw into the trash bin, and she did exactly that with each title. She transformed British Vogue from a horsey fantasy into a tableau of working women; she turned House & Garden into a celebrity and society magazine (she even renamed it!); and she changed the look of American Vogue’s first cover so much that — a story she is fond of recalling — the printer called to ask if there had been some mistake.
Anna’s first cover was November 1988.
Chloe Malle takes on Vogue as “Head of Editorial Content” under very different auspices. Anna is down the hall, serving as her boss just as she did when Malle was in her previous role running the website. If her first cover (for spring, featuring Rosalía) tells us anything, it’s that, as long as Anna is around, Malle is not at liberty to alter the magazine in a fit of disgust for all it represented under her predecessor or aspiration for what the future of fashion may be, but that it is something to thoughtfully preserve and carefully evolve.
This was made clear in a joint interview Malle and her boss gave to the New York Times. This line said it all to me (emphasis mine):
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