TheChek News Flow

Sources told WWD his latest recruit is seasoned British designer Andrew Heather, who has worked in the couture studios of Maison Margiela and Givenchy.

Matthieu Blazy, who officially started work April 1 as Chanel’s new artistic director of fashion activities, is quietly assembling his team, WWD has learned.

According to market sources, he has tapped seasoned designer Andrew Heather from Maison Margiela for a top post.

It is understood Heather starts in June and will work in Chanel‘s haute couture studio.

A graduate of London’s Royal College of Art, Heather started out as a design assistant to Bruce Oldfield before moving to Paris in 1998 to work at Givenchy as head designer, haute couture, under Lee Alexander McQueen. He stayed on to assist Riccardo Tisci on Givenchy’s couture collections.

In 2011, he was named creative director of fur house Revillon, following in the famous footsteps of Rick Owens and Peter Dundas.

Between 2013 and 2021, Heather held senior design roles at Celine and Chloé before joining Maison Margiela as design director of the Artisanal couture line under creative director John Galliano, according to sources.

Contacted on Monday by WWD about the hire, a Chanel spokeswoman said: “As we enter a new chapter, it is natural that we should consider to have our creative organization evolve by bringing in new talents, while continuing to rely on our current teams.”

Heather could not be reached for comment.

Meanwhile, sources said executives in Blazy’s immediate orbit that he is likely to bring with him to Chanel include Michael Giugliano, who lists himself on LinkedIn as head of brand expansion at Bottega Veneta.

Last December, Chanel confirmed that Blazy, formerly Bottega Veneta’s creative director, was joining the French house and would be responsible for all haute couture, ready-to-wear and accessories collections.

“I am thrilled and honored to join the wonderful house of Chanel. I look forward to meeting all the teams and writing this new chapter together,” Blazy said in a statement at the time.

He is expected to make his debut with Chanel’s spring 2026 ready-to-wear collection, which should be unveiled during Paris Fashion Week next October.

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Some executives have come away from meetings with the commerce secretary confused and exasperated

WASHINGTON—Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has tried to sell President Trump’s trade agenda to American companies for months. Business leaders say they are often confused about what he wants.

Lutnick has played a supersize role in Trump’s first months in office, driving tariff discussions, meeting with dozens of business leaders, appearing on television and often standing alongside Trump.

The former Cantor Fitzgerald chief executive has come to frustrate executives and senior White House officials, who have come away from interactions with Lutnick exasperated, according to roughly a dozen people who have interacted with him.

In private meetings with business leaders, Lutnick has browbeat executives to support Trump’s tariffs, while at other times expressing sympathy and telling them he wants to help their companies. Lutnick has taken contradictory positions on key issues, including on whether certain imports should be exempted from tariffs, executives say.

Lutnick, 63 years old, is running point on Trump’s disruptive and combative trade agenda, which has rocked the stock market and unsettled governments around the world. When Trump unveiled his far-reaching tariffs last week it was Lutnick standing next to him in the Rose Garden, holding the large chart that explained the punitive measures against dozens of countries. It will also be Lutnick attempting to manage the economic fallout, Trump aides say, amid growing predictions that Trump’s trade agenda could tip the U.S. into a recession.

Frustration with Lutnick is spilling over into public view as the stock market plummets, with hedge-fund manager Bill Ackman, a Trump ally, criticizing him on social media. The irritation at Lutnick partially reflects the challenge of representing a president known for making last-minute policy U-turns.

Lutnick has been responsible for several of the administration’s most unorthodox ideas—some of them unvetted by staff—and his TV appearances have proven so challenging to White House officials that he was asked to curb them last month, according to senior administration officials.

He has openly mused about wanting to run for elected office himself, people who have spoken to him say.

Trump has asked why Lutnick is at the White House so often, and he has grown frustrated with his commerce secretary at times, advisers said, particularly when Lutnick grows emotional in White House meetings. White House officials said he is at the White House more than any other cabinet secretary.

“Secretary Lutnick has always been a staunch defender of President Trump’s America First agenda, and his immensely successful private-sector career makes him an integral member of and communicator for the President’s trade and economic team,” said Kush Desai, a White House spokesman. “The entire Trump administration is playing from the same playbook—President Trump’s playbook—to restore American Greatness from Main Street to Wall Street.”

Benno Kass, a Lutnick spokesman, declined to comment.

Lutnick, who has long been an associate of Trump’s on Wall Street, frequently touts his relationship with the president, telling associates they once caroused at Studio 54 in Manhattan, according to people who have heard his comments. Some White House advisers say he has exaggerated their closeness.

Lutnick has hosted fundraisers for Trump in the Hamptons and he co-chaired Trump’s presidential transition team, helping to identify personnel for hundreds of open jobs across the government. In the weeks before Trump took office, Lutnick lobbied to become Treasury secretary, but lost out to investor Scott Bessent. During the transition, he clashed behind the scenes with some senior advisers to Trump, people familiar with the matter said.

He often speaks like Trump, saying what is on his mind with a New York brashness. “We are the sumo wrestler of this world,” Lutnick said on CNN last week, explaining how the U.S. wouldn’t be bullied by other nations.

“Lutnick has sent the message that he is going to amplify the message of everything Trump says and serve as an ambassador to the public of the Trump brand. The broader view is he’s amplifying Trump, not curbing him,” said Kevin Madden, a longtime Republican strategist.

Asked if that is working, Madden pointed to the stock market: “You see the Dow ticker today.”

Mangoes and lilies

Business executives have left their interactions with Lutnick wondering whether he adequately understands Trump’s thinking. Last month, Lutnick met with oil executives who were concerned about how the tariffs might be designed and wanted exemptions from Trump’s duties. But Lutnick said he didn’t want industry-specific exemptions, people at the meeting said. It would be like picking one lily from a field of lilies, Lutnick said, according to an attendee.

In the same meeting, he said there would be some exemptions on imports of products like mangoes that couldn’t be domestically produced at the level needed to meet U.S. demand, the people said. When Trump rolled out the tariff plan on Wednesday, there were no exemptions for mango imports. And Trump did give an exemption to the oil industry.

Before a call between Trump and American auto executives last month, Lutnick told the executives they needed to be supportive of Trump and not critical of his policies or antagonistic in their questions, according to people with knowledge of the call. After delaying a meeting with top automaker CEOs earlier this year, Lutnick asked them to get on a video call so he could show them he was traveling with Trump on Air Force One, people briefed on the call said.

He has repeatedly told executives that he is in charge of the tariff portfolio and that they don’t need to deal with others in the administration, industry officials say. Lutnick often dominates the calls with long riffs, people on the calls say. At times, some executives say, Lutnick has been aggressive on calls.

At one point, he told steel executives that he wanted to help push through a deal for U.S. Steel to be bought by a foreign company. But later, he said he no longer could help make the deal happen, frustrating some involved, according to people familiar with the matter.

Those who have observed him say Lutnick has a knack for telling people what they want to hear.

In meetings with senators ahead of his confirmation, he sometimes delivered conflicting messages about trade. If a senator expressed concerns about tariffs and local industries that could be hurt, Lutnick told them not to worry about it, the people said. Tariffs are going to be used sparingly and would be targeted. In meetings with more Trump-aligned senators, he praised tariffs and stressed how important they were, people familiar with the meetings said.

Lutnick has told associates he joined the government out of a desire to help the president, noting that he could afford to leave his lucrative private-sector job because he has already amassed vast wealth.

The night he was confirmed, he threw a party at his opulent Washington mansion, complete with a putting and chipping green, a heated pool, a floor-to-ceiling wine display and a spa. He bought the house for $25 million from Fox News anchor Bret Baier.

‘Like President McKinley’

At a reception with executives last month, Lutnick said he came up with the idea for the Department of Government Efficiency and encouraged Trump to be more expansionist “like President McKinley,” a person who heard his comments said. Trump has mused about acquiring Greenland, taking back control of the Panama Canal and making Canada the 51st U.S. state.

People close to Trump have sometimes been annoyed by Lutnick’s propensity for proposing ideas to the president that haven’t yet been vetted, according to three White House officials.

White House aides grew frustrated when Lutnick went on television and called for eliminating income taxes for those making under $150,000 a year. White House staff later learned that he had talked about the idea at a private dinner with Trump, and the president seemed to like it, officials said. Members of Congress flooded the White House with questions: Was this going to be a new policy? It wasn’t, White House aides assured them.

White House staffers were also stunned when Lutnick went on Fox News in February and said the administration wanted to abolish the Internal Revenue Service. Several Trump aides said Lutnick hadn’t seemed to think through how the public might interpret the commerce secretary calling for the closing of the IRS in the middle of tax season.

Lutnick has promoted the idea of a “gold card,” which would grant wealthy foreigners permanent U.S. residency for $5 million. Lutnick said the idea came out of a call between Trump, investor John Paulson and himself. Some in the White House have privately raised concerns that the idea is unworkable or potentially violates the law, but Trump loves the cards, which are emblazoned with his face. Lutnick has said he is already selling them.

He has weighed in on topics far afield from commerce, particularly on immigration, senior administration officials said.

Trump so far seems to be sticking by him. As the president flew on Air Force One to Florida late last week, Lutnick appeared with Trump during a question-and-answer session with reporters.

“The tariffs give us great power to negotiate,” the president said. “They always have.”

Lutnick had put it differently one day earlier during a televised interview: “The president is not going to back off,” he said.