In June, Net-a-Porter founder Natalie Massenet, 60, walked the red carpet at the Tribeca Festival in New York City. She looked chic as she smiled for photographers in a sleek black midi dress and Valentino kitten heels, but privately, her life was in disarray.
Weeks earlier, Massenet had discovered that her romantic partner of nearly 15 years, Erik Torstensson, 47, had been living a “secret life” of drug abuse, affairs, and prostitutes, according to a bombshell lawsuit she filed in Los Angeles on August 20th.
The suit alleges Torstensson “seduced Massenet and schemed to pursue a romantic relationship in addition to their professional one,” using her to “bolster his professional career.” It claims she poured over $95 million into funding Torstensson’s extravagant lifestyle and supporting his business ventures over the years while he was hiring prostitutes, abusing drugs like cocaine and ecstasy, and cheating with younger women — one of whom was allegedly a friend of her daughter’s. Now, Massenet says, Torstensson is reneging on his promises to repay her, and she is suing for numerous claims including fraud, breach of contract and causing her “severe emotional distress.”
“People have been known to have double lives,” a stylist, who has worked with both Massenet and Torstensson and was “very surprised” by the lawsuit, told The Post.
It’s an ugly ending for one of the most influential couples in fashion. Massenet is widely credited with revolutionizing online luxury shopping. Torstensson is known for his branding savvy; he co-founded Frame, the “model-off-duty” denim brand popularized by the likes of Emily Ratajkowski and Karlie Kloss. The couple were fixtures at elite fashion events and threw exclusive parties at their homes in London, New York City and the Hamptons.
“If Erik Torstensson and Dame Natalie Massenet host a house party, you must do anything you can to nab an invitation,” Tatler magazine once declared. Now, the power couple is unraveling.
Massenet, a former journalist, launched Net-a-Porter in 2000. She quickly grew the designer fashion portal into an e-commerce powerhouse.
“The term visionary is applicable when it comes to Natalie Massenet,” culture and fashion journalist Mosha Lundström Halbert told the Post. “She had the idea and the instinct to execute the concept of bringing the multi-brand department store luxury fashion experience to the internet, which hadn’t really been done.”
Around 2009, Massenet, who was then married to French financier Arnaud Massenet, met Torstensson, a strapping Swedish man 13 years her junior. At the time, he was running a marketing agency with fellow Swede Jens Grede.
He initially pitched Massenet the concept of an extension of Net-a-Porter aimed at men, but by late 2010 their relationship had turned romantic, per the complaint.
That same year, Massenet sold her majority stake in Net-a-Porter for an estimated $76 million and remained on as executive chairman. In 2011, she announced that she’d split from her first husband.
Massenet and Torstensson soon became fashion’s glamorous, wildly successful first couple, lighting up red carpets and paling around with supermodels and designers.
When Torstensson and Grede launched Frame denim in 2012, Net-a-Porter carried its first collection. Massenet introduced her beau to her powerful network, including Anna Wintour, designer Diane Von Furstenberg and Glossier founder Emily Weiss, the complaint states.
“That’s the currency in this industry,” Lundström Halbert said. “It’s relationships, direct introductions, it’s favors, it’s that kind of access. You can’t put a price on that.”
Massenet left Net-a-Porter in 2015 with $153 million, and went on to launch a venture capital firm, Imaginary Ventures, that’s invested in various buzzy brands including Everlane, Reformation and Daily Harvest.
Meanwhile, Torstensson’s business partner, Jens Grede, and his wife, Emma Grede, became key players in the Kardashian business empire. In 2016, Emma launched the denim line Good American with Khloe Kardashian. Three years later, the couple cofounded Skims with Kim Kardashian.
Torstensson invested in both ventures, and Massenet claims she supported him by becoming an early investor as well. Today, Torstensson’s stake in Skims alone is worth “in excess of $300 million,” according to Massenet’s lawsuit.
She believed in Torstensson, at one point calling him her “best investment,” the suit says.
“My God, she was so in love with that man,” a fashion industry insider who worked with both Massenet and Torstensson said.
They had a child together via surrogate in 2017, and enjoyed the fruits of her their success. (Massenet has two daughters, ages 25 and 19, from her previous marriage.)
According to the lawsuit, Torstensson was a big spender, chartering private jets and buying art instead of fulfilling his promises to repay Massenet. In a 2023 interview with the Financial Times, he said part of his “uniform” was a Patek Philippe Nautilus, a watch that can retail for over $100,000. After the renovation of Massenet’s English countryside mansion, Torstensson orchestrated multiple articles about it, the suit says, including an eight-page spread in The Wall Street Journal in 2022.
But in 2024, Torstensson grew erratic, drinking heavily, disappearing for nights and suffering frequent panic attacks and unexplained illnesses, according to the lawsuit. In May, when Torstensson returned to New York after a work trip to Los Angeles, he told Massenet that he was no longer in love with her and did not believe their romantic relationship could continue.
The conversation was “shocking and traumatic for Massenet,” per the legal complaint, who thought they were just going through a rough patch.
“She was blinded by it,” the insider said.
At the suggestion of their relationship counselor, Torstensson checked into a treatment center. While he was away, Massenet found one of his old cellphones that contained “indisputable evidence, including explicit texts and photographs, that Torstensson had maintained multiple affairs with several younger women for years,” per the complaint. One of these women was someone in Massenet’s daughter’s social circle “who had once asked Massenet to be her mentor,” the suit claims.
After Massenet found the cellphone, Torstensson admitted to her that he was a “liar, an alcoholic, a drug addict, a sex addict and that it had gone on for seven years,” according to the lawsuit.
Massenet began to hear of more alleged misdeeds. A woman who worked for Torstensson at Frame told Massenet’s friend that in 2018, he had chartered a private plane to Cabo San Lucas with an unidentified woman. Massenet knew then that “the entire foundation of their relationship had been a complete lie,” the complaint said.
The fashion industry insider claimed that while many were aware of Torstensson’s alleged infidelities, she believes Massenet was “blindsided” by them. “Everybody, they would’ve just stayed quiet,” she said. “Don’t get involved. Don’t be the one that says anything.”
Massenet is “not a foolish woman,” the fashion insider added. “But she was a woman in love that thought they’d be together forever.”
The Post has reached out to Torstensson and Massenet for comment.
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