LVMH Under the Microscope: Nobody Can Squirm

2025 Cannes Lions

Multiple events related to LVMH and — specifically Louis Vuitton — have occupied major real estate in my brain this past week. On a positive note, the 2025 Cannes Lions was held on Thursday on the Croisette in Cannes. The event remains the world’s largest gathering for professionals in the advertising and creative communications industry.

With its Luxury & Lifestyle category operating for the second year under a new name ‘The Luxury Lion’, Mathilde Delhoume-Debreu, global brand officer at LVMH, chaired the jury that evaluated the projects according to the following criteria: 20% for creative ideas, 20% for strategy, 30% for quality of execution, and 30% for results achieved.

LVMH won the prestigious Grand Prix for their partnership with the Paris 2025 Olympic Games, illustrated by their film ‘The Partnership That Changed Everything’, designed by the Havas Play Paris agency.

Tiffany & Co, owned by LVMH, won the Silver Lion for its embrace of the environment with ‘1837 Tiffany Blue Conservation’ film. Some critics note that LVMH, and the luxury sector generally, continue to lag in terms of technology and innovative design.

The Bernard Arnault Haters Are Out in Full Force

Speaking of Transparency . . .

Business of Fashion shared a bruising Bloomberg post written this week, Bernard Arnault Grapples With the Biggest Slump in LVMH’s History by Angelina Rascouet and Tara Patel, writing under the name Bloomberg.

When critiquing one of the world’s most famous and influential business leaders, a degree of transparency is desirable. In my case, Anne went looking for the names of the authors because I do not like business-world hatchet jobs written under the guise of ‘Bloomberg’ anonymity.

My always-primed instincts tell me that a significant number of fashion writers are purely transactional in our clickbait world. The majority of them have never run a business unit or developed a brand, as I have. They are as transactional as international financial markets, which notably lack complex and nuanced reasoning capabilities.

LVMH Has Long-Haul Vision

LVMH is a long-haul company in the Warren Buffett tradition. Buffett doesn’t own any LVMH stock, as he finds the luxury sector just too volatile. But the old-fashioned, financially-savvy, then 93 year-old ‘oracle of Omaha’ wrote Bernard Arnault a letter in November of 2024, telling him that raising his retirement age to 80 was too low. It should be age 85.

The deed was done, but the succession drama remains front and center in the Business of Fashion repost of the Bloomberg article. Writing for Reuters, Yawen Chen got into the act, writing that “Bernard Arnault has no succession plan, and no apparent intention of unveiling one soon.”

It’s unfortunate when a financial writer can’t distinguish between the reality of truly not having a succession plan versus having made a conscious decision not to discuss it with investors. You can ding LVMH for that decision, but I can read the corporate boardroom.

Bernard Arnault and Daughter Delphine Arnault,

Attack Dogs Are Out for Delphine Arnault

The fact that LVMH has lost 25% of its value in 2025 is a prime example of irrational market behavior.

If today, Bernard Arnault were to announce that Delphine Arnault, chairperson and chief executive officer of Christian Dior Couture since February 2023, will lead LVMH in the future, the stock might drop another 25%. That’s how insanely volatile the financial markets are today — before we add in Trump tariffs, an explosive Middle East, and an authoritarian Republican government knocking on America’s door.

My jaw hit the floor when the Bloomberg dame duo went for Delphine Arnault herself, writing that Dior is “a brand that’s lost steam on her watch”.

Her appointment was seen as a vote of confidence from her father, who started his luxury foray in the 1980s with Dior. But after years of double-digit growth, with blockbuster products like the Dior Book tote bag that can go for €2,750 and designs worn by the likes of Rihanna and Jennifer Lawrence, the brand has underperformed the larger Louis Vuitton in recent quarters.

Forget that Delphine Arnault spent a decade building out Louis Vuitton, a fact the writers do acknowledge.

Not mentioned are 1] Benedetta Petruzzo, former CEO of Miu Miu, was appointed Managing Director of Christian Dior Couture, starting mid-October 2024 and reporting directly to Delphine Arnault. 2] Pierre-Emmanuel Angeloglou was appointed Deputy CEO of Christian Dior Couture, effective April 15, 2025. He oversees business operations, finance, and legal affairs and reports to Delphine Arnault.

Meanwhile, certain afore-mentioned fashion writers practically accused Delphine Arnault of misogyny against women, when the appointment of Jonathan Anderson as creative director of both Dior Women and Men was announced.

When you haven’t made the difficult decisions involved in running any business, let alone one the size and scale of Christian Dior Couture, you leave this reader wondering exactly why you have such a bug up your pants over Bernard Arnault and LVMH. Having read about the succession drama for months now — all created from outside the family, to the best of my knowledge — has it occurred to so-called experts that the siblings might not be looking to kill each other off?

So Far Family Ties Are Holding

Bernard Arnault reportedly gathers all five children for a monthly lunch in the private dining room at LVMH headquarters in Paris. On occasion, they zoom in. They discuss strategies across all 70 brands, along with highlighting expertise among young and new to the organization executivs. Multiple trusted LVMH executives continue to mentor the powerful quintet who were taught at a young age to put the company before their individual egos.

Given all the drama going down in the Rupert Murdoch family, now tied up in court over Murdoch’s loss in trying to change his trust, why in the world is this family the model for success? The Murdochs are one dysfunctional family.

And on the subject of Louis Vuitton, I just read — again from HSBC, the same financial institution that financed all of Donald J. Trump’s bankruptcy business messes, when no other bank would — that the current Louis Vuitton brand strategy is a ‘hodgepodge”.

If I can speak candidly, a financial analyst from HSBC is the last person I’d be looking to for advice on any business topic. That’s just my opinion, but I’m more interested in what Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of JP Morgan Chase, has to say on the subject. As even Google AI notes, financial analyst is a low-rung position on the financial world’s totem pole. No offense intended to HSBC.

The Hermès Obsession

Fashion writers and financial markets are currently obsessed with Hèrmes as a praise-worthy example of what’s wrong with LVMH, including both Louis Vuitton and Dior.

I decided that if one more writer referred to Bernard Arnault as “a wolf in cashmere”, a ruthless businessman hiding behind a polished and luxurious facade, I would speak out. The nickname comes from the Hermès family in response to Arnault’s “predatory takeover moves” against the company in 2010.

AOC has no ax to grind with the Hermès family. None. But it’s ironic to me that the Birkin bag house reported 2024 operating income of €6.2 billion, representing 40.5% of sales and a net profit of of €4.6 billion. These same privileged fashion writers say metaphorically “Bravo, Hermès is good people. Good French citizens.”

I think it takes a wolf to know a wolf, because if Occupy Wall Street was still functional, they would have encampments on the doorsteps of every Hermès store in the world for reporting the above financial earnings. I do not support such actions, but it does show us just how judgmental many of these writers are, as they pick winners and losers.

In the same Washington Post fashion slam at Bernard Arnault for Maria Grazia Chiuri’s Dior departure, Hermès was praised as a model employer for its 25,185 members in 2024; LVMH was again the greedy wolf. [Note, I’ve already linked out to that article, but you can find it easily].

This was news to me, as my impression is that LVMH treats its 215,637 [2024] employees well — and I’ve said so on both the Wall Street Journal and WaPo. From my viewpoint, the fashion-media mafia ladies have declared a scorched-earth policy on LVMH while loving Hermès to death.

The Hermès family calls its governance system for the world’s great luxury brand a “democratic monarchy”. Now THAT is a word salad, but it’s 2025 and words don’t really matter all that much.

Except they matter on Anne of Carversville. So I want to give Mr. Arnault an opportunity to speak for himself.

Bernard Arnault In His Own Words via CNBC

To be clear, I am furious with Bernard Arnault over comments he made about a new era of optimism in America, as he stood with the tech bros at the January Inauguration of Donald Trump. That was a lot for me to stomach given the high regard I have for LVMH brands generally.

I had the LVMH chairman in my good guys camp of billionaires — people like Bill Gates, who would hands-down be far richer than both Musk and Arnault and Bezos — literally the world’s first trillionaire — had Gates not taken a different route in life as a philanthropist and global health supplier of vaccines.

While Elon Musk was trying to tear apart USAID, Bill Gates was trying to save it, because he relies on the group to deliver his vaccines across Africa. I thought Bernard Arnault was more like Mike Bloomberg, who also has a massive list of philanthropy accomplishments. I thought Arnault was more like the Buffett family — and I still believe that to be true, even though Bernard Arnault has worked really hard to change my mind in recent months.

Billionaires Are Often Good People

The chairman of LVMH believes that companies have responsibilities to citizens and communities.

He’s in a particularly bad mood — not because of the music played at his recent financial presentation as suggested by the Bloomberg dames duo — but because of his surviving a grueling and very devisive series of hearings by the French government on May 22. He’s in a bad mood because a 3-5% sales decrease in a treacherous market just wiped out 25% of the value of LVMH.

Bernard Arnault was frustrated like hell, when he couldn’t even control the music at his own financial presentation to investors.

Arnault is not Elon Musk. I’m quite certain that the chairman agrees with Bill Gates, who said that Musk is brilliant but he has an appetite for risk like nothing Gates has ever watched.

Bernard Arnault is angry because he was forced to defend his company on May 22, by stating:

“We are probably the most patriotic group in the CAC 40, and the one that pays the most taxes in France, despite the fact that only 8% of our turnover comes from the French market.”

One Day Soon Bernard Arnault Will Be Happy that AOC Thinks He’s a Renaissance Man

Arnault is angry and frustrated that we all think he loves Donald Trump — and whether he does or he doesn’t — the company and shareholders come first. As far as I’m concerned, Mr. Arnault made an idiot out of himself the week after the Inauguration, cozying up to Mark Zuckerberg, when he towers over most of these guys with his business savvy and intellect and empathy for people and organizations.

Bernard Arnault may run on more testosterone than Brunello Cucinelli, but Hermès aside, he has a far better business reputation as a Renaissance man than any of these hard-ass, American technocrats.

As for the fashion media mafia running after him waving hatchets, I’m not sure who reads them anyway. AOC admits that my vision for humanity needs the billionaires, whether we like it or not. If you respect business excellence, you must respect LVMH.

Next up, I take on the no-nothings who are saying that Louis Vuitton is “a hodge-podge mess”. Gucci is a hodge-podge mess, financial analysts. Keep your luxury brands straight.

Any challenges facing Louis Vuitton are far different than Gucci’s — except the general slowdown in the luxury sector and tarriffs.

LV is well-aware of the experiential preferences of today’s luxury customers. Seriously. They do not need you advising them. You may not like Louis Vuitton’s involvement in sports. The multicultural mix in the brand experience may be offensive to you, because it’s no longer rarified enough for your taste. Just because you don’t aspire to hangout with these guys, that doesn’t mean that LVMH is trashing the LV brand.

There’s 5-10 reasons why you might not like where Vuitton is going. Just don’t lecture Louis Vuitton CEO Pietro Beccari about his widely-shared vision for LV. Meanwhile, former CEO of Loro Piano Damien Bertrand is now installed as deputy CEO of Louis Vuitton, and he has much to offer there. But let me tell you guys, he hates the term “quiet luxury”, having rejected it at the end of 2023 for Loro.

Given all the brainpower circulating at both Dior and Louis Vuiton, AOC is not depending on the financial analyst at HSBC to carve out a better path for LV, just because he can’t make sense of it all. For people who are saying “I just don’t know what it stands for anymore”, our next post lays out a key branding platform for you to read. Hopefully, it will help to calm your nerves — which clearly aren’t cut out for a job at LVMH. The pursuit of excellence is — well, it’s demanding — and you probably just aren’t a good fit to work there. That’s how the cookie crumbles. ~ Anne