PARIS — Dior is starting to feel the Jonathan Anderson effect.
The French fashion house saw double-digit sales growth with American and Japanese clients in the second quarter, helping parent company LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton’s key fashion and leather goods division break a two-year losing streak.
The unit, which also includes brands such as Louis Vuitton, Loro Piana and Celine, posted organic sales growth of 1 percent in the three months to June 30, following seven consecutive quarters of declines.
This was in line with analysts’ estimates, amid mixed results from sector peers that indicate luxury brands are increasingly dependent on a small cohort of ultra-wealthy clients, while aspirational consumers remain squeezed by inflation and geopolitical turmoil.
“LVMH demonstrated its solidity and effective strategy. Our maisons — which remained focused on ensuring the utmost quality in our products, and several of which are pursuing their creative renewal — continued to inspire dreams and enhance their desirability,” Bernard Arnault, chairman and chief executive officer of LVMH, said in a statement.
“Accelerating growth in the second quarter arose in particular from the success of Jonathan Anderson’s first designs for Christian Dior, the remarkable performance of Louis Vuitton’s exceptional new stores in Beijing and Seoul, and Tiffany and Bulgari’s iconic lines,” he added.
Cécile Cabanis, chief financial officer of LVMH, said Dior performed better than the fashion division average in the first half, with momentum reflecting the arrival in stores of Anderson’s first products since taking over as creative director of women’s and men’s collections last year.
“When it comes to Dior, all clienteles were up in [the first half],” she told analysts and reporters on a webcast after the market close on Monday.
The brand has seen good uptake for women’s ready-to-wear and leather goods, ranging from new introductions like the Cigale handbag to updates of pillar collections like the Lady Dior, she noted.
“We’ve made a lot of progress,” Cabanis said. “What we are offering is getting success, and there will be more to come.”
While acknowledging Dior has hit speed bumps amid reported shortages of some key styles, Cabanis said she was confident in the general direction of business.
“Whenever you start with creative renewal, and you are in a transition, it’s a bit more complex for your supply chain,” she said. “The trend is positive and accelerating, so I think it’s what matters.”
Feeding the Pyramid
Growth at Vuitton was in line with the division average, with the brand leveraging the 130th anniversary of its signature Monogram motif to return its pillar Speedy and Alma handbag lines to growth, in addition to launching the Monogram Emblème collection, featuring jacquard instead of the traditional coated canvas.
Special-edition Louis Vuitton bags for the 130th anniversary of the Monogram.
Courtesy of Louis Vuitton
The house is also seeing progress on women’s rtw, jewelry and perfume, while customers are flocking to its experiential flagships in Seoul and Beijing, opened late last year. The Louis Vuitton Hotel pop-up in London was a commercial success, Cabanis reported.
LVMH has been strategically offloading assets as it focuses on brand reboots under new creative directors at Dior, Celine, Fendi, Loewe and Givenchy. The group revealed in May it was selling Marc Jacobs to WHP Global, having divested its stakes in Stella McCartney and Off-White over the last two years.
Newness has become crucial in the battle to woo and retain VICs, with the top 0.1 percent now accounting for around 23 percent of global expenditure, according to a recent research note by Bernstein analyst Luca Solca and his team. They estimated that 70 million aspirational consumers have exited the market since 2023.
“Selling more to existing consumers will require sustained relevance and a higher innovation tempo. As the inflow of new middle-class consumers slows, brands must lean more heavily on their installed base of repeat clients and VICs, who already own the iconic essentials and will only part with additional money for genuinely new and compelling products,” it noted.
“This is pushing brands to accelerate innovation, whether through category expansion, product refresh or increased brand investment, to remain differentiated, interesting and culturally relevant,” the Bernstein report said.
Cabanis said LVMH continues to court new customers with products at all price ranges.
“Where wealth is created, consumer appetite for luxury — and for our products in particular — is strong,” she said. “It’s very important to continue to nourish the pyramid, so both the very exclusive clients and the aspirational, because we need to continue to recruit.”
At Vuitton, for example, the handbag offer ranges from the recently launched Squire East West and Multipass styles, priced from $2,470 to $3,350, to the Speedy P9 handbag, which retails for upward of $10,000 and is aimed at the “very exclusive, high net worth individual” and has a growing waitlist, she explained.
Elsewhere in the division, Loro Piana and Rimowa are still outperforming, while Celine is seeing progress quarter-to-quarter, with Michael Rider’s ready-to-wear, shoes and soft versions of the Triomphe handbag resonating with consumers.
Loro Piana spring 2026
Courtesy of Loro Piana
At Fendi, there are signs of improvement, although Maria Grazia Chiuri’s debut collection is only just arriving in stores. “We are very confident that these two brands will continue to make progress,” Cabanis said.
LVMH benefited from a positive comparison basis, since organic sales of fashion and leather goods dropped 9 percent during the same period a year ago. Excluding the impact of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, the division would have posted organic growth of 2 percent in the second quarter, Cabanis said.
The Chinese Exception
The industry bellwether reported group net profit was flat at 5.7 billion euros in the first half of 2026, beating a consensus forecast of 5.22 billion euros in a poll of analysts conducted by Visible Alpha.
Profit from recurring operations was down 4 percent to 8.69 billion euros, equating to an operating margin of 22.5 percent. Currency fluctuations wiped 686 million euros from the operating profit.
Overall revenues were flat at 19.52 billion euros in the second quarter, representing a rise of 3 percent in organic terms.
The wines and spirits division continued its recovery with a 5 percent increase in organic sales, while perfumes and cosmetics remained under pressure, registering a 1 percent decline.
The watches and jewelry unit was a bright spot, with organic sales up 11 percent, confirming the strength in hard luxury seen elsewhere. Rival Compagnie Financière Richemont said jewelry sales jumped 24 percent and watch sales were up 8 percent during the same period.
At LVMH, jewelry sales recorded double-digit growth in the second quarter, with Tiffany and Bulgari progressing in the mid-teens, fueled by demand from the U.S., Japan and South Korea, Cabanis said.
Atmosphere at Tiffany & Co. store on June 24 in Costa Mesa, Calif.
Savion Washington
Tiffany, which continues its store renovation drive, saw sales of its HardWear collection jump 75 percent during the quarter, while Knot was up almost 50 percent, she noted. Sales in the watch division, which includes Tag Heuer and Hublot, remained in negative territory during the second quarter.
Selective retailing maintained its momentum with a 6 percent increase, after DFS sold its travel retail business in Greater China to China Tourism Group Duty Free. LVMH has also entered into an agreement to sell the Los Angeles and San Francisco airport concessions to Duty Free Americas, and DFS Okinawa to Swiss-based travel retailer Avolta.
All regions saw a sequential improvement in sales in the second quarter, except for Asia. Group organic sales were up 6 percent in the U.S., 14 percent in Japan, 4 percent in the rest of Asia and flat in Europe.
Cabanis said Chinese demand overall was flat during the quarter, with spending shifting from domestic to overseas shopping.
“Chinese local consumption is high by historical standards. What we are already seeing is that Chinese demand is increasingly clustered around shopping events,” she said.
The executive declined to comment on the potential fallout from Vuitton’s highly publicized trademark infringement case against Chinese beverage brand Molly Tea, which has sparked fiery debate around cultural heritage and its preservation.
LVMH is the first major French luxury player to report second-quarter results this week. Kering will follow on Tuesday and Hermès International on Wednesday.
