According to Nicolas Hieronimus, CEO of the L’Oréal group, quoted by France Presse, “beauty is a marketplace to be”, especially for fashion brands and luxury heavyweights.
A Prada Candy Florale Eau de Toilette shot from the new prada-beauty.com website
Recent efforts to boost the fragrance and cosmetics sector within large groups are proof of this: the French luxury conglomerate Kering created a new division, Kering Beauté, to develop the beauty category for several of its brands, including Bottega Veneta, Balenciaga and Alexander McQueen, and has appointed Raffaella Cornaggia as its CEO; a former L’Oréal executive, Stéphane Rinderknech, was named Chairman, CEO of LVMH Beauty Division; and Italian fashion house Prada introduced a new website dedicated to its beauty offerings.
Le Grand numéro de Chanel was Chanel's latest exhibition celebrating the house's iconic perfumes from 15 December 2022 to 9 January 2023 at the Temporary Grand Palais in Paris
Chanel’s latest fragrance exhibition in Paris, Le Grand Numéro de Chanel, featured a mix of cabaret, live music, art installations, fashion displays from the archives and virtual reality immersion. The just-concluded show was a great success, with 100,000 visitors in three and a half weeks.
Hermès continues to expand its beauty offering
The numbers are also revealing of the success of luxury cosmetics and perfumes: LVMH’s perfumes and cosmetics division had a turnover of EUR 7.7 billion in 2022 (+17%), while leather goods and saddlery expert Hermès, which already had perfumes in its offering, entered the world of make-up in 2020 and two years later its ‘parfums et beauté’ division had a turnover of EUR 448 million, up 16.4% compared to 2021.
Ihsane Rahmani, a luxury expert at Paris-based independent strategy and management consultancy Vertone, explained to AFP that luxury perfumes and premium cosmetics are “an opportunity for luxury brands to build bridges between different product universes – ready-to-wear, leather goods, but also spas and hospitality, – and to offer a global experience to customers, especially VIP costumers.”
Silvia Manzoni
Journalist and Beauty expert