Will Bernard Arnault’s LVMH Control The Empire Giorgio Armani Built?

TOPSHOT – Italian designer Giorgio Armani acknowledges the applause at the end of his presentation for Armani Prive during the Women’s Haute-Couture Spring/Summer 2025 Fashion Week to mark its 20th anniversary, in Paris on January 28, 2025. (Photo by JULIEN DE ROSA / AFP) (Photo by JULIEN DE ROSA/AFP via Getty Images)

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Giorgio Armani built one of the last great independent luxury powerhouses by saying no—to investors, partners, and acquisition offers from industry giants. “I wouldn’t have blinked an eye if they said it’s just going to stay with the family,” Kurt Bielawski, former Giorgio Armani buyer for Neiman Marcus, told me on our Zoom call.

Armani was sole shareholder of the estimated $12.1 billion lifestyle brand, encompassing apparel, beauty and fragrance, eyewear, watches and jewelry, hotels, restaurants and even gourmet chocolates. He owned entirely his manufacturing subsidiaries and held a financial stake in a licensing partner’s business.

And yet, his will introduced a completely contradictory directive: within 18 months, 15% of the Group must be sold, ideally to LVMH, L’Oréal, or EssilorLuxottica. A second tranche of up to 54.9% follows within five years to create an eventual handoff of majority control. If no strategic buyer emerges, an IPO is mandated.

“He was definitely a designer who was also a businessman,” Bielawski added. “I’m sure he was looking at this from a perspective of longevity and who is going to take care of my brand.”

Armani’s long-time partner and head of menswear, Leo Dell’Orco, will oversee day-to-day operations with 30% of company shares and 40% of voting rights. Armani’s niece Silvana, who leads women’s design, will hold 15% of both shares and voting rights, as will his nephew Andrea Camerana, the only family member with children representing the next generation. His other niece, Roberta, and his sister Rosanna both received 15% of shares but no voting rights.

At the center sits the Giorgio Armani Foundation, created in 2016 to safeguard the brand’s codes of “essential, modern, elegant and unostentatious” style. It retains 10% of shares and 30% of voting rights, maintaining veto power over major corporate changes to act as guardian of the brand’s legacy. After the mandated 15% sale to outside investors, voting rights and share percentages will be proportionally reduced, but voting structure stays similar.

“It is rumored that Pantaleo [Leo] Dell’Orco—Armani’s partner and right hand for decades—will take on its creative leadership,” Jeannine Diego, assistant professor of fashion in the Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts told me in an email prior to the will’s reading. “Yet Dell’Orco is not Armani. Fashion labels have always been tied to a personality, a persona, a charismatic center.”

She added, “I wonder whether it is wise for this new chapter to lean so heavily on continuity rather than on opportunity.”

Armani After Giorgio: Three Paths

Any potential successor must grapple with creative and commercial principles defining the 50-year-old Armani Group and forged through its founder’s absolute vision. The brand’s DNA represents both a powerfully enduring pedigree and potential constraint on future evolution.

“Once Giorgio Armani, the man, is gone, by definition, his hand is not involved in the garment you are buying,” Robin Derrick, former creative director at British Vogue and creative consultant for Giorgio Armani for seven years, said over Zoom. “I actually think there is no Giorgio Armani without Giorgio Armani.”

Dana Thomas, fashion and culture journalist and bestselling author of “Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster” and “Fashionopolis: The Price of Fast Fashion and the Future of Clothes,” drew on her 35-year acquaintance with Armani to offer a measured optimism. “I think the Armani brand is larger than its creator and is likely to remain a mainstay in the fashion and luxury sector,” she told me in email. “Other brands have survived their founders: think Chanel, Dior… I expect brands like Armani or Ralph Lauren will do the same.”

So then, who takes Armani?

The will specifically names three contenders, but only one casts a long shadow over the others. Bernard Arnault, fashion’s “Cashmere Wolf,” has a proven playbook for folding heritage houses into his constellation. Bulgari and Tiffany have flourished under LVMH, with the former increasing net profits over 60% in recent years and the latter delivering record results at flagship stores. In adding Armani, Arnault will complete a grand trifecta including Dior and Vuitton to claim one of the last bastions of Italian independents.

The house Armani built isn’t entirely Arnault’s to lose, however. The will also names L’Oréal and EssilorLuxottica as potential successors, both with decades-long ties to the house. L’Oreal delivers beauty expansion with operational independence; EssilorLuxottica sustains the Italian influence. Neither possess Arnault’s comprehensive sphere, but both might protect more of what makes Armani distinctly Armani. All three fundamentally represent different visions for what the brand becomes next.

L’Oréal Knows Armani Best

“I actually thought that Estée Lauder would have been a candidate since they had acquired the Tom Ford company a few years back,” Tom Julian, brand consultant and former style manager for Nordstrom, emailed me after our initial Zoom call. “That has seemed to be a seamless transaction and successful partnership especially for Ford’s high-end tailored collections and boutiques.”

Indeed, the Tom Ford–Estée Lauder deal became one of the most consequential in luxury. What began in 2006 as a licensing agreement for Tom Ford Beauty culminated in Estée Lauder’s $2.8 billion acquisition of the full brand in 2023. A beauty house buying a fashion label and making it work suggests a model L’Oréal could pursue.

L’Oréal’s relationship with Armani runs deeper than most realize, spanning nearly four decades of collaboration extending well beyond typical licensing agreements. “L’Oréal had a deal whereby between five and 10% of their marketing spend, he could do with what he wanted, and one of the things he did was hire me,” Derrick told me. “So basically, he got a free art director, namely me, paid for by L’Oréal.” The unusual arrangement gave Armani extraordinary creative freedom while L’Oréal bankrolled campaigns across categories.

“He used to love torturing L’Oréal,” Derrick laughed, recounting fragrance meetings where Armani would spray samples and tell the French executives the sample “smells like wet dog.” When L’Oréal proposed naming a new fragrance Bellissima, forecasting $27 million in sales compared to $11 million for Armani’s preferred Anima, he retorted, “La pasta è bellissima (pasta is beautiful),” implying the commonality of their choice lacked sophistication.

“The beauty of Armani is he never just slapped his name on colognes and belts to build a business,” Julian noted. “He did all these very uniquely and very distinctly.”

The partnership thrived precisely because Armani demanded more. Acqua di Giò became one of the most successful fragrances in history, while the Armani Privé collection achieved a prestige rivaling Chanel and Dior. “He got them to increase the quality of the ingredients, he got them to do incredible things, and I think the makeup and the cosmetics is brilliant,” Derrick said.

Now L’Oréal has the chance to convert that licensing relationship into ownership, but industry speculation suggests the French conglomerate only wants the beauty division. The existing agreement was renewed in 2018 through 2050. It’s worth approximately €1.5 billion annually, or roughly 10% of L’Oréal’s luxury division sales.

Still, L’Oréal represents continuity without disruption. Unlike LVMH, which would absorb Armani into a sprawling portfolio, L’Oréal knows the brand’s creative language, understands its standards, and has invested decades building infrastructure to support Armani’s vision. Ownership could retain Armani Group’s independence.

EssilorLuxottica and the Italian Case for Armani

An EssilorLuxottica acquisition would keep one of Italy’s most consequential luxury houses under Italian ownership. Giorgio Armani and Leonardo Del Vecchio, Luxottica’s late founder, forged a groundbreaking partnership in 1988, with Armani holding a 2.5% stake in the world’s largest eyewear company. Before their deal, glasses were medical devices. After, they became fashion accessories behind a billion-dollar category, reshaping how luxury brands think about extensions and proving eyewear could carry the same prestige as couture.

Armani-branded eyewear generates about $530 million annually for the group; one-fifth of Ray-Ban’s sales, but with luxury positioning’s heftier margins. EssilorLuxottica renewed their exclusive arrangement with Armani in 2022 for another 15 years, running through 2037.

“While others remained focused purely on clothing, Armani started building a complete lifestyle ecosystem, decades before ‘lifestyle branding’ became an industry standard,” noted Effie Kanyua, former director of PR & communications for Hearst UK & Europe, in email. Yet this expansive ecosystem is precisely where doubts about EssilorLuxottica’s capacity arise.

The group only recently stepped into apparel with its $1.5 billion acquisition of Supreme from VF Corporation in 2024. This was a bold move, but hardly preparation for Armani’s sprawling fashion network. “Armani would be a tough nut to crack for EssilorLuxottica,” a Reuters analyst remarked. Managing a streetwear brand built on hype drops isn’t the same as sustaining Armani’s sober sophistication.

And there are margin realities. Armani’s core fashion business operates at just 3% margins. EssilorLuxottica’s eyewear, by contrast, enjoys 17%. As HSBC’s Erwan Rambourg put it, Armani means “great eyewear, great beauty, a great legacy, but the ready-to-wear brand today is not the hottest on the planet.”

Still, an Armani succession to another Milan-based company would preserve Italian identity in a way LVMH or L’Oréal can’t. “The work now is custodianship, not reinvention,” Eric Abramian, former vice president of development at Zadig & Voltaire, told me in an email. “New leadership must carry his manners forward — discretion, respect, the unflashy bow — so the world he built remains intact while edging ahead of the present.”

But can Armani Group afford sentiment over scale in today’s M&A landscape? Perhaps Armani himself wrestled with this when he left the door ajar for “The Terminator,” (one of Arnault’s other colorful nicknames) to ensure going with him will allow his dynasty to live.

And If LVMH Takes Armani?

“Succession is going to be very interesting given what must be a unique structure among a decades-old label of this size,” Jack Yan, founder and publisher of fashion magazine Lucire, told me in email. “I imagine plans have been made among trusted team members to keep the ship steady. This is one of the more diversified fashion groups around with so many brand extensions, including restaurants.”

This latter point makes the case for an LVMH acquisition. With 75 luxury brands in Arnault’s harem, real estate holdings including a major stake in Miami’s Design District and New York’s Fifth Avenue, several hotels through a 2019 $3.2 billion acquisition of Belmond Ltd, and ventures across finance, media and technology, luxury’s modern-day Alexander III of Macedon could easily fold Armani into his empire.

“Given Armani’s brand is a global one and represents elegance, craftsmanship, design and luxury, these would align strategically with LVMH,” Julian noted. “I really don’t see a downgrade in quality for Armani should an acquisition come to pass.”

Even so, as I’ve mentioned in past articles about my favorite Cashmere Conquistador here and here and here, I have reservations; not about LVMH’s ability to keep the brand profitable, but the sacrifices that come from Arnault’s business methods. The Conqueror of the Known Luxury World isn’t known for his sentimentality.

Will he close or sell off Armani’s factories in Modena, Trissino, Fossò, Trento, and six other Italian cities in favor of the Milan-based Chinese-owned factories that produced $2,800 Dior handbags at $57 each under sweatshop conditions? Will he push out Armani’s heirs like with former Louis Vuitton president Henry Racamier, heir to the Vuitton family? Or will he pursue the acquisition as he did Tiffany & Co., seizing control by cutting the purchase price after a protracted legal battle?

“I think what I would call out is LVMH does own the following men’s brands — Louis Vuitton, Dior Men, Celine, Loewe, Kenzo, Givenchy, Berluti and Loro Piana,” Julian countered against my concerns. “The last two are still known as two pure luxury labels out of Italy. And both have exquisite products and retail presentations around the globe. I really don’t see a downgrade in quality for Armani should an acquisition come to pass.”

But he wasn’t entirely dismissive of my point. “I do suspect that with any global organization based in Paris that there could be a matrix of partners that would not necessarily align with all those that were Armani ‘pure’ from Mr. Armani’s years of working with the entities,” Julian acknowledged. “Yes, there could be a shift or downgrade at some point when all the labels, categories and product extensions are reviewed.”

Bielawski, on the other hand, urged pragmatism. Armani naming LVMH as his top choice made perfect sense. “LVMH has the wherewithal and the capacity to manage a brand like Armani,” he said, noting the company “worked really hard to grow their accessories business,” but it was “never in a place that they were ever really satisfied with it. Having someone like an LVMH come in might be interesting because they might be able to take off with it or get accessories off the ground in a bigger way than they’ve ever been able to do.”

The Armani Endgame

Armani may have imagined LVMH as the custodian of his legacy, but Arnault’s kingdom-building has always prioritized conquest over continuum. Armani’s heirs and factories could find themselves reduced to collateral. Yet I can’t deny the math favors Arnault.

LVMH possesses the infrastructure, capital, and luxury management expertise neither L’Oréal nor EssilorLuxottica can match. Whether that expertise preserves or transforms what made Armani distinctly Armani remains the question.

“Armani’s passing signals the end of an era,” emailed Tara Whitman, editor at Britannia Daily. “It raises urgent questions about how fashion’s remaining independent houses will navigate the future without icons like him.”

Giorgio Armani spent 50 years building independence. Nonetheless, his will acknowledges that in the pursuit of luxury, independence no longer survives without scale. The designer who made his fortune dressing American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman may have his legacy shaped by fashion’s actual wolf in cashmere clothing.

Or he may not. After all, the will also stipulates the possibility of an IPO should the Foundation and heirs be equally concerned of Arnault’s stewardship. But then again, if we consider LVMH’s origin in the hostile takeover of Louis Vuitton, an IPO may very well be the thing that lands Armani into Arnault’s pack.