I'm really impatient. I would love it to be like tomorrow. I would have like the it by the iconic there's a revenue like boom and but it doesn't work that way because it's unrealistic. Because once you were here, the only way to go is here. Yeah. It there's that it because it's attention span. And I think for me it is about this progression. About trying, getting things wrong, getting things right. Is this what the customer wants? Is this is you know, because for me it's like how do we retain and how do we recruit? So each time you're kind of pulling this back and forward. What Because ultimately if you were to kind of listen to what everyone was saying in real time, then you're not thinking what is in five.
I introduce to you Delphine Arnault and Jonathan Anderson who are respectively the CEO and creative director of Dior. Not to be confused. Delphine, you're the CEO. Jonathan, you're the creative director. Um we'll start with Delphine. Um you actually joined Dior first of all in 2001. You went back there in 2008 till 2013. So you've had a long experience. It's it was your first job at LVMH. Um and your first sort of experience in the company. You returned in 2023 as the CEO. Um and your first big big kind of like decision, I suppose, in a more public environment was to announce Jonathan, this reprobate who you brought in to look after the billion-dollar company. So tell me about the decision-making and what made Jonathan the guy for the job.
So first of all, thank you so much, Jo, for having us today. We're delighted to be here, and thank you to Rula for this beautiful day. We're delighted to be here, and we don't come very often to talks together.
Done a talk together. Never done it together.
Yeah, so it's Internally, we do talks together, but never externally. So, it's nice to be here and to be able to exchange about how we work together between business and creativity, and it's a great opportunity for us to be here. So, yes, one of the first choices that I had to do as a CEO was to appoint Jonathan. It's the first time in the history of Dior since Mr. Dior that we have a designer, creative artistic director who's at the same time in charge of women's categories, men's categories, and haute couture. So, it's a very big appointment. We thought about it with my father because he's very involved in the brand Dior, and in the
Yes, a very special house to his heart because it's the first house that he acquired in 1985. And so, we talked a lot. I knew Jonathan for a long time because I knew you before you even started at Loewe.
Yeah. So, Delphine was the first to hire me. At Loewe. I mean, she was part of my brand, and then Loewe.
Shows. Yeah. So, we did. Yeah, so we've known each other for a long time. He did an amazing work, amazing vision at Loewe. He totally transformed the brand, and we thought it was the right timing and the right person to take on one of the biggest jobs in the industry.
Um so you made this announcement. I actually was checking back today. We spoke about it in June 2025 and I think two days later Jonathan you did your first men's wear show where I met you backstage and I said so how's it going and you were like um what was it I mean you understood the scale of it and the scope of it and the kind of you know you'd obviously wanted it you talked about it a lot but what is it like when you arrive at a brand like Dior and they realize actually how much you've taken on.
Well I think I kind of knew because Delphine would be like you know it's very big. It's very very big and I was like sure it'll be fine. No I think when you get in it's not about the scale of collections it is about the scale of people. You have a lot more people that you're interacting with. So it's sort of like you're trying to perform to an audience and try to get the message through but there's a lot more of them. So this was a big change and then I think the media pressure of taking Dior was I think I had underestimated. I think because I was a designer at Loewe and then going to Dior I didn't think there was going to be such a shift. Delphine knew the shift was going to happen. And she kept telling me things will be different and I was like it'll be fine but I think it was different when I would get on the Eurostar or go to a restaurant and it was
You became a meme. I became a meme.
You became a meme. It was hard work. Yeah. Um even when you come outside your house and you're having a cigarette you're not safe. Um for the memes. Um and it was unusual. It was a kind of like you had to you were kind of the media part of all these brands were changing and it became a kind of strange type of Hunger Games, you know, like off we go. Um But just to quickly put it in context, so Loewe you sort of doubled revenues in the time you were there. Um so it was around 2 billion I guess in than doubled.
More than doubled. I mean we won't I won't talk team numbers. We're not allowed to talk any numbers. Estimated numbers, but Dior as you derived it had already quadrupled its revenue. So I think it it it's been 10 years of like massive massive massive growth. So I think anybody arriving anywhere in the luxury industry in like 2024 was already arriving somewhere in a very kind of like like a frenzied moment. It's like it's been it's a difficult thing to kind of like keep your vision straight when everything is like on like, you know, constantly on fire but in a good way but also there are dangers and hazards around. It's it's a lot of work. I think that you're working on multiple collections at the same time and also Jonathan was was used to it because even though Loewe wasn't the same scale, you were already used to having a big studio with different collections, collections for men's, collections for women's. You had also your own brand. So you were used to kind of this multitasking multitasking.
Yeah and and this was also I think something very important that you were used to even though the teams weren't aren't the scale like at Dior, it was big teams at at Loewe with you know, people in different fields and the handbags and the ready-to-wear. So
Just about scope. I think Dior the name brings an added kind of for me the job is not different. Yeah. Um a lot of people will be like, how do you do all these collections? And how, you know, you're going to burn out. You know, it's not about that. It's more about the media scrutiny of it. So, you're kind of And it was interesting cuz we were just talking backstage. It's sort of like when I did the show in LA, it
Last week, by the way. It was on Thursday or Friday.
Got here, so a bit of a mess. Yeah. Um, you know, it I've only been there for a year. The product has only been in store for 4 or 5 months. But, in the general internet world, they want you to turn a business around tomorrow. They want you to arrive at a collection like perfect tomorrow. Yeah. But
Which is to say, Delphine, when you first, um, when I first spoke to you, you're on record saying, 'It needs time. Things need time. A designer needs time.' So, talk to me a little bit about your dynamic. Like, how often do you speak? What's the big focus? What have you worked on like
All the time. We speak all the time. We have meetings, um, several times a week.
Yeah. Um, every Monday morning.
Yeah, every Monday morning we do collection reviews together. And, uh, we see each other all the time. And I think it's very important to have this dialogue and to be able to speak openly about, uh, everything that's happening in the company.
Yeah, it's good because we kind of are a good yin and yang. Because Delphine is more, uh, I don't know how to say it. Like, cautious in a very good way. So, she's very kind of Whereas I would be like, 'Let's do this.' And then Delphine would be like, 'Hmm, let's slow down a bit.' So, it's kind of good because it is a good balancing act. Because I think She brings you in. Yeah, because in a brand like Dior, it is, you know, you push one thing and it's like Yeah. So, and it's a good balance, you know, to learn. Especially Delphine knows a lot about bags. I've worked at Loewe. So, we're very good at like we know we're both very challenging on the team with bags because we both have worked in a And and Delphine is very good at surrounding with the right getting the right people you know like to work with work with me on ready-to-wear and like because the collections are we've got a collection every month technically. Um and it's sort of you know so you have to be on the same page because if not you could action something and then it would be hundreds you know what I mean? So you have to be kind of like cautious but at the same time keep the momentum. Like Delphine is always about agility is trying to find agility within the business and this is the most important thing especially in a brand that is you're trying to move 45° and it's even just by doing this you've got to get like hundred thousands of people to go in the right direction. And this takes patience.
A lot of patience. Talk to me about that agility and like working around something where you are maneuvering a huge brand.
We need to be very agile nowadays. I think every company needs to be very agile. You don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. Things change super fast and you need to be agile. We have this very big ship to maneuver and we have to be agile like if we had a kind of a small river. So we need to do both, manage the ship and be also very agile in everything we do in the collections, in the number of drops, in the supply chain, in the service to the client. We need to invent a lot of things and be very agile in that way.
Cuz shortly before um Jonathan you'd also made a lot of like corporate changes in the management structure and who was looking after things in order to look at the supply chain issues and resolve some of the problems that had happened. Um and then subsequent to that you said you wanted to look at like the offering and offering quality to the consumer. To which end I suspected you said especially in the leather goods area, I imagine that you what you meant there was like thinking of the offering in an environment where the prices had kind of escalated massively and across the industry for like several years. How have you introduced those like new offerings and how is that going?
Yeah, so we're working a lot on the leather goods offer for example. It's um we're very cautious about, you know, I think the prices and we haven't increased the prices on the for example our icon bag, the Lady Dior since July 2023 except in two currencies where there's devaluation in the currencies. We uh yeah, I think that we can't really increase the price of the product without increasing also the perception of that product and the quality of that product. So it's very important to work on that. So we're working on that.
But also you have this drop zero. Yeah, this is Delphine's idea. Okay, Delphine. Well, yeah. No, but when I joined, we had this conundrum where we were like how do we get product in quick enough?
Yeah. So Delphine was like we need to get products in so we had this Delphine came up with this idea where we would drop earlier which was at the beginning of still at the in January. 2nd of January because we wanted basically the world to know that a new chapter was there for Dior and so it's a great chance to have a creative director who does men, women, and haute couture because you can have, you know, a coherence, a consistency in the product, in the visual merchandising, in the communication, in the message.
Yeah. Um and we thought that by changing all our windows on January 2nd, which was a huge thing for our teams because, you know, they had to work over Christmas and over the 31st of December, we would pass on the message, and we saw that the customers were really really happy with the new products that they saw. It's very colorful. It's very joyful. There's a lot of products that are out of stock, um and um That's your That was your baby. That was kind of your No, but I think it was something I didn't think of because I was just thinking of like how do we get on top of all this? But I think what was really good is we started off the year in a kind of like, this is where we can go. Yeah. And I think it really encouraged the teams. And as well, we were able to, you know, like when you look at what's happening in the market in terms of price structuring and products, and in terms of novelty, you know, like we had to get out ahead of the market.
Yeah. And I think this was a good way to start the year so that the entire company could see windows, communication, this is where we're going.
It's a kind of wholesale vision. That's the thing when you're talking about thousands of employees, it's about shoals of fish, isn't it? Everyone's got to swim in the same direction.
Excitement. You've got to get the consumer excited and try to The biggest thing is getting teams excited because if they're excited, they will deliver the message. If they are not excited, they will definitely not
Are you at team rallying? I'm It is on and off. It depends what week it is.
Good. [laughter] You're good. No, I, you know
And you spend a lot of time in shops. Yeah, I love going in shops. You both love spending a lot of time in shops.
Well, you started off in merchandising, right? Sorry, I don't mean to point like that. With Prada and Delphine, you were marching around shops in Tokyo with your father last week.
Yes. Never not in a shop.
Also in Korea and uh Okay, all over. Yeah, and like what is the sort of essence of this shop research that you find like that you can't get through any other kind of like me?
Well, it's so important to see because basically in the shops that's where you have the contact with your clients and that's how you understand, you know, even better what's working, what's not working, what you should change. You look at the shelves, the lighting, the presentation.
Me last week your father wanted the lighting arranged differently on a shelf. I'm like, that's an attention to detail you wouldn't expect the president of your major to be worrying about on a Saturday. I've been visiting shops with him since I was 10 years old and he's always been like that.
