Dior chief executive Delphine Arnault has said the brand is reassessing its approach to pricing on some products as the luxury industry attempts to win back customers put off by precipitous rises.Arnault is overseeing a period of renewal at Dior, which is the second-largest brand by sales at the LVMH group controlled by her family. She appointed star creative director Jonathan Anderson last year to help revitalise its image and counter falling sales amid an industry-wide slowdown.Anderson presented his sixth collection for Dior — and his first cruise show — in Los Angeles last week. “We are working a lot on the leather offer and we’re very cautious about the prices,” Arnault said at the FT’s Business of Luxury conference in Puglia on Monday (May 18). “We can’t really increase the price of a product without increasing the perception of the quality and the product. It’s important to work on that.”
CEO of Dior, Delphine Arnault. (Photo: Andrea Renault/AFP)
She noted that Dior had not increased prices on its Lady Dior bag since 2023, except for two currencies that had devalued. Anderson’s first designs for the house were rushed into boutiques on Jan 2 this year — including several lower-priced product offerings — to demonstrate the brand’s new strategy and look.Price rises at brands including Dior, Louis Vuitton and Chanel in recent years have caused a backlash among some shoppers. Some luxury products are up to 1.7 times more expensive than they were in 2019 according to consultancy Bain, a factor that has caused middle-class shoppers to leave the industry in droves and even deterred some wealthier buyers.
