Fashion
Bernard Arnault bets on LA’s Rodeo Drive with new Tiffany, Louis Vuitton flagship
By
Bloomberg
Published
August 31, 2025
Bernard Arnault is pressing ahead with two major developments on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, tightening his grip on one of the world’s most exclusive retail corridors.
Arnault’s luxury conglomerate, LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE, is planning a new Tiffany & Co. flagship store on the site of the old Luxe Hotel, which will be demolished, according to city filings reviewed by Bloomberg.
Just a block away, LVMH has submitted plans for a big new Louis Vuitton store and cultural campus designed by architect Frank Gehry – a pivot from the company’s original plan to build a hotel, which was rejected by voters in 2023. The new proposal would be the company’s largest project yet in the tony Los Angeles-area enclave.
LVMH is deepening its bet on Rodeo Drive as it contends with headwinds including higher US tariffs on European goods and what it described in July as softening demand in key markets such as China and Japan. Despite that weakness, Rodeo Drive still draws a steady flow of wealthy visitors from Asia, the Middle East and the Americas, offering a palm-tree-lined stage and selfie backdrop that few other shopping venues can match.
Rodeo Drive is in a league with shopping high streets such as Madison Avenue and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan and the Miami Design District, said Milton Pedraza, chief executive officer of Luxury Institute, a consulting firm. “There are some places and spaces that are iconic, and they are some of the most pleasant and desirable places to be.”
LVMH declined to comment for this article. Executives have previously named Rodeo Drive on a select list of places where it makes more sense to own than rent.
“You can mention Paris, London, New York and Fifth Avenue and probably Rodeo Drive in Los Angeles and that’s about it,” Jean-Jacques Guiony, LVMH’s chief financial officer at the time, said on a 2023 earnings call.
The Paris-based company already has spent more than $900 million on 12 leased or owned boutiques on Rodeo Drive over the years. That includes a new three-floor Bvlgari boutique opening in October.
Its plans to invest more underscore the strength of high-end luxury in the Los Angeles area even as the regional economy struggles in the aftermath of the deadly wildfires in January, a downturn in Hollywood and US immigration raids backed up by a temporary military deployment.
LVMH bought the Luxe Hotel site for $200 million in 2021. Plans for the Tiffany project, the most recent version of which was filed Aug. 4 with the Beverly Hills planning commission, haven’t been publicly announced.
Designs filed with the city call for a three-story building on Rodeo Drive spanning 30,466 square feet (2,830 square meters), featuring a rooftop indoor-outdoor space for very important clients and a restaurant. The plans by architect Peter Marino are wending their way through the planning department. The plan is occurring as LVMH renovates its Tiffany stores, a process that’s about 30% complete, CFO Cecile Cabanis said in July.
The campus proposed for Louis Vuitton calls for about 100,000 square feet in two buildings connected by pedestrian bridges and an underground tunnel, according to an application with the planning commission. The development, which LVMH disclosed earlier this year, would include luxury retail, a cafe, restaurant, open-air terrace, exhibition space and a garden rooftop. If approved by the city, construction could start in 2026 and finish by 2029.
Pedraza likened the concept to a theme park, with LVMH “becoming more like Disney or Universal Studios than they are just purveyors of luxury goods.”
LVMH originally planned a Cheval Blanc hotel for the same corner of Rodeo Drive and South Santa Monica Boulevard, a proposal rejected by Beverly Hills voters after a contentious fight over zoning and public benefit.
This time, the company’s proposal doesn’t require changes in zoning rules. Darian Bojeaux, an attorney who led opposition to the hotel, said she doesn’t personally like what’s being proposed — but she isn’t campaigning against it either, saying it’s her understanding that the project complies with local codes.
For Beverly Hills City Councilmember John Mirisch, who also opposed the hotel plan, the earlier fight wasn’t over luxury itself but whether the development gave enough back to the community. While he hasn’t taken a position on the Louis Vuitton campus, Mirisch said the project could offer a civic benefit if it draws from LVMH’s art holdings.
“If they use that to feature the amazing LVMH world-class art collection and bring that to Beverly Hills, that would be a tremendous community benefit,” he said.
LVMH’s latest plans cap a buying spree on the street that began more than a decade ago, mirroring its approach in other global hot spots such as New York and Paris, where it paid $1 billion in 2023 for a retail property on the Champs-Elysees.
In 2012, LVMH paid $85 million for a site on Rodeo Drive now being developed into a Dior flagship opening later this year. Between 2018 and 2020, the company spent another $465 million to piece together four parcels for the planned Cheval Blanc hotel.
“There’s these hubs where people go and they have expectations of what stores are there — and if you’re not there, then the money flows to competitors,” said Justin Mateen, a tech and real estate investor who co-founded Tinder.
Mateen and his brother Tyler paid $211 million in 2024 for a building on the corner of Rodeo and Wilshire Boulevard they plan to rebrand as One Rodeo, a new deluxe retail venue.
Prime real estate on Rodeo Drive typically commands annual rents of between $960 and $1,200 a square foot, while store sales often top $10,000 per square foot, said Houman Mahboubi, a broker with CBRE Group Inc.
“That limited supply creates urgency for groups like LVMH to buy rather than lease,” said Mahboubi, who was involved in the sale of the Luxe Hotel site.
Beverly Hills trailed only New York in new luxury openings from July 2023 to July 2024, with Rodeo Drive accounting for more than 40% of all new luxury space in the Los Angeles market, according to a report from Jones Lang LaSalle Inc.
Strong demand illustrates the willingness of high-end brands to splurge on one of the areas that make up the “absolute core” of global glamor, said Jay Luchs, vice chairman at Newmark Group Inc. and a longtime broker on Rodeo Drive. It’s not just about securing space on the street, he said. It’s about appearing on the feeds of influencers who flock to Rodeo Drive.
“People that have hundreds of millions of followers on Instagram — those are very important in fashion and in influence in the world,” he said.
The report, ‘Breaking Point: Heat and the Garment Floor’, by Tata Institute of Social Sciences and HeatWatch, documents widespread heat stress and major gaps in workplace protections across factories in Tamil Nadu, Delhi-NCR and Gujarat. Based on surveys of 115 workers and 47 in-depth interviews, along with factory case studies, the study highlights how extreme heat combines with production pressure and gendered workplace dynamics to intensify risks.
Severe heat stress and weak protections plagued India’s garment factories, employing 45 million people, mostly women, a new report found.
It urged legal recognition of heat stress as an occupational risk, stronger labour rights, enforceable safety standards and infrastructure upgrades such as ventilation, cooling and medical access to protect workers’ health, productivity and incomes.
Survey findings reveal limited access to basic protections. Over 36 per cent of workers reported irregular or unclean drinking water, 78 per cent struggled to access toilets, and 80 per cent said their workstations lacked air movement. Nearly 88 per cent felt completely drained during peak summer months, while 87 per cent reported heat-related ailments such as headaches, dizziness and muscle cramps in the past year.
Women workers reported acute impacts, with 96.8 per cent experiencing burning sensations during urination and 92.6 per cent reporting menstrual disruptions linked to heat and production pressure.
Factory assessments across 15 surveyed units across different states showed 60 per cent lacked on-site medical facilities, 73.3 per cent had metal or asbestos roofs, and nearly half did not monitor temperature or humidity. In some cases, monitoring devices were installed only during buyer inspections.
The report warns that extreme heat is not merely seasonal discomfort but a structural labour and public health issue. It calls for legal recognition of heat stress as an occupational disease, expanded social protection, mandatory work-rest cycles, infrastructure upgrades and stronger worker participation in safety decisions.
With India projected to lose 35 million jobs and 4.5 per cent of GDP by 2030 due to heat stress, the study urges urgent structural reforms to protect one of the country’s largest employment sectors.
Fibre2Fashion News Desk (CG)
Without seasonal adjustment, this number dropped by 369,000, or 0.8 per cent MoM, with the decrease being a usual seasonal phenomenon.
The seasonally-adjusted number of employed in Germany fell by 14,000 month on month (MoM) in January to 45.5 million, provisional data show.
This number was down by 0.2 per cent YoY in the month.
Around 1.86 million were unemployed in January—a rise of 11.7 per cent YoY.
The unemployment rate rose to 4.2 per cent—a rise of 0.5 pp YoY.
The number of unemployed, at 1.75 million, rose by 0.4 per cent MoM.
In the period from May to December 2025, the number was down by an average of 12,000 MoM.
The number of employed in January 2026 was down by 88,000, or 0.2 per cent, year on year (YoY).
The downward trend in the YoY labour market figures, observed since August 2025, continued, a Destatis release said.
According to the Destatis Labour Force Survey, 1.86 million were unemployed in January 2026—an increase of 195,000, or 11.7 per cent, YoY. The unemployment rate rose to 4.2 per cent—an increase of 0.5 percentage point (pp) YoY.
Adjusted for seasonal and irregular effects, the number of unemployed in January stood at 1.75 million—a MoM increase of 6,000, or 0.4 per cent. The adjusted unemployment rate remained unchanged at 4 per cent.
Fibre2Fashion News Desk (DS)
Activewear sales rose 9 per cent to $3,088 million, while Innerwear sales increased 21 per cent largely due to the acquisition. International sales declined 5 per cent to $240 million.
Gildan Activewear has reported full-year 2025 net sales of $3,619 million, up 11 per cent, supported by HanesBrands integration and growth in Activewear and Innerwear.
Adjusted EPS rose 17 per cent to $3.51, while free cash flow reached $493 million.
The company targets $250 million synergies by 2028, plans Bangladesh Phase 2 expansion, and forecasts 2026 revenue of $6-6.2 billion.
The gross profit increased to $1,130 million and gross margin improved 50 basis points to 31.2 per cent, supported by lower manufacturing and raw material costs alongside favourable pricing, partly offset by tariff pass-through. Adjusted for a $35.4 million inventory fair value step-up related to the transaction, adjusted gross profit reached $1,165 million with adjusted gross margin of 32.2 per cent; the remaining $237 million step-up is expected to flow through cost of sales in 2026, Gildan said in a press release.
Selling, general and administrative (SG&A) expenses were $389 million, while adjusted SG&A rose to $387 million (10.7 per cent of sales) from $308 million (9.4 per cent), reflecting consolidation effects and higher variable compensation. Operating income stood at $620 million (17.1 per cent margin) versus $618 million (18.9 per cent) in 2024, while adjusted operating income increased to $779 million, lifting adjusted operating margin to 21.5 per cent.
Net financial expenses climbed $45 million to $149 million due to acquisition-related borrowing. GAAP diluted EPS from continuing operations was $2.57 compared with $2.46, while adjusted diluted EPS rose 17 per cent to $3.51, benefiting from a lower diluted share base.
Operating cash flow increased to $606 million from $501 million, and free cash flow reached $493 million after capex of $114 million. Year-end net debt was $4,417 million, with leverage at 3.0x net debt to trailing 12-month proforma adjusted EBITDA.
In the fourth quarter (Q4), net sales from continuing operations rose 31.3 per cent to $1,078 million, with operating margin at 9.2 per cent and adjusted operating margin at 20.7 per cent. GAAP diluted EPS declined to $0.32, while adjusted diluted EPS increased to $0.96. Quarterly operating cash flow rose to $336 million and free cash flow to $304 million.
Integration progress is ahead of plan, with expected annual run-rate cost synergies of about $250 million by end-2028, up from the earlier $200 million target. The company plans to close two HanesBrands textile facilities in early 2026 as part of footprint optimisation.
Gildan has initiated a formal sale process for the HanesBrands Australian business, expected to generate approximately $675 million in net sales and $0.21 in diluted EPS in 2026, with proceeds earmarked for debt reduction.
For 2026, excluding HanesBrands Australia, Gildan forecasts revenue of $6-6.2 billion and adjusted diluted EPS of $4.2-4.4, alongside adjusted operating margin of about 20 per cent and free cash flow above $850 million. The company also approved a 10 per cent dividend increase, declaring a quarterly dividend of $0.249 per share.
Looking ahead, Gildan plans to develop a second textile facility within its Bangladesh complex, with initial production targeted for late 2027. From Q1 2026, segment reporting will shift from product categories to Retail and Wholesale to align with its go-to-market structure.
“Our results underscore the impressive execution by our global team whose focus is now on fully capturing the value of our expanded platform. As we look ahead to 2026, we are very excited about the HanesBrands acquisition which doubles our scale, combines iconic brands with our world-class, low-cost, vertically integrated platform, and unlocks a powerful engine for innovation and growth. The integration is well underway, and we now expect to deliver higher than initially targeted run-rate cost synergies reaching approximately $250 million by the end of 2028 with approximately $100 million in 2026,” said Glenn J Chamandy, president and CEO at Gildan Activewear.
Fibre2Fashion News Desk (SG)
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