Dior CEO Delphine Arnault says brand is rethinking prices as luxury shoppers push back

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.” 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.Speaking alongside Arnault, Anderson noted that some luxury brands and shoppers had lost sight of the value of human touch in the high-fashion supply chain. Dior, like other major luxury houses, has had suppliers caught up in a string of labour abuse scandals in Italy that have made the sector the subject of a Milanese prosecutor’s probe. Italian officials closed the probe into Dior last year “without establishing any infringement” after the company agreed to remedies. “The thing we have really struggled with in luxury today is what is the value of talented people making something — we don’t think about the hourly rate of the person embroidering the dress that might take up to three months,” said Anderson. “We have such a visceral reaction to luxury now . . . but if we don’t keep doing the embroidery, and we don’t keep having a couture atelier, then it will vanish.” Anderson added he had underestimated the media scrutiny he would come under after he moved from his previous role at LVMH-owned Loewe and running his own namesake label, despite being warned by Arnault that there would be a shift. “I became a meme,” he said referring to a photo of him smoking by the Seine in the run-up to his womenswear debut last autumn that went viral. “I have only been there for a year, the product has only been in stores for four or five months,” he said. “But the internet world wants you to turn the business around and create a perfect collection tomorrow. Things need time. A designer needs time.” Arnault said that Dior was her father’s favourite fashion house as it was the first he acquired in 1985. Adrienne Klasa, Jo Ellison and Elizabeth Paton in Savelletri © 2026 The Financial Times. This article originally appeared in The Financial Times.