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The e-commerce giant wants to reduce its postal volume by at least two-thirds by this fall

Amazon.com AMZN 1.63%increase; green up pointing triangle is planning to sharply cut the number of packages it ships through the U.S. Postal Service, a move that could cost the agency billions of dollars in much-needed revenue.

The e-commerce giant, long the Postal Service’s biggest customer, has already begun ratcheting down its postal volume and wants to reduce it by at least two-thirds by this fall, when its current contract with the agency expires, according to people familiar with the matter.

USPS delivered more than a billion packages for Amazon last year, close to 15% of all the packages that the Postal Service delivered in the country. Amazon’s guaranteed volumes have been a source of stability for the agency, which has operated at a loss for most of the past two decades. In fiscal 2025, it reported a net loss of $9 billion.

The Postal Service has expanded its parcel-delivery capacity in recent years, building bigger facilities and buying new machines to process boxes, which replaced aging equipment that focused on letter mail. If the decline in volumes from Amazon isn’t adequately managed, the new equipment and facilities could end up being underutilized. The Postal Service may also have to find more ways to cut costs.

According to people familiar with the matter, Amazon disclosed the plan to the Postal Service in a confidential bidding process for its so-called last-mile delivery service, in which USPS handles the last leg of delivery for businesses. Under new Postmaster General David Steiner, the Postal Service solicited bids from Amazon and other businesses for the service for the first time. Steiner has said the bidding will help the quasigovernmental agency determine the true market value of the last-mile service.

Amazon’s existing contract with the Postal Service expires in October. Results of the last-mile bidding competition will be released in the second quarter, and contracts will be finalized by the end of the third quarter. That left Amazon concerned that it would have little time to make changes to its network if its bid weren’t accepted, the people said.

An Amazon spokesman said the retailer initially wanted to increase its volumes with the Postal Service and was surprised by the new bidding process.

“We negotiated with [the Postal Service] in good faith for over a year to try and reach a deal that would bring them billions in revenue and believed we were heading toward an agreement, when the USPS abruptly walked away at the 11th hour and introduced the auction concept. While we’ve submitted a bid and hope to continue our partnership, even at a reduced level, we now have to prepare to meet our customers’ delivery needs regardless of the outcome of the auction,” the spokesman said.

If Amazon’s bid is rejected by the Postal Service, it could attempt to raise its bid, seek other carriers to handle its final-mile deliveries, invest more in building out its own delivery network or some combination of those options. The final-mile deliveries are typically the costliest part of supply chains, and in rural areas, costs go up due to the lack of density. Amazon and other businesses typically rely on the Postal Service to deliver parcels to harder-to-reach areas.

USPS currently delivers approximately 15% of Amazon packages. That number reaches 30% to 40% in rural areas.

Amazon has already been expanding its one- to two-day delivery capabilities in rural areas but has said previously that it isn’t trying itself to deliver to 100% of its customers in the U.S.

The Postal Service’s losses stem in part from its mandate to deliver to more than 170 million addresses six days a week. The six-day-a-week statutory obligation leads to 71% of delivery routes being financially underwater, the agency has said. Roughly three in five post offices don’t cover the cost of their operations.

Businesses that bring in bulk volumes typically get a rate discount from the Postal Service. The biggest shippers have negotiated directly with the agency for contracts with even bigger discounts. Until this year, those large contracts have been negotiated individually.

In February, more than 20 companies submitted bids to have the Postal Service bring packages from 18,000 local post offices and delivery hubs to their final destinations, Steiner said in an interview last month. Each bid includes a projection of the number of packages they expect to ship through the Postal Service, and the price they are willing to pay for this access.

During a congressional hearing Tuesday, Steiner said the Postal Service was on pace to “run out of cash” in about a year—and asked lawmakers to consider lifting regulatory restrictions on the Postal Service’s ability to raise prices for stamps and other services.

“I am a firm believer that the market should set the rates. And the market isn’t setting the rates,” said Steiner.

Steiner is asking Congress to raise the Postal Service’s $15 billion debt limit, a number that was established more than three decades ago, to allow reforms to its pension payments and to modify regulations that limit its ability to raise prices.

Amazon now handles a substantial chunk of its own deliveries. It delivered 6.7 billion packages last year, while the Postal Service delivered 6.6 billion, according to data from ShipMatrix, a parcel-analytics firm. It was the first year Amazon’s parcel volumes exceeded the Postal Service’s volumes. Amazon had already overtaken the parcel volumes of United Parcel Service and FedEx in recent years.

Both FedEx and UPS, which have historically delivered vast volumes of Amazon parcels to people’s homes, have cut back the number of packages they deliver for the e-commerce giant to focus on more profitable parcels.

STADA / CAPVEST — M&A Hunt: Three Actionable Target Scenarios Morning Note | Consumer Health | 18 March 2026

STADA this morning reported record 2025 results — €4.3bn in sales (+6%) and €961m adjusted cc EBITDA (+8%), with CEO Peter Goldschmidt signalling the firm has "absolutely enough firepower" for meaningful consumer health acquisitions. Context matters here: CapVest Partners agreed in September 2025 to buy control of STADA from Bain Capital and Cinven in a deal valuing the business at roughly €10bn including debt, with the transaction expected to close in early 2026. This is the first major strategic signal from the new ownership — a buyout-backed platform actively hunting, with a freshly closed deal and institutional PE capital to deploy.

STADA's M&A track record is well-established. Under Bain/Cinven, STADA executed more than 25 targeted acquisitions including Johnson & Johnson's Nizoral brand, Walmark, a GSK consumer healthcare portfolio, and a Sanofi European consumer healthcare portfolio. CapVest has explicitly stated it intends to use M&A to transform the scale of its portfolio companies. The machine is warmed up. The question is: what's next?

Perrigo is arguably the most logical large-scale target for STADA. Perrigo describes itself as a leading pure-play self-care company with over a century of OTC experience, focused on consumers primarily in North America and Europe. Its European branded portfolio — Compeed (blister care), EllaOne (emergency contraception), Mederma (scar treatment), Jungle Formula (insect repellent) — overlaps neatly with STADA's existing categories and distribution infrastructure. These are exactly the kind of "local hero brands" STADA prizes.

Perrigo is in active restructuring mode, creating a motivated seller dynamic. In November 2025, Perrigo initiated a strategic review of its infant formula business, which generates approximately $360m in net sales and represents less than 10% of annual revenues. The company has been systematically shedding non-core assets: in July 2025, Perrigo announced the divestiture of its dermacosmetics business for up to €327m, with the transaction expected to close in Q1 2026. What's left after these disposals is a cleaner, more focused European/North American OTC platform — precisely what STADA would want.

Perrigo's FY2026 CORE adjusted EPS outlook is $2.25–$2.55, with CORE organic net sales guiding -3.5% to +0.5%. The stock has been under pressure. At current levels, the EV represents a compressed multiple for a pure-play OTC asset — M&A optionality is arguably not priced in. Main risks: execution drag from ongoing restructuring, US private-label manufacturing complexity, and leverage (net debt roughly 3.6x EBITDA) which would need careful structuring in any deal.

Bottom line on PRGO: Best risk/reward as a tactical long with M&A optionality. STADA buying the European branded segment in a carve-out (rather than the whole company) is the most realistic scenario.

Haleon generates roughly 60% of sales from global power brands including Sensodyne, Advil, Centrum, and Poligrip, with trailing twelve-month revenues of $14.5bn. At £49bn market cap, Haleon as a whole is far beyond STADA's reach. But that's not the trade.

The playbook here is brand carve-outs. Procter & Gamble, Reckitt, Coty, and others are divesting smaller local brands, niche or entire categories, and legacy formats that no longer fit their strategic priorities. Haleon has a tail of local/regional brands — Tums, Caltrate, Emergen-C — that are non-core to its global power brand strategy. STADA has already demonstrated it can execute exactly this type of transaction: the Sanofi European consumer health brand acquisition in 2023 followed the same template of a large pharma pruning non-priority brands.

Any Haleon strategic review announcement, portfolio simplification press release, or analyst day commentary pointing to category exits in 2026–2027. This is a 12–24 month idea, not an immediate event-driven trade.

Sanofi announced in 2023 its intention to separate its consumer healthcare division via the creation of a standalone company, Opella, and in 2024 confirmed negotiations with a US private equity firm to transfer a 50% controlling stake. Opella's portfolio includes major European OTC brands: Dulcolax, Allegra, Niquitin, Doliprane. Revenue is estimated in the €3–4bn range — larger than what STADA would likely absorb whole, but specific geographic carve-outs (e.g. Central/Eastern Europe distribution rights) or a co-investment structure with CapVest alongside the PE firm are plausible.

This is the most speculative of the three scenarios. Opella's ownership structure post PE-deal is complex and regulatory scrutiny on any further transaction would be significant. Flag as a monitoring situation rather than an actionable trade.

The broader consumer health M&A wave provides the perfect hunting ground for STADA. Kimberly-Clark's $48.7bn acquisition of Kenvue aims to create a global health and wellness leader, while CapVest's own investment in STADA and the Alliance Pharma take-private reflect strong PE conviction in the sector's stable demand and margin potential. Large pharma is shedding OTC assets; PE-backed platforms like STADA are the natural acquirers. The window is open.

Key monitoring signals: Any Perrigo strategic review outcome; Haleon portfolio simplification commentary; CapVest capital deployment announcements; STADA press releases on "major" transaction.

Laurent Chekroun | Makor Capital Markets | 18 March 2026For professional investors only. Not investment advice.

Brussels plans to neutralise short-term impact of Fundamental Review of the Trading Book over competitiveness concerns

The European Commission is set to delay the impact of a global banking reform as it seeks to stop EU lenders from being put at a disadvantage by US moves to cut capital requirements for big banks.

According to two officials familiar with the plans, Brussels will after Easter adopt legislation to neutralise the short-term impact of the Fundamental Review of the Trading Book (FRTB) — a key component of the Basel III framework governing market risk.

The FRTB overhaul introduces a more risk-sensitive framework for trading activities, replacing older models with stricter rules on how banks measure potential losses and allocate capital buffers. 

The European Banking Authority estimates that implementing FRTB would raise market risk capital requirements by about 30 per cent on average, with increases of up to roughly 80 per cent for some banks.

Brussels’ plan is to introduce a temporary multiplier that negates the increase for banks’ trading activities for up to three years, the officials said.

Regulators have been grappling with diverging timelines between jurisdictions. 

The UK earlier this year postponed its own implementation of FRTB’s internal models framework until 2028, citing the need for greater international alignment.

In the US, the Federal Reserve announced plans to implement the so-called “Basel Endgame” in a way that would “decrease the requirements by a small amount” for the biggest American banks, including JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.

This in turn raised concerns in Brussels that European banks could face disproportionately higher capital charges if the EU presses ahead with full implementation of FRTB.

The delay comes ahead of a broader review of EU banking regulation, expected later this year, following demands from lenders and politicians to reduce regulatory burdens and ensure EU banks can stay competitive.

But critics worry that it could undermine the international framework put in place following the 2008 financial crisis.

Julia Symon, head of research and advocacy at Finance Watch, said: “Market risks have not disappeared over the past decade. What has faded is the memory of why these safeguards were introduced in the first place.”

The Defense Department wants to mass produce a kamikaze drone the U.S. military recently used to strike Iran, according to the top Pentagon official.

The one-way attack drone, called Lucas, is an American-made copy of Iran's Shahed drones, which have terrorized Iran’s neighbors in the weeks following the U.S. and Israeli-led strikes. The U.S. military deployed the Lucas to the Middle East in late last year.

“After only a few years, we continue to refine that and make that something that we can mass produce at scale,” Emil Michael, the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, said Tuesday at an industry conference in Arlington, Va. “They’ve worked very well so far and it’s proven out to be a useful tool in the arsenal,” Michael said of the Lucas drones.

SpektreWorks has manufactured “dozens” of the drones, he said. The U.S. military has not disclosed how many of the Lucas drones it has used in combat.

Moscow has expanded intelligence sharing and military cooperation to help keep Tehran in the fight against U.S. and Israeli military might

Russia has been expanding its intelligence sharing and military cooperation with Iran, providing satellite imagery and improved drone technology to aid Tehran’s targeting of U.S. forces in the region, people familiar with the matter said.

Russia is trying to keep its closest Middle Eastern partner in the fight against U.S. and Israeli military might and prolong a war that is benefiting Russia militarily and economically.

The technology provided includes components of modified Shahed drones, which are meant to improve communication, navigation and targeting, the people said. Russia has also been drawing on its experience using drones in Ukraine, offering tactical guidance on how many drones should be used in operations and what altitudes they should strike from, said the people, who included a senior European intelligence officer.

Russia has been providing Iran with the locations of U.S. military forces in the Middle East as well as those of its regional allies, The Wall Street Journal has reported. That cooperation has deepened in early days of the war, with Russia recently providing satellite imagery directly to Iran, said two of the people, the officer and a Middle Eastern diplomat.

The assistance is similar to intelligence the U.S. and European allies have given to Ukraine in recent years, analysts say. In the Gulf, Moscow’s aid is believed to have helped Iran with recent strikes on U.S. radar systems in the region, said the people. Those strikes have included an early warning radar for a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or Thaad, system in Jordan, as well as other targets in Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman.

The Kremlin didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Satellite images can provide more granularity about the details and movements of both land-based and sea-based targets, to help targeting before the strike as well as damage assessment following a hit.

“If there are details in those images that the Russians are providing, say, of specific types of aircraft, munitions sites, air defense assets, and naval movements, that have intel value to the Iranians, that would really help them,” said Jim Lamson, a visiting research fellow at King’s College London and former CIA analyst who specialized in the Iranian military.

The data Russia is providing comes from a fleet of satellites that provides intelligence for military operations, one official said. The fleet is managed by the Russian Aerospace Forces, better known under its Russian acronym VKS.

Iran has had greater success targeting U.S. and Gulf state military assets in this war than it did during last year’s 12-day war. The country’s strikes—using drones to overwhelm radar before a missile strike—look very similar to Russia’s tactics in Ukraine, military analysts said.

“Iranian targeting in the Gulf has been more focused on radar and command and control,” said Nicole Grajewski, a professor at Sciences Po, a research university in Paris. “Iran’s strike packages have come to strongly resemble what Russia does.”

U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff, who has led U.S. negotiations with Moscow, said Russia denied they were giving Iran intelligence to aid in their strikes. President Trump has said he believes Moscow might be aiding Iran “a bit.”

The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Russia and Iran don’t have a formal military alliance, but Tehran is Moscow’s closest partner in the Middle East. Russia is one of Iran’s top military suppliers. The relationship has had its ups and downs since the fall of the Soviet Union, but it has deepened greatly since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine.

The two have formed commissions and working groups to share military and defense learning. Military delegations regularly visited one another while their soldiers trained together. Russia even built and launched one of Iran’s most recent satellite systems.

But most important, Iran supplied Moscow with its Shahed drones for its war against Ukraine.

When Russia started using the Shaheds on the battlefield, a delegation of several dozen Iranian officers gathered in Crimea to watch footage of the effects on Ukrainian cities and front-line positions. Ukraine says that Russia has used more than 57,000 Shahed-type drones since the start of the war.

Since then, Moscow has started producing them domestically, and it has been adapting them to navigate and target more precisely as well as withstand electronic warfare jamming. It is sharing some of those innovations back with Iran now.

The aid Russia can give to Iran has been limited not only by its own ongoing conflict in Ukraine, but also the Kremlin’s reluctance to anger Trump. While Moscow could do much more to turn the dial up on its assistance, its current aid plays an important, albeit limited, role in helping Iran’s war effort, said Lamson.

“The categories of assistance—including satellite data and advice on drone tactics—that Russia is providing are limited but still valuable to the war and Iran’s ability to hit specific military sites,” he said.

The war has played to Russia’s advantage in some ways, drawing down U.S. supplies of the interceptors that Ukraine needs for its air defenses. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz, where a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas transits, has boosted the price of oil, the lifeblood of the Russian economy. The Trump administration has eased restrictions on purchases of Russian oil to bring down prices.

The war also carries downsides for Russia, especially if the regime in Iran is toppled, but Moscow still sees a chance to help a partner and strike out at the U.S. Despite Putin’s relationship with Trump, the Kremlin still sees Washington as a strategic adversary, said Samuel Charap, distinguished chair in Russia and Eurasia policy at Rand, a U.S.-based defense think tank.

“It’s an opportunity to give us a taste of our own medicine in terms of what the U.S. provides to Ukraine in intelligence support,” he said.

The first timepiece under the complications specialist's name, dubbed the Pulse60, will debut at the Time to Watches fair running April 14 to 19 in Geneva.

NEW TIME: Influential watchmaker and entrepreneur Dominique Renaud is launching an eponymous brand.

It will make its debut at the Time to Watches fair running April 14 to 19 in Geneva, running at the same time as the 2026 edition of Watches and Wonders.

The first timepiece under Renaud’s eponymous label will be the Pulse60, with a name nodding to 60 beats or oscillations per minute — or 1 Hertz, which is also the resting rhythm of a healthy human heart.

Inside a 40mm case is the newly developed Dominique Renaud BUA2024 movement, which took two years to develop and operates at that frequency, the lowest possible one in contemporary mechanical watchmaking.

The veteran watchmaker is considered a pioneer of movement development and cofounded complications specialist Renaud & Papi in 1986. After the company was sold to Audemars Piguet in 1992, he went on to develop a wide range of complications for major watchmakers.

Dominique Renaud is the second brand under the aegis of Haute Horlogerie Dominique Renaud, or HHDR, which is billed as a laboratory and incubator for watchmaking as well as an integrated manufacturing chain that is headquartered in Tolochenaz, a city located in the watchmaking arc of Switzerland.

The first is Renaud Tixier, launched in 2023 as the fruit of a collaboration between Renaud and 33-year-old rising watchmaking star Julien Tixier. HHDR’s parent company DR Group also has a stake in Niton, a freshly revived Geneva-based watchmaker specialized in jumping hour complications that traces its roots to the 1920s.

Renaud has also launched an eponymous foundation that aims to foster transmission and innovation in watchmaking expertise.

Fashion's roulette wheel has spun again, with John Galliano landing at Zara with a two-year collaboration that will see him riff on the brand's archives, creating new, seasonal clothing collections.

LONDON – John Galliano is back at work, and teaming with Zara on an unconventional collaboration that will see the maverick couturier “re-author” the brand’s archives and create seasonal collections over the next two years.

An announcement is expected today.

Galliano and Zara have described their new project as a “creative partnership” where the designer will be working directly with clothes from Zara’s past seasons, “deconstructing and reconfiguring them into new seasonal expressions and creations,” a joint statement said.

“Guided by a couture process and authorship, the collections will be released seasonally,” beginning in September 2026. Further details will be announced in due course, the statement added.

It is understood Galliano will be creating new toiles inspired by the pieces in the Zara archives, and the collections will be filled with new shapes, fabrics, colors and clothing with his distinctive signature.

One of the industry’s most enduring talents who’s best known for his cutting skills, theatrical bent and way with a bias-cut dress, Galliano has been laying low since his departure from Maison Margiela, where he had a creatively and commercially successful 10-year run.

He might have been out of work for a while, but the 65-year-old designer has always been top-of-mind among his many fans.

He was a front-row guest at Jonathan Anderson’s debut Dior haute couture show earlier this year, while Joan Burstein, the 100-year-old doyenne of British fashion retail, told WWD that while times and tastes may have changed, Galliano “still has it.”

Burstein famously bought Galliano’s graduate collection in 1984 and sold it at her family’s multi-brand boutique, Browns, on London’s South Molton Street. The two have remained close ever since.

Galliano’s pieces for Dior, and his signature collection, are also a hit with collectors. Bonhams New York is currently auctioning a series of Y2K-era, bias-cut slip dresses as part of a Dior online sale. Called “From the Vault: Dior,” it features 127 designs from multiple Dior designers and is taking place until March 20.

Bonhams said one of the highlights is a red damask gold embellished gown from the fall-winter 1997 ready-to-wear collection, Galliano’s first for the house.

Marissa Speer, Bonhams’ head of sale for handbags and fashion in the U.S., said that Galliano “created some of the most recognizable and sought-after designs of the late 1990s and early 2000s,” including the masterfully engineered bias-cut slip dresses, inspired by the pioneering techniques of Madeleine Vionnet.

“Though often deceptively simple in appearance, these gowns were technically complex, cut on the bias to contour the body. Today, Galliano’s bias-cut slip dresses remain highly prized by collectors and are emblematic of his visionary approach to femininity and craftsmanship. Their enduring desirability continues to generate significant interest at auction,” she added.

Prized for his ultrafeminine, historically inspired designs, Galliano joined Dior in 1996, quickly making his name not just as couturier but as a showman, with historically and culturally rich shows that could rival the best West End productions.

For years he reigned as fashion’s wunderkind, but was eventually ousted from Dior, and his signature fashion house, in 2011 following racist and anti-Semitic outbursts. The outbursts, and his increasingly erratic behavior, led to one of the most spectacular flameouts in recent fashion history.

He made a brief comeback in 2013, working on Oscar de la Renta’s fall collection as part of a three-week residency, but it was Margiela’s owner Renzo Rosso who offered Galliano a chance for renewal, naming him creative director of the Belgian house. The designer embraced it with gusto, breathing new life into Margiela – and his own career.

By the time Galliano left, sales had multiplied five-fold to around $500 million, and he and Rosso had forged an enduring partnership.

Galliano’s spring 2024 Maison Margiela Artisanal collection was a tour de force, showcasing new ways to encrust lace, create sequins with fabric, drape tulle, shrink and glue tweed, ridge and groove fabrics to resemble cardboard, and to imbue garments with subliminal gestures via “emotional cutting.”

He is the latest designer to collaborate with Zara – following Stefano Pilati, Narciso Rodriguez, Samuel Ross and Ludovic de Saint Sernin – and also the most significant one.

His appointment is part of a wider strategy by Zara to align itself with contemporary luxury brands and top creative talents, and leave any fast-fashion references behind. Last year, for Zara’s 50th anniversary, the brand collaborated with friends, brands and creatives, including Steven Meisel, Pierpaolo Piccioli and Pieter Mulier, to design the object of their desire.

Zara’s partnerships aren’t just in fashion. The brand has been working with the perfumer Jo Malone for years on a series of premium fragrances, and tapped Ramdane Touhami, owner of design agency Art Recherche Industrie, to create a concept café for its stores, now known as Zacaffè, with the first opening in Madrid in 2024. The longtime collaborator of Zara Home is the Belgian architect, interiors and product designer Vincent Van Duysen.

Inditex chair Marta Ortega Perez, daughter of the company’s billionaire founder Amancio Ortega, has been behind that momentum. She’s been bringing design credibility to the brand once associated with fabulous – but throwaway – fashion.

She has steadily burnished Zara’s image, attracting a crowd of celebrity creatives to the company’s home in A Coruña, in the Galicia region of northern Spain, with a series of fashion photography shows at her new MOP (Marta Ortega Perez) Foundation.

The latest one, “Wonderland,” is the first major survey of Annie Leibovitz’s work in Spain. It opened in November, runs until May, and is the sixth in a series of photography exhibitions presented by MOP.

The first exhibition, which opened in December 2021, presented the work of Peter Lindbergh while subsequent shows have featured Steven Meisel, Helmut Newton, Irving Penn and, most recently, David Bailey.

Galliano’s appointment is also the latest in a long list of marquee designer pairings with high street brands.

Clare Waight Keller, formerly of Givenchy, is now creative director of Uniqlo, while Jonathan Saunders has joined & Other Stories as chief creative officer. Zac Posen is now at Gap and Aaron Esh sits at the creative helm of AllSaints.

For seasoned designers who’ve done the rounds of the big fashion houses, working for a high street brand is not just a viable option, but an increasingly coveted one.

In an interview last year, Mary Gallagher, senior consultant at Find executive consulting, said there is “no longer a stigma or snobbism about going down-market when the project is exciting to a creative director who wants to build something.”

Moira Benigson, founder and chair of The MBS Group, said “the high street is catching up, and has caught luxury napping, living in the past, and not keeping up with where customers are going.” She pointed to “overinflated prices for goods that can be as nicely made and on trend on the high street” at places like Gap, Marks & Spencer, Uniqlo, Zara and H&M.

Galliano shaking up the Zara archives? Maybe it’s not so unconventional.

The French fashion house's Monsieur Dior restaurant in Paris was distinguished in the 2026 edition of the Michelin Guide.

STARMAKER: Dior has earned its first Michelin star.

Just seven months after taking over the Monsieur Dior restaurant at the French fashion house’s historic headquarters on Avenue Montaigne, chef Yannick Alléno has added another accolade to his resumé.

The restaurant was awarded one star at the Michelin Guide’s annual ceremony, which was held in Monaco for the first time. Alléno also oversees the eatery housed in the store’s atrium space, now renamed Le Jardin, as well as the Café Dior at La Galerie Dior, the exhibition space adjoining the sprawling boutique.

Inspired by founder Christian Dior’s love of food, Alléno tried to imagine the kind of menu the couturier would enjoy today, combining his signature sauces with inspirations culled from Dior’s love of nature, and the forms and textures of the couture universe.

Among the eatery’s signature dishes are Alléno’s revisited version of Oeuf Christian Dior, Couture Lasagna with artichoke pleats, and New Look cocktails.

“I am very proud that our restaurant, Monsieur Dior, has been awarded its first Michelin star – a wonderful achievement by Yannick Alléno merely a few months after he took over,” said Delphine Arnault, chairman and chief executive officer of Christian Dior Couture.

“His great talent for reinventing our codes and our passion for art de vivre have made this place much more than just a restaurant; it is a space for unique experiences, where the beauty of haute couture meets the excellence of haute cuisine,” she added.

Dior has been growing its network of Monsieur Dior restaurants with recent openings in the United States, with chef Dominique Crenn, and China, under Anne-Sophie Pic.

Alléno’s relationship with LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, the luxury group that owns Dior, stretches back to 2008, when he opened his restaurant 1947 at the Cheval Blanc hotel in the French ski resort of Courchevel. The restaurant kept its three-star rating in the 2026 edition of the Michelin guide, as did his Pavillon Ledoyen in Paris.

“Being awarded this Michelin star for the Monsieur Dior restaurant at 30 Montaigne and bringing the House of Dior its first star is a source of immeasurable pride,” Alléno said, paying tribute to his team.

“Our responsibility is to prepare for the future through training, transmitting savoir-faire and building confidence. Stars light the way but it is women and men who construct it. This distinction rewards their creativity, their commitment and their desire to constantly go further,” he added.