How Alexandre Arnault Is Shaking Things Up at Tiffany & Co.
Jay-Z and Beyoncé! Supreme! Hailey Bieber! One year into the LVMH takeover of the American jewelry company.
In February 2021, just one month after Alexandre Arnault began his new role as executive vice president of product and communications at Tiffany & Co., he went to Beyoncé and Shawn (aka Jay-Z) Carter’s house in Bel-Air, Los Angeles. Over dinner prepared by the Carters’ private chef, the young Arnault pitched them on his ideas for the 185-year-old American jewelry company, then recently acquired by his father Bernard Arnault’s luxury conglomerate, LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, in a $15.8 billion deal. Even though Arnault, 29, is friendly with the couple, and LVMH announced its 50 percent stake in Jay-Z’s champagne brand, Armand de Brignac, the same month as the dinner, he still knew that getting them involved with Tiffany’s first big campaign was a reach. Like the New Yorker he now is, he uses a basketball metaphor to describe the meeting: “The hoop is so far, and you feel like you’re never going to put it in, but for some reason it goes in.”
Arnault came prepared with a clincher. He remembers, “I had a Steve Jobs moment where I was like, ‘One more thing’ ”—a Jobs aphorism that concluded many of the late executive’s Apple keynotes. At the end of the dinner, Arnault pulled out a high-res printout of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s 1982 painting Equals Pi. He had just acquired the painting, with its background in an uncanny shade of Tiffany-like aqua, on behalf of the company. (There’s no confirming evidence that Basquiat, who died in 1988, intended the color as an homage, and some fans and friends of the artist decried the implication.)
Arnault told the duo that he wanted the painting to be part of the advertising; they were intrigued. “I do things based on relationships,” wrote Jay-Z in an email. “Alex and I have developed a great relationship and friendship over the years. Our partnership with Armand de Brignac is great, so I was definitely interested.”
That conversation would result in Tiffany’s “About Love” campaign, which was revealed in August 2021. Beyoncé, wearing the 128-carat yellow Tiffany Diamond, appears in the ads as a contemporary Audrey Hepburn alongside Jay-Z—and that painting. In the accompanying films, the couple are playful and intimate. They eat pizza. She sings “Moon River.” It’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s for the TikTok generation.
Jay-Z and Beyoncé’s appearance in a recent Tiffany campaign, brokered by Alexandre Arnault, alongside a Jean-Michel Basquiat painting he acquired on behalf of the brand.
PHOTO: MASON POOLE, COURTESY OF TIFFANY & CO.
Although the campaign was first discussed during an anxious, Covid-riddled winter, Arnault bet that by the time it came out there would be hope in the air again and the ads would make people want to fall in love. The timing of a pandemic love story synced up with Arnault’s personal life. He married designer Géraldine Guyot in 2021, first in a civil ceremony in Paris in June and then in a Venice extravaganza in October, attended by the Carters, Pharrell Williams, Roger Federer and Kanye West, who also performed.
Between his wedding, a new job, a move to New York and his family’s acquisition of one of the most storied American luxury brands—the largest takeover ever in the luxury business sector—it was a pretty big year for the second-oldest son of 72-year-old French tycoon Bernard Arnault. Moving quickly and breaking things, as the startup cliché goes, is in his nature. In the context of his private and hardworking family, Alexandre is a disrupter. He’s the technology-obsessed futurist who counts Snap’s Evan Spiegel and Jack Dorsey, Twitter co-founder, as confidantes. Which is not to say he’s brash—in interviews he comes across as self-possessed and disciplined.
While he was still a computer engineering student, Arnault was methodically groomed for the family business, going on official LVMH trips to China, Japan, Korea, the Middle East, the U.S. and Singapore. Pietro Beccari, the chairman and CEO of Christian Dior Couture, remembers him from these trips as very tall and very shy. He said, “He was there to learn and observe as much as possible.” Later, in 2014, Arnault shadowed Beccari, then the CEO of Fendi, at the brand’s Rome headquarters.
During his time as CEO of German luggage brand Rimowa, which was founded in 1898 and acquired by LVMH in 2017, the company grew exponentially, according to LVMH (the group does not release performance for individual brands). And crucially, Arnault helped make the heritage brand hip. Its packaging now bears a resemblance to that of Apple products, with streamlined white labels and boxes. Arnault spearheaded collaborations including Supreme logo–emblazoned luggage and a clear case designed by the designer Virgil Abloh for Off-White. That 2018 suitcase was a nod to issues of privacy and surveillance. It wasn’t just a suitcase—it was a comment on contemporary society. And to cement its place in pop culture, Rihanna carried it.
Now Arnault brings that contemporary approach to Tiffany, a company whose wide range of products includes entry-level sterling pieces like the small $275 Elsa Peretti heart necklace beloved by generations of teens; extensive engagement ring offerings; home collections; and fine jewelry that goes well into the millions.
Anthony Ledru, Tiffany’s CEO, who’s also worked at jewelry companies Cartier and Harry Winston, says, “Alexandre brings a huge influx of modernity [to the group].” Ledru adds, “You have to engage with new fans, and that’s what he brings in a big way.”
All of Bernard Arnault’s five children are in the family business, which reported about $50.5 billion in revenue in the first nine months of 2021, from businesses including the fashion houses and spirits it’s most known for—Louis Vuitton, Dior, Dom Pérignon, Hennessy, to name a few—as well as less glamorous enterprises like Starboard Cruise Services and Le Parisien newspaper. The fashion and leather goods business group, which Rimowa is part of, recorded a 38 percent gain in organic revenue growth in the third quarter of 2021 compared with the same period in 2019.
Alexandre’s half-sister Delphine, 46, is executive vice president at Louis Vuitton; his half-brother Antoine, 44, is CEO of Berluti and chair of Loro Piana. His brother Frédéric, 27, is chief executive of Tag Heuer, and his brother Jean, 23, is director of marketing and development at Louis Vuitton Watches. By all reports, they’re close-knit and compatible—King Lear this is not. The siblings continued their regular lunches with their father over Zoom during the pandemic, although Arnault is often eating breakfast due to the time difference. At these gatherings, they discuss common interests like tennis and art.
“The brand is looked at with binoculars and sniper guns, and people are really waiting to see what we’re doing.”
— Alexandre Arnault
And of course, they talk business. Unlike Rimowa, which Alexandre scouted as a potential acquisition, the Tiffany & Co. deal was for years in the hands of bankers and lawyers working for the group. Between the first reports of the deal in 2019 and its closing in January 2021, the transaction was marked by lawsuits, countersuits, price haggling and insults. By Arnault’s account, he was distanced from the back-and-forth, still focused on his work at Rimowa, where he remained as CEO until the end of 2020 and is still the president. Running a luggage brand during the travel standstill of a pandemic meant trying to weather the storm.
Arnault’s last day at Rimowa was Christmas Eve 2020. He moved to New York on January 6, 2021, into an apartment in SoHo with Guyot and their black Labrador, Lemon. And on January 7, Arnault took the subway uptown to his first day of work at Tiffany’s headquarters. That first day involved “a bunch of Zoom meetings,” he remembers, as well as an introductory town hall with his new team. He was coming in somewhat blind, with just a paper org chart. He says, “Until [the deal is] actually signed, you can’t really interact with the company or do anything.”
Bernard Arnault had tapped Ledru, a longtime LVMH executive, to lead Tiffany, with Alexandre working beneath him. (Trusted LVMH executive Michael Burke is chairman of Tiffany’s board of directors.) Ledru says, “I am in an Arnault sandwich. That’s the structure.” Together, they set about getting to know the current team and hiring new talent.
Mementos in Arnault’s office.
Taking on a beloved American company as a European luxury conglomerate is a diplomatic challenge. Arnault bristles at the idea that LVMH might somehow sully or Frenchify Tiffany. He says, “I don’t know why people perceive us in a way where we would bring the office to Paris or something, but it’s so far from what we do…. Our history has always been acquiring companies from different nationalities and staying very true to their DNA.” Citing examples of previous acquisitions—Fendi, which stresses its Roman heritage, and Rimowa, which remains based in Cologne, Germany—Arnault speaks of a desire to preserve Tiffany’s identity. (Arnault, meanwhile, has adapted his disciplined routine to New York, jogging around Lower Manhattan and playing tennis along the Hudson River. Jay-Z made sure to send him to a favorite Brooklyn pizzeria, Lucali.)
Tiffany is an American brand—some of its manufacturing is in New York and Rhode Island, and it has 94 stores in the States—but it’s also very much a New York brand. In the 1950s, it became an icon of midcentury sophistication, burnished by its designer Jean Schlumberger, another Frenchman from a wealthy family who landed in New York. It has always been a magnet for talented creatives—Elsa Peretti, Paloma Picasso, Frank Gehry—as well as a beacon of iconography, like the famous still from 1961’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s of Audrey Hepburn peering into a Fifth Avenue window. Even the Yankees logo was derived from a Tiffany’s design.
Many of LVMH’s early moves for the company were in line with that Manhattan lineage. In September 2021, Tiffany released a limited edition of 49 eroded bronze boxes designed by New York–based artist Daniel Arsham, twists on the classic Tiffany blue box, which were sold by Tiffany along with a bracelet inside for $40,000. Two months later, another limited-edition collection dropped, a collaboration with New York streetwear giant Supreme that included plays on the “return to Tiffany” dog tag. It sold out in a day.
But Arnault’s marketing strategy owes as much to Silicon Valley’s omnivorousness and streetwear’s speed as to New York City’s clout. Ledru, Tiffany’s CEO, explains, “Alexandre to me is 40 percent analysis, 60 percent gut feeling; he’s about…making it happen today rather than waiting for tomorrow.” In one year, the relentlessness of the drops has kept the fashion and business press churning.
A limited-edition Patek Philippe Tiffany & Co. Nautilus watch, which sold at auction in December 2021 for about $6.5 million.
PHOTO: PHILLIPS/PATEK PHILIPPE, COURTESY OF TIFFANY & CO.
In addition to the Arsham and Supreme collaborations and the Jay-and-Bey advertising, the brand also released a limited-edition Patek Philippe Nautilus watch with a Tiffany-blue dial in December 2021. At a Phillips auction to benefit the nonprofit Nature Conservancy, the watch exploded its estimate, which was around $50,000, to sell for over $6 million. Also in December, artist Urs Fischer released an NFT of Tiffany’s Bird on a Rock brooch colliding with a habanero pepper as part of his Chaos digital sculpture series. Hailey Bieber signed on in the fall of 2021 as a brand ambassador.
In its most literal statement against the past, Tiffany launched a controversial campaign in July 2021 that included one image emblazoned with the words: Not Your Mother’s Tiffany. Although the effort was nowhere near the scale of “About Love”—it consisted of wheatpaste posters in cities and social media imagery—it struck a nerve, with Instagram comments from alienated customers (an example: “My mother has amazing taste thanks”). Arnault says that he stands by the campaign: “It had some backlash but it also had people who had never thought of Tiffany talk about us, which I view as a good sign.” And it taught him about the ferocity of Tiffany’s consumers. He says, “The brand is looked at with binoculars and sniper guns, and people are really waiting to see what we’re doing. It’s quite fascinating to see the level of engagement we have, either on the hate side or the love side.”
Is this steady stream of attention-grabbing methods effective, or is it too much, too soon? Robert Burke, a New York retail consultant, says, “These frequent drops are very smart. They may go over the head of the current customer, but I think that’s OK.” With a swift, decisive rebranding, Tiffany may be able to nab a new customer as well as readjust expectations of the existing client base. Burke explains, “Some people do believe that if you are quicker during these transitions, the customer evolves quicker. If it’s a slow and steady change, it’s maybe not as effective.”
Alexandre Arnault in his office at Tiffany & Co.
Slow and steady is no longer the modus operandi at Tiffany. Arnault says that when he’s hiring, he’s looking for street smartness. To him, that’s the “ability to roll your sleeves up and get things done.” It’s not antithetical to the establishment, necessarily. He says, “All entrepreneurs throughout their fields, whether it’s my father or Mark Zuckerberg or God knows what, are street smart in a way.”
As for future projects, the brand will not confirm anything solid, but Arnault did take Tiffany-obsessed artist Tom Sachs on a tour of the brand’s Rhode Island factory. The iconic Fifth Avenue flagship is being redesigned by LVMH stalwart Peter Marino, with Equals Pi, Richard Prince’s Tiffany paintings and the Tiffany yellow diamond all given spots of honor.
But perhaps the most poignant Tiffany collaboration is the one that will never happen. Virgil Abloh, the men’s artistic director of Louis Vuitton and a close friend of Arnault’s, died of cancer in November 2021. Arnault remembers, “His creativity was endless, and he was constantly pushing boundaries in everything he was doing.” They had been in very early talks to collaborate on Tiffany before he died. “He was interested in the wedding category, and so he played around with the idea of wedding rings. We hadn’t really sat down and started designing but we were having chats about the potential idea of doing something.”
Arnault admired Abloh’s “never-be-scared mentality.” It’s a state of mind necessary to run a marathon in a new city, as Arnault did in the fall of 2021. He marveled at the difference between the Paris marathon—when Parisians joke that it’s a time to get out of town—and the New York City marathon, an effusive, earnest celebration. Arnault’s friends, who wore “Run, Alex, run” sweatshirts, instructed him to write his name on his shirt, which was counterintuitive for such a private person. But on that blue-skied, cool day, it felt good to be seen. He says, “When I was running I had people saying, ‘Alex! Alex!’ It was so cool.”