On the morning of February 1 last year, imperturbably recovered from a party to mark her departure from Louis Vuitton, Delphine Arnault stepped into her new office in Paris as chairman and CEO of Christian Dior. The eldest child and only daughter of Bernard Arnault—who is, more often than not, the richest man in the world—she had moved up through the ranks of her father’s companies at LVMH over the course of a couple of decades, quietly absorbing every aspect of the fashion business. Now here she was, at 47, with the crown jewel in her hands: the first fashion house her father had ever bought, the place where he had taken her at weekends as a child, the home of the much-loved Monsieur Dior (as its employees still call him), who, 77 years ago, changed the way women dreamed about their lives. Christian Dior is a name inextricably linked to the history of France—and on that day Delphine Arnault became the first woman ever to be in charge.
Not long afterward she called her friend Larry Gagosian in New York. “Larry,” she said, “I’ve got this big office. But it’s lonely up here!”
Being a member of the Arnault family, while companionable in many respects, carries its own form of isolation. Close-knit and very private, the Arnaults have been subject to increased public attention since their patriarch parceled out decision-making responsibilities over the future of LVMH to his five children (via a holding company where they each have a 20 percent stake). “When you grow up in a well-known family, you don’t have the right to make any mistakes,” Delphine’s brother Antoine explains. “People look out for the slightest flaw.”
I first meet Delphine Arnault seven months into her reign at Dior, in the lobby of creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri’s studio in Paris. Discreet in demeanor, fragile-featured, with a composure to match her impressive nearly six-foot height, Delphine greets me in a navy Dior trouser suit, her hands in its pockets. It’s the eve of the spring-summer 2024 show, and in the studio three black leather seats have been arranged in front of a sample of the neon pink and yellow set. Models are walking back and forth, small adjustments made, accessories considered. Tiny turrets of strawberries and raspberries are laid out before us. Maria Grazia, clad in jeans and a black sweater, sits next to Delphine and introduces a little gray poodle, whose color, they both note with a smile, is perfectly on brand. “It’s gris Dior,” Maria Grazia says.
If, in 1947, Christian Dior was telling a story about women’s lives—the war they’d emerged from, the future they hoped for—then the first two women to lead his company are telling a new one. With Delphine as CEO and Maria Grazia as creative director, the house of Dior is moving into an era in which two busy working mothers are in a position to determine what women wear, how they feel, and how the people who make the clothes feel too. In Maria Grazia’s view, “fashion has to help you to feel that you’re free.” As Marie-Josée Kravis, a family friend who has sat on the board of LVMH for 13 years, observes, “Here you have two really talented women who are living the message daily. I think it’s a great example for women everywhere.”
As the clothes appear, Delphine and Maria Grazia settle into each other’s company with ease. Delphine absorbs, never intervenes. She has seen this collection in progress twice before. “Every time you see it you get to know it a little better,” she tells me. Dior’s 1947 New Look is reflected in black pleated skirts and refracted in asymmetrical white shirt collars. There’s an occasional kinky touch from strappy black gladiator boots with kitten heels and pearl buttons. There’s a cotton dress made of many different kinds of lace, and a blurred, X-ray-like projection of the Eiffel Tower on a black coat.
“How many looks do you have?” Delphine asks.
“Seventy-eight,” Maria Grazia replies. “Because Rachele cut five.”
Maria Grazia’s 27-year-old daughter and cultural adviser, Rachele Regini, is behind us, readying the models and overseeing operations.
“Isn’t she a bit too skinny for this one?” Maria Grazia wonders out loud, about one of the models. She turns to Delphine: “I’m obsessed. I don’t want to show too-skinny girls. I want healthy girls.” Then, quietly: “It’s an intense week for you, huh, Delphine?”
Indeed it is. Five days earlier, Delphine and her partner, Xavier Niel—with whom she has two young children—had attended a dinner at the Palace of Versailles for the King and Queen of the United Kingdom (Queen Camilla was dressed by Dior; the French first lady, Brigitte Macron, was dressed by Vuitton). Delphine wore an embroidered wool haute couture coat with a floor-length gown in lace and champagne-colored crushed silk. Tomorrow she will be speaking for the first time to 600 delegates invited to a Dior Summit at the Louvre, a few floors beneath the Mona Lisa. The same spring-summer runway show will be put on for them, and they’ll be entertained with talks, parties, and dinners over the next couple of days. “It’s great for them,” Delphine says, “and I think it’s important.”
At dusk, Delphine and I walk a couple of blocks under her ample umbrella to the Dior boutique, where the delegates to the following day’s symposium have gathered for welcome drinks. She marvels at Maria Grazia’s calm organization. John Galliano and Raf Simons, she recalls, would be up all night on the eve of a runway show, panicking and remaking things, whereas Maria Grazia is always done on time. (“I think it’s very important not only for me, but also for the people who work with me, to have time for their personal life,” Maria Grazia tells me later. “It’s nice for everybody to have dinner at home.”)
The original site of Christian Dior’s 1947 debut is 30 Avenue Montaigne—or “Trente Montaigne” for short. Extensively remodeled, it reopened in its new incarnation in March 2022. And that’s not the only sign of a company expanding at speed. There are store directors from all over the world here—“the heart and soul” of the company, as Delphine will tell them. They haven’t been brought together since before COVID, and since then Dior has created more than 6,600 jobs. One million of their iconic Lady Dior bags have been sold.
His daughter, in a more quiet way, contributes too—to French schools. “I work a lot with education,” she tells me when I ask about causes she supports.“It’s something I do personally with specific schools that I know, who identify very good talents. Students who are super bright and don’t have money to pay for a scholarship, things like that.” It’s not something she talks about publicly.
