One House, Two Crowns: LVMH Puts Dior's Leadership Atop Maison Francis Kurkdjian

Paris — LVMH has raised its stake in Maison Francis Kurkdjian from 70.9% to 80.6% and installed Véronique Courtois — chairman and CEO of Parfums Christian Dior and head of the group's beauty division — as the house's president (Pambianco Beauty, reporting figures first surfaced by *Glitz*). The two moves landed in the same week as the first public sign of strain: the house's French accounts show revenue slipping to just under €200 million in 2025 — its first decline since LVMH took majority control in 2017 — with net profit down 27%.

The stake increase is the first publicly reported change to LVMH's holding since the 2017 acquisition. Deal terms and the selling shareholders were not disclosed — and roughly 19.4% of the company remains in hands no outlet has identified.

Courtois succeeds Marc Chaya, who co-founded the house with Francis Kurkdjian in 2009 and stepped down effective May 1 (Cosmetics Business); he stays on as an independent strategic advisor within LVMH Perfumes & Cosmetics. One wrinkle the reporting hasn't resolved: at the time of Chaya's exit, trade press described Courtois's role as interim, supported by international managing director Stéphane Augé (Basenotes); July reporting presents it as a straight appointment. LVMH has not issued a press release either way.

The sharper structural fact sits underneath the personnel news: Francis Kurkdjian has been perfumer-creative director of Parfums Christian Dior since 2021, and Courtois now presides over both houses. As of this month, Dior fragrance and Maison Francis Kurkdjian are run by the same two people.

The figures come from the unconsolidated French statutory accounts of Parfum Francis Kurkdjian — directional for the brand, not the whole global picture. Revenue fell from over €200 million to just under that mark; net profit dropped from €54.9 million to €40.1 million. The 2024 profit figure is independently verifiable in French corporate filings (Societe.com); the 2025 figures are reported but not yet independently confirmed.

The filing cites four causes: US tariffs, the Saks Global bankruptcy, heavy promotional investment behind Baccarat Rouge 540, and the Palais de Tokyo exhibition now going on tour. Note that two of those are market damage and two are elective spending — this is partly a house investing through a soft year, not purely demand rolling over.

The Saks mechanism deserves a line of its own. Saks Global filed Chapter 11 on January 14, 2026, owing vendors north of $337 million, and in the run-up vendors withheld an estimated $550 million of inventory (Retail Dive). For a prestige house, a wholesale partner that stops paying *and* stops taking stock is a double hit — lost sell-in and lost shelf presence, in its single most important market. Saks emerged from bankruptcy on June 26 as Exemplar Luxury Group, with 49 full-line stores (Robb Report).

Here is the context our own data adds. Baccarat Rouge 540 is one of the five most-imitated fragrances in the entire Fragrance Index: across 158,000+ catalogued products, only YSL's Black Opium, Creed's Aventus and Flower by Kenzo draw more catalogued imitations. Twenty-two dupe, alternative and "commonly compared to" listings point at BR540 across its EDP and Extrait lines, and Maison Francis Kurkdjian ranks eleventh among the 117 houses in our relationship graph with catalogued imitations — a top-tier imitation target with a catalog a fraction the size of the designer giants around it. Even Kurky, the house's newest release, already has its first catalogued imitation. (Our relationship graph counts operator-reviewed dupe and alternative listings; a verified subset appears on each product page.)

The community conversation tells the same story of concentration: in our mention tracking, Baccarat Rouge 540 accounts for essentially all of the house's resolved community mentions over the last 30 days — 22 of 23 — and it made our weekly most-discussed leaderboard again this week.

Read against the filing, the picture is coherent. The accounts say the house spent heavily in 2025 defending Baccarat Rouge 540; our graph shows exactly what it is defending against. One scent is simultaneously the house's economic center of gravity, the market's favorite thing to copy, and — as the centerpiece of the Palais de Tokyo exhibition — its cultural monument.

• LVMH H1 2026 results (late July): whether Perfumes & Cosmetics commentary names MFK and quantifies the US drag. The division did roughly €2.04 billion in Q1, flat organically (LVMH).
• The missing 19.4%: who holds the remaining minority stake has not been reported.
• Interim or permanent: whether MFK or LVMH clarifies the scope of Courtois's mandate.
• The touring exhibition: "Parfum, sculpture de l'invisible" leaves the Palais de Tokyo for a 2026 tour; destinations and dates are still to be announced.

Against a beauty division treading water, buying more of Maison Francis Kurkdjian in its softest year can be read as conviction rather than rescue — LVMH adding to a position while the price of doubt is low. The more interesting question is the one nobody has answered yet: is MFK being drawn into the Dior orbit, or kept deliberately apart?