LVMH’s Tannery Deal, Valentino’s New Face
TANNERY DEAL: LVMH Métiers d’Art, the French luxury group’s specialist crafts division, has acquired a majority stake in Italian tannery Nuti Ivo SpA.
“With the addition of Nuti Ivo Group, we complete our operations in the leather business, expanding our savoir-faire and product offering while ensuring traceable and sustainable sourcing,” Matteo de Rosa, chief executive officer of LVMH Métiers d’Art, said in a statement Monday announcing the operation.
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Ivo Nuti established the tannery in 1955 in Santa Croce sull’Arno, a historic leather-working and tanning area in Italy’s Tuscany region, in 1955. Today, the company is managed by Fabrizio and Andrea Nuti, second-generation members of the founding family, and counts more than 300 employees throughout Italy.
According to Italian media reports, Nuti Ivo SpA’s revenue stood at 160 million euros for 2022.
The tannery company stated it exports 85 percent of its production abroad and has introduced technical and procedural innovations to the field of leather processing, investing in sustainability and reduction of waste and energy consumption. It has also developed partnerships in Paraguay, Morocco and China for materials destined to the footwear market or after-sales services.
For Fabrizio Nuti, president and CEO of the Italian company, the move was recognition of “more than 40 years of collaborations with the best brands in the world” as well as “a new beginning, a new departure, which serves as an incentive for us to grow and improve in all areas of our savoir-faire, guaranteeing a future for our history and our company.”
Jean-Baptiste Voisin, LVMH chief strategy officer and president of LVMH Métiers d’Art, said such an acquisition fit into its goal of “ensuring a future, by providing new opportunities to local artisan excellences which, alone, in the new scenarios of the luxury industry, may struggle to maintain an international projection.”
The Nuti Ivo acquisition reinforces the group’s presence in the leather, exotic skins and metal sectors, where it counts partners in breeding, tanning, finishing and leather ready-to-wear production across France, Italy and Spain for calfskin and lambskin, and in Africa, Australia and the U.S. for exotic skins. It also owns the noted Heng Long tannery in Singapore and Italy, specialized the tanning and finishing of crocodilian skins.
In April, LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton reported an 18 percent jump in first-quarter revenue for its fashion and leather goods business, headlined by its star mega-brands Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior, and a 17 percent increase overall.
Leather goods, alongside hard luxury and apparel, have been leading the post-pandemic resurgence of the luxury industry, according to Federica Levato, partner at Bain & Co., leader of its EMEA Luxury Goods and Fashion practice, and coauthor of a Bain & Company Luxury Study in collaboration with Fondazione Altagamma released in November 2022. — LILY TEMPLETON AND MARTINO CARRERA
NEW FACE: The popular Chinese actor Yang Yang has been named Valentino’s latest brand ambassador.
The announcement of his appointment is being accompanied by a new campaign, shot in the brand’s Rome headquarters, in which Yang sports various looks from Valentino’s pre-fall 2023 collection while highlighting the Rockstud23 handbag.
Pierpaolo Piccioli, creative director of Valentino, said he is happy to welcome a new friend from China to join his community.
“My dialogue with Yang is cultural, generational, multidisciplinary: a complete experience of diversity and mutual appreciation. His talent relates concretely to human emotions, and I value this a great deal,” he added.
Considered one of the most successful actors of his generation, Yang shot to fame in 2010 for playing the lead role of Jia Baoyu in the TV adaptation of “The Dream of Red Mansions,” one of China’s most sought-after novels in history.
Since then he has starred in a long list of hit TV series and become a favorite among luxury brands in China. Prior to Valentino, Yang has been the face of L’Oréal, CeraVe, Dunhill, Bulgari, Chandon and Coca-Cola.
Speaking about his partnership with Valentino, Yang said, “The distinctive individuality and unique aesthetic of Valentino have always been appealing to me, and Piccioli’s unique talent and sense in fashion do surprise me every time.”
With more than 56 million followers on Weibo, Yang’s repost of the brand’s announcement logged more than 1 million shares, 300,000 likes, and 72,000 comments in less than a day.
Valentino’s other ambassadors in the in the region include actress Sun Li, Guan Xiaotong, actor Lay Zhang, and singer Li Ronghao. — TIANWEI ZHANG
LONDON LANDING: Jeanne Damas has landed in London’s Mayfair with a store for her fashion and beauty brand, Rouje.
“It’s funny because a few years ago when I wasn’t looking for boutiques or anything, I was walking in London, and I walked on these streets, which I thought were beautiful for shopping,” said Damas, who came across South Molton Street again when she was searching for a place for her store.
She plans to open boutiques in key countries, including Spain, Germany and the U.S., which is one of her biggest markets, along with her home country of France.
As an extension of the brand, Damas launched Rouje Beauté line in 2018, which firstly consisted of makeup, but now is now venturing into skin care via a collaboration with clean beauty retailer Oh My Cream.
“It was really important for me to be [stocked] there because in France it’s the concept store of clean beauty,” she added.
Oh My Cream launched in London last winter on the King’s Road.
“I have always loved coming to London, especially for shopping, but it seems to me that a new generation of beauty destinations is still missing,” Lévy told WWD at the time, adding that her brand’s holistic approach and stocking of exclusively clean beauty brands fills the gap in the capital city’s market. Her ambition is to “become the next favorite beauty destination for English women.”
In the fashion realm, Damas has teamed up with ‘90s French designer Lamine Badian Kouyaté, founder of Xuly Bët, who Damas thinks will be a shock to many people. She said it felt right because they both share similar values, despite the contrast in aesthetic.
She’s even taken the task of shooting the images for the collaboration with Kouyaté — something she’s never tried before. — HIKMAT MOHAMMED
NEW KID ON THE BLOCK: Legends, a Los Angeles-based men’s essentials brand founded by a group of athletes and celebrities in 2019, is launching its first kids’ collection.
The direct-to-consumer brand that counts the rapper Quavo, NBA players Matt Barnes, Larry Nance Jr., Marcus and Markieff Morris, and NFL player Baker Mayfield and former NBA star and coach Steve Nash among its investors, was created by former All-American lacrosse player Scott Hochstadt as an alternative to the existing offerings in performance activewear.
The kids’ collection, called Lil’ Legends, was created in partnership with Nash. It launches Wednesday and consists of shorts, T-shirts and swim trunks in colors and silhouettes that match those in the men’s collection. The line is available in youth sizes XS-L as well as adult sizes S-XXL.
Nash is passionate about inspiring youth through sports and passing his love of athletics to the next generation. In launching the kids’ collection, Nash passed along some words of inspiration to both kids and adults: “No lesson that you write or tell them is going to be as important as the way they’ve watched you behave for the entirety of their life,” he said. “Your kids are watching and learning and that’s an important component of parenting — that you represent the values that you want to represent especially when it’s not easy. If you want to improve you have to go through difficult times. As a parent that has afforded me a lot, I don’t want to protect my kids from all their falls. We all make mistakes, we’re all human, use these things as a teaching moment.”
The collection will retail from $40 to $65 and will be sold on the Legends website. — JEAN E. PALMIERI
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