The 2024 Paris Olympic Video games medals are displayed inside a custom-designed trunk manufactured by Louis Vuitton, an LVMH model accomplice of the Paris Olympic and Paralympic Video games, throughout a gathering at LVMH in Paris on July 22, 2024, forward of the beginning of the 2024 Paris Olympic Video games.
Stephane De Sakutin | AFP | Getty Photos
Whether or not it is the Moët champagne poured to have a good time a win or the {custom} trunks that Louis Vuitton has made for medal ceremonies, luxurious has been on full show on the 2024 Paris Olympic and Paralympic Video games.
To Carly Duguid, the artistic director for tennis and vogue star Naomi Osaka, luxurious vogue and athletics are the proper mixture.
“There is a robust parallel between athletes and types of their dedication to high quality and excellence,” Duguid advised CNBC.
Within the influencer age, vogue has shortly embraced the sports activities world and elevated athletes as vogue tastemakers. These international stars assist join manufacturers to a complete new market of followers and potential new patrons.
Osaka was the primary athlete to accomplice with Louis Vuitton, whose roster now consists of Victor Wembanyama, Carlos Alcaraz, and lots of French Olympians and Paralympians.
LVMH isn’t alone. Gucci has an ambassadorship with British soccer participant Jack Grealish and put billboards throughout cities that includes Italian tennis champion Jannik Skinner. On the 2024 WNBA draft, Caitlin Clark was the primary skilled basketball participant ever dressed by Prada, and continues to don traditional designer put on all season. Dozens of luxurious designers outfitted nationwide groups for the primary time for the opening ceremony, marking not solely new ties between athletics and vogue, however athletics and the Olympic Video games.
LVMH has regarded to make a giant splash past simply athlete partnerships, turning into the primary luxurious model to be an Olympic sponsor.
The roughly $160 million funding, which represents almost 1% of LVMH’s 2023 income because the father or mother firm of manufacturers like Celine, Louis Vuitton, Loewe, Sephora, and Dom Perignon, has supplied luxurious touchpoints to the Video games, from the Chaumet-designed medals to French athletes carrying Berluti-designed outfits on the opening ceremony and medal bearers carrying vintage-style, distinctly French LVMH uniforms.
LVMH financials, luxurious shopping for, and Olympic progress
Connecting to the world’s most elite sporting occasions might give LVMH a lift as total luxurious spending slows.
LVMH missed its second-quarter gross sales and income targets, and the luxurious sector is extra broadly faltering with lowering international demand, largely because of elevated monetary instability and a shrinking market of “aspirational” shoppers – younger, first-time luxurious patrons.
Milton Pedraza, CEO of luxurious trade consultancy The Luxurious Institute, mentioned that new potential patrons, slightly than shopping for a “no-name belt,” will see athletes on the Olympics surrounded by LVMH branding and aspire for these luxurious objects.
Luxurious manufacturers as soon as involved themselves primarily with the costliest and unique sports activities, like tennis and crusing, however now promote what Pedraza calls “inclusivity with exclusivity.”
“At present, as a result of lots of the rising rich are athletes, actors, influencers on social media, there’s far more of an [idea that] no matter race, creed, gender, or every other background that you simply occur to have, you can also take part in luxurious when you obtain the financial… means,” Pedraza mentioned.
A brand new period of luxurious in athletics?
LVMH has introduced the worldwide Video games a traditional French glamor from the fashion-forward Opening ceremony, however the model’s attain goes far past French tradition.
“Sports activities and luxurious and vogue convey us collectively… Shared tradition is the target to guarantee that luxurious manufacturers… prolong out,” Pedraza mentioned.
The night time earlier than the opening ceremony, Osaka attended a star-athlete-studded social gathering at Fondation Louis Vuitton within the coronary heart of Paris alongside Lebron James and Serena Williams in addition to actors, artists and different enterprise moguls donning items from LVMH manufacturers.
Duguid referred to as it “the proper alternative for athlete ambassadors to indicate up and help their LVMH partnerships whereas additionally celebrating the start of the Video games.”
As each medal tray dropped at the champions’ podium is within the checker sample that has lengthy outlined the model, “[LVMH’s] presence might be felt in each vein of the Video games,” Duguid mentioned.
Disclosure: CNBC father or mother NBCUniversal owns NBC Sports activities and NBC Olympics. NBC Olympics is the U.S. broadcast rights holder to all Summer time and Winter Video games by 2032.
