PARIS — Raffaella Cornaggia, chief executive officer of Kering Beauté, is on a singular mission: construct a beauty behemoth internally and from scratch.
“We created this division in January 2023 with the clear ambition of building and leveraging the maximum potential of our maisons’ beauty category,” she said during her first interview as CEO. “We have among the most beautiful houses in the luxury industry in the portfolio.”
Those include Bottega Venetta, Balenciaga and Alexander McQueen, for which Kering owns the beauty rights, and Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent, whose beauty licenses are currently held by Coty Inc. and L’Oréal, respectively.
Cornaggia’s strategy is to differentiate Kering Beauté via innovation, creativity and sustainability, developing products through the lens of each brand.
“Beauty is a natural extension of the Kering houses’ universe, and it was strategic for Kering to develop the expertise of beauty in-house,” Cornaggia said. “In addition, we have a portfolio of very elevated brands. So the idea of developing a category that is, by definition, more accessible, just amplifies the universe and creates a natural entry point for our customers.”
She is no doubt up to the task. Cornaggia has more than 25 years of experience in the cosmetics industry, having worked also at Chanel, L’Oréal and the Estée Lauder Cos. on three continents — Asia, North America and Europe — across all product categories. She’s notched up experience in various retail channels and roles, spanning development to business.
“Luckily, I have all these competencies, because all of them are needed in the adventure that I’m living,” she said.
Kering Beauté has from the outset focused on fragrance.
“Fragrance is the most natural extension of luxury houses,” said Cornaggia, adding it allows for the development of products in conjunction with the brands’ creative directors. A case in point is Bottega Veneta’s eponymous five-product collection, which launched on Wednesday.
“This project is exemplary of how we want to approach beauty,” she said. “We have distilled the vision of Bottega Veneta in a product.”
It is the first perfume creation for the house’s creative director Matthieu Blazy. Cornaggia was struck by his passion and deep sensibility for fragrance.
“He has the most incredible olfactive memory,” she said.
Blazy was inspired by Bottega Veneta’s birthplace — Venice — and signature intrecciato leather weave for the perfumes.
“Each of them is the interweave of at least two main ingredients that are coming together,” Cornaggia said.
She said the choice of natural scents could imply limited composition, since natural olfactive palettes aren’t as wide as traditional ones, but that they were able to create highly complex, sophisticated, long-lasting fragrances.
Their names altogether make up a narrative of sorts. They include: Come With Me, with notes of Italian bergamot and French orris butter; Acqua Sale, containing a note of Spanish labdanum and Macedonian juniper oil; Colpo di Sole, with French Angelica oil and Moroccan orange blossom absolute; Alchemie, containing Brazilian pink pepper and Somalian myrrh notes, and Déjà Minuit, with notes of geranium from Madagascar and Guatemalan cardamom.
The Bottega Veneta fragrances.
Courtesy of Kering Beauté
“The idea is also you can live through a day with these five fragrances,” Cornaggia said. “It’s a new collection that needs to speak to everyone.”
Each eau de parfum bottle appears as if it is of hand-blown Murano glass, replete with bubbles. The flacons’ wavy form evokes the Venice Lagoon and Bottega Veneta’s undulating design.
“The cap is very special — it’s also exemplifying the fantastic sustainability effort that we have put in this project, because there is not one ounce of plastic in it,” Cornaggia said. “We really wanted to set a new standard of sustainability.”
She described every refillable fragrance bottle as “an art object in itself” that is unique to each individual, since every one has its own composition of bubbles. Plus, no Verde Saint Denis marble base or wooden cap looks the same.
“You will want to keep it forever,” Cornaggia said. “We distilled the vision, values and universe of Bottega Veneta into it. We were able to do it, just because we were completely integrated.”
It’s an auspicious start for the division, for which buzz has been steadily mounting since the official announcement in February 2023 that Kering had begun taking its beauty activity back in-house and appointed Cornaggia as CEO of Kering Beauté — a new position in a new division. (Kering, when it was formerly called PPR, had a beauty subsidiary named YSL Beauté that was sold to L’Oréal in 2008 for 1.15 billion euros.)
Her initial remit was to develop a team with expertise in the beauty category for Bottega Veneta, Balenciaga, Alexander McQueen, Pomellato and Queelin.
The other Kering-owned brands have licensed-out beauty businesses. The Brioni fragrance license will be held by Lalique Group until the end of this year, while that for Boucheron remains with Interparfums SA through 2025.
Regarding Gucci and YSL, Kering’s two largest fashion brands, the 50-year Gucci license is expected to expire in 2028, while the long-term YSL license went to L’Oréal in 2008.
Cornaggia believes she has all the necessary essentials for the journey she is on, she said. Those include the support of parent company Kering and the team of experts Cornaggia has assembled.
“I was looking for expertise and attitude. I needed the sum of these two elements,” she said. “If you need a path that is completely linear, you could not succeed in this adventure.”
Another crucial element is speed: Kering Beauté has shown its inclination to move quickly. In late June 2023, it acquired Creed, the oldest-existing niche fragrance house in a deal worth an estimated 3.5 billion euros. Cornaggia called the acquisition an “integral part of our strategy.”
“We want to be a leading player in beauty. To do so, we needed scale,” she said. “We were looking for the perfect brand that was positioned in the high-end fragrance segment, which is the most dynamic, with very nice growth and potential. It has the perfect positioning and the perfect consistency, as well, with Kering.”
Creed, she said, shares the same values, craftsmanship and elevation as the group, and created a platform, especially for supply and distribution. The brand has centennial know-how, affiliates in key geographies and top-notch sourcing, too.
Creed fragrance.
Courtesy of Kering Beauté
“They’re one of the few remaining fragrance houses that’s sourcing their ingredients themselves,” Cornaggia said. “Creed goes across the world to source the most fantastic natural ingredients.
“They have internalized production and a beautiful portfolio with high customer loyalty,” she continued. “Creed has a very big group of followers. It’s a jewel of a brand with incredible potential ahead. Creed was the perfect fit, and that’s why we decided to go after it.”
Moving forward, the plan is to increase its market share in women’s fragrances, while doubling down on the brand’s leadership in the men’s category.
“It has an extraordinary potential in female fragrances,” said Cornaggia, adding Creed’s last two launches — Carmina and Queen of Silk — were strong. “We’re already making this strategy into a reality.
“We have, as well, an incredible potential in enlarging the category,” she said. “We can still develop the business enormously through home and through body. The portfolio can be extended very easily.”
That includes further into China and travel retail. “These are the highways of growth for this brand,” Cornaggia said.
In June, Kering Beauté took a minority stake in French niche perfumery label Matière Première.
“It’s a brand that is built on excellence,” she said. “They source the best ingredients, many of them in-house. It’s the exceptionality of the brand that really drove us to them.”
Raffaella Cornaggia
Kuba Dabrowski/WWD
Kering’s level of investment in a beauty brand depends on its stage of development. Matière Première was still small.
“We want them to continue the work they need to do themselves, and we want to support them,” Cornaggia said. “It’s another brand that has fantastic potential ahead.”
Further M&A is not a priority at present. She is fully focused on the current brand portfolio. In 2025, she will unveil a new creation for Balenciaga.
“We have an amazing journey ahead of us, because we have amazing brands — with all of them, a formidable potential of development,” Cornaggia said.
