Kering’s €4 billion deal with L’Oréal shifts luxury from fragrance to full-scale wellness, backed by accelerating consumer spend, new science in longevity, and experts who say efficacy now defines value.
Kering’s plan to sell its beauty unit to L’Oréal in a deal valued at €4 billion sets up a 50/50 joint venture aimed at wellness and longevity, pairing L’Oréal’s research engine with Kering’s luxury houses to build services and products that promise measurable outcomes as well as aesthetic appeal.
“This strategic alliance marks a decisive step for Kering,” Luca de Meo, CEO of Kering, said in a statement. “Joining forces with the global leader in beauty, we will accelerate the development of fragrance and cosmetics for our major Houses, allowing them to achieve scale in this category and unlock their immense long-term potential, as did Yves Saint Laurent Beauté under L’Oréal’s stewardship. Together, we will also venture into new frontiers of wellness, combining the unrivalled expertise of L’Oréal with our unique luxury reach. This partnership allows us to focus on what defines us best: the creative power and desirability of our Houses.”
The move lands as consumer wellness spending reaches new highs and prestige fragrance continues to outperform, a combination that favors cross-over concepts such as functional fragrance, longevity-informed skincare, and service-led experiences.
U.S. prestige fragrance sales rose six percent to $3.9 billion in the first half of 2025, with new launches contributing nearly one-third of dollar gains, an indicator that performance claims and sensorial ritual can lift the category at once. “The beauty industry’s latest results are indicative of a consumer who is focused on efficacy and elevated value,” Larissa Jensen, global beauty industry advisor at Circana, said in a statement. “Only 14 percent of U.S. beauty buyers believe that higher prices indicate a better-quality product.”
Measured at $6.3 trillion in 2023 and projected to reach $9 trillion by 2028, the wellness economy is expanding faster than global GDP, with wellness tourism, spas, mental wellness, and prevention/personalized medicine among the fastest-growing segments. “The wellness economy continues to march forward at a brisk pace,” said Katherine Johnston and Ophelia Yeung, senior researchers at the Global Wellness Institute. “In a world full of uncertainty and divisiveness, wellness has become a universal value.”
Consumer priorities are shifting in tandem. McKinsey estimates the global consumer wellness market at roughly $1.8 trillion, with the U.S. alone at $480 billion and growing as much as ten percent per year; more than 80 percent of U.S. consumers say wellness is a top or important priority in daily life. Those habits increasingly emphasize data-led routines, including sleep improvement, strength and mobility, stress regulation — blurring the line between beauty and health services.
Kering and L’Oréal are formalizing a wellness and longevity platform within this context. L’Oréal has been building a scientific stack oriented toward aging biology, including Longevity Integrative Science and partnerships that examine epigenetic markers to inform product design and longer-term care. Its research push ranges from conference-stage science to development tie-ups with specialists in cellular health.
For luxury groups, wellness has become a brand-defining capability. Business of Fashion reported that longevity has become a dominant theme in the wellness market, with industry leaders reframing the conversation around healthspan and biological age — language that dovetails with high-touch retail and service models. Estée Lauder’s Justin Boxford calls it “an exciting time.” He noted that when you’ve got wellness connecting through skincare, through technology, through ingredients, it’s a market signal — and one that helps explain why L’Oréal is doubling down on long-cycle science and why Kering is choosing a partner model rather than scaling beauty manufacturing in-house.
What this means for consumers and brands
The Kering–L’Oréal arrangement reorients beauty at three levels that consumers will feel. First, it puts heritage fragrance and skincare into a performance framework. Creed’s reputation for rare naturals and meticulous craft now sits within L’Oréal Luxe’s scale and R&I ecosystem, which is increasingly geared to clinically testable benefits — skin-barrier support, inflammatory pathway modulation, or recovery metrics — precisely where luxury shoppers are spending.
Circana’s readout shows consumers rewarding launches that deliver perceived efficacy, not just branding, a trend that has lifted higher-concentration fragrances and skincare lines with functional narratives.
Second, it sets up Kering’s fashion houses to translate their design codes into wellness-led product and service roadmaps without standing up full internal labs. Gucci, Bottega Veneta, and Balenciaga will move under long-term L’Oréal licenses after the current Gucci agreement expires, allowing Kering to focus on its core fashion engine while collecting royalties on beauty and fragrance. On governance, a strategic committee is planned to coordinate between the brands and L’Oréal, an important detail for protecting brand equity as ranges broaden into service and diagnostics.
It also opens the door to experience architectures beyond counters and campaigns. The wellness joint venture is designed to craft “cutting-edge experiences and services” that combine L’Oréal’s innovation capabilities with Kering’s luxury client insight — language that hints at connected retail, spa-adjacent spaces, and data-enabled personalization that can be extended across hospitality and travel.
Wellness tourism, spa, and thermal/mineral spring sectors — all growing at double-digit rates — offer natural platforms for branded protocols and residencies, particularly in Europe and the Middle East, where spending and per-capita adoption have been most resilient since 2019.
The risk profile is not insignificant, though. Integration will test the preservation of house aesthetics while scaling science-led claims, and regulatory guardrails will tighten as beauty inches closer to health. Longevity remains an expensive, loosely defined space, and the benefits need to be substantiated to avoid consumer fatigue and regulatory scrutiny.
Still, the weight of data is on the side of demand: wellness is outpacing the broader economy, fragrance remains a rare beauty category growing on both units and price, and mass–prestige price dynamics suggest consumers will pay for function when trust is earned.
Nicolas Hieronimus, CEO of L’Oréal Groupe, underscored the long-term ambition. “This partnership will further solidify our position as the world’s #1 luxury beauty company and allow us to explore new avenues in wellness together.”
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