LVMH takes innovative approach to recruit new talent

“Our goal is to become a cultural and lifestyle destination. Savoir-faire tourism is booming in France. Every year, nearly 23 million visitors come specifically for this type of experience. That gives us a fantastic opportunity to introduce a wide audience — young and adult — to the wealth of professions that are at the core of the DNA of our houses,” she said during the awards ceremony. “We also hope to create business synergies, for example by welcoming your customers or partners,” she told the brand executives in the room.

Wednesday’s event was part of a two-day program that included an introduction to the type of experiences that will be on offer at the future venue. Louis Vuitton, Dior, Ruinart, watchmaker Tag Heuer, cocktail bar Cravan, cognac brand Hennessy, department store Le Bon Marché and its food hall La Grande Epicerie designed pilot programs. A separate ceremony on Thursday night was set to celebrate the graduates of LVMH’s Institut des Métiers d’Excellence, the vocational training program aimed at promoting, enhancing and ensuring the transmission of know-how in partnership with leading schools. Since it was founded in 2014, the scheme has trained more than 3,300 people, and this year saw an intake of 700 apprentices, stable versus 2024, Bardet said.

In parallel, LVMH released “A Journey to the Heart of Excellence,” a documentary directed by Vasken Toranian that showcases the journeys of five craftspeople. It’s available on France TV’s streaming platform and LVMH’s YouTube channel. Next year the group plans to extend its “You and ME” recruitment roadshow to Turin in Italy, and will return to Naples for the second year in a row. Among the local partners of the initiative is jeweler Bulgari, which plans to hire more than 500 new craftsmen by 2029 at its production plant in Valenza in northern Italy.

The facility is also home to the recently opened Scuola Bulgari, the first publicly accessible Bulgari training school focused on jewelry, Laura Burdese, deputy CEO of Bulgari, said in a presentation at the Savoir-Faire Ceremony in Paris. “This school is the first ever created within a jewelry production site. It represents a symbolic bridge between past and future,” she said. “It carries forward the tradition of Made in Italy.” In Valenza, home to employees from 32 nationalities, Bulgari has also hired 20 people through its Refugees and Asylum Seekers Training Program, which offers selected participants training in goldsmithing, stone setting and polishing.

Bardet emphasized that getting in front of potential recruits is key. “These careers often suffer from a lack of visibility,” she said. “When we manage to bring young people into contact with our professions, we see results and motivation. It’s all new to them, and the moment they touch the materials and try the gestures, it becomes tangible and meaningful. They can see the result of their work, and that the work has purpose. That’s very encouraging for the future.” LVMH is aware that recruiting and training skilled craftspeople requires a deep-seated shift in mindset, even as artificial intelligence is revolutionizing the workplace.

“When we run workshops for young people, we often meet teens who are holding a brush for the first time. There’s an underlying trend here that we feel is close to a tipping point, with a revived interest in bringing hands-on activities back into everyday life,” she said. “Many of our professions rely on gestures that no machine can replicate. That might change someday, but for now, we’re nowhere close. In luxury, we work with ‘living’ materials that don’t always react in the same way,” Bardet explained. “Only humans know how to work with these raw materials and bring out the best in them each time.”

LVMH