Luxe Retail King LVMH Adds Tiffany Flagship to Rodeo Drive’s Reinvention

The world’s preeminent luxury retail conglomerate is continuing to bet big on Beverly Hills’ Rodeo Drive, with sprawling expansion proposals for two of its legacy brands.

Bernard Arnault’s LVMH — which owns the likes of Louis Vuitton, Bulgari, Dior, Celine and many other high-end brands that line the iconic retail strip — submitted plans with the Beverly Hills Planning Commission earlier this month for a three-story, 30,466-square-foot Tiffany & Company flagship location half a block from the Tiffany store at the entry into Rodeo Drive off Wilshire Boulevard. Bloomberg first reported the news. 

The project would be at 360 North Rodeo Drive, which LVMH purchased for $200 million in 2021, property records show. The property houses the now-defunct Luxe Rodeo Drive Hotel, which LVMH plans to demolish. The project comes about two years after LVMH completed its renovation of Tiffany’s Fifth Avenue flagship store in New York City.

Meanwhile, LVMH is simultaneously planning a new storefront and campus for Louis Vuitton on Rodeo Drive. It submitted plans earlier this year for a two-building, 100,000-square-foot property that would also feature a cafe, restaurant, terrace, exhibition space and rooftop garden. The Frank Gehry-designed Louis Vuitton plans marked a major pivot for LVMH, which at one point aimed to develop a new 109-key luxury hotel there after purchasing the property for $245 million in 2018. 

Brooks Brothers had previously owned the site at 468 North Rodeo Drive, though the clothier vacated the site in fall of 2018 for a location at the nearby Beverly Center. The property has sat vacant since then, as Beverly Hills voters rejected LVMH’s hotel plans in a controversial 2023 referendum.

Representatives for LVMH did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

The luxe conglomerate’s plans for Tiffany and Louis Vuitton are just the latest examples of LVMH tightening its grip on Rodeo Drive. The company is opening a new flagship Dior storefront later this year at a property it purchased for $85 million in 2012; and it opened Southern California’s first permanent Givenchy store last summer at 332 North Rodeo Drive, at the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Anderton Court Shops. All told, LVMH has spent nearly $1 billion on Rodeo Drive real estate since 2012, highlighting its belief in luxury physical retail spaces despite retail challenges before and during the pandemic. 

LVMH is hardly the only company with two eyes on Rodeo Drive and Beverly Hills in general lately. Aside from the 300,000-square-foot Wilshire Rodeo Plaza, which Tinder co-founder Justin Mateen and his brothers purchased for $211 million last year, Fashion Nova purchased a 175,000-square-foot office at 407 North Maple Drive last August for $118 million; One Cole Group acquired a two-building retail portfolio on North Beverly Drive that same month for $39.2 million; investors Oscar Engelbert and Jens Grede acquired the 90,000-square-foot 331 North Maple Drive for $61 million in October; and Cain International is currently developing a $5 billion-plus mega-development dubbed One Beverly Hills.

Nick Trombola can be reached at ntrombola@commercialobserver.com.