LVMH Chairman and Chief Executive Bernard Arnault.
Photo: Eric Piermont/AFP via Getty Images
The COVID-19 pandemic is hitting every corner of society, and fashion is far from exempt. On Sunday, one of the industry’s largest luxury conglomerates, LVMH, announced one way it intended to address the crisis: by turning its perfumes and cosmetics business into a hand sanitizer manufacturer.
Many parts of the world, France included, have faced shortages of hand sanitizer — which is used to limit contamination and slow the spread of the virus — as panicked citizens stock up on it.
“LVMH will therefore use all the production facilities of its Perfumes & Cosmetics brands (Parfums Christian Dior, Guerlain and Parfums Givenchy) in France to produce large quantities of hydroalcoholic gel,” the company said in a release.
The hand sanitizer will be delivered free of charge to French health authorities starting on Monday in a commitment LVMH will continue to honor “for as long as necessary” in an effort to “enable a greater number of people to continue to take the right action to protect themselves from the spread of the virus.”
See more updates about how the fashion industry is responding to the spread of the coronavirus here.