It may be LVMH’s newly-named chairman and chief executive of its Americas division Michael Burke, who first introduced the term ‘hodgepodge’ to the popular press and select financial analysts’ LVMH lexicon.

Anne will explain, but first the latest news.

The Burke appointment comes at a critical moment when the luxury sector is haunted by waning demand and US President Donald Trump’s ever-changing, often daily, tariffs landscape.

Burke Also Becomes Nonexecutive Chairman of Tiffany & Co BOD

LVMH also appointed Burke as nonexecutive chairman of Tiffany’s board of directors. He retains his 2024 appointment as Chairman and CEO of LVMH Fashion Group.

The reasons why Tiffany & Co are underperforming for LVMH are not clear. There has been pushback against LVMH at high-important staff levels at Tiffany, with some long-time sales staff citing individual revenue goals as unrealistic.

Along the same line of thinking is the possibility of a culture clash between LVMH's Parisian approach and Tiffany's American identity.

The culture clash is a word salad, until we understand the fundamentals of the assertion in greater detail. But in July 2024, BoF noted that the higher sales goals were resulting in lower commissions for key sales floor staff with their own client black books.

Executive-level sales staff was leaving Tiffany & Co and taking their clients with them.

How many of these highly-valued sales people moved to rival Richemont, which owns Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels and caters to customers that tend to be wealthier than Tiffany shoppers is unclear. But it’s indisputable that Tiffany has lost market share to rivals.

There’s no doubt that the highly-regarded Michael Burke, who will be based in New York City, has a plate full of opportunity for LVMH. It’a also important that Anne has a ‘glass half full’ approach to problem-solving.

LVMH: 21st Century Luxury World Urban Planners

In June and July 2025, AOC has been a bit obsessed with the word ‘hodgepodge’ being bandied about by select financial analysts, with the support of several fashion journalists also embracing the idea of a lack of branding clarity around Louis Vuitton in particular.

Referring last evening to the problem, I set off again this morning, trying to document the original source of the word. The source may be none other than Michael Burke.

What Burke said in an interview with Deborah Acosta and Kate King, writing for The Wall Street Journal on April 26, 2024 was:

“We make handbags, we’re vintners. It sounds like a hodgepodge,” said Burke. [But] “It all makes sense when you say we’re urban planners. Good urban planning is taking all aspects of life and lifestyle and bringing them together in one place.”
“All roads lead to real estate,” said Michael Burke, who is head of LVMH Fashion Group, the division that comprises eight of the conglomerate’s fashion brands, including Celine and Loewe, and has long worked on the company’s real-estate projects. When it comes to LVMH’s biggest property investments, he added, “we’re creating a city.”

This WSJ article was not there last week on the front page in an identical, last-year results search. Given that Google brought up my own articles in the top positions, then adding the 2024 WSJ story last evening, is proof of my point that what we write impacts search results, depending on how Google ranks us.

And how few of us are pointing out the errors in ‘experts’ analyzing LVMH, as the stock plummets.

Louis Vuitton Is Not a Hodgepodge; Neither Is LVMH

Burke’s point with WSJ was that appearances can be deceiving. AOC reads with alarming frequency lately, some financial analysts calling Louis Vuitton a hodgepodge mess of a luxury brand. I paraphrase one analyst saying “I don’t know what it stands for anymore.”

Those same analysts are pressuring LVMH to ‘bag’ [forgive the word choice] the entire Wine and Spirits division because it’s a distraction and not part of LVMH’s forward motion-trajectory to dominate experiential and emotional luxury retail.

LVMH rejects this viewpoint absolutely. AOC agrees.

My conclusion that several financial analysts are clueless as to understanding the methadology of LVMH’s approach to brand management stands strong.

It’s also disconcerting to read financial analysts and fashion writers as self-appointed ‘authorities’ on luxury marketing, questioning the fundamentals and executive competencies of Louis Vuitton’s current management and creative teams. Specifically Delphine Arnault at Christian Dior by the Bloomberg writers — leaving me stunned.

That degree of financial analysis arrogance is so extreme that it can’t be bottled for educated audience consumption. It stinks. And yet, there’s no doubt that the stock impact is real. Finally on Monday, heavy hitter and highly-regarded Goldman Sachs stepped into the action, adding LVMH to its European Conviction Buy list.

No wonder Bernard Arnault wakes up some mornings, feeling like a character out of Franz Kafka’s small but high-impact volume ‘Metamorphosis’. The recent devaluation of LVMH stock is shocking — and would be derailing to LVMH’s current expansion plans, if the company wasn’t so financially well-managed with major reserve funds.

However, AOC feels compelled to be truthful that my further investigation this morning took me to the 2024 WSJ in-depth interview with Burke and his use of the word ‘hodgepodge’ as a misunderstanding of LVMH’s strategy by many people. I will add financial analysts, in particular.

It was not there before on the front page. Given that Google brought up my own articles in the top position, then adding the 2024 WSJ story, not previously on the front page, is proof of my point that high-ranking media can impact Google results.

Additionally, two days ago, I discovered that Squarespace had added a default setting that impacts writers and concerns AI. SS never shares minor details that can have high impact on traffic, and this is one example.

Why turning my AI-related permissions to ‘on’ Monday, would impact the WSJ Journal 2024 Burke interview — in which he used the word ‘hodgepodge’ — moving to page one with AOC, when it wasn’t there last week [nor was I] is not clear to me. I do have a long history of linking into WSJ. It does mean that answers to why Louis Vuitton is being critiqued over its branding strategy will now also include my defense of them in Google’s powerful AI responses. Previously it did not. ~ Anne