A perfume bottle rarely moves markets. This one did. Gucci is leaving Coty for L'Oreal, and it signed the papers a year early.
Kering confirmed the agreement on 7 July. Gucci's beauty and fragrance licence will pass to L'Oreal, the largest cosmetics company in the world. The current holder, Coty, has agreed to hand the rights back a year before they were due to lapse. The new licence runs for fifty years and is expected to take effect in mid-2027, once regulators sign off.
The terms
The mechanics are plain and large. Coty will receive around 400 million dollars for releasing the licence early, paid across 2026 and 2027, with selected inventory changing hands on top. L'Oreal covers most of that cost to Kering as the price of an orderly transition. The old contract had been set to expire on 30 June 2028. Neither side wanted to wait.
The move sits inside a wider pact. Kering and L'Oreal announced a beauty and wellness alliance in October 2025, and this licence is the first concrete piece of it. Gucci is the largest house in Kering's portfolio, and its scents rank among the most valuable fragrance franchises in luxury. Placing them with L'Oreal gives the cosmetics group a marquee name and gives Gucci a partner with wider reach.
The house
The timing matters for Gucci itself. The house is in the middle of a reset. Demna took the creative director's chair in 2025 and showed his first collection in Milan this year, a debut watched as closely as any in recent memory. A new beauty partner lets the fragrance and cosmetics line move in step with that direction rather than trail a season behind.
Luca de Meo, chief executive of Kering, framed the deal as a way to start sooner. He said the early handover lets Gucci and L'Oreal begin shaping the next chapter of Gucci Beauty a year ahead of plan. He put the aim in terms of reach, describing a push to strengthen the brand across generations and geographies.
Fragrance is how most people first buy a fashion house. Gucci has decided who will hold that first encounter for the next fifty years.
The Splendid Edit
Demna, creative director of Gucci since 2025. Courtesy of Gucci.
The stakes
For L'Oreal the prize is scale. The group already runs the beauty lines of several designer names, and Gucci adds one of the strongest. Fragrance has held up while handbags and clothing softened across luxury, which makes a fifty-year hold on a house this size a serious asset.
For Kering the deal is also about cash and focus. The group posted revenue of 14.7 billion euros in 2025 and has spent the past year working to revive Gucci. Simplifying the beauty relationship, and pulling forward the payments tied to it, suits a company trying to steady its largest brand. The line Kering repeats, creativity is our legacy, now has a fifty-year beauty contract behind it.
Nothing changes on a counter tomorrow. The licence takes effect in mid-2027, and the perfumes on sale until then stay Coty's to make. The work for now is the handover, quiet and technical. What the public will notice comes later, when the first bottle carries a Gucci name and an L'Oreal address.