LVMH chief Bernard Arnault ordered a makeover for Tiffany's Fifth Avenue store after getting lost inside

• LVMH's CEO ordered a makeover of Tiffany's flagship Fifth Avenue store after getting lost in it.
• He told The Wall Street Journal he canceled plans to revive the store's dark wood interior.

LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault got lost inside Tiffany's flagship New York store, which led him to order a complete revamp of the building that cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

In a rare interview with The Wall Street Journal, the world's richest person said he was given a tour of the Fifth Avenue store by a senior Tiffany executive as he was negotiating to acquire the luxury jeweler in 2019.

"We got lost in the building," Arnault said. "Here is a guy getting lost in his own shop. I said, 'We have some work to do on this.'"

Arnault ordered a complete revision to renovation plans that focused on the traditional dark wooden interior of the store when it first opened in 1940.

"We decided to stop this and do something else, which is more in line with the beauty and the myth which is Tiffany," he told the newspaper. "Tiffany is, I think, the most recognizable and the most mythical US brand in the world."

LVMH finally struck a $15.8 billion takeover of Tiffany in 2021 following an acrimonious process interrupted by the pandemic.

Arnault tried to back out of the deal when COVID-19 appeared to have significantly damaged the luxury sector. He was able to lower the price by $425 million, per Reuters.

Since the acquisition, LVMH has overhauled the design of Tiffany's flagship store, which reopened Wednesday after being closed since 2019.

This includes a painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat in a robin's-egg blue similar to Tiffany's boxes that hangs on the ground floor, per the Journal. There is also an so-called Audrey Room on the fifth floor, containing the Givenchy dress Audrey Hepburn wore in "Breakfast at Tiffany's."

LVMH is thought to have spent hundreds of millions on the revamp, with the Journal quoting analysts who estimated the bill to be about $500 million.

When asked about that figure, Arnault told the Journal: "You cannot dream when you talk numbers. When you create desire, profits are a consequence."

He also revealed that Tiffany's profits had doubled in the past two years since the takeover.

The New York flagship accounted for a tenth of its entire 10% global sales in 2019, previous management disclosed.

LVMH didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider, made outside normal working hours.