When it comes to fashion and fragrances, the former has historically lead the dance, but the music is changing.
So says Ana Trias, president of prestige and fashion brands at Puig, who sees consumer behavior in fragrances becoming more analogous with fashion.
“We used to have people that would buy a fragrance when the bottle was empty. Now we have people collecting fragrances, having a wardrobe of fragrances,” she said. “It reminds me more of the way people use fashion, where depending on your mood, or the moment, they like to mix and match. They like to create their own looks and to create their own smells and to distinguish themselves from others.
“[Fragrance] is becoming more emotional, more collectible, more cultural, which is great, honestly,” she said.
In fact, Trias is convinced that the beauty category has the capacity to sometimes influence fashion, citing as an example a recent lipstick project at Carolina Herrera, where the fashion house’s creative director Wes Gordon collaborated with the founding designer’s daughter, Carolina A. Herrera.
The two had settled on polka dots for a lipstick case, “and this inspired Wes to then do a collection devoted to polka dots,” Trias related.
Similarly, patterns on the distinctive bi-color bottles of Dries Van Noten perfume, launched in 2022, had never been used in his fashions, but sometime after the launch, the Belgian designer created some clothes using some of the prints.
A Puig veteran and an upbeat, driven executive, Trias has spent one year in her current role, charged with further unifying the fragrance and fashion houses under her purview, which also include Jean Paul Gaultier, Rabanne and Nina Ricci.
As an owner of all five of those mentioned fashion houses, Puig has “a competitive advantage that can allow us to manage our brands differently,” Trias said. “We think we’re quite unique in that sense, and we have very distinctive houses, all of them with a very particular DNA. We do not try to make the same approach in every brand.
“Being distinctive is more important now, and we try to make our brands very precise, to push them to the max, so that if you like a brand, you really like it. But if you don’t like it, maybe you don’t like it at all. And I think that in these challenging times, it’s more important than ever.
“We need to keep on that very creative, bold, daring approach,” she added.
Trias was quietly promoted about a year ago as part of a reorganization when José Manuel Albesa was elevated to chief executive officer of Puig, succeeding Marc Puig, who remains the company’s executive chairman.
While best known for its mastery of fragrances — and the owner of such diverse beauty brands as Charlotte Tilbury, Byredo, Penhaligon’s and L’Artisan Parfumeur — two of Puig’s fashion houses, Carolina Herrera and Dries Van Noten, logged double-digit revenue growth in the first half of 2026, outpacing the group’s overall 4.4 percent like-for-like uptick.
Over an hourlong conversation, Trias elaborated on how Puig is bringing fashion and fragrances closer together, and crafting distinctive business models for each house:
WWD: How does Puig distinguish between its fashion and fragrance activities?
Ana Trias: The way we are evolving is reinforcing even more this idea of one brand. Under my responsibility, I have both the beauty and the fashion business, and whatever other categories we’re doing under the brand. We manage brands as a whole, and not just beauty on one side and fashion on the other side.
We really go brand by brand and have a tailored approach by brand, and we are reinforcing that even more.
We have brand presidents such as Javier Roces at Carolina Herrera, who manages both fashion and beauty. (Roces is president of Carolina Herrera One Brand and Emilie Rubinfeld is president of fashion and licensing, Carolina Herrera Ltd.) Same for Renaud de Lesquen, who’s managing Rabanne for both fashion and beauty. I think that that’s what distinguishes us, and that’s what we are reinforcing even more.
Our teams and are quite combined. We have communications teams that care of the whole brand. We manage the digital ecosystem thinking of a whole brand. Because I think at the end of the day, a consumer looks for a brand, and then will buy whatever product category they are interested in.
WWD: Puig has managed some big some creative handovers lately in fashion.
A.T.: One of the ones I’m very proud of is the transition we have done at Dries Van Noten, with the [promotion] of Julian Klausner [to creative director]. It was one of the roles where I thought, “We need to get this right. It was a must,” and I’m very proud of what we’ve done there. Not only that, but we keep our relationship with Dries. He’s still involved with us in many projects, which I think is also quite unique in the industry.
This takes me also to another brand where I’m very proud on the transition, and it’s been done many years before. But I was there, too, which is the transition we did from Carolina Herrera, the founder, to Wes Gordon, and the fact that Wes has been there for a long time, and we’re very happy with the way the business is is evolving.
I’m very proud about the way we do it, the time we take into making the decisions, the way we take the decisions, thinking long term.
WWD: Still, there’s a perception among some in the industry that Puig is not as serious about building fashion businesses as other European luxury groups. How do you respond?
A.T.: I understand the perception because we are very strong in fragrances. Still, I believe firmly that fashion is one of our most strategic competitive advantages.
It’s about thinking of the end consumer. Why will she consume a brand, and how can we address her in the best way possible with several categories in that brand?
We are having a lot of activities in fashion. Carolina Herrera is developing in retail very intensively. We have just opened Miami a few weeks ago. So we are enlarging our retail footprint in the States mainly for Herrera, but this is also true in the rest of the world, where we’ve been bringing new flagships.
We have a long-term commitment for fashion in the group, and I think we’re doing things at the time and at the pace we want to do them. Fashion requires discipline. Fashion requires taking the right choices, and I think that’s what we are doing.
WWD: How how does fashion nurture the fragrance business and vice versa? What’s Puig’s latest thinking on this?
A.T.: At the beginning, it was almost a cliche that fashion was the one setting the tone and beauty should follow, which has a part of truth, because fashion is where the codes usually appear first. Fashion is the north star. So many times beauty was eating from these codes and inspiring itself with fashion. But I would say that the more we work on it — that’s why I think that makes us particular — the more we are seeing that inspiration comes from both sides. Beauty usually is closer to the consumer. Usually the volume we do in beauty is bigger.
We start forcing ourselves to ask, “OK, what are the codes that we want to have forever because beauty does not change as much as fashion.”
I think fragrance is becoming a more fun category that many people use all day long. They mix, they play. So I think yes, inspiration can come either way.
WWD: Leather goods are the linchpin category for most European fashion houses. Does Puig have any ambition in that category?
A.T.: I think it’s an important category, but we do not take the same approach at every brand at the same time, and we do not think all of them are ready to go into that part of the business. We take a tailored approach strategy, brand by brand, depending on its own codes, on the brand moment, on the opportunities we might see.
We’re working on this in a very serious way at Dries Van Noten, and not only leather goods. We have opened recently a concept that we call “Galerie,” where we mix beauty and accessories. It’s quite different from what other groups do.
Many products are giftable. Many products are just an impulse buy. We started with the first Galerie in Paris a few years ago. We now have added to that Brussels, Milan and Kyoto, and it’s a very successful business that we are expanding and that we believe in a lot.
Also, at Carolina Herrera, when we did the show in Madrid last year, we presented our bags for the first time on the runway, and it’s another business that we are working on.
WWD: Are there any shared services or synergies across the various houses?
A.T.: I bring together all my houses, and we have some committees where we share ideas, we share knowledge, we share experiences, we share perspectives. So yes, everybody operates independently for the fashion piece, but yet we do share a lot of knowledge and advice.
WWD: At Rabanne, you recently appointed Olivier Rousteing as creative director, succeeding Julien Dossena. Why?
A.T.: We are very proud of this long tenure of Julien — 13 years is something that is not that common in the industry today, and that has allowed us to build a brand that is doing well, that is very culturally relevant, that has built a solid business.
But I think we need to look at when is the right moment to bring changes to make the brands evolve because I think fashion and beauty are also about change. We thought that it was the perfect moment to bring Olivier on board. He’s about to open this new chapter.
He has a great ability to create fashions that celebrates confidence, individuality and self-expression, which are values that are very anchored within what we think Rabanne is as a whole, as a brand. At the same time, he’s very strong, building a dialogue with younger generations. He has this fearless spirit.
WWD: Can you give any update on what’s happening at Nina Ricci, after Harris Reed stepped down as creative director last March? Will fashion continue?
A.T.: Following his departure, we took the opportunity to assess the future of Nina Ricci, and what we have decided is that we want to focus on beauty. Beauty is growing, and we really want to put more strength and more focus behind beauty, while thinking what are we going to to do with the future expression of the brand. Nina Ricci remains a very important brand in the Puig portfolio.
WWD: Any new developments at Dries Van Noten?
A.T.: We continue looking actively for more retail expansion. I’m finalizing some shops I want to get. We’re actively looking in some cities.
I still work a lot with Dries. He was involved in the opening of the latest shops, and he has been doing beauty with us since the beginning. And now we are bringing Julian [Klausner] into the beauty equation with him. So I think that that’s also very interesting because I don’t get one talent to develop beauty. I get two, which is super interesting.
Also, with the arrival of Julian, we are opening ourselves to a new community. We are having a dialogue with more people in the digital world, with younger talents. When Dries first told me he wanted to step down, I said, “No, please don’t.” But he was the first one to say we need change; we need younger people to connect to other audiences, too.
WWD: How are things going at Jean Paul Gaultier?
A.T.: It has been the brand that has been growing the most in the Puig portfolio in 2024 and 2025.
We decided to make a transition after five years of guest designers despite the fact that it was doing very well. We decided that it was the right time to bring a designer on board with Duran Lantink.
He is creating collections that are daring and are uncompromising, which I think are the values that Gaultier should stand for. I think that’s our DNA, and I think that that’s what we will keep on doing.
We are extending into ready-to-wear. Duran just presented the haute couture collection, but he has also presented a pre-collection that is going to be available soon. We will open a retail expression at Galeries Lafayette Haussmann that will be unveiled in October.
WWD: You’ve been at Puig more than 20 years. How would you describe the corporate culture?
A.T.: Puig has always been a home of creative people, an entrepreneurial spirit, where you really have the chance to be able to bring new ideas, to challenge the status quo. It is a group that puts brands at the center, and has a long-term commitment to build things over time.
We are challengers, so we need to think in a different way. We need to win in a different way to others. I love that.
I believe a lot in collective intelligence. I love putting in my teams people with different mindsets so that they challenge each other.
WWD: Finally, what’s some of the most important wisdom you’ve gleaned from mentors over your career?
A.T.: One of them is that you cannot have all the information and be 100 percent perfect to take a decision. You need to take a decision without having 100 percent of the information. This is something that stays with me because I think speed and agility are important.
Also, sometimes you need to provoke change yourself. You don’t need to expect things to get harder, or you need to see when change needs to come. And I think we need to do that homework every day. I believe that we need to always keep on challenging the status quo.