Delphine Arnault Receives Honorary Doctorate From Seoul's Ewha Womans University

Delphine Arnault, chairman and chief executive of Christian Dior Couture, has received an honorary doctorate in business administration from Ewha Womans University in Seoul, according to WWD.

Ewha Womans University, one of South Korea's best-known private universities, was founded in 1886. Dior's link with the school goes back to 2020, when the two began a partnership that includes mentoring and educational programmes for Ewha students.

The ties are also visible on campus. Dior unveiled its pre-fall 2022 women's ready-to-wear collection on the university grounds. A pre-fall collection is a range shown between the main seasons, ahead of the autumn and winter shows that anchor the fashion calendar.

Arnault's own path into the fashion business started inside the LVMH group, the French luxury company that owns Dior. She joined LVMH in 2000 and began her fashion career at John Galliano, the British-born designer whose house LVMH controlled at the time.

In 2003 she became the first woman on the board of directors of LVMH. Between 2013 and 2023 she served as executive vice president of Louis Vuitton, the group's leather goods house, before taking over the top management role at Dior. She is the first woman to lead the house in that role.

She also launched the LVMH Prize for Young Fashion Designers in 2013. The prize is a competition for emerging designers, run by the group.

The honorary degree recognises her work on the business side of fashion, the part of the industry that handles finance, staffing and the long-term planning behind a collection. It is the kind of award that universities give to people from outside their own faculty, and it sits alongside Dior's long-running ties with students in Seoul.