The most useful way to read Luca de Meo’s first plan for Kering is by what it omits. No transformative acquisition. No platform pivot. On April 16 in Florence, the new chief executive put four of the group’s own brands on a profitability watch and told the room he would “eject them from the system” if they failed.

The selection is the tell. McQueen, Brioni, Ginori 1735 and Pomellato are all Pinault-era acquisitions; three of them were bought between 2011 and 2013, when the group was treating its portfolio as an asset to extend. De Meo gave them two years.

The plan, branded ReconKering, was built on the language of restraint. Two hundred and fifty store closures over four years, with one hundred booked for this year alone. Two-thirds of the retail network renovated by 2030. A billion euros of inventory cleared in twelve months. The operating margin to more than double from a 2025 base of 11.1 per cent. None of these are growth ambitions. They are deductions, calibrated to make whatever growth follows visible against a smaller base.

Then the one permitted exception. House of Wonders, a newly created vehicle, took a minority stake in ICCF, the Shanghai group behind ICICLE. De Meo called it “a kind of escape valve” to put oxygen into the organization. The structure — minority, partnership, terms undisclosed — is closer to a venture line than to the Bottega and Balenciaga pattern of twenty-five years ago. Where Pinault would have bought to control, de Meo took just enough to learn. The deal is the strategy in miniature: contained, and built to be unwound if it disappoints.

The contrast with François-Henri Pinault is the point. The 2010s were a decade of additions: Brioni in 2011, Qeelin in 2012, Pomellato, Christopher Kane and Ginori in 2013, Ulysse Nardin in 2014. Creed and a thirty per cent stake in Valentino came later, in 2023 and 2024 respectively. Pinault treated the portfolio as an instrument of growth. The premise was that scale begets margin and margin begets desirability. Whatever else the strategy failed to do, it grew.

De Meo treats the same portfolio as a perimeter to defend.

The numbers endorse the discipline. Kering’s Q1 2026 revenue fell 6.2 per cent to €3.57 billion, with Gucci down 8 per cent in organic terms. A house with that print does not need new wings; it needs fewer rooms.

There is also a fairness in the asymmetry. Of the four brands on probation, three arrived during the Pinault buying spree. Gucci, Saint Laurent, and Bottega Veneta — de Meo’s spending priorities — have been in the group for decades. The plan punishes the most recent decade and bets on the one before it.

The market disliked it. Kering shares closed down 3.9 per cent on the day. Investors wanted a story; they got a budget. The two fail differently.

De Meo refused a deal. It was the decade he meant to refuse. Pinault expanded the group to prove what it could be; de Meo is shrinking it to find out what it is.