-By Lucia Moses

In a bid to grow its clout with luxury marketers, Hachette Filipacchi Media announced today that it has combined its two upscale shelter titles, Elle Decor and Metropolitan Home, into a single entity called the Luxury Design Group.
 
Deborah Burns, vp, publisher of Met Home, was promoted to head the group with the new title of senior vp. She remains publisher of Met Home, and continues to report to Philippe Guelton, Hachette’s executive vp and chief operating officer.
 
Also promoted was Barbara Friedmann, acting vp, publisher of Elle Décor, to vp, publisher of Elle Décor and managing director of the group. She now reports to Burns.
 
The move complements Hachette’s French parent Lagardère Active’s recent expansion into luxury media with its acquisition in April of the Massin Group, a French publisher of decorating magazines.
 
Burns said the goal of the new structure in the U.S. was to grow the advertising shared by the two home titles, which currently share about 40 percent of their clients with each other.
 
“It is formalizing informal collaboration that we’ve done in the past,” Burns said. “We have the top two niche luxury magazines. And presenting that with the scale of the combined reach is very compelling.”
 
Met Home, which focuses on modern luxury, and Elle Décor, with its international bent, have outperformed the Shelter category so far this year, per the Mediaweek Monitor.
 
This year through its July/August double issue, Met Home’s ad pages edged up 1.5 percent to 568 while Elle Décor’s were down 1.6 percent to 675 versus a 5.5 percent decline for the category overall. The same couldn’t be said for Hachette’s Home; its pages tumbled 31.4 percent to 256 in the same period.