Investigation“Successions” (5/6). In the Pinault family, which reigns over part of French luxury, the seizure of power of the youngest son, François-Henri, was done gradually, and always according to François’ wishes.
The last guests left, silence settled under the cupola of the Bourse de Commerce which houses part of François Pinault’s contemporary art collection. After greeting his visitors one by one alongside his wife Maryvonne and his son François-Henri, the patriarch went up to the third floor of the building for a family dinner. On May 19, the inauguration day of his new museum in the heart of Paris, he wanted to bring his people together at La Halle aux grains, the restaurant entrusted to chef Michel Bras, privatized for the occasion. A bubble of light with anthracite furniture, from which we can see the interior of the building transformed by the Japanese architect Tadao Ando and, through the bay windows, the slender splendor of the Saint-Eustache church, the canopy of Halles and again, at the back, the Pompidou Center, the other major modern art museum in the capital.
In a happy mess, there are a dozen around the table: François Pinault and his wife, François-Henri – his successor at the head of Kering (Gucci, Saint-Laurent, Balenciaga, etc.) – and his, the actress Salma Hayek, and a few children of all ages. There is also the eldest of the siblings, Laurence, and the youngest, Dominique. These two, rare are those who really know them. The business community never talks about them. They do not appear in any photos or in any article. They are the two Pinault children who were not chosen to take over the family empire.
They had come, however, just before this dinner, to witness their father’s triumph, in the midst of some three hundred people invited to the inauguration of his museum. Their presence went unnoticed. They preferred to wander apart, rather than cling to the leading cohort, that of the capes and the powerful who crowded around their father and brother. Who could have distinguished them, while photographers and socialites only had eyes for Brigitte Macron, Anne Hidalgo, François Hollande and Alain Juppé?
Same build, same look, same expressions
With their complexion and their clear Breton eyes, they look like their father. But everyone has their place. Laurence and Dominique Pinault have long admitted that theirs would not be in the light and in the command posts. And they put up with it, assure those close to the family. “I had to make a difficult choice”, Bluntly recognizes François Pinault, when we meet him at the head office of Artémis, the family holding company where he has kept an office. “I love my children as much as each other, but from adolescence I told myself that it would be François. ” From adolescence …
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