“It’s a sad trip to Mexico to say goodbye to Gilbert, my missing little brother…” This is how Arielle Dombasle’s video begins, posted on her Instagram account this Thursday, November 23, 2023. Died on April 7, 2023, Gilbert, her 71-year-old brother, was buried privately in Mexico. A moving text, music by the artist Nicolas Ker and torrents of flowers: this is how she decided to pay tribute to him. In the video, we see childhood photos of Gilbertalone or with his sister Arielle, many lit candles, large bouquets, his coffin covered with flowers. “A little blond boy said the nurse at his birth… A little prince of delicacy, tact, nobility, elegance… A little prince…”, recites the voice of Arielle Dombasle. She also shows photos of him as an adult and talks about who he was, quite simply. “Eternal lover of the oceans and the starscrazy nature, plants, birds…”
“He will rest at the foot of a small treefor eternity…”
Several green landscapes, under the sun, also punctuate Arielle Dombasle’s Instagram video, revealing what Gilbert himself admired. And the environment in which it currently rests. “In this small village of Valle de Bravo with three thousand nine hundred sunsets, he will rest at the foot of a small treefor eternity…”, concludes his sister with emotion. Arielle Dombasle and her brother spent part of their childhood in Mexico. In an article from Capital dating from 2021 on the fortune of Bernard-Henri Lévy, the husband of Arielle Dombasle, we learned that Gilbert Sonnery was one of the leaders of the American textile group JB Martin Companythe family business which he inherited upon the death of his father in 1995. On RTL in 2018, Arielle Dombasle revealed, about his family heritage: “My family is the great silk makers from Lyon and then, one day, things collapsed, because all the synthetic things came from Asia, and so my father set up factories in America. a French flagship which was exported to America”.