Investigation“Successions season II” (2/6). This dynasty of French luxury was long undermined by rivalries. Until the day when, in 2011, a hostile raid by the boss of LVMH led the many heirs to stand together to defend what they call “the house”.
To dive into the heart of the Hermès dynasty is to experience elegance and good taste, the best screen for family secrets. Each cousin introduces himself with exquisite courtesy, leaving you this little time for reflection which allows you to mentally go back along his family tree. While waiting for you to see more clearly, you will be offered a Darjeeling, in a lovely tea service… The decor? A Parisian museum, open sparingly to handpicked guests at 24, rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, the company’s historic headquarters. You can admire the collection of the ancestor Emile Hermès, reconstituted, over the years, through acquisitions at auctions: an accumulation of trunks with sophisticated locks, Amazon saddles and trompe-l’oeil in paper. It’s hard to imagine, faced with so many marvels, that ten years ago, this luxury royal family almost lost everything under the battering of the number one in the sector, the boss of LVMH, Bernard Arnault.
In this Protestant tribe, even the vocabulary is carefully chosen. We are not talking about the company but about the « maison ». We don’t say “expensive”, but “expensive”. A marketing department? What vulgarity! In the workshops, the craftsmen who cut and sew skins soft as caresses to make bags seem to be regarded with the same esteem as if they were bosses. On weekends, the titular CEO, Axel Dumas, can stroll in jeans and a white shirt in the bookstores of Saint-Germain-des-Prés without anyone guessing that he belongs to one of the richest French families: a appraised fortune to 78,700 billion euros in 2022, three hundred stores around the world, 17,000 employees and a company posting a net result of 2.445 billion euros in 2021. An insolent success that the pandemic has further consolidated.
“It’s a bit like Ukraine”
So we were a little taken aback when a very good connoisseur of the « maison » told us outright: “You know, Hermès is a bit like Ukraine. A culture and a magnificent know-how, three branches whose links are a little distended, a third of tax exiles and a fortune which ranks them among the richest French people. And then suddenly, just at the time of the succession, the war. The one that threatens your independence and brings everyone together around the country. » And there, the bags, scarves and silk ties parted, like the curtain on a theater stage, illuminating the dynasty just before the earthquake that nearly tore it apart.
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