FORTUNE APRIL 2020 101for Uniqlo and spent more
time hopping from one
global meeting to another
than doing what he loved
most: building and grow-
ing brands with potential.
“It was during one meeting
that the vanity of it all fully
hit me. People around me
behaved as though they
were changing the world—
I lost it,” he confesses. He
sold the group to the global
investment firm KKR and
prepared for a different life.
Initially, that life was
meant to involve reviving
an old winery and restoring
the estate’s 18th-century
manor house—a veritable
find in a secluded section
of the Luberon in southern
France. It was intended toaround the same time,” says
the 50-year-old during a
candlelit dinner on the
stone terrace of Torre Vella,
one of two converted fincas
he and his husband,
Guillaume Foucher, opened
last year as intimate
agritourism hotels on the
southern tip of Minorca in
Spain. Juggling gargantuan
budgets and customer“The luxury of tomorrow isn’t money
or recognition—it’s meaning and
purpose. And that’s especially true
in travel. It’s tied to conserving local
heritage, agriculture, and perma
culture. It’s putting local first.”
—FRÉDÉRIC BIOUSSEDOMAINE
DE FONTENILLEA restored 18th-
century manor
house and winery in
a secluded section
of the Luberon in
southern France.needs was familiar to
Biousse, but life as a serious
hotelier, winemaker, and
even farmer was new
territory.
The foray into hospitality
was a life change precipi-
tated by what could be
called retail burnout. As the
founder and former CEO
of the Sandro Maje Claudie
Pierlot Group (SMCP),
Biousse fast-tracked
international growth for
the clothing lines Sandro
and Maje, saving them
from bankruptcy in 2007
and catapulting them into
profitable, accessible luxury
brands with boutiques
around the world. But by
2015 he had also taken on
ILL a role as a board memberUSTRATIONBYSAM^ KERR;^ORIGINAL^ PHOTO:^ SYLVIE^CASTIONI^HOS.W.0420.XMIT.indd 101 FINAL 3/6/2020 6:30:47 PM