U
p close, Arnault’s polished appear-
ance is like a suit of armor. On an
overcast Friday morning in late
September, he is attired in a selec-
tion of LVMH brands, including a
pin-striped suit by Celine, a navy tie by Loro Pi-
ana, black leather slip-ons by Berluti and a white
cuff-linked shirt by Dior with his initials em-
broidered just below his heart. Slim and 6 foot 1,
he stays fit playing four hours of tennis a week,
sometimes with his friend Roger Federer. “I try
not to be fat, as you see, and I do a lot of sports,”
he says.
Those games are among his only breaks from
a workaholic schedule that starts at 6:30 a.m.
in his 17th-century mansion in the posh 7th Ar-
rondissement on Paris’s Left Bank. He begins
each morning listening to classical music, scan-
ning industry news and texting family members
and brand chiefs. “What I have in mind every
morning is that the desirability of a brand should
be as strong in ten years,” he says. “It’s really the
key to our success.” By 8 a.m. he’s in his office at
22 Avenue Montaigne, where he stays as late as
9 p.m. Occasionally he’ll take a 20-to-30-minute
pause to play the Yamaha grand piano in a room
down the hall from his ninth-floor office.
“He works 24 hours,” says Delphine Arnault,
44, Arnault’s oldest child, from his first marriage,
and the executive vice president of Louis Vuitton.
“When he sleeps, he’s dreaming of new ideas.”
Every Saturday, he prowls his retail stores, re-
arranging bag displays and making suggestions
to clerks. He visits as many as 25 stores, includ-
ing the competition, in a single morning. “It’s a
ritual,” says his son Frédéric, 25, who works at
LVMH’s top watch brand, TAG Heuer.
Arnault relays details from his store visits to
the chiefs of his top brands. He recently alert-
ed Louis Vuitton CEO Michael Burke that the
new “it” bag, the $2,480 Onthego tote, was not in
stock at the Place Vendôme shop. “He complains
when too many SKUs are sold out,” says Burke,
who has worked with Arnault since 1980.
At least once a month, Arnault travels in his
Bombardier jet to visit some corner of his empire.
In October, he visited the small town of Keene,
Texas, where he and Donald Trump cut the rib-
bon on the first of two new Louis Vuitton work-
shops slated to create 1,000 jobs over the next
five years. (The brand already has two workshops
in California.) “I am not here to judge his types of
policies. I have no political role,” said Arnault to
reporters. Still, the event sparked a flash of con-
troversy within his own ranks. Vuitton’s womens-
wear artistic director, Nicolas Ghesquière, wrote
on Instagram: “I am a fashion designer refusing
this association #trumpisajoke #homophobia.”ly stock deal. Two years later it bought the fine-
wool purveyor Loro Piana for a reported $2.6
billion. Arnault’s most recent acquisition was in
April when LVMH paid $3.2 billion for the Lon-
don-based hotel group Belmond, whose opulent
holdings include the Cipriani hotel in Venice, the
luxury train line Orient Express and three ultra-
luxe safari lodges in Botswana.
“Bernard Arnault is a predator, not a creator,”
says a banker who was close to the Boussac deal.
Arnault has not succeeded at every conquest.
In 2001 he lost what the media called the “hand-
bag war” for control of fabled Italian fashion
house Gucci, to his French luxury rival, Fran-
çois Pinault. Over the next decade, LVMH used
a stealth tactic common among hedge funds—
cash-settled equity swaps—to secretly acquire
17% of Hermès, the 182-year-old maker of fine
silk scarves and the iconic Birkin bag. Hermès
fought Arnault off in a protracted battle that end-
ed in 2017 with LVMH relinquishing most of its
Hermès shares. JAMEL^ TOPPINFOR^ FORBESFORBES.COM NOVEMBER 30, 20 1960
PROFILE—BERNARDARNAULTMicromanager
Arnault frequently
visits this Louis Vuitton
location next door to
his Paris offices.