GrantDSA

The founding family of French luxury-goods maker Hermès International SCA Tuesday named a member of its sixth generation to become chief executive next year, cementing its grip as the threat lingers from larger rival LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton.
Hermès, the 175-year-old maker of Kelly bags, horse saddles and equestrian-themed silk scarves, said Axel Dumas, the 42-year-old chief operating officer, will take over from Chief Executive Patrick Thomas, who will be 65 in a few weeks. In a lengthy transition, Mr. Dumas, a descendant of founder Thierry Hermès, will become joint-CEO alongside Mr. Thomas at the end of May 2013 and will assume full managerial control at a later unspecified date.
The change in management returns the reins of the company to the family, which in 2010 had a backseat role before an unfolding drama with LVMH.
Two years ago, LVMH, the holding company for brands including Louis Vuitton, Fendi, Marc Jacobs and Donna Karan, stealthily began building up a 22% stake in Hermès, swallowing up the majority of the shares of Hermès that are in the hands of the general public.
Faced with what Mr. Thomas called “an intruder in our garden,” the Hermès family closed ranks, but not before the market speculated that some family members would sell at the right price.
Although LVMH insisted that its intentions were friendly and it didn’t plan a takeover, the Hermès family interpreted the stake buildup as an assault on its family unity—only a few months after the death of the family’s patriarch, Jean-Louis Dumas.
Analysts questioned whether the members of the sixth generation would fill the gaps being vacated by the fifth generation. At the time of Mr. Dumas’s death, there was no family succession plan in place, and little had been done to identify likely contenders.
The first nonfamily member to run Hermès, Mr. Thomas, who has been boss since 2006, guided the company through its standoff with LVMH. Yet the avuncular boss was seen by many family members as a surrogate member of the clan.
The younger Mr. Dumas emerged as the most likely successor to Mr. Thomas over the past year, since he was named chief operating officer. The dark-haired manager, who started his career as a banker in New York and China, entered the family business in 2003, working in various divisions, such as jewelry and leather goods.
Though LVMH remains a major shareholder, the Hermès family feels that it has won the battle for now. Last year, dozens of Hermès family members locked up shares representing just over half the capital in a new holding company, with the intent to keep them out of LVMH’s hands for at least 20 years.
“I am glad a member of the Hermès family has been brought in to succeed me,” Mr. Thomas said in a prepared statement Tuesday.
“In 15 days’ time I will be 65 years old… for some time I have been preparing my succession,” Mr. Thomas said at the company’s annual shareholders meeting Tuesday.
Several of Mr. Dumas’s cousins have joined the company or been promoted to senior positions since LVMH’s arrival. Of the roughly 40 members of the sixth generation, about 10 work in the family business. Julie Guerrand quit her banking job with Rothschild last year to become the director of corporate development. Eric de Seynes became the president of the supervisory board.
They will now be joined by one more. Henri-Louis Bauer will replace his uncle, Bertrand Puech, on July 1 as the top manager of Emile Hermès SARL, the limited partnership that controls the company and which is open only to direct Hermès descendants.

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166 years ago, a man was born who would on Easter morning, deliver to a palace what appears to be a simple enamelled egg. But to the delight of the Empress, inside is a golden yolk; within the yolk is a golden hen; and concealed within the hen is a diamond miniature of the royal crown and a tiny ruby egg – both now lost to history.
His wife’s delight is all the Czar needs to reward Fabergé with a commission for an Easter egg every year. The requirements are straightforward: each egg must be unique, and each must contain a suitable surprise for the Empress. With consummate craftsmanship and an inventive spirit, Fabergé repeatedly meets the challenge, borrowing inspiration from the gilded lives of the Czar and Czarina.

In October of 1894 the Czar’s health fails. He dies suddenly in the prime of life, and his son, Nicholas II, unwillingly ascends the throne. “My God! The Lord has called our deeply beloved Papa to him. My head is spinning. What is going to happen to me? To Russia? I am not prepared to be a Czar. I never wanted to become one.” (from the letters of Nicholas II, October 20, 1894.) “So to make sure that he didn’t make any mistakes,” explains author Lynette Proler, “he decided that the easiest course for him was to continue everything that his father had done.”
Untrained in the business of ruling one-eighth of the world’s population and purposely cut off from progressive thinking by his parents, Nicholas embraces the limited ideals of order, service and tradition: “I shall maintain the principle of autocracy just as firmly and unflinchingly as my unforgettable late father.”

Nicholas’ rigid adherence to convention applies as deliberately to the established customs within the court and family as to the affairs of state. “And of course, the Easter eggs was a tradition that was started by his father, and Nicholas decided to carry it on,” adds Proler. Czar Nicholas orders the continuation of the annual commission of a Fabergé Easter egg for his mother and adds a second order to be delivered to his new wife, Czarina Alexandra Fedorovna.

So imaginatively conceived and opulently executed, Fabergé’s work elevates jewellery to a decorative art unequalled since the Renaissance. At the 1900 World Exhibition in Paris, the Imperial eggs are shown in public for the first time. They astound the jury, which showers him with honours, and Fabergé’s fame spreads throughout Europe. The novelty of combining artistic excellence with functional value – and a touch of whimsy – so captures the imagination of the aristocracy that the Fabergé workshops are flooded with commissions, transforming an ordinary goldsmith shop into the famous “House of Fabergé.” But though aristocrats, barons of industry, kings and queens alike all cross his threshold seeking gifts, Fabergé’s first duty is always to the Czar.

Nicholas loves the pomp and ritual of military life and Imperial ceremony, which require him only to look good and say little. But he shows little aptitude for ruling, vacillating on most important issues, coming across as weak and contradictory, though he firmly opposes any much-needed political or social reforms. Over the years, the royal couple increasingly insulate themselves from politics and the intrigues of the court, preferring instead the comfortable sphere of family and life’s less complicated decisions. So Fabergé makes a point of learning something of the interests and achievements of the Romanovs, fashioning the memorable moments of their lives into Easter gifts to delight and surprise them.

Year by year, Fabergé’s Imperial Easter eggs reach new heights of invention and extravagance, expressions in miniature of the life of imperial privilege. According to author and Fabergé expert, Géza von Habsburg, “They are the absolute summit of craftsmanship. They are unbelievably made. They were the sort of apogee of what Fabergé was able to do, and he lavished everything he could on them.” Ultimately, these eggs would become painful reminders of the tragic events to come.

All the elements of the Romanov story come together most elegantly in the Fifteenth Anniversary egg (1911), a family album just over five-inches-tall. Exquisitely detailed paintings depict the most notable events of the reign of Nicholas II and each of the family members. “Not only is it a staggering tour-de-force of the jeweller’s art,” says Forbes, “but probably more than any other egg, it is the one most intimately associated with the whole tragedy of Nicholas and Alexandra and that incredibly beautiful family. There are these five children – all these sort of glamorous events surrounding their lives – and there they are looking out at us happily unknowing what was going to happen to them just a few years later.”

During the first months of Russia’s involvement in World War I, the simmering discontent of the troubled nation is cooled by patriotic unity in defence of the motherland. But the Russia’s dismal economic conditions make it impossible for Nicholas to sustain the war effort against powerful, industrialized Germany. By 1917, famine threatens the country. Riots and strikes demanding bread are commonplace in Moscow and St. Petersburg. When the Imperial troops join the demonstrators, the government collapses to the revolution. On March 15th, with neither the support of the people nor the aristocracy, Nicholas is forced to abdicate.
The next day, a decree is passed ordering the arrest of Nicholas II and all other members of the Romanov family. The Czar and his family are eventually removed to Siberia where they are held captive for over a year. In the chilly pre-dawn hours of July 17th, 1918, Nicholas and Alexandra, with their five children – Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia and Alexei – are herded into a basement and executed.
Of the immediate family, only Nicholas’ mother, the Dowager Empress Maria Fedorovna, escapes the assassin’s bullet. As she makes a hasty departure from her homeland, she brings with her the Order of St. George egg, the last Fabergé Imperial Easter egg she will ever receive from her son Nicholas, once Czar of all the Russians.

In the harsh light of historical hindsight, the Fabergé Imperial Easter eggs can be seen as nothing more than the frivolous indulgences of a decadent monarchy. But stripped of revolutionary ideology, they endure simply as fragile mementos of the doomed Russian dynasty, each not only an artistic masterpiece, but a remarkable reflection of the joys and achievements of a family at the crossroads of history.

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Die, Workwear!: The Swann Club

dieworkwear:

Once a year, men gather in Paris as members of the Swann Club, an invitation-only social club named in honor of the Proust hero who epitomized elegance and romanticism. Their annual nighttime soiree begins with a great meal, some port and cigars, and then moves to what they all came for. After…

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… what Steve Jobs taught me about presenting.

We can all take some communications cues from Steve Jobs. Here are five that I recently came across from Jim Confalone, co-founder and creative director of ProPoint Graphics, a New York-based professional presentation design firm.

1. Know the one critical point in your presentation — then make it clear. Steve Jobs recognized that the human mind couldn’t process a mountain of material in one sitting. Any information or data that isn’t driving a specific message can be a distraction that weakens the impact of your presentation. Use only visuals that support your one point.

2. Acknowledge why people are listening to you. Your audience is in the room for a particular reason. It’s critical to understand why they’re listening to you so you can tune your presentation in a manner that makes them more receptive listeners. The same talk might play out very differently if it’s given to shareholders, engineers or sales people.

3. Make an immediate, personal connection. Jobs always began by trying to make an emotional connection with the audience, even though his goal was to sell technology. This connection builds empathy, which in turn encourages your audience to be more receptive to what you have to say.

4. Keep the audience focused on you the speaker, not your presentation. The audience isn’t there to look at your slides. They’re there to see and listen to the presenter. Keep their focus on you. That may mean bringing a prop to hold up and draw their attention to, or it may mean inserting a blank slide into your presentation so that the audience is forced to look at you. Steve Jobs often did this — again, drawing the audience’s attention to himself.

5. Know your story. You should know your content so completely that you are comfortable giving your presentation with no visuals at all. Steve Jobs was notoriously meticulous about his preparation, scripting everything. Other presenters prefer to have an element of spontaneity or improvisation. Regardless of your style, mastery of your story affords you the luxury of calm and clarity, essential components to a great presentation.

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“Leather Forever”, which runs until May 27, marks the French luxury goods maker’s 175th anniversary and its enduring love of leather and its relationship with the material.
Zouzou, a rhino mannequin clad in white ostrich skin, sits at the entrance of the exhibition inviting all members of the public to interact with Hermes and learn about its equestrian history and love of superior craftsmanship.
“It’s a very poetic and light-hearted way to put through the experience of Hermes and this is best way to convey Hermes’ future; who we are, where we are coming from,” Thierry Outin, Managing Director of Hermes UK told Reuters.
“We’ve been in the UK for almost 50 years now I think it’s a very good time, when we are celebrating London, the Queen’s Jubilee, the Olympic games.
“It’s the perfect timing for us to reassess and put forward this culture of craftsmanship, this culture of beautiful objects, of great quality towards a British audience,” he added.
The 12 spacious rooms showcase the different stories and sides to Hermes which is famous for creating famed handbags such as the Kelly and the Birkin, named after Princess Grace Kelly of Monaco and actress Jane Birkin.
Visitors are encouraged to interact with the exhibition by lifting hidden panels, touching digital displays or just simply basking in the scent of the finest leather that money can buy.
“All the senses are stimulated, not just the brain. It’s not just gathering information, it’s also a mood as you walk through the different rooms,” said Patrick Albaladejo, Director of Communication for Strategy at Hermes.
“You will feel something and hopefully you will feel those values, this philosophy that has been driving Hermes for over 150 years,” he added.
On display is a bespoke saddle completed with wings in red and orange calfskin as well as clever and detailed references to the firm’s trademark orange boxes, and a neon oversized Kelly bag sculpture showcasing the many variations of Kelly and Birkin bags created over the years.
In large part the company’s image and baseline revenues are still driven by its oldest division, leather goods and saddlery.
As part of the festivities, Hermes has created four unique handbags to represent the UK which will be auctioned online by Christie’s on May 14. The proceeds of which will be donated to the Royal Academy of Arts.
OBJECTS OF BEAUTY
Visitors will also be able to watch actual craftsman from the company’s atelier in Paris at work. Each Hermes bag that is made is created by one craftsman, from start to finish, who signs their name on each bag they create in an unseen place inside the bag.
“I think a craftsman is a master of the know-how. He has received the know-how from an older craftsman when he was training and in turn over time, he will become a trainer to pass his know-how to others,” Albaladejo told Reuters.
“But what is important to his job, is not so much the technique that he will use, but the nature of the objective that he is pursuing and his objective is to create beauty.”
In creating such objects of beauty, each craftsman must train for a year and create a Kelly bag from scratch, it is perhaps no wonder that the wait for a Hermes bag can last up to five years.
Albaladejo said the waiting times for a Birkin bag can vary because of the time it takes to create and source the leather.
“It could be anything from zero, you can get one today if you go to the shop or you want a very big Birkin in crocodile, you may have to wait several months, perhaps one year until we get the skin to make it.
“You cannot just answer with one figure.”

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In a sort of VIP sleepover, G8 leaders bedded down in rustic cabins in rural Maryland, where the U.S. presidential retreat known as Camp David is hosting by far the largest international summit in its 70-year history.
President Barack Obama welcomed his peers from Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and Canada to the verdant compound on Friday evening, describing the weather as “perfect” with clear skies visible through tall oak and poplar trees.
The G8 summit was first set to be held in Chicago, where Obama is hosting a Sunday-Monday NATO summit, but he moved them to the retreat 60 miles (96 km) north of Washington to give the talks a more informal flavor.
“The thinking was that people would enjoy being in a more casual backdrop,” Obama told reporters in March after the White House announced the change of venue, widely seen as a way to reduce exposure to potential protests in Chicago.
Camp David, which opened in 1942, has traditionally been a place for U.S. presidents to relax away from the bustle of the White House, and to host foreign dignitaries, typically one at a time.
Its two prior international summits included only a pair of visiting leaders at once: Bill Clinton’s peace talks with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat in 2000, and the 1978 negotiations Jimmy Carter hosted between Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat yielding the historic Camp David peace accords.
The White House said each of the G8 leaders would have their own cabin on the Camp David grounds, but admitted they would be of different sizes and possibly of lesser luxury than many prime ministers and presidents are accustomed to.
“The allocation system of course is classified; I really can’t go into that,” Tom Donilon, Obama’s top national security aide, told reporters ahead of the summit.
Donilon twice used the word “adequate” to describe the facilities where German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister David Cameron, French President Francois Hollande, Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda were to overnight.
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and European Council President Herman Van Rompuy also stayed at Camp David for the summit that ends Saturday, and each leader could bring in at least one aide.
The G8 meetings are taking place in the dining room of Laurel Lodge, a dark green building surrounded by lush forest where the leaders also ate together on Friday. The large cabin serves as the facility’s business hub, with several conference rooms and a small presidential office.
While Camp David is highly secure with modern communications technology, its decor is somewhat dated. Recent photos released by the White House have featured extensive wood paneling and plaid and vividly patterned upholstered furniture.
Before Friday, Obama had not hosted any foreign leader at Camp David and has spent less time there than his predecessor, George W. Bush, an outdoorsman who often went to the Catoctin Mountain Park getaway for the weekend to mountain bike.
Though Camp David boasts basketball and tennis courts, a swimming pool, and a putting green, sandtraps and tees, Obama has preferred to spend his weekends closer to home, golfing at Andrews Air Force Base and shooting hoops with his daughters Malia and Sasha at a government building near the White House.
Friday marked Obama’s 23rd visit to Camp David, and his first time there since October, according to CBS White House correspondent Mark Knoller who keeps extensive records of presidential travel. At the same point in his presidency, Bush had gone to Camp David 81 times.

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… the “old” new thing Dior’s spring 2012 show was staged traditionally in a salon at the house’s Avenue Montaigne headquarters.
Today haute couture is the most modern way to dress because it’s very individual,” says Pier Paolo Piccioli, who with Maria Grazia Chiuri designs Valentino’s ethereal gowns. “It’s like customizing your life; it means uniqueness.”
There is no argument that haute couture is supremely beautiful. To think of it as the apex of modernity, however, goes against conventional wisdom. In fact, for several years, haute couture has been repeatedly declared on the brink of extinction. But perhaps reports of its death were premature. The strictly governed French craft of handmade and custom-fitted clothing, which is more than a century old, is undergoing a renaissance. In the past few years, six new labels have been awarded the official haute couture designation and entered the fray, bringing the total number of couture houses to 12. Long-established couturiers like Chanel and Valentino are reporting healthy sales. And new customers from emerging markets like China, Brazil, the Middle East and Russia have stepped in to bolster the ranks of the fading old guard.
The current state of couture has emerged from the ashes of economic turmoil. “Couture seems more relevant now than it was in the boom years,” says designer Donatella Versace, who this season returned Atelier Versace to the official couture runway after eight years of low-key presentations. “The global downturn has made people think about the value of things. Couture may be expensive, but as a reflection of the designer’s art, and as an expression of pure creativity in fashion, it is unsurpassed.”
As a rule, couture houses are secretive about their clientele. Purchasing a custom-made, five-figure piece of clothing comes with the gift of discretion, a rare commodity in our publicity-crazed world. But executives describe many of their new clients as relatively young working women—doctors, lawyers, executives—who spend their own salaries, often on daywear and not merely for special occasions like weddings and black-tie galas. One of Valentino’s recent couture clients, for example, is an equestrian enthusiast who wanted a bespoke jacket to wear with her riding pants.
Where you can really see a marked shift is in many of these houses’ post-show itineraries. Up until just a few years ago, most clients were in the U.S. and Western Europe, and after the runway shows in Paris, designers would take their collections to New York City and Los Angeles for additional presentations. Now Dior, Chanel and Armani Privé all go to Hong Kong, Shanghai and Dubai, and do private appointments in many other cities. The atelier heads also travel for individual fittings, maintaining the personalized relationship the houses have long cultivated with their clients despite couture’s recently globalized nature.
This all evokes a culture very different from that of traditional haute couture: wealthy socialites in grand dresses from idolized designers such as Christian Dior and Jeanne Lanvin. For many years, that’s certainly what it was. After World War II, these houses outfitted a newly prosperous class of society ladies, heiresses and royalty, from Babe Paley, Marella Agnelli and Grace Kelly in the ’50s and ’60s to Nan Kempner, Lynn Wyatt and Dodie Rosekrans in the ’70s and ’80s. Meanwhile the ’90s saw the rise of prodigious and quite public couture buyers like Mouna al-Ayoub, then the wife of a Saudi businessman, and Suzanne Saperstein, a former Swedish model who was the wife of a Texas billionaire. They stand in stark contrast to the discreet shopper of today. Now it’s difficult to find women who so openly display their membership to the couture club.
But couture also began to get stuck in the past. Women entered the workforce and discovered the efficient pleasure of buying off the rack; ready-to-wear itself became a glossier commodity. It was previously the domain of department stores, which traveled to Paris to visit couture salons and buy the right to produce cheaper versions of their collections on an industrial scale. Yves Saint Laurent changed that second-fiddle reputation when he created his first full ready-to-wear collection in 1966 in an attempt to democratize high fashion. When Cristobal Balenciaga shuttered his couture atelier in 1968, it was clear that times had changed.
Couture seemed to hit rock bottom in the middle of the last decade, when Balmain, Yves Saint Laurent, Emanuel Ungaro and Christian Lacroix all showed their final collections. For the labels that remained, couture became a way to stand out amid the clutter of hundreds of ready-to-wear lines. For the likes of Dior, Chanel and Valentino—which all typically reserved a sky’s-the-limit budget both for dramatic staging and the collections themselves—the image of haute couture provided a halo of luxury around the label to help peddle mass-market items such as perfume and makeup.
As haute couture undergoes the process of revival once more, its insular and quintessentially Parisian nature is changing. To wit, many of today’s practitioners are not French. Italian designer Giambattista Valli debuted just last year, joining Giorgio Armani, which launched couture label Armani Privé in 2005, and Versace, which began in 1989 as part of the Milanese contingent. And there’s Lebanese designer Elie Saab, who does a robust business for his gowns. Perhaps it’s only fitting for what appears to be couture’s ever more global future.

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