LUXE!.....another luncheon with the FT

My lunch with François-Henri Pinault at Paris’s boutique Hotel Lancaster begins and ends with embarrassment - first mine, then his. Here’s how it started: I stuck my hand out to shake his, but ended up spearing him in his side; he was moving in for an air-kiss. I felt like an idiot. He laughed.
Pinault is the chief executive of PPR, the French behemoth which owns Gucci Group, the luxury conglomerate. He is not very well known outside the business world, and, until recently, had been deliberately underexposed, to avoid comparison with his father, the entrepreneur François Pinault. Pinault pere is a legendary figure in French business, having dropped out of high school and built his company on a willingness to reinvent it whenever the opportunity arose.
In 2005, Pinault pere handed over the reins of Artemis (the family holding company, which owns just over 40 per cent of PPR), to his oldest son. And now, after two years, Pinault fils is starting to emerge from his father’s long shadow. The business is performing well. In March, PPR - which also owns entertainment retailer Fnac, Conforma furniture stores and catalogue giant Redcats - posted a net profit for 2006 of +685m, a 28 per cent rise on the previous year - and then, last month, used a chunk of its cash to buy a majority stake in sportswear giant Puma. Meanwhile, Pinault has appeared on French television, pushing his plan for improving the country’s economy by decreasing the tax levied on companies, taking the savings and giving the cash back to employees via a salary rise - which would presumably spur consumption.
But the news that propelled Pinault off the business pages and into the gossip columns is the announcement that he and his girlfriend, the actor Salma Hayek, are now engaged and having a baby. As a result, when Pinault takes his place at the head of the grand staircase in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art this Monday, as co-host of the annual Costume Institute Gala, the party of the year in New York, the level of scrutiny will be intense. Indeed, some say the event, which is underwritten by Gucci Group’s Balenciaga, will be worthy of some of the catty fashionistas featured in the hit television show Ugly Betty, which Hayek has both executive produced and starred in.
For now, however, Pinault is happy to sit back and choose the wine. ”Red or white?” he asks. We go back and forth, and then he orders Chateau Ducru-Beaucaillou 1999. ”It’s my favourite wine,” he says, ”aside from mine, of course.” (Financiere Pinault also owns Chateau Latour.) Did he, I wonder, ever think of not going into the family business? ”Oh, yes. I interviewed at lots of places: Colgate-Palmolive, Procter & Gamble, Price Waterhouse,” says Pinault, examining his escabeche. ”My father’s company was quite different at the time. It was only doing FFr5bn a year in turnover, and the main businesses were lumber and a building merchant network. But I realised that at a place like P&G, you are always assistant to the this, or regional chief of that, but at my father’s company, I would be able to assume full responsibility for a balance sheet, and that was what I wanted.”

Pinault finishes his double espresso, doesn’t touch the petits fours (he also doesn’t touch the bread or wine), and reaches for the bill. But I have to pay, I explain. A look of horror comes over his face. ”But I chose a very expensive wine,” he says. I had suspected this - that he was doing it to be nice, so I could taste a great wine - but in fancy French restaurants the woman never gets the menu with the prices, so I didn’t know. ”It’s OK,” I say. Pinault looks a little sick. ”This is very weird for me,” he says.
Later, Pinault’s communications director calls me to apologise again, and to explain that it was all his fault, as he forgot to tell Francois-Henri that the FT had to pay, and that Francois-Henri feels like an idiot. I laugh.
It occurs to me a fabulous bottle of wine, only partially drunk, is as good a definition of luxury as any I’ve ever heard.
La Table du LancasterHotel Lancaster, Paris
1 x fraicheur aux fraises des bois d’Andalousie et vinaigre balsamique
1 x cueillette de legumes du moment, jus herbace
2 x escabeche de coquillages et encornets aux cerises ratatinees
1 x filet de sole au parfum de yusu
1 x double expresso
1 x Badoit
1 x Chateau Ducru-Beaucaillou 1999
Total: €368.50