As the last guests left, silence settled in under the dome of the Bourse de Commerce, a unique monument in Paris that houses part of François Pinault's contemporary art collection. After greeting his visitors one by one with his wife Maryvonne and his son François-Henri, the patriarch went back up to the third floor of the building for a family dinner. On this day, May 19, the inauguration day of his new museum in the heart of Paris, he wanted to gather his family and friends at La Halle aux Grains, chef Michel Bras' restaurant, privatized for the occasion. The museum is a bubble of light with anthracite furniture, from which one can see the interior of the building transformed by Japanese architect Tadao Ando and, through the bay windows, the slender splendor of the Saint-Eustache church, the new canopy roof over Les Halles and, in the far distance, the Centre Pompidou, the capital's other great museum of modern art.
In cheerful disorder, about 10 family members were seated around the table: François Pinault, his wife, François-Henri – his successor at the head of Kering (Gucci, Saint Laurent, Balenciaga, etc.) – and his wife, the actress Salma Hayek, and a few children of different ages. The eldest of the siblings, Laurence, and the youngest, Dominique, were also present. Few people really know these two. The business world never talks about them. They do not appear in any photos or articles. They are the two Pinault children who were not chosen to take over the family empire.
They had, however, attended the event just before the family dinner, to celebrate their father's triumph, with some three hundred people invited to the inauguration of his museum. Their presence went unnoticed. They preferred to wander away, rather than join the leading cohort, that of the caped and powerful crowding around their father and their brother. Who could have told them apart, while the photographers and the socialites had eyes only for Brigitte Macron, Anne Hidalgo, François Hollande and Alain Juppé?
Same build, same look, same expressions
With their Breton complexion and light-colored eyes, they look like their father. But to each his place. Laurence and Dominique Pinault have long since admitted that theirs would not be in the limelight and in positions of authority. And they got used to it, according to their entourage. "I had to make a difficult choice," said François Pinault bluntly, when we met him at the Artemis headquarters, the family holding company where he still has an office. "I love my children equally, but right from his teenage years, I told myself that it would be François." As early from his teenage years...
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