PARIS, Oct 24, 2001/ --- Everyone in Paris is talking about the recent bestseller in which luxury lord Bernard Arnault reveals his inner thoughts and settles old scores.

Entitled "La Passion Creative" ("The Creative Passion"), the 200-pager has already sold 25,000 copies, a healthy figure for a bio about a businessman in France and an indication that more marketed-type ideas are creeping into French thinking. Local philosophers, several of whom have assailed the loss of "French values" to Anglo-Saxon materialism, however, have attacked its success.

The tome compiles a series of interviews with Arnault by business journalist Yves Messarovitch, whose questions vary in tone from informed to unctuous. Messarovitch gushes on the jacket cover that Arnault "truly invented the luxury industry," and his first question to Arnault is Napoleonic: "You incarnate better than anyone success and the spirit of conquest."

Even though the leading business monthly Capital this month ranked Arnault France's richest man, second to L'Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt, the largely self-made luxury tzar insists he's not in it for the money. He professes to be motivated by a very French impulse: passion.

"Money has never represented, in my view, an objective or even an indicator of any significance," says Arnault. "I've been fascinated for a long time by artistic creation and by the search for perfection, of the highest level."

America's energy and practicality have also clearly fascinated Arnault ever since he spent three years there in his 30s. His admiration, however, doesn't exactly extend to American sportswear, which he looks on with a certain Gallic hauteur. It's ironic to read Arnault's opinion of American fashion brands in the week when his luxury conglomerate LVMH bid over $600 million for Donna Karan.

"Certain of them are formidable marques. But they do not have the mythic dimension that Dior or Vuitton have," he sniffs.

By any standard, Arnault has done a brilliant job as chairman and major shareholder of LVMH. In 12 years, he's grown LVMH into the world's biggest luxury conglomerate with annual sales of $8 billion and 45 classy brands including Christian Dior, Louis Vuitton, Tag Heuer, Hennessy and a shelf of different champagne brands crowned by Dom Perignon.

In a France plagued by anti-business regulations and still quite inward looking, LVMH accounts for a staggering 15 percent of total French exports to Japan.

Arnault is at his most touching when recalling Princess Diana, a close friend of his wife Helene, whom they last met with her sons at lunch in the south of France.

"She still seemed attached to her former husband, but had nothing but caustic words for the in-laws. . . A month after this, she died. I'll always remember with an inexpressible sadness her two sons when they passed before us following their mother's coffin in Westminster Abbey."

Arnault comes across as a warm, rational fellow. Though he's very clearly got a major bug up his nose about l'affaire Gucci, and his failure to prevent his great rival Francois Pinault from winning control of the Italian brand and uniting it with France's greatest legend, Yves Saint Laurent.

Pinault ranked third on Capital's list with an estimated fortune of $11 billion dollars, one billion less than Arnault. But even though Arnault mounted what the Gucci management clearly regarded as a hostile takeover by buying 30 percent of their shares, he claims he "was attacked" by Pinault.

He even suggests that Pinault henchmen mounted a dirty-tricks campaign in the press by feeding French monthly Le Nouvel Observateur a biased "report" against the LVMH chief. "The longest thing will be to forget the personal attacks," he bewails.

He's at his most acidic about Gucci's creative director Tom Ford, who staged his debut Yves Saint Laurent collection in October. "It's pointless to add anything. The reviews are enough, sadly. And that doesn't fill me with joy, as we are a major shareholder in the brand," he scoffs.

But Arnault is certainly a major fan of the man who is probably the most famous designer in his stable, John Galliano. The Dior couturier "is doing exactly what I believe Mr. Dior would have done himself today."

"Dior is truly creative," enthuses this high priest of hedonism. "When you go to a fashion show with just a series of looks after having witnessed a Dior show, you fall right asleep."

The LVMH chairman is known as a demanding boss with his executives. "They have the right to make mistakes, they don't have the right to failure," is his management policy.

In his book, Arnault mostly focuses on his designers. Few of his executives are mentioned. Moreover, he is not adverse to some revisionism.

One blatant example is when Arnault tells Messarovitch that he and Christian Dior Couture's president Sidney Toledano together made the decision to hire Galliano. The fact is that at the time of Galliano's arrival Dior had another president, Francois Baufumé. Arnault and Baufumé parted under strained circumstances subsequently.

The luxury lord downplays the importance of his bitter court battle with Vuitton clan chief Henry Racamier over a decade ago. However, by winning control of Vuitton, the world's most consistently profitable luxury brand, he wrangled the cash cow that has funded LVMH's avaricious acquisition campaign. Surprisingly, Vuitton's brilliant chairman Yves Carcelle isn't even mentioned.

The well-mannered though icy Arnault insists he's a simple chap, who enjoys his tennis, likes to play Chopin on the piano and is a devoted father of his four children. He carefully underlines that he always breakfasts with the two youngest from his second marriage.

This French billionaire has few regrets, except maybe "not having invested in Microsoft ten years ago." Hélas!

The English translation has been entitled A Passion for Luxury

Click here to purchase A Passion for Luxury