Paris

"Their American base, their intact international network, as well as their two major specializations - foreign exchange and the financing of gold transfers - suddenly became major assets. While bonds collapsed and the franc quickly lost two-thirds of its pre-war value, London and New York fully benefited from the paralysis of the old European financial centers. Over the post-war years, these gentlemen from Lazard thus set up a magical New York-London-Paris triangle, governed by a top-tier team that made the firm a true hidden power. Governments would often call on them. The talent and genius of the partners during this delicate period was to always think big and international."

""Let me introduce you to my associate," Bolloré even said to Michel Drucker, crossing paths with the boss of Marianne at the restaurant Marius et Jeannette, on Avenue George-V in Paris. And then nothing... The negotiations got lost in the limbo of postponed meetings and unanswered phone calls. A specialty of the entrepreneur, defended by his close associates in this way: "He's so polite that he's reluctant to say no." Except to his collaborators, of course..."

"Turning towards the future, eager to perfect his leather crafting techniques, Thierry decides to settle in Pont-Audemer, a peaceful small township in the province with only 5,300 inhabitants. This very private man knows how to weigh the pros and cons. He is aware that, even though he is already a skilled saddler, he will always need to progress. The choice of Pont-Audemer is not random. At the end of the 1820s, Thierry Hermès leaves one capital for another. 150 kilometers from Paris, at the end of a two-day journey, awaits the 'capital' of leather."

"Bernard Arnault has won. With a stake of 40 million francs, he becomes the boss of Boussac, which has returned to private ownership and will be worth 8 billion three years later. That same evening, he invites his colleagues to dinner at Laurent, one of the best restaurants in Paris. He is delighted, but does not show it much. Restraint is part of his character. Above all, the agony of his beloved grandmother Savinel, who is dying in Lille, spoils his pleasure."

"IN SEPTEMBER ’86, in the opulent Revlon offices where he and “the Drexels” had arrived as hated interlopers and dropped ashes on Bergerac’s Persian rugs, Perelman now seemed at home. He and Drapkin had liked calling attention to Bergerac’s excesses, particularly the Boeing 727 outfitted with a gun rack for his safaris, and the Revlon offices in Paris which Perelman described as a “castle.” Now the company leased its corporate jet from a Perelman aircraft-leasing company. And now that the “castle” was his Paris headquarters, Perelman had decided not to sell it, after all. He was having the New York offices redecorated. And James, Bergerac’s butler, was now serving Perelman."

"Shenzhen was China’s greatest boomtown and, therefore, the world’s. [Its population soared](private://read/01k3jwt46q240aq6fe12mqkyr0/16_Notes.xhtml#_idTextAnchor344) from three hundred thousand in 1980 to seven million in 2000 and eighteen million in 2020. For many Chinese, who are intently judged on the region they’re from, Shenzhen was a land of opportunity where no one was a local. One of the city’s slogans, still occasionally found on billboards, reads, “You’re a Shenzhen local the moment you’re here.” It’s a poke at Beijing and Shanghai, cities where older families maintain a certain exclusivity (as they might in Paris or London)."

"work. In his mind’s eye he could see Monte Carlo awakening from the unnatural slumber and reverting to the glory of the past. One of his exciting visions was of a new outer harbor big enough to accom¬ modate the Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth and attracting a big international cruising clientele. There was not a port in the Mediter¬ ranean capable of taking big passenger liners without subjecting them to the noise, smoke, and dirt of a commercial harbor, as in Genoa, Naples, Marseilles, or Barcelona. In Villefranche and Cannes the swell was so strong that it was impossible to embark or disembark pas¬ sengers during more than six hours at a time. Onassis visualized oceangoing liners coming in like yachts and staying while their pas¬ sengers flew on quick excursions to Paris, London, Rome, anywhere in Europe. It would put Monte Carlo among the great international harbors of the world and, he reckoned, attract two thousand visitors to Monaco every day. A man whose visions quickly solidify into hard figures, he worked out that even at twenty-five dollars a head a day, even without gambling, this represented a secure income of fifty thou¬ sand dollars a day. The project might require an investment of at least thirty million dollars but this was not an amount to deter Onassis."

"it. In the first—a simplified and rather static version of the second—notice that groups of people move in orbit around the central hub. This calls to mind Baron George-Eugene Hauss- mann’s breakthrough in the nineteenth-century restructuring of Paris. The French capital was a mess of tiny intersecting streets before this brilliant engineer cut broad boulevards across and around the city. The advantages are obvious. By radiating streets from a central hub, distances are vastly reduced, and vistas are opened up in all directions. This is why Paris is the world’s greatest city for tourists on foot."

"“Among the coachmen, there are clever ones who, without ever having tried the tire, declare themselves its opponents. There are also pranksters and brutes who burst the tubes during stops or at night. The Michelin maintenance teams, tireless, carry out the changes. “But true progress, boldly supported, always ends up triumphing. By the end of 1896, more than three hundred cabs on tires are running in Paris and working at full capacity."

"Contradiction between its isolation and its global dynamism. Located in a hard-to-access region (Clermont will likely not be connected to Paris by highway before the end of this decade), far from car manufacturers, major universities, financial institutions, and national and European political assemblies, Michelin nevertheless manages to find in this loyalty to its roots the sources of its originality, strength, and common sense. Its expansion is largely explained by this fierce determination to draw fully and abundantly from its own earthy and rural roots."

"On December 21, Citroën files for bankruptcy, and the commercial court of Paris declares the judicial liquidation. The Lazard Bank, which is the largest creditor among all financial institutions, asks Michelin, the largest creditor among the two thousand four hundred industrial suppliers, to take charge (André Citroën owes eighty-two million to his tire supplier)."

"When, in January 1978, André Sacau joins Vuitton, the house has two shops, in Paris and Nice, and begins a franchise experiment in Munich. Immediately he realizes that things need to be done differently. Margins are made at retail, in stores. To make money, you need to own the shops. Vuitton, and this is an essential option, will never practice either licensing or franchising, but will develop a partnership policy in all countries by always maintaining control (51%)."

"I can only advise every young person: Learn languages! This is also why I like to think back to my student days, which began in Cambridge and Bristol and later took me to Paris and Montpellier. Academic learning, and of course a joyful student life, are valuable factors that I also enjoyed during my semesters in Munich, Tübingen, Heidelberg and Mannheim. But the semesters abroad in England and France also made possible the so important immersion in the native languages. It is pleasing that today's students almost obligatorily incorporate semesters abroad into their academic training. In my day and even decades later, this was still not a matter of course."

"In the apparent calm of relations with Paris, Leonardo manages to complete the other piece he was missing. He fills the only "gap" that remained in his empire: a retail distribution chain in Europe. He manages to acquire the major competitors in retail sales on the old continent."

"When the French managers realize that, despite the headquarters and listing remaining in Paris, it will be the Italians who take the helm of the group, they begin an all-out battle."

"In 1978, Diane Keaton appeared at the Oscar ceremony to receive the award for Best Actress for Annie Hall by Woody Allen, wearing an Armani dress. Two years later, Richard Gere in American Gigolo wears only Armani clothes. Milan is then inaugurated as a fashion city, on par with Paris, London, and New York. "We were in the midst of recovery after the dark period of the Seventies," Armani tells me in an interview for this book. "They were optimistic years, carefree, which saw the fashion system established and the first appearance of words, objects, and habits that still today determine our daily lives." Among the objects that change their "intended use," there are precisely the protagonists of our story: glasses."

"Trends, colors, successes of each season arrived at the design tables of Arteixo from all over Europe and beyond the seas. This was always this man's obsession: reworked, reinvented clothes, in direct connection with what consumers expected. Clothes that appeared very shortly after hanging in Madrid, Barcelona, and other cities in Spain; in Porto, Paris, or Mexico."

"In 1979 Amancio Ortega gathered all his companies under the Inditex label. During the eighties, he took his stores to all regions of Spain and, before the end of the decade, he dared to compete in the fashion capital, setting up in Paris, and cross the Atlantic to open stores in New York. In the nineties, in line with the globalisation that was beginning, expansion turned into an explosion. Zara set foot in the most important European cities, the Far East, and several Latin American capitals."

"Cookie Jars and Irises 99 room off the lobby. Although it had a very low ceiling, the space was perfect for a cafe to enliven the lobby and create a more welcoming feel to Sotheby’s historic front door. We raised the ceiling, added a kitchen on the level below the lobby, and installed a motorized dumbwaiter to deliver orders to the cafe. A simple video system al¬ lowed the kitchen and waitstaff to communicate effectively. Shortly before we opened for business, I received a call from a se¬ nior Sotheby’s executive in London. He was nearly hysterical and was concerned that our cafe looked too much like—perish the thought—a French cafe, one you might see on the streets of Paris! That was exactly the look we were after, and I assured him that our cafe would fit right in and be attractive to people from all over the world. And that’s precisely what happened. The Cafe (which is what we unimaginatively named it) was an instant hit. Clients stayed lon¬ ger, staff held small meetings over lunch, visitors stopped in for tea and discovered Sotheby’s for the first time. We introduced a lobster sandwich on brioche bread (a London first) that put our simple but distinctive cuisine on the map."

"Early in the 20th century Cartier opened branches in London’s Bond Street and Fifth Avenue, New York. Alfred Cartier’s three sons respectively managed the Paris, London and New York houses, but after they died in the 1950s the business fragmented."

"“Working in this factory (Prinetti and Stucchi) enabled me to get permission to build the first twin-engine tricycle. I took part in ten races with this first machine of mine and won all of them except one, when I was second. “The best of these races, the one which gave me most satisfaction, was at Turin. I beat Gaste and Rigal, who had come from Paris to beat me. Even before the start, I was sure of winning. “In the Paris-Bordeaux race I averaged fifty miles an hour and was running second, twenty minutes behind Osmont, when I ran out of petrol and had to give up (damaged fuel- tank).”"

"As was his way, Sol had again been overseas to “investigate”, taking Barry King and his sketchpad along. The pair had been particularly impressed by Chez Régine in Paris and New York, where Barry had sat with his pad under the table."

"The old man’s strategy worked better than he could have imagined. At the suggestion of his friend Gerardo Rodríguez, with whom he used to go horseback riding every morning, Emilio traveled to San Sebastián, Spain. There, through Gerardo’s friends, he joined a circle of friends that included several expatriate French. At a party he met a young and wealthy Parisian girl, who would surely meet Don Emilio’s approval. Her name was Pamella de Surmont, and she would be the next Mrs. Azcárraga."

""If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a movable feast." ERNEST HEMINGWAY"

"Except for the protagonists, there was no witness that day in the large office on Rue Poissonnière to report how the connection was made between Boussac, fifty-seven years old, at the peak of his power, and Dior, forty-one years old, still waiting for his moment, between the great self-made man and the aesthete converted late in life to work, between the “king of cotton,” who nearly forty years earlier had revolutionized fashion in the countryside and small towns with his fancy cottons, and “the stout gentleman dressed in the neutral colors of a Parisian from Passy”—as Dior describes himself—who proposed to create a selective and exclusive couture house that would bring back to Paris the clientele of elegant women from around the world."

"The day after the press presentation, the planes were full. America was immediately won over: it was this battle that Dior wanted to win. If he had not made this bold move, the transatlantic market risked being lost. During the five years of war, the bridges had been broken between Paris and American fashion."