Feature: Fashion Meets Art with Bernard Arnault

Currently, Arnault is constructing a dream museum of sorts in Paris. The Louis Vuitton Foundation for Creation, Arnault’s project with Gehry, will occupy a 30,000-square-foot space near the Bois de Boulogne in Paris. Gehry’s distinguished extremist design style will provide a unique artistic mecca in a city already dense with culture and tourism. The project, estimated at $127 million, is slated to open in 2013.

The construction of the Louis Vuitton Foundation for Creation began the same year that François Pinault opened the doors of his $37 million museum in Palazzo Grassi in Venice at 18th century Palazzo Grassi, formally of the Fiat family. Pinault had first tried a museum near Paris too, on Île Seguin, but after $25 million, the project was abandoned and moved to Venice.

Pinault built holding company Pinault-Printemps-Redoute (PPR) beginning with Parisian department store Printemps and developing relationships with visionaries such as Tom Ford. Today, Alexander McQueen, Balenciaga, BottegaVeneta, Yves Saint Laurent and Gucci are all under the PPR umbrella. The future of PPR and its foundations now sit in the hands of Pinault’s son, François-Henri Pinault.