Bernard Arnault going direct is remarkable and worth reading in full The single most impressive thing is that Arnault (personally, not via company spokesman) responds to a major hit piece without at all accepting the role of defendant He never complains about “biased reporters” or “they ignored our fact check” etc. He instead: 1) Does not flinch. He starts by giving the rebuttal a title: “Thank You.” Not “Addressing Recent Allegations” or whatever but implying the expose has backfired and made him look good. Eg: “They used to call me The Terminator. I prefer ‘the last royal family.’ It’s more elegant, and probably better for Dior sales.” Tone stays measured and bemused throughout; it’s giving Logan Roy 2) Lampoons the allegations. His wry humor makes the expose seem silly and theatrical, his tone is like he’s divulging a stupid child. He opens with, “Apparently I am the head of ‘the last royal family of France’.” And drops gems like, “At the Arnault family, apparently, we don’t argue, we conspire. We don’t deliberate, we plot. It’s novelistic… What, in an ordinary family, is simply called Sunday lunch becomes, in our case, an intrigue. It’s a matter of vocabulary.” 3) Reframes the whole narrative. From billionaire to steward, from an oligarch pursuing power to a patriarch preserving an institution built by and for others Eg: “You describe power as though it were a prize to be won. I experience it as a responsibility to be passed on. The houses entrusted to me are older than I am. Most will outlive me. My role is to hand them on stronger than I found them. That is why I reject the idea of a dynasty. Dynasties exist to preserve privileges. We work to preserve craftsmanship.” Interestingly, in the very act of doing this Arnault shows how masterful he is at wielding power, and he summons that skill here to make the reporters look like bumbling neophytes