Green With Envy

François-Henri Pinault has spent his life working in the family business. Only this family business is worth more than us$95 billion and as one of the most influential in the world, it’s making strides towards sustainability.

- Emily Pidgeon

Computer programmer, pharmaceutical equipment salesman, military serviceman, father of four and Salma Hayek’s husband are some of the diverse hats François-Henri Pinault has worn. Although it’s his blazing vision for a healthier planet that sees him don the most honourable, albeit stylish, hat of all.

Lauded as a humble hero, Pinault is pioneering the way to a sustainable future as his company, Kering, targets one of the most unforgiving sectors on Earth: the greatly criticised fashion industry. Valued at more than US$95 billion, the luxury conglomerate is one of the most influential in the world. But it hasn’t always been this way.

Pinault was just one year old when his father, François Pinault, established timber and building materials company Pinault in 1963. And it would be another 36 years before the business acquired a 42 per cent stake in the Gucci Group for US$3 billion, setting it on the glamorous path to luxury goods. After graduating from HEC business school in Paris and spending time in the military based in the US, in 2005, the younger Pinault was appointed Chair and CEO of the company, which had by then changed its name PPR.

“It was funny and dramatic and surreal,” he told The New York Times Style Magazine in 2013. “I knew it was coming, but I never expected it to happen so fast. I was still only 40 years old, and my father was 66 and in great shape, full of plans for PPR. But he had seen too many omnipotent fathers and what they did. I saw how hard this was for him.”

Being handed the keys to his father’s business empire was a pivotal moment for his career. Pinault had been tasked with transforming the once misunderstood company into the apex of fashion.