THE PERFECT STORM

Chapter 1

"Hegel remarked somewhere that all the great facts and characters of world history occur, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: once as tragedy, once as farce.

(Karl Marx, The 18 Brumaire of Napoleon Bonaparte)

France, June 2025

Everything has changed, and as the political scientist Dominique Reynier and the writer Michel Houellebecq had predicted, an entertainer has become president of the French Republic.

In most industries, all the cards have been reshuffled. In 2024, the fashion industry experienced a major crisis in demand: the movement of deconsumption, initiated by young people in the early 2020s, has spread to all age groups and all over the world. Nobody wants to buy anything anymore. The luxury giants have lost everything. It is on these ruins that a new entity worth 365 billion euros was born: FranceLux. A portfolio of twenty plus luxury brands, foundations for contemporary art and a majority stake in various media platforms make this structure a leading global group.

This crisis of 2024, which was already noticeable at the end of the Covid (nothing was supposed to be the same as before, but everything had remained the same), had appeared like a long and powerful tsunami. Inflation had set in; the poor had become even poorer, the middle class had become anti-consumerist, and the wealthier classes were no longer so seduced by the grossness of the big brands' offer. An overdose of bags with metal parts made of fake leather, megalomaniac fashion shows in the middle of the desert and total allegiance to show business values had finally disgusted almost everyone with fashion. A certain bourgeoisie had revolted against the trash culture of reality TV that had invaded everything, and the poor had finally realized that they would remain slaves forever.

As for the truly rich with a modicum of taste, they had long since abandoned the makers of fake luxury: it was only to thank the wife of the janitor of a property in the south of France that they would send their driver to buy an iconic bag in a store protected by bodyguards on benzodiazepine.

It is in these conditions that the FranceLux group has grown, a steamroller crushing everything on its way, led by a strategic committee made up of artists, a Nobel Prize winner in economics and the last fashion professionals who understand the creative, industrial and geopolitical stakes.

All the brands that are not part of this group are crashing; and those owned by the finance industry have collapsed, due to the indigence of a management focused only on immediate profit (for example, the Caiman group, a flagship sportswear brand with a turnover of 5 billion euros, was sold for 30 million euros to a small Kazakh textile group). Funds specializing in the acquisition of brands can no longer find financing. A small army of moccasins with tassels has been put out of business, as fashion finance has become a deleterious activity.

FranceLux, initially financed by capital from Doha and Dubai, is not based on a patrimonial structure as in the previous world. Its capital is 93% owned by small and medium-sized investors attracted by the stock market performance of the old world. The advantage is that money can flow freely. The drawback is that a hostile takeover is a possibility that should never be ruled out.

As a result of a number of simultaneous and converging contingencies, this gigantic flagship of European industry will fall into the hand of clever Chinese private equity operators. The carnage will be interrupted by the new President of the French Republic, Guy-François Boublil, who will decree the closure of the Paris stock exchange for 3 days, hoping to limit the already monstruous damage.

Yes, there had been a crisis in 2024, a sort of dress rehearsal, which had brought all the brands down and reshuffled all the cards. Mergers, sales, bankruptcies; everything looked like a post-war period without a war. But in fashion, as in all fields of human activity, nature often comes back at a gallop: the come-back always comes back. And the tragedy of 2024 is transformed, one year later, into a great destructive farce.