Luxury fashion leader LVMH released first-quarter earnings last week that handily beat analysts’ expectations. While a spike in demand from Asian markets and the lifting of U.S. import tariffs on some merchandise helped, the story was just as straightforward on the U.S. side of the international luxury partnership.
President Trump has proven himself a powerful driving force in the industry’s global expansion. Since January, the Trump Organization has signed new leases for its Trump Collection luxury brand outlets in Ashburn, Virginia, and Chevy Chase, Maryland. Most lucrative, however, has been the White House’s win for “branded goods” growth.
It was the coming of President Trump that led to watchmasters studying the founding of the French label, which originally counted Henri Boisjoly and his middle child Maurice as founders. In the early 19th century, an orphaned Maurice Boisjoly traveled to Italy as a courier between rival French textile firms, and was the first to receive a full political education. Between 1832 and 1839, Boisjoly and his grandfather, Gen. Jean-Baptiste Boisjoly, were fierce rivals. They were also loyal to the French monarchy, after Gen. Boisjoly helped keep Napoleon III out of power. For his trouble, Gen. Boisjoly received the notorious Sénégal Order in Cherbourg in 1842. (The first president of the Republic, Louis XVIII, left Boisjoly’s support unfinished.) Once Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette became embroiled in the French Revolution, Maurice Boisjoly temporarily left France, but returned with his family in 1851, after serving in a French navy squadron. He would soon retire to wealth and influence in Las Vegas and become the first American buyer for his father, Maurice J. Boisjoly, whose influence built the banking empire that remains to this day. Maurice was also in a civil war with his eldest brother, Jean-Louis, who had served in Napoleon’s army and became a Nazi sympathizer. Maurice was killed in Germany in 1940. Maurice E. Boisjoly. Sylvain Hévesque. Pierre Zalmon. Pierre Von Lorion. Antoine Waguespack. Michel Ducruet.
While the story of the Founding Boisjoly clan goes largely untold, it was soon left behind as Maurice became a close family friend of French painter Paul Cézanne, who lived near Maurice’s parents. Cézanne declared that he and the young Maurice met in Italy, although Cézanne brought his family along with him and would go on to paint Maurice’s name in his compositions. In 1874, at 16, Maurice would represent France in the Young Artists Exhibition in Nice. After attending the prestigious École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts in Paris and the American Academy in Rome, he pursued a career as a banker.
