Delphine Arnault arrives three minutes late for our meeting at Kinugawa and not before having a brief conversation with the diners at a neighbouring table. As she apologises, she explains that they are old acquaintances anxious to share their condolences about the recent death of Yves Carcelle, former chairman and chief executive of Louis Vuitton, who worked alongside her father Bernard for more than 25 years.
“It’s sad because he was so young,” she says of the 66-year-old, who died in August from a rare form of kidney cancer. His role at the house was monumental, she says. “I’ve been working at Louis Vuitton for one year and every day I hear about him.”
It is, in fact, exactly a year to the day since Arnault took her position as executive vice-president of Louis Vuitton, assuming a role that many say was written in her destiny at birth. As the eldest child of Bernard Arnault (she has a younger brother Antoine, and three stepbrothers from her father’s second marriage), she is the heiress apparent to LVMH, the vast luxury conglomerate that has made her father a fortune of $33bn. Her appointment at Louis Vuitton, the most glittering jewel in LVMH’s portfolio, and her role on the executive board of LVMH since 2003 suggest a future that will one day see her take more control of the company: Delphine by name, dauphine by nature.
