Luxury World: The Past, Present and Future of Luxury Brands

by Tungate, Mark

  Today, the borders of the New World are being extended – and French savoir faire is once again playing a role in the expansion. In March 2009, Domaines Baron de Rothschild – owner of Château Lafite – announced a plan to make wine in China. In a partnership with state-owned Chinese investment company CITC, the French winemaker had selected a 25-hectare site on the Shangdong peninsula, near the town of Penglai. It added that wine was already produced in the region, which is known as ‘China’s Bordeaux’ as it lies roughly at the same latitude.

  In common with many luxury brands, Domaines Baron de Rothschild has a taste for emerging markets.

  16

  The chef

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  ‘In a restaurant, everything counts – nothing is trivial.’

  If luxury is about enjoying goods and services that have been elevated to the highest levels of quality and refinement, then eating in a fine restaurant is one of the greatest luxuries of all. There are many reasons for choosing a particular restaurant: the location, the decor, the service, the wine list – I’ve even heard two French businessmen debating the quality of the bread at their potential lunch destinations – but ultimately our judgement rests on the cooking. We might come the first time for the smart crowd or the quirky design, but the food is why we’ll come back. The proof is in the moelleux au chocolat.

  We may also come for the chef. Most of us can cook, but not all of us can cook well. And very few of us can turn basic ingredients into the kind of culinary magic that makes diners close their eyes and groan with pleasure when they take a bite. Those who combine this ability with an attractive personality, a flair for marketing and an eye for all the elements that make up a great restaurant are rewarded with cult status in our society: they become celebrity chefs.

  One thinks of British firebrands like Marco Pierre White and Gordon Ramsey – with their commis-searing tempers – or the more cerebral Heston Blumenthal, whose scientific approach at the three-Michelin-starred Fat Duck in Berkshire frequently earns him comparisons to Ferràn Adria of El Bulli. Adria’s restaurant on the Costa Brava is said to be the best in the world, although it’s so hard to get a table that few people you know will be able to confirm or deny this claim. In America there is Thomas Keller, of Per Se in New York and The French Laundry in California – although the Alsace-born Jean-Georges Vongerichten may have a stronger claim to global brand status. In France the restaurants of Pierre Gagnaire and Joël Robuchon regularly earn rave reviews from the toughest of critics.

  When I started researching this chapter, however, the name that sprang to mind was that of Alain Ducasse. And it wasn’t just because I’d recently been hanging out on his home patch in Monaco. With his eponymous company, his 25 restaurants worldwide (as either owner or consultant), his nine Michelin stars and his 1,000 or so employees, Ducasse is a global luxury brand. Indeed, in the introduction to the company brochure, CEO and co-founder Laurent Plantier compares Groupe Alain Ducasse to Ferrari and Louis Vuitton. So how does Ducasse feel about this? How did the man become the brand?

  A BRAND NAMED ALAIN DUCASSE

  ‘Let’s get one thing straight first,’ replies Alain Ducasse, ‘I have no marketing theories and no lessons to give about how to construct a brand. I can simply look back at my 35-year career and try to understand, retrospectively, how things happened. And even then, one must remain prudent: I did not, at the age of 25, have a clearly established plan that would enable me to progress in a coherent manner. There are lucky breaks, desires and encounters that orientate you little by little in a certain direction.’

  Let’s establish some background. Alain Ducasse was born on 13 September 1956 on a farm in the Landes region, which is located below Bordeaux in the southwest of France. This is the legendary region of Gascony, also known as Aquitaine. Gascons have a reputation for earthiness and courage: d’Artagnan was from Gascony, as was Cyrano de Bergerac. It is an area of rolling Atlantic breakers and vast pine forests, of Armagnac and foie gras. Ducasse fits right in to this bucolic scene: ‘His grandfather was a carpenter, his father a farmer,’ reads the company brochure. ‘His rustic upbringing, surrounded by chickens and ducks, influenced his taste early in his life.’

  Apparently Ducasse did not want to rear fowls and grow vegetables – he wanted to cook them. He apprenticed at the age of 16 at a restaurant called the Pavillon Landais in Soustons, not far from home. Then he studied at the Ecole Hôtelière de Bordeaux. His next job was with Michel Guérard, the inventor of nouvelle cuisine, who had moved with his wife to Eugénie-les-Bains in Les Landes. Soon, Ducasse found himself on less familiar territory near Cannes, where he worked at Le Moulin de Mougins under Roger Vergé. ‘If Guérard’s lesson was to remove the shackles of old culinary habits, Vergé initiated the young chef into the tradition of Provençale cuisine and healthy, natural, authentic and joyful cooking.’

  But Ducasse considers that his next mentor, Alain Chapel, had the greatest influence on his cooking style. By the time Ducasse arrived at Chapel’s La Mère Charles in Mionnay, near Lyon, in 1978, the restaurant had been proudly sporting three Michelin stars for five years. Ducasse says that everything he had learned since childhood was brought into focus by Chapel’s cooking. He learned that cooking was not about mixing flavours and aromas, but dextrously highlighting each one to create a sensorial landscape.

  By the time he left, a couple of years later, Ducasse was ready to take the helm of a restaurant. At the age of just 25, he took over La Terrasse, the restaurant at the Hotel Juana in Juan-Les-Pins. And in 1982 he received his first two Michelin stars. This promising career was almost cut short in 1984 when Ducasse and four friends boarded a Learjet from Courchevel to Saint Tropez. The jet crashed – and Ducasse was the sole survivor. After numerous operations, Ducasse emerged a subtly different character: stronger and more rigorous. And during all those bedridden months, unable to cook, he had learned to conceptualize dishes in his head, designing and refining them long before he instructed others in how to make them. His teaching, management and delegation skills are among his greatest strengths today.

  In 1987, fully recovered, Ducasse accepted the position of head chef at Le Louis XV, the restaurant at the Hotel de Paris in Monaco. He bet Prince Ranier III that he would gain three Michelin stars for the restaurant within four years. He did it with a year to spare in 1990 – incidentally, at the age of 33, becoming the youngest French chef ever to achieve three-star status. Many more restaurant ventures were to follow, including the Bastide des Moustiers in Provence, the Plaza Athenée in Paris and Beige in Tokyo. And in 1998 – also in Paris – Ducasse opened the first branch of Spoon Food & Wine. This pioneering concept enabled diners to assemble their own meals from lists of elements. It also included an extensive list of wines from overseas.

  In France – where the traditional image of the chef in the tall white hat remains practically set in stone – Ducasse established a reputation as a modernizer. He certainly wasn’t above turning his name into a brand. In fact, after a chance meeting in a bar, he teamed up with MIT graduate and finance wizard Laurent Plantier to do just that. Groupe Alain Ducasse was formed to expand into overseas markets and diversify into sectors beyond haute cuisine. Apart from its many restaurants, it now owns a hotel chain – Chateaux & Hôtels de France – a culinary publishing arm, a training department and a consulting service. The chef’s range of interests is so wide that he has even designed meals for manned space flights; some of them were consumed on the International Space Station in 2006.

  Although he is clearly a skilled businessman, Ducasse does not consider himself a marketing expert. ‘If one looks upon branding as a marketing strategy, with cynicism, it’s the beginning of the end. Turning one’s own name into a brand signifies a genuine personal engagement.’

  Marketing may add a garnish of glamour, he suggests, but chefs generally rise to prominence because they are extraordinarily good at their jobs. ‘There is a fundamental truth in cooking as in any other artisanal métier: you cannot
cheat. At a given moment, you serve the meal and it is tasted. The magic works or not – that’s to say, you grant the client a moment of happiness or not. Whatever else happens, you should never lose sight of that essential truth.’

  Honesty is a strong theme in Ducasse’s discourse, along with the importance of being true to one’s vision – while remaining clear-sighted and flexible. ‘When I arrived at the Louis XV in Monaco in 1987, I was an advocate of Mediterranean cuisine. It was the style of cooking that inspired me and therefore it was the one that I developed. There were quite a few negative comments, because my approach did not remotely correspond to the accepted canons of gastronomy at that time. Nevertheless, I stuck to my guns and now I can say that I was right.’

  Almost 10 years later, when he arrived in Paris, the critics assumed that he would bring his Mediterranean-themed cooking with him. ‘But of course not! I’m not blind: Paris is not Monaco, the culinary cultures are not the same and the customers have different expectations. So I invented something else. And I take that same “adaptive” approach to every restaurant I open.’

  In fact, says Ducasse, if he has a style at all, it is ‘la différence’: ‘When I create a new restaurant, everything starts with the place. You know, when I was young I thought for a while that I might become an architect. I’m very sensitive to locations, to buildings, to their environmental context and the comportment they suggest. I spend a lot of time soaking up the spirit of the place, trying to understand its story. Whether you’re in Paris, London, Tokyo, Osaka or New York, each city has a distinct personality. I opened Adour in New York for New Yorkers and, when I took the idea to Washington, I adapted to the particular atmosphere of that city. So – I start with the place and then I create the cuisine that goes with it.’

  I wonder if he chooses the place – or whether the place chooses him?, he replies: ‘More than the place, it’s the entire cultural context. Take for ex-ample Le Comptoir de Benoit, in Osaka. That city has a particular atmosphere, very different from that of other Japanese cities. In Osaka, eating is a leisure activity that takes a wide variety of different forms, from the simplicity of udon to the deli-cacy of takoyaki. Osaki also has an infinite palette of differ-ent establishments, from the earthy kappo to the refined ryotei. The quality of the products, the long culinary tradition and the passion for eating well make it a place apart. In that context, there was no question of simply copying Benoit in Paris, which is a classic French bistro. So we put a lot of work into harmonizing the two cultures. Le Comptoir de Benoit is the result of that work: it offers the diners of Osaka the exotic elements of a French bistro while paying homage to local ingredients and culture. Even the interior designer was Japanese.’

  This desire to adapt, observes Ducasse, prevents him from being boxed into a certain style. Having said that, he admits that there are recurring themes. ‘Rather than a style, I have certain convictions, certain principles to which I adhere. The first is the most essential: the quality of the ingredients. Nature provides us with products that are already excellent. The skill of a cook is to remain modest and not try to detract from nature. I don’t like clever techniques that put virtuosity before taste. The flavours should remain perfectly discernable – not too many ingredients, not too much seasoning.’

  Ducasse’s sardonic comment on self-consciously fancy cooking appears at the beginning of his group’s brochure: ‘A turbot without genius is better than a genius without a turbot.’ Additionally, each chef is a product of his predecessors. ‘Cooking is a story of encounters – with the great chefs of the past, with one’s mentors. One can’t cook today as if nothing has happened for the last two centuries. Yet, at the same time, it’s a story that’s written in the present and in the first person. Everyone has followed their own path, experienced their own encounters. It’s a combination of creativity and shared knowledge.’

  Sharing is one of the delights of the job. ‘To eat is a marvellous moment: all the senses are involved. Above all, it’s a shared moment. Beyond that, there are a million and one ways of creating pleasure because everyone is different. Tastes are not exactly the same: here one steams a fish, there one grills it; elsewhere it is eaten raw or marinated. The nuances of taste are infinite – they reflect the world’s diversity and they fascinate me.’

  I wonder if his customers have become more sophisticated and demanding since the beginning of his career. Is he under more pressure to perform, to innovate? ‘Indisputably, eating well has become a more democratic pleasure. [Former Cartier president] Alain-Dominique Perrin has an interesting phrase: “luxury was once the ordinary in the lives of the extraordinary; now it is the extraordinary in the lives of the ordinary.” There is an increasing interest in cooking classes, which is paradoxical because we know that people cook less on a daily basis. But the phenomenon demonstrates that interest in cuisine has grown and changed in its nature. It has become a leisure activity for more people. Flourishing restaurant guides and the multiplication of articles and broadcasts about cooking reflect the same trend.’

  And, like every other luxury sector, the phenomenon has globalized. ‘Two generations ago, haute cuisine was very European, if not to say rather French. Today, enthusiasts can be found all around the world. At the same time, talents are emerging worldwide and, above all, local culinary traditions are evolving and melding. Consequently, cuisine is becoming multicultural. We’re dealing with clients who have widely varying approaches and reference points.’

  While restaurants like El Bulli and The Fat Duck have grabbed headlines and plaudits with their scientific approach to cooking, Ducasse comes from a more classical tradition. On the other hand, his website is sleek, accessible and bang up to date. Does he appreciate technology? He says, ‘I like it so much that I try and make it invisible. The best car is the one that never forces you to open the bonnet. In my job, technology has two very different facets. The first concerns service, and the second the way we do our jobs. Naturally, we’ve developed extremely sophisticated tools for management, reservations, human resources and so on. But we also appreciate technology that helps us in the kitchen. Such tools permit us to be more accurate, to obtain exactly the right cooking temperatures by controlling humidity levels, for example. They also enable us to innovate in terms of flavours: I’m thinking of slow cooking, at extremely low temperatures, which enables us to concentrate flavours in a remarkable way.’

  Inevitably, I’m keen to hear a chef’s definition of luxury. What separates an extraordinary restaurant from an ordinary one? And how has Ducasse been able to replicate the formula with such apparent ease? ‘It’s the obsession with detail. In a restaurant, one must master a multiplicity of details. That’s the challenge: absolutely everything counts. In the kitchen, of course, the timing and the seasoning are fundamental. In the dining area, the placement of the tables and the decor are key. Nothing is trivial or unimportant: if the vegetables are not perfectly peeled and the tableware is not impeccable, a chef can have all the talent in the world, but the meal will not be of quality.’

  Service, then, is crucial: ‘During the meal the most difficult elements to control are the intangible ones. The detail, in this case, is in the natural smiles of the staff, the way they move, the well-judged word, the right advice on the choice of wine. These are the concerns of men and women who are committed to their work and have a feeling for perfect service. It’s the most fragile aspect of what we do and the hardest to get right. It’s essentially a live performance: you don’t get another chance to shoot a badly judged scene. You must perform perfectly, every day, for every client.’

  Not surprisingly, Ducasse is rarely convinced that the performance merits a standing ovation. ‘In the end, luxury is a perfection that one strives for every day, without ever being entirely satisfied.’

  17

  Well-being

  * * *

  ‘Sanctuaries for the senses.’

  In the 1966 film Alfie, the titular working class philanderer played by Michael Caine
worries about two things: his health and his peace of mind. ‘If you ain’t got that – you ain’t got nothing,’ he observes, sounding surprised by his own insight. Somewhere along the line, health and peace of mind hitched up to give rise to the concept of ‘well-being’. Happily, there are many spots around the world where one can seek this elusive physical and mental condition. If Alfie wanted to pick up wealthy women today, he’d undoubtedly cruise a spa.

  Spas have been around forever – certainly since long before François Blanc had ever heard of Homburg or Monaco. When I was growing up in the West Country of England, one of the places my family regularly visited on weekend motor trips was the city of Bath, in Somerset. Of course, it was named after its natural hot springs – the only such springs in Britain, we were always informed – although the Romans had called it Aquae Sulis. The city they built around the source was essentially a giant spa complex. I would stand on uneven flagstones amid the noble ruins of the Great Bath, staring through wraiths of steam into the murky green water and wondering how anybody could have considered even dipping a toe into the stuff.

  Not far away, the hot water that fed the baths gushed constantly from a dark, mossy aperture in the wall. At that point it still looked sparkling and pure. But a strong whiff of sulphur provided evidence of its long subterranean journey. We were told that this very water had originally fallen on the Mendip Hills as long as 80,000 years ago, seeping towards the hot core of the earth and rising again through a crack in the carboniferous limestone to emerge at a constant temperature of 46.5°C – more than a million litres of the stuff blasting from the depths every day. Not surprisingly, the Celts and the Romans felt that the spring waters had healing powers. They were said to cure rheumatic and muscular disorders, skin ailments and respiratory problems, as well as promoting ease and – naturally – well-being.