FILE PHOTO: An employee shows the Paris 2024 - Berluti label sewn inside the suit jacket for the French team athletes for the opening ceremony by LVMH's upscale menswear label Berluti, in a showroom at Berluti headquarters in Paris, France, April 10, 2024. REUTERS/Stephanie Lecocq/File Photo PARIS - Bernard Arnault, France's wealthiest man and chief executive of luxury group LVMH, paid some 150 million euros ($163 million) to be the premium sponsor of the Paris Olympics'. At the Games' opening ceremony, his wares were placed front and centre of an extravaganza viewed by a global audience.
Grammy-winner Lady Gaga delivered an energetic performance of Renee 'Zizi' Jeanmaire's "Mon truc en plumes" (My Feather Friend) decked out in a Dior Haute Couture black feather jacket over a black satin bustier. Aya Nakamura, France's most-listened to female singer in the world, performed a medley of her top hits clad in a Dior over-the-shoulder gold feather and silk dress. Meanwhile, LVMH's Berluti label dressed France's athletes for the ceremony.
Arnault, who a day earlier had been rubbing shoulders with Tesla-owner Elon Musk at a lunch hosted by President Emmanuel Macron, followed the ceremony from his opulent Cheval Blanc hotel overlooking the Seine. Asked in an interview broadcast by CNBC on Friday why LVMH sponsored the Games, Arnault said: "As we are the number one French company, we cannot avoid helping. "But it has to have a sense.
We are just not going to give money and say, OK, yo.