In 1650, in Port-Royal Near Paris, a sling is organized against the religious power in place in Versailles. Led by Blaise Pascal with her pamphlet them Provincial lettersthe Jansenists attack the “accommodating morality” of the Jesuits, their art of convincing souls by compromise, rhetoric and spectacle. While, for their part, they defend an “austere grace”, reserved for a deserving elite. Two radically opposed ways to communicate faith in the Catholic Church: one expansive and universal, the other silent and elitist.
But why then resuscitate Almost 400 years after this obscure theological quarrel between Jesuits and Jansenists? Simply because it is reborn before our eyes to the heights of the world of luxury. Because, last week, Hermès dethroned LVMH from first place in luxury capitalizations. Beyond the scholarship duel between the monomark and the sprawling holding company, it is a pass of arms between two philosophies, or more exactly, two radically opposite luxury theologies.
LVMH embodies a Jesuit theology Luxury: missionary, spectacular and universal. Salvation is broadcast with great fanfare in flagship stores Pharaonic as so many cathedrals. Each collection, each pop-up, each corner is an act of evangelization for the faithful. The brand has a cult of the rituals of the show and entertainment: immersive courses, XXL events, VIPs, muses, influencers and rowdy collaborations contribute, like the Pharrell Williams parade on the bridge-Neuf, to create pop liturgies. Authority is hierarchical and embodied: Pope Bernard sits on LVMH, frequenting the greats of this world, surrounded by his executive cardinals and his bishops of the style at the head of their respective episcopates Louis Vuitton, Dior, Moët and Chandon, Hennessy, Bulgari or Tag Heuer … A management of cyclic and secular time, obeying the seasons of fashion, Clear teleological target: create a kingdom without borders where everyone can come into communion with the brand.
-Here, the time is not cyclical, it is suspended, out of fashions and insensitive to the foam of the days: objects cross the eras with the desire to tu eternity.
Hermès, mirror, is a Jansenist theology: elite, silent and inflexible. Grace is rare, inaccessible to the crowd: a birkin or kelly bag is not chosen, it deserves. The wait becomes initiation because when you sign, the ostrich egg from which it is drawn has not yet been laid. No spectacular high mass: the shop is purified, almost monacal, proselyte is received there as in Confess, where it is taught patience and humility. It is the craft gesture that is venerated here, transmitted in hand in the collected silence of workshops as a sacred oath. Hermès lives (relatively) entrenched in his Port-Royal from rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, far from the tumult of the media, shows and urbi and orbi campaigns to keep his sense of purity. The authority is inflexible but discreet, transmitted in the conclave of the initiates around the Dumas family. Here, the time is not cyclical, it is suspended, out of fashions and insensitive to the foam of the days: objects cross the eras with the desire to tu eternity. In contrast to the distribution to the multitude, here salvation is an intimate affair in the mystical fusion with the sacred object.
So what saint to devote to? Should we prefer the ostentatious charisma of LVMH or the silent apparatus of Hermès? In these agitated times, the investor council preferred asceticism. But everything is a matter of faith. Because the ways of the scholarship, like those of the Lord, are impenetrable.
