LET THE LUXURY GAMES BEGIN

This summer, as athletes and fans descend on the Paris Olympics, LVMH is spending a fortune making sure its brands are enmeshed in the Games. It's the grandest convergence of sports and luxury ever-but what can it tell us about the Arnault family's broader ambitions

- TOM LAMONT

Paris, that most presentable of capitals, is being polished before it hosts the Summer Games. Around the ChampsÉlysées, where some of the benches date to the 1850s, the seats are getting a new layer of paint before an estimated 15 million visitors arrive to scuff them up again. High on the steps of the National Assembly, I watch as workers fuss with temporary statues of Olympians, lowering them into place with cranes. France no longer has a monarch or a royal family, but some say it gets close in the form of Bernard Arnault, owner of the luxury-goods conglomerate LVMH, and his five children, each of whom oversee a part of their father's empire.

The Arnaults and LVMH are closely involved in the coming Games, major sponsors who mean to tempt those millions of visitors (and upwards of 1 billion more viewing on TV) with fine handbags and belts, fragrances and jewels, a whiff of LVMH's trademark savoir faire. A former editor of Vogue France, Carine Roitfeld, has agreed to collaborate with LVMH and the Arnaults, designing tuxedos for opening night. Just outside Paris, in a private workshop run by Louis Vuitton, one of LVMH's luxury brands, artisans are making trunks to house the tournament's medals.