Column | Enter the luxury nepo baby

People are behaving as though this whole “nepo baby” thing is something new. Please. I have two words for you – Harry Windsor.

Could there be any greater representative of the “nepo” baby trend than the Duke of Montecito, the Prince of California, the Whinger of Windsor (as coined by the Sunday Times)? I contend, along with any number of paleoanthropologists, that the minute our kind became territorial, set up a little boundary line, swung their crown jewels in the direction of their enemies, and demarcated their area of operations, nepotism became a thing. Nay — the thing.

The gods in all their manifestations apparently willed it so, therefore I am wondering what particular set of circumstances wiped all this practically inherent set of behaviours from our communal memory and launched such a renewed flurry of indignation on the interwebs? Did people miss the American War of Independence? The French Revolution? The Communist Revolution (which played out in technicolour in a nation state near you over the course of the 20th century) or, most recently, the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II? Which part of primogeniture did Harry and every other incensed antimonarchist calling out William Windsor, Gwyneth Paltrow, Zoë Kravitz, Lily-Rose Depp, Miley Cyrus, Hailey Bieber, and hundreds of others miss?

I read that one of the chief complaints at Twitter HQ, other than the fact that people were finding the sudden-death approach to change management espoused by Elon Musk a little too much to swallow, was the fact that one of his many children, I presume the youngest (Decimus Maximus X!pffft @, or whatever), has been toddling around during meetings just learning the ropes and picking up the slack from Elon’s cousins, who have also been installed in the twittersphere since his annexation. Elsewhere in the popular culture they have made a docudrama — sorry, TV series — about Rupert Murdoch’s incestuous media-conglomerate shenanigans, called, rather bluntly, Succession.

You may have binge-watched it in shock and awe and not a little delight. Just what I imagine it must have been like to watch King Lear back at the Globe when heads were rolling in real time and then spiked outside the palace walls to remind upstart relatives with an eye to the throne what happens when you backstab your sibling. But it’s at LVMH where it’s all really going down. Owner Bernard Arnault, now officially the world’s richest man after Musk twittered away his first place, is dangling all the lovely baubles in front of his progeny in the luxury succession wars. Daughter Delphine got Dior for Christmas. It’s the aforementioned crown jewel (just saying) and it transpires her brother Antoine has been declared the spare — or, in corporate speak, the deputy CEO. He has a few compensatory toys to play with — Berluti, Loro Piana — just to keep him happy and out of trouble. But they should all keep on their toes.

Bernard has five children altogether — so, not as prodigious a procreator as Elon, but not bad when it comes to ensuring your line will continue into the far distant future. This is what I call hardcore nepo-baby territory and it all comes thanks to daddy.