J ean-Victor Meyers has an interest in art that recalls a bygone era. “I wouldn’t say I’m a collector,” he tells me when I visit his Paris apartment on a sunny dayℱ in March. “I don’t really like the collection idea.” Given our curated surroundings, it’s a surprising claim,🍒 but it’s clear that Meyers wears multiple hats, and more by the day.
The previous month, L’Oréal, a business founded in 1909 by his great-grandfather and today the world’s largest cosmetics company, announced that the 39-year-old Frenchman would succeed his mother, Françoise Bettencourt Meyers, as the vice-chairman of its board of directors. What’s more, we’re meeting just a few months beforeꦿ Meyers convenes the inaugural Bal d’Été at the Musée des Aജrts Décoratifs—a gathering not short on style and ambition.
His appreciation of creativity is a cultivated instinct. “I st♐arted at a very young age, becau꧋se I traveled a lot with my parents. We would always go to museums around the world and see mostly modern and contemporary art. As a kid, you find it always a little bit boring, but your eyes get used to seeing.”
When it came to furnishing homes of his own, it became clear that the exposure had honed a distinct taste: “I have always been very focused on some periods—quite precise periods,” Meyers expl🙈ains. “It’s very much art deco design, minimalist contemporary art, modern [art] a little bit. That’s it.”
His interest in deco design, however, rises above all else. “The proportion is something very difficult to explain. They knew exactly how to make it look magical or not. You raise a line by two centimeters and it doesn’t work.” Fortuitously, this year marks the centenary of the International Exhibitio♊n of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts of 1925—a sequel to the Exposition Universelle of 1889, which gave Paris the Eiffel Tower—from which the art deco movement later acquired its name.
To celebrate the occasion, the MAD, France’s preeminent collection of design and decorative arts, 𒀰is presenting a dedicated series of major exhibitions. “It’s a museum that I like very much because it’s human size,” says Meyers. “They have amazing archives, amazing inventory of important pieces of art. It’s fash𒅌ion, art and design, which are the three fields I like very much, so I go quite often.”
The first of the centenary exhibitions, currently on show, focuses on Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann, the standout character of the 1925 exhibition for his mastery of line and proportion. It makes use of 26 sketch♒books that the furniture and interior designer’s widow left to the institution in 1959. This archival approach resonates deeply with Meyers’ methods for exploring what to purchase personally. “I love the search. And I love digging into the history and the provenance.”
The 1920s and ’30s saw a boom in bold commissions by key art deco patrons, such as fashion designer Jacques Doucet, and Meyers seeks out pieces with this provenance in particular🦂. His most hallowed figure is the Maharaja of Indore for the commissioning of Manik Bagh Palace. The story was captured in the MAD’s 2019-20 exhibition “Moderne Maharajah,” which detailed how, in 1930, the modernizing Indian prince created a new palace in his home city, where the architecture of European modernism was furnished with bespoke designs from icons including Charlotte Alix, Jean Puiforcat, Eileen Gray and Le Corbusier.
Meyers shares a similar confidence in selecting the objects with which to surround himself. “I don’t have advisors. I basically spend some evenings with the catalogs and a pencil. I do my homework.” I get the sense he sees his peer🥃s in the past.
He is limited by being a century removed from the community of makers he꧒ loves, unable to arrange his own commissions, so he does the next best thing. “I’m a bit obsessed with restoration—the less, the better, in my opinion. But you need people to know exactly how it was made in the past to be able to m💛ake it today; otherwise, you just ruin the piece.”
Once more, he has learned from his family. In 2019, after the fire at Notre Dame Cathedral, the L’Oréal group and the Bettencourt Meyers family pledged €200 million towards its repair. The unveiling of the restored building in December last year, a televised affair attended by world leaders, also spoke to the general public, believes Meyers: “I think everybody was amazed with the renovation, even the ones that were maybe not the most interested in craftsmanship.” The project injected ailing crafts with young blood: “It’s not only making new things, it’s also being able to restore exactly t🔯he way things were made.”
His collecting has also taught him of the use-it-or-lose-it reality of craft know🐟ledge. “I have known a lot of craftsmen in Paris for a very lo🅺ng time. I go to their ateliers so I know exactly how they do what they do and how they work. If we want them to survive, they need commissions.”
Here, again, he gets nostalgic for a time he’d like to be able to access. “I love all the black-and-white photos from the ’70s and ’80s. I think it was a period when Paris was really the center of everything. Every🍰body woไuld come to Paris. Everything was happening in Paris. I wasn’t born, so it seems even more like a fantasy. You know, it’s more the idea of this period when you see very elegant people, the whole crowd, very international, lots of different people mixed together, like artists, etc. We don’t really have so many events like this anymore.”
At first, I didn’t see a connection. “I think a whole industry was living from this era,” explains Meyers. He is referring to the couturiers, silve✅rsmiths, florists and many artisans who enabled these affairs. And there’s a realism to these sentiments. “It’s not the idea of a nostalgic feeling of the past—because I wasn’tᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚ there. It’s more the idea of, how can we still support and promote this industry?”
Enter his involvement with the MAD’s fundraiser. O♊ccupying the Pavillon de Marsan of the Louvre Palace since 1905, the museum has its origins as an industry lobbying organization in the 1860s. Like the V&A in London, a group of interested parties—figures from industries linked to the applied arts and, indeed, collectors—banded together to promote their wares (and to fight off the danger of foreign imports). “The MAD is really, for me, the museum of art de vivre,” says Meyers.
As the honorary chairman of the ball committee, he has enlisted film director Sofia Coppola as its artistic director. “She knows all these references, obvious꧟ly,” says Meyers, who has charged Coppola to draw upon her filmic imagination to select every detail of the evening, down to flowers and table settings. “I love the traditions and photos from classic balls over the years,” explains Coppola, “like how Cecil Beaton did portraits at the Proust Ball (a lavish gathering held in 1971 by Marie-Helene de Rothschild to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of the French novelist), so I’d like to set up a portrait studio area.”
Meyers and Coppola are united in making use of the MAD’s own cultural troves. “I also love being able to go ꦓthrough the archives of the museum,” she say🐈s. “I’m trying to make it beautiful, lavish and fun, while also respecting the budget so the funds raised can go to the museum. The theme is a summer ball, so I plan to bring the garden into the building—it’s such a beautiful space.” Meyers has complete faith in his collaborator’s vision. “She will do an amazing job. And she embodies everything that we wanted to do with the ball.”
The first hal👍f of the event, a dinner, takes place in the central nave, designed by Beaux-Arts architect Gaston Redon, from which the museum’s galleries extend. In contrast with other cultural fundraising galas, including the Le Grand Dîner du Louvre, which held its inaugural gathering in March, the Bal d’Été is focusing on selling tickets🍰 to private individuals, not brands.
“I think it’s more intimate. It’s more personal. And also, rather than selling tables, the idea is that people and families can buy one, two or a few of seats, but the idea is really to mix 🌼people together. So you know, at each table you can ♔have artists, entrepreneurs, collectors,” says Meyers. His ambition is that these collusions will spark new commissions.
For the second half of the evening, students of fashion and art will b🅠e welcomed in for a concert. “The idea is to have this fundraising event, but also to have the new generation. When we invite students, it is also to make them feel the museum is their home, as it should be.” Some of these young guests will come from the🙈 École Camondo, a prestigious design school created after World War II and now part of the MAD’s umbrella organization.
I observe that these efforts stand in contrast to patrons who want their name literally🐬 chiseled in stone. “It’s a very good p🌳oint, the fact that it’s one night and then, from the next day, it’s just a memory.” What will hopefully endure for Meyer’s first major public foray into cultural philanthropy is a community. I think back to my original question on how he collects: “I don’t think the idea is really to build a collection, but maybe, at the end, it will look like it.”
Further breaking away from the conventional mold, the event is unthemed, and the dress code is simply “evening.” So there’s no obligation to emulate a 1920s flapper, despite the Paul Poiret exhibition that will be on show in the museum. Coppola endorses this open-minded aꦿpproach. “I love that Jean-Victor appreciates these traditions ꧑and a very European way of entertaining—with beauty and a certain formality—but done in an easy way. He cares about elegance and refinement without being snobby.”
Still, Meyers hopes some guests are well underway on commissioning couture gowns as part of the resparking of patronage—a process that takes many months. The ball is scheduled directly before co൲uture week in Paris, so it might trigger a further round of shopping. “Balls and parties can look a little bit superficial,” he acknowledges, “but I think it’s quite important too, because it says something about art de vivre in France and the industries behind it.”
For information about tickets for the Bal d’Été, visit .
