A member of the world's third wealthiest family has shocked the fashion community with his plans to bequeath billions to a surprising heir.
Nicolas Puech is a fifth-generation descendent of the founder of Hermès, a luxury fashion brand known for its stable of fine leather goods and delicate silk scarves.
Highly sought after for its mystique and inaccessibility, Hermès has experienced a bumper year of sales amid a cost of living crisis.
But its future wasn't always so secure.
Nine years ago, the fashion brand was embroiled in a war with a rival label, which saw Puech walk away from the business, but retain his 5.8 per cent stake — a package of shares reportedly worth 11 billion euros ($17.8 billion).
He has kept mostly to himself in the years since.
That was until earlier this month, when multiple Swiss media outlets began reporting about Puech's succession plans.
The man set to inherit his estate is not your typical would-be successor.
He isn't a blood relative of Puech, nor does he oversee the family's sprawling business empire.
He is Puech's middle-aged, former gardener.
Swiss newspapers say he is from a modest Moroccan family and that Puech is planning to adopt him in order to make him a legal heir.
It would be a rather bold turn in Puech's inheritance plans, with the mysterious billionaire reportedly having planned to pass his fortune onto a foundation he created in 2011.
Now as Puech enters his eighth decade, he appears to be engaging in a complex legal arrangement to secure his preferred successor while opposed by a charity built in his name.
The rise of a luxury fashion brand
Like the other Hermès heirs, Nicolas Puech sits on a branch of a family tree that can be traced back to the original Hermès founder.
From a humble Parisian factory, Theirry Hermès turned his gift for leatherwork into bespoke, hand-crafted horse harnesses fit for European royalty.
By the turn of the century, Hermès had an enviable list of wealthy buyers and all the trappings of a luxury brand.
The company was handed from father to son and so on until Emile-Maurice Hermès, a third generation Hermès who patented the zipper in France, had four daughters, one of whom died young.
Without a male heir, the torch was passed to his sons-in-law — Dumas, Guerrand and Puech, three family names that would from that moment on become associated with the Hermès line.
Little is known about Nicolas Puech, the son of Emile's third daughter, Yvonne Hermes, and her husband, Francis Puech.
The Hermès heir has been described as secretive, and is understood to live in a grand mansion in a small town in Switzerland.
What is known is that he holds a stake in a global conglomerate worth more than $324 billion.
Today Hermès has expanded its production of goods beyond harnesses and other stable gear to 16 product categories, including $4,300 glasses cases, jewellery, beauty and homeware.
It is perhaps best known for its Kelly and Birkin bags, named after American actress Grace Kelly and British-French actress Jane Birkin.
They can cost between $10,000 and $250,000 and are hand-made by French artisans, who train for three years before they can sew a single stitch.
The family credit the longevity of the brand to their dedication to craftsmanship, the strength of the business built around hours of precise, painstaking work by hand.
"We are like peasants working the land to yield fruit," former chief executive and artistic director of Hermès, Jean-Louis Dumas, once said.
As other competitors have contracted out their production lines and moved to other countries, Hermes has kept their brand within France and their limestone headquarters at 24 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré in Paris.
How Hermès evaded a hostile takeover bid
Nicolas Puech's schism with his family began when they almost lost control of Hermès during the "handbag wars".
France's richest man Bernard Arnault spent decades accumulating luxury brands into a fashion super-conglomerate called LVMH, earning himself the nickname "the wolf in cashmere" in the process.
But Hermès, the pinnacle of French heritage and sophistication, always eluded him.
After several failed bids to buy out the company, he made an audacious bid to finally make Hermès the jewel in the LVMH crown.
In 2010, it was revealed that Arnault had stealthily acquired a 17 per cent stake in Hermes at a 50 per cent discount to the prevailing market price.
"It is unclear how LVMH managed to purchase 15 million shares … at this attractive price," Citigroup said at the time.
"We do not know at this stage whether members of the Guerrand, Dumas and Puech families of Hermès have been involved in this transaction by selling shares to LVMH."
As wild rumours spread that someone in the family was working with Arnault, the wolf in cashmere continued to steadily increase his piece of the Hermès pie.
By 2014, he had increased his stake to 22 per cent.
Hermès described Arnault as a "mosquito buzzing around" and claimed there was "an intruder in the garden but we don't want him in the house".
The family didn't care how much money and power was on the table — their brand transcended such gauche concepts.
"I don't think a house like Hermès is capable of surviving in a universe defined by money," Patrick Thomas, then president and chief executive of Hermès, said at the time.
"The house has constantly proved that poetry and creativity are not incompatible with financial business."
The Dumas and Guerrand family lines decided the only way to save their forefather's legacy was by working together.
They pooled some of their shares into a holding company to protect their 72 per cent of Hermes, binding themselves in an agreement not to sell to outsiders for decades.
The plan worked, stopping the wolf in cashmere from staging a full hostile takeover.
After the matter ended up in court, the two wealthiest families in France agreed to a truce.
Arnault gave up on his dream of possessing Hermès, and reduced his holding in the company to about 8.5 per cent.
But one member of the Hermès clan refused to join his family members to help save the fashion house: Nicolas Peuch.
Instead, he kept his 5.7 per cent stake in the company and resigned from the board of Hermès.
"He resigned … because he has felt for several years beleaguered by members of his family, who have attacked him on several fronts," a spokesman for Puech told AFP in 2014.
"Nicolas Puech has never sold any of his long held shares to LVMH. Some have accused him of doing so, complaining here and there.
"He has had some very bad experiences and felt very badly and felt harshly criticised on numerous occasions, even while he is very attached to Hermès."
He is estimated to have a fortune of up to $17 billion, making him the richest man in Switzerland.
While Nicolas retreated to a private life on the foothills of the Swiss Alps, the family he left behind turned their fortunes from millions to billions.
Luxury fashion's bumper year
Hermès is now considered the second most valuable luxury brand after its rival, LVMH, with a valuation worth more than $324 billion.
It is one of the oldest family-controlled companies in France, with a very distinct brand.
Orange is to the French business, what eggshell blue is to Tiffany.
But Hermès's true power is built on leveraging the scarcity and exclusivity of its products, enabling them to charge premium prices.
As other brands floundered from supply chain disruptions, labour shortages and consumer disinterest during the pandemic, the French fashion house rode a wave of interest in luxury sales.
"In difficult times, there is what you call a flight to quality and we have benefited," Hermes executive chairman Axel Dumas told analysts in July.
Hermès continued its sales streak this year, recording a jump in sales of 23 per cent in the first three months.
Six months into 2023, the French luxury fashion company made 2.23 billion euros ($3.6 billion) in profit compared with 1.64 billion euros a year prior.
In a year where quiet luxury dominated, Hermès made millions off its position and prestige within the industry.
"Luxury goods have become a big part of pop culture," Lauren Sherman, fashion correspondent at Puck News, told Vox News.
"Now it's a social thing. When I was growing up, having an interest in fashion — especially in America — was seen as a hobby or a niche."
Who will inherit Nicolas Puech's estate?
As the worth of Hermès has climbed ever higher, so too has the interest in what becomes of the family and its fortune.
And that's where Puech comes in.
Now 80 years old, Swiss media outlet La Tribune de Genève reports the Hermès heir has instructed his lawyers to "put his inheritance situation in order".
Puech is reportedly in the process of adopting his gardener, an unnamed man of Moroccan origins married to a Spanish woman.
Nicolas Puech's business manager and Hermès have been contacted for comment.
The proposal could face legal hurdles in Switzerland.
Adult adoption involves a complex set of requirements, and typically demands evidence of a close connection during the adoptee's childhood or for the adoptee to have lived with the proposed parent as a minor.
If the adoptee does not meet these conditions, they must have lived with the proposed parent for at least a year and satisfy two other requirements, either by requiring constant care or providing another "important reason for the adoption".
Meanwhile, Nicolas Puech could face a challenge from a philanthropic foundation he started in 2011.
The charity was registered in his home country of Switzerland with Puech reportedly signing an inheritance pact — more binding than a will, according to Swiss media— with the foundation to pass on his inheritance.
Three years after Puech left the family business and in the context of rising concerns around the issue of disinformation, the charity's purpose began to take shape.
The focus of the Isocrates Foundation is on "protecting and promoting public debate" by supporting nonprofit initiatives and organisations that promote access to quality independent information and contribute to "the health and safety of the digital public space".
In a statement, Isocrates said it had only recently learned of their founder's desire to dissolve their contract and declared it had opposed the move, "while leaving the door open for discussions" with Puech.
"From a legal point of view, a unilateral cancellation of the contract of inheritance seems void and unfounded," it said.
The inheritance contract between Isocrates and Puech reportedly agrees for his shares in Hermès to be left to the charity, unless he has a son, according to Swiss outlet, Blink
If Puech was successful in his bid to adopt an heir, his child would be entitled to a part of the inheritance.
He may have been born into one of Europe's most powerful families, but Puech has long been determined to forge his own path.
Now he may legally create a new family of his own.