Lord Mandelson, Louis Vuitton and Bags of PR Hell

The Daily Telegraph’s Tim Walker asked me for my opinion, in today’s paper, on Bernard Arnault’s response to Lord Mandelson’s insistence that the Louis Vuitton bag he was photographed with last week wasn’t his…

“Bernard Arnault responded with a polite “merci, mais non” when I asked him if he would care to comment on why Lord Mandelson should have felt the need to clarify that the Louis Vuitton bag that he was pictured beside at Gatwick airport last week did not in fact belong to him.

“Mark Borkowski, the ubiquitous brand manager, tells me it was probably a wise call on the part of the normally chatty boss of Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy. ‘The sooner the case was closed on that one the better for all concerned,’ he says. ‘For Mandelson and for LVMH, it was always going to be a match made in PR hell.'”

To read the article in situ, click here.