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Lapo Elkann's Wild Ride

This story appears in the June 29, 2015 issue of Forbes Life.

Lapo Elkann blazes into his office on Milan’s Corso Venezia at a hot clip, a few minutes late, issuing a gracious,“Sorry, gentlemen,” in his cigarette-etched rasp. Trays of espresso appear for the people in the office. Elkannslams one down, then another, burns through a couple of Marlboros, rifles through a few papers on and off hisdesk, issues a few orders and begins to undress. Really undress, as in whipping off his jacket, shoes and pants.It’s swift work.

This much can be simply stated: Elkann approximates the effect of an intense weather cell, one of those heaven-reaching waterspouts that occasionally wreak havoc on the Mediterranean. The centrifugal upsurge ismagnificent. Many things fly by in the vortex around the man: people, ideas, pens, paper, cigarettes, eyeglasses,coffee, more coffee, his Juventus football club lighter (his family has owned the world-famous team since 1923), acouple of phones and, right this minute, his pants.

(Photograph by Fulvio Maiani)

Fair enough, he’s changing into a suit from his made-to-order capsule collection for Guccithe eponymous Lapo’sWardrobe, in which he will shortly be photographed—so there’s an ostensible sporting efficiency to the exercise.But still. Would, say, Larry Ellison or Les Moonves dare the instant locker-room familiarity in his office with four orfive people standing around? Elkann has no secrets, metaphorically or otherwise, or not many that he doesn’tautomatically reveal.

The new suit is a peacocky double-breasted chalk stripe and could almost pass as bankerly. But the stripes areset gangster-wide, so it seems more appropriate for the gentleman who might be relieving the banker of his funds.It bears both a retro- and future-time-travel appeal—simultaneously evoking something you might see on CabCalloway at the Cotton Club in the ’30s and on a villain in the next Batman movie.

Under the suit, Elkann has styled a counterpoint to the gangster formality with a white open-necked terry-clothshirt that has a huge floppy collar, the kind of top that Picasso might have worn on the beach in Antibes withFrançoise Gilot. For his part, Elkann has the air of a man fresh off a yacht moored nearby no matter where he is orwhat time of day you see him. It’s an ensemble that should not work—on any man’s back—but Elkann has therequired dollop of native devilry in him, along with his leathery world-weariness, that makes this outfit work.

In a couple of weeks, he will, in fact, jet out to Shanghai to promote Lapo’s Wardrobe—to a perfect market ofyacht- , label- and party-hungry swashbucklers. His Asian jaunt can be seen philanthropically, as a kind of men’sfashion world emergency relief mission. No matter how rich and experienced the nouveaux masters of theuniverse in Shanghai purport themselves to be, it’s fairly certain they’ll need some instruction on how to pull offLapo’s Wardrobe with his level of sprezzatura.

A second, fresh tray of espresso has arrived, and we are madly recaffeinating. The coffee and Marlboros on his12-foot-long checkerboard carbon-fiber conference table just might be breakfast, it seems. The Marlboros are thepastry.

At 37, Elkann continues his preternaturally colorful dance along the tightropes of several dizzying careertrajectories–entrepreneur, marketer, car customizer, global denim- and eyewear-mogul, vodka distiller, filmdistributor, menswear designer, watch designer and, not least, Fiat heir. He is a founding father to eight companiesin all, six public ones under the Italia Independent Group, in whose offices we sit, plus the privately held GoodFilms, a producer-distributor that he owns with his sister, Ginevra, and which she runs out of Rome. The last of thelitter, born just this March and also privately held by Elkann, is Garage Italia Customs, the hip design andfabrication arm for customizing cars, aircraft, and boats, globally. Elkann is nothing if not breezily forthright aboutwhy there are so many and such diverse enterprises under his aegis and why he’s on the prowl to do more.

“A prime motivation for me is love—and I love cars,” he says flatly, and aptly for a great-great-grandson of Fiatfounder Giovanni Agnelli. “Automotive for me is love. So is design. I love shaping cars. I love to see cars frombirth. I love it when they come to market–small, big or huge. I have a real passion working with the designers andmechanics. I’ve helped Ferrari to create the process of tailoring and the one-offs, but the reality is, in a big familycompany you don’t always get to do what you want. There are other people in those positions. With the greatrespect that I have for the Agnelli family and for the Elkann family, I created Lapo, and this is Lapo’s world. It’s notan Elkann or an Agnelli world.”

(Photograph by Fulvio Maiani)

He speaks not so much in sentences as in whole paragraphs, and he likes to drive conversation rather than ridealong in one. He puts his fist on his chin, like a Roman senator in a debate, and clicks his blue pen twice as thestarting gun for continuing the reminiscence.

“Obviously I have been taught many things by both my grandfathers,” he says. “But the ventures that I take are notwith my family’s money–they’re my decisions, my choices, and that’s the way I want them to be. It’s a veryseparate but kind wall that’s been built, with flowers, between my companies and my family’s companies. I’m stillone of the largest shareholders in the family business, with my brother [John, the chairman of Fiat] and my sister,

which I look at with very serious eyes, and I’m part of it. But my day-to-day life is building my group, my company,my empire, my story, which I hope one day I’ll be able to leave to my kids.”

He doesn’t have children yet–or a wife for that matter–but there should be quite a bit to leave by the time he’sdone. Elkann’s literary talent for analysis along with his obvious entrepreneurial gifts–the Italia Independent IPO in2013 was a solid hit on the Milan Exchange and last year the company reported revenue of nearly $36 million, a32.1 % rise–is delightfully at odds with the knight-errant figure he cuts on the social battlefields, upon which he haslong been a closely tracked star. Playboy? Maybe, but it’s mostly just another suit of clothes he can put on or takeoff. At his core, he’s a peripatetic entrepreneur working out his ancestral gift for empire building.

I ask him how, with the dozens of directions and the many continents to which he’s taking his businesses, hefound the time to design the roomful of witty, razor-sharp shirts and suits for Gucci. He cracks a wry smile, blueeyes straight up through his big eyeglasses.

(Photograph by Fulvio Maiani)

“Once I get to it, I’m very fast,” he says with a bare trace of a smile.

He’s not kidding, in a couple of ways.

First, the empire-building has taken place in just eight years. In 2005, he emerged from drug rehab and lived onthe mend in New York. Although he had long been toying with some of the ideas that ultimately became the ItaliaIndependent Group, his recovery formed the crucible in which he crystallized them. He cofounded ItaliaIndependent in 2007. For Elkann, the next few years were a ferocious burst of business-making, with the required

globetrotting to seal partnerships and service commitments in Brazil, Asia and America.

Not a bad business and personal renaissance for an heir who narrowly missed taking himself entirely out of playvia the well-worn cliché of almost killing himself partying, with a drug overdose. Although it’s clear thatirrepressible character is irrepressible, and that Elkann remains the gloriously kaleidoscopic man he always was,the close call has obviously layered in a deep operating wisdom, and he seems most gratefully devoted to usingthose hard-won tools.

“It’s great to do things that you love,” he says. “But it’s also great to do things you love where you understand thatyou have some space and there are other people that are not yet capable of doing what you want to do. Beingcreative today is also being an entrepreneur. It’s great to take risks. But risks have to be taken after having seenthe opportunity arise. If not, danger.

“I’ve moved into cinema with my sister,” he continues. “Last year, we distributed Dallas Buyers Club, Lars vonTrier’s Nymphomaniac and Still Alice . It’s knowing there is a way of doing something better.”

Consider his approach to eyeglasses with Italia Independent. “Why have I chosen eyewear?” he asks. “Glassesare a way, first of all, to protect your soul from others. Second, it’s an industry of which we Italians can be mostproud. Everyone said to me, you’re crazy, you’re going into a closed industry, they’ll kill you and squeeze you. Andit is not a cup of tea, the business. But we’re not in the luxury market. Some of these frames cost $80. We’re in theaffordable luxury market, which I happen to think is very much part of the future. All sorts of people like them. KarlLagerfeld wears the pair trimmed in fur.”

Elkann’s personal velocity shows in more than just the execution of his business ideas. Partly for Garage Italia,but partly because he’s just a classic pistonhead with genetic high-octane in his veins, he’s plotting a return to theAutodromo di Monza test track in a Ferrari 456 GT2. Or put another way, despite last September’s bone-crunching motorcycle wreck, he’ll be satisfying his velocity jones with another few dozen bursts downstraightaways at 150 mph.

If one is around Elkann for long, it becomes clear that the eddies and gusts of events around him are just theshape of his wake, the disturbance coming off him as he slices through the waters of life at speed. He’s inwhatever’s happening, but he’s so fast that he also seems in any given moment to be beyond that moment.Outwardly, he reserves his formidable impatience for himself, but there’s a strong sense that he’s always, silently,calling out “Next!”

“I think the automotive world, the big manufacturers, need to wake up,” he says not far from one of several loveseats he has had fabricated from sawed-off vintage Fiat 500 engine bays. “All people want their things their way.When I move through the world, I want my things my way. Whether you’re old, young, male or female, there is a

range of things that you like and things that you don’t like about any of your vehicles. We can change all of that. Infact, Garage Italia does not restrict it to cars; let’s take your boat, your Jet Ski, your motorbike, your 4×4, yourhelicopter, your Gulfstream and fashion it the way you like it.

“At this level of the market, there’s no limit. We’ve only been up and running for a few months, but we’re in thefortunate position of having to turn down jobs. We can do it anywhere, to any kind of vehicle on Earth and deliveranywhere on Earth. It’s a global design push.”

Or, in American terms, an air-sea-land version of Pimp My Ride . Garage Italia’s splashy debut was at this March’sauto show in Geneva, where Elkann and his 15 core designer-builders chose to deliver a hilariously elegant Fiat500, the recently redesigned iconic Fiat “bug” of the late ’50s and early ’60s. The Turin factory had tweaked it intoa very sleek, handy, midrange urban gadabout, much as BMW tweaked the Austin Mini. In Geneva Elkannpresented it with his customary brio as the “Black Tie” Fiat 500X, with tuxedo fabrics, cashmere and leather trim,and excellent black-on-black-striped “wrap paint.” Which is something nobody expected in the midrange. Thatwas his point.

“The wrappings are amazing,” says Elkann. “And we’re investing a lot in R&D of paint. But really what we canoffer is an infinite palette. Let’s say you want something seasonal. One car one way for summer and another car,fitted another way, for autumn. We change our clothes seasonally, don’t we?” Elkann hides little, or put anotherway, uses transparency at speed very adroitly. His formidable corporate life aside–Garage Italia, the IPO, theeyewear line’s expansion to Brazil and Japan, and his partnership with Adidas and a new deal with Hublot–Elkann’s social life is, also, lived with a certain supersonic tact. As he is minutely and breathlessly portrayed in theItalian gutter press, social media and fashion pages, “Lapo”—the phenomenon, not the man—is a cometlike bodystreaking across the Italian heavens.

Rendered economically, in addition to his companies, Elkann is also an employer of countless paparazzi and theireditors. Vanity Fair Italia has a Web page devoted to “Tutte le ex di Lapo Elkann,” chronicling his past decade ofinternational affairs. He claims to be dating no one person steadily now, although, with summer on theMediterranean having kicked off, the rabid-for-Lapo European tabloid editors and their camera-wielding centurionsremain on red alert at fashionable airports, harbors, bars, restaurants and resorts Continent-wide.

His office décor is evidence of Elkann’s giving no quarter to the paparazzi or, more pointedly, to their bosses. Eachyear the Italian satirical TV show Striscia la Notizia (The Slithering Snake of the News) presents a “golden tapir” toa celebrity for his or her heavily documented and outrageous behavior. In other words, the gutter press isawarding a celebrity for the most impressive gutter press coverage. The golden tapir statue, which stands ass-up,nose to the ground, is supposed to be a mark of shame, as measured by column inches and level of theatricality indaily life. Dominating the recipients’ field, Elkann has garnered four golden tapirs, all exhibited prominently–arranged with their faces to the wall–on his office book table, alongside his beloved automotive books. In otherwords, he’s not had an assistant chuck the tapirs in a Dumpster, as any number of moguls would in a huff. Elkannhas no “huff.”

As for his press clips, good, bad and indifferent, he’s had a selection of them printed as wallpaper, with which hehas lined the hall leading to his door. Taken together, the wallpaper and the tapirs are a celebratory act ofdefiance: You think you’ve caught me, but there’s no way you will–so bring it.

But it’s important to know that there’s a larger, more legitimate historical reason for the unending attention of theItalian press. It is that–in Italy, metaphorically speaking—Elkann is descended from God. There were not manytitans of industry in 19th-century Italy—there was certainly no automotive industry in Southern Europe at all–asGiovanni Agnelli, Elkann’s great-great grandfather, invested in and then later became chairman of Fiat. If we addElkann’s eternally stylish 20th-century grandfather Gianni—who ruled Turin for decades—in the Agnellis we havethe family that, above all others, brought Italy into the modern age. In Elkann, then, we have a pure industrial deitywho is just now realizing his own powers.

We take a quick ride around the corner on an errand in his throaty Garage Italia-customized Maserati—kitted outwith a silver-gray pin-striped paint job and black worsted wool pinstripe upholstery. We decide to walk back.Walking is complicated for Elkann right now, because, in line with the theory of velocity in his life, he’s more than alittle stiff from that motorcycle crash a few months ago. He just recently got off his canes, so there’s a bit of a limpleft.

“I have to be a little careful,” he admits.

He once hilariously described himself as an “French Turinese Neapolitan Catholic Jew born in New York,” and heis all of that. But he bears the aquiline profile and the swift, careless sartorial perfection of his legendarygrandfather Gianni. Elkann’s visage is the DNA image of his forebears. All of Italy recognizes this nose, theseeyes, the silhouette of this face.

Milan’s business morning is fully under way as we undertake our walk–against us in the sidewalk crush come twowell-splattered painters, in their white overalls, on a coffee and cigarette break.

“Ciao, Lapo,” they say, with not a little familiarity behind it.

“Ciao,” he says, “how are you, gentlemen?”

Fifty paces farther, two imposing carabinieri.

“Ciao, Lapo,” they say.

“Ciao.”

If he kept walking, he’d be greeting tutti di Milano in this old, familiar, 19th-century manner. It’s a great testamentto his hometown role and to the public recognition that this is indisputably Elkann’s patch of Earth. Howevermosaically extravagant his life is, it’s their country and its industrial history that the police and painters address asthey are moved to acknowledge him.

“So, you were born in New York,” I say to him as we round the corner to his office.

“Yes,” he volleys quickly, “but I’m Italian.”

As he strides up to the bar in the cafe downstairs from his office, Elkann, ever the gentlemanly host, asks, “Carefor a sandwich? I think we could all use a little something. Let’s order up a few.”

Back upstairs with our panini, downing more espresso, Elkann is moved to add the grace note. “I don’t deny myinheritance,” he says. “I don’t deny the luxury and the opportunity I’ve had to see beauty, to seek beauty or to learnfrom people. But there’s a moment in life when it is time to make your life, to work on the things that you want towork at. The reality is that I couldn’t do all that I wanted to do in the family company, so I decided to do the thingsthat I want to do on my own. This is just the beginning,” he says, pausing to click the cap of his pen.

“I’m not someone who likes to stop.”