by Christos Zabounis

I stopped writing and saying the word rich after a traumatic experience I had in the 1980s in Paris. At the time, I was a young journalist and had requested an interview with Rena Dumas, the wife of the president of the Hermès House, Jean-Louis. The occasion was an article in a French magazine listing the richest women in France. Mrs. Dumas was second. First was Liliane de Bettencourt of L’Oréal. Rena Grigoriadou, as was her maiden name, eventually agreed to speak with me after much hesitation—but under one condition: that we would not mention her husband’s family, and focus solely on her work as an architect. (At the time, she was designing the Hermès store in Tokyo.) I reluctantly accepted her terms, and together with photographer Angelos Rassias, we went to her architectural office—doomed, as I thought then, to a dull interview. It was the era of Koskotas, and I was wondering which of the magazines from his publishing group (“ENA,” “MIA,” “TV3,” “Tetarto”)—for which I was the correspondent in France—would publish the piece. The women’s magazine “MIA” was chosen. What kind of “tsetse fly” bit me and led me to title the article “The Second Richest Woman in France is Greek”, I do not know. What I do know is that Rena Dumas never spoke to me again. These days, I am curating and co-writing—with board member Nikolaos Kosmatos—the Members’ Handbook of the Athenian Club, on the occasion of its 150th anniversary. Reading the phrase “rich Greeks of the diaspora,” I immediately corrected rich to affluent. It is a trauma—and I felt the need to explain it.