December 10, 2003

Holy CEO! This 62-year-old industrialist works in the nude

By Eric Ellis

Christian Fabre dresses down at work, but not just to polo shirt and chinos. The 62-year-old industrialist goes all the way and works in the nude—odd, given that his business is making clothes.

But then Fabre, CEO of Fashion International, a Madras textile company, is anything but a conventional boss. Also known as Swami Pravananda Brahmendra Avadhuta, the French-born Fabre converted to Hinduism 15 years ago and is now an ascetic sadhu, a holy man adhering to a faith that demands he be naked and shun all worldly attachments.

That includes salary. Although Fashion International makes $100 million of clothes a year like Kenzo, Lee Cooper and Galeries Lafayette, Fabre earns only $200 a month. And there are no shares or options. "I have nothing," he says, "just the confidence of my partners." Fabre oversees 62,000 workers in 35 factories across India, but most of his deals are done on good faith. Contracts, he says, are "an article of distrust between partners." But he's no pushover. Elisabeth Coustie, a buyer at Paris fashion house Diplodocus who has dealt with Fabre for more than a decade, says he is "a very tough negotiator."

At his stylish Madras office, he dons the flowing orange robe of a Hindu priest - Indian law forbids nudity in the workplace - but he spends most of his time at his spartan 20-acre ashram, where he works nude in his Internet-enabled temple, checking e-mails while dispensing enlightment to his worldwide flock of devotees.

"I have perfected the art of being Christian Fabre in one screen and Swami Pranavananda in another," he says.

"Rather like my life, really."