High Fashion to High Stakes: Thierry Gillier's Desire to Breed a Champion

What better accompaniment to a global fashion business, Parisian hotel and fabulous art collection than a Thoroughbred stud farm? Nothing, right?

This was apparently the conclusion reached by Thierry Gillier, the founder of the uber-cool Zadig & Voltaire label, whose appropriation of the nom de plume of the celebrated French writer for his fashion brand has now been extended to his own nom de course at Haras Voltaire. 

Just last week, Gun Of Brixton (Fr) (Frankel {GB}) became the latest graduate of the Normandy farm to advertise this burgeoning breeding operation. The Haras Voltaire homebred, trained by Andre Fabre, landed his second win from three starts at Clairefontaine and looks a juvenile who will surely soon be moving up into Pattern class, as his TDN Rising Star tag suggests.

Gun Of Brixton's dam Cat Kate (Ire) is an Invincible Spirit (Ire) half-sister to Harzand (Ire), foaled in 2017, the year after her illustrious elder brother won the Derby and Irish Derby and their dam Hazariya (Ire) (Xaar {GB}) was sold to Coolmore for 2 million gns. It was also in that year that Haras Voltaire was launched, with the assistance of agent and bloodstock advisor Laurent Benoit.

“I bought a house surrounded by lovely land and when that land came onto the market I took the opportunity to buy it,” says Gillier, who, like a number of Parisians, was drawn by the easy reach of Deauville and the Normandy countryside. 

But had the plan been to start a breeding operation when he first took up part-time residence in that area?

“Not at all,” he says. “It was really something I didn't know about but I was always looking at the farms in Normandy because I live in the 'golden triangle'. My neighbours are the Wertheimers and I was curious about what they were doing. At that time I was spending weekends in Normandy and, as usual, I look at things and I decided to jump into the water.

“Then I met Laurent and started a 'football team'.”

That team of broodmares is now almost double the size of a football team, with 21 listed as being in residence at Haras Voltaire. These include the Niarchos-bred Typique (Ire), a daughter of Galileo (Ire) and the G1 Prix Marcel Boussac winner Denebola (Storm Cat) – herself a sister to Machiavellian. She was bought as a three-year-old by Benoit through his Broadhurst Agency for €450,000 in 2016.

Naturally, Typique had plenty to recommend her genetically, and she has duly delivered for her owner. Her first foal, by Invincible Spirit, is the G2 Prix de Malleret winner Babylone (Fr), whose name is appropriately Zadig & Voltaire-inspired, and she has now also joined Gillier's broodmare band, along with her full-sister Assyrian Queen (GB). Two foals later, Typique produced a Dubawi (Ire) filly, who gave the owner and breeder a taste of the commercial highs of the game when topping the Arqana August Yearling Sale of 2021 at €2.4 million. Typique has suffered some bad luck since then, but she produced a filly by Siyouni (Fr) this year and is now back in foal to him. 

The Aga Khan Studs stallion is one of a number in which Gillier has invested by buying breeding rights, and in recent weeks he has also bought a share in Siyouni's stud-mate Zarak (Fr).

“We went to visit a few studs in Ireland. That was the first step,” he says. “We had bought our first share in Siyouni before travelling to Ireland but once there I understood very quickly that the stallions are a big part of the business.

“When we came back we tried to go bigger on Siyouni and we ended up with eight per cent of the horse [four shares]. That was the starting point.

“We bought into Hello Youmzain when he was still in training and got involved in Wootton Bassett before he moved to Ireland. We've been very lucky so far with it.

“This is what I understood very quickly as a businessman, that the stallion was very important to build a good stud, to use with good mares.”

The top sprinter Hello Youmzain (Fr) (Kodiac {GB}), who is owned in partnership with Haras d'Etreham and Cambridge Stud, gave Gillier his first involvement in a Group 1 winner when landing the Diamond Jubilee Stakes at Royal Ascot, though this came in the first year of the Covid pandemic so the victory was watched and celebrated from afar. He now features as the covering sire of several of the broodmares at Haras Voltaire, with members of his first crop including a half-sister to the Voltaire-bred German 1,000 Guineas winner Txope (Fr) (Siyouni {Fr}).

That Classic winner was raced by football legend Antoine Griezmann before her sale to Yuesheng Zhang of Yulong for €1.2 million.

“We sold Txope to Griezmann. You have to sell: with horses in training, mares, foals and yearlings, they start to add up. The goal is to stay at around 25 mares,” says Gillier, who currently has eight homebreds in training in France with Fabre and Philippe Decouz, the original trainer of Txope before she was exported to America and the barn of John Sadler.

I am working in the art business as a collector and I believe that horses are like art pieces, too

The fashion mogul admits that, with business interests in Europe, America and beyond, the time he has to devote to Thoroughbreds is limited. 

“We have Laurent and the Navet family – Alexis is running the farm – so we have a good team,” he says. “Laurent was the best investment. We are always talking about things and making plans.”

With Alexis Navet and his parents Jacques and Florianne installed at Haras Voltaire to oversee the day-to-day business of the farm, and Benoit as racing and bloodstock manager, Gillier also depends on a strategic partnership with Nicolas de Chambure of Haras d'Etreham, both for selling yearlings and shared ownership in stallions. At the forthcoming August Sale at Arqana, Etreham will consign four yearlings for Haras Voltaire, including Babylone's first foal, a filly by Wootton Bassett, and a Siyouni filly out of Queen Of The Sea (Fr) (Sea The Stars {Ire}), a half-sister to G1 Grand Prix de Paris winner Feed The Flame (GB) (Kingman {GB}). Gillier has had to adapt to the idea of being a vendor, however.

“When we sold the Dubawi filly from Typique, just before she went into the ring I didn't want to sell her. I called Laurent and said 'What are we doing?', but he said we had to do it and then we set a record for the most expensive yearling in the world that year,” he recalls. 

“We kept Gun Of Brixton because he was a bit small, but maybe today that was a big advantage because he is more flexible. We have a lot of hope for him.”

Even a quick flick through the Haras Voltaire stud book is enough to underline the sense that Gillier is entitled to be hopeful about far more than that promising young Frankel colt. With Benoit, he has assembled an equine “football team” of World Cup potential. The matrons in the paddocks surrounding his Normandy bolthole have been plucked from some of the best families in the world: the five-year-old Piattoli (GB) is a Shamardal granddaughter of Allez Les Trois, while the Galileo mare Girls Can (Ire) has the illustrious In Clover (GB) as her granddam. Girls Can's Group 1-winning mother We Are (Ire) (Dansili {GB}) is a sister to fellow Group 1 winners With You (GB) and Call The Wind (GB) among six black type-earning siblings which include the dam of G1 Prix de la Foret winner Kelina (Ire). There is plenty to work with here. 

“What we are trying to do is produce a champion and we are trying to make sure we have the right tools to do that,” Gillier says. 

“I am working in the art business as a collector and I believe that horses are like art pieces, too. It's why I felt I could spend so much money on a Siyouni share because you need to jump on those opportunities to get into the business. Yes, people can be lucky, and my friends are buying horses to race, but I am looking at it in a different way because I am producing them myself. I want to build something and I want to do it the right way. This is how I try to do it in life, with my business. I have put that experience into my stable.”

Since 1997, Gillier, whose father Andre was the co-founder of Lacoste, has seen his own Zadig & Voltaire fashion house expand from being a French success story to one of global renown. Could this eventually be replicated by an expansion in his breeding and racing business?

“That's a good question,” he says, “because now you have made me think.”