Call my agent: The man representing the world’s most famous cat
Furry friends are increasingly big business in Hollywood and beyond and this former Sydneysider has represented them all.
For me, a cat of this fame needs to give back to all other cats in the world,” smiles Lucas Bérullier, owner of My Pet Agency, and agent to Choupette Lagerfeld, perhaps the world’s most recognisable feline.
Berullier and the 12-year-old Birman’s guardian Françoise Caçot, who has been responsible for the social media sensation since Karl Lagerfeld’s death in 2019, have big plans for the Choupette Fund. “We are [just] waiting on the will and the inheritance to be over before,” Bérullier adds.
“For the past five years there’s been nothing,” he says of the resolution of Lagerfeld’s estate, which was the central storyline of last year’s hit documentary The Mysterious Mr. Lagerfeld. Bérullier and Caçot, as well as many of the superstar designer’s inner circle, all featured.
“She’s from a simple background,” he says of Caçot, Lagerfeld’s former housekeeper, “With zero money, zero help, she’s had all the pressure from the world saying, ‘What are you going to do with Choupette?’. Since Karl passed, everyone’s attention has been focused on her. So the pressure is enormous.”
As it turns out, managing one of the planet’s most famous kitties – who under Lagerfeld’s tutelage graced covers of British Harper’s BAZAAR, Grazia and German Vogue – is a delicate operation.
“Of course, we don’t want to sell cheap products, and the ones with the budget are the big brands and we don’t want to associate with them,” Bérullier says, nodding to Choupette’s symbolic affiliation with Lagerfeld and of course Chanel, where he was creative director for 36 years.
“So that’s where it’s a hard task. I had pieces of a puzzle and I had to bring that together, like, ‘OK, this is the Choupette brand, this is the Choupette attitude, this is the Choupette animal, and what does that mean and how do we continue from that?’ Because it’s really, really hard to take over that role with the legacy of such an important man.”
Bérullier’s path to representing some of France’s most famous pets began humbly, as a passionate animal lover. The French-Italian grew up in Paris, moving to Australia to study international marketing culture and business administration at Macquarie University, where he met his Australian wife, photographer and make-up artist Jessica.
In between studying, modelling, waitering and working for a local event agency, Bérullier joined a group of Macquarie University students to set up TEDx in Australia. He became lead curator and director of TEDxMacquarieUni, one of the biggest student university-run TEDx groups in the southern hemisphere.
Then life took a four-legged turn when Jessica brought home their now 13-year-old husky-staffordshire cross, Bruce.
“I was like, ‘Come on, we’re students, we go on holidays all the time. It’s way too complicated’. But that dog became our child; super important in our life and inspired me to start my business later on.”
Not long after, Bérullier’s father, the former European chief executive of international HR company Monster, called to entice them back to Paris.
“He’s like, ‘I’ve got a house for you here. Your siblings would love you to be back’. It was the time that we were a bit old to still have a share house,” he smiles ruefully.
Back in Paris Bérullier worked for an event agency and started the Love Run – a race where you run with your lover – and also floated the idea for Dog Run – with your canine – thanks to Bruce’s influence. During this time the couple spent three months volunteering in Tanzania, where they helped at an orphanage in Arusha, from which they still support four kids. “This changed our perspective of life,” he says. “And we’re like, ‘Life is precious, let’s do things that we are really passionate about’.”
Bérullier got home and started an Instagram account for Bruce. He and the dog would accompany Jessica on her work trips as a destination wedding photographer all around Europe, which provided ample content.
“One day I got a phone call from a friend of a friend who was like, ‘I’ve got the biggest YouTubers in France that have dogs and they want an agent, are you interested?’,” he says. “So it started like this with my expertise in events, marketing and modelling.”
Bérullier soon realised that there are no image rights for animals: “They’re treated like objects and not like living creatures, which was a big disturbance for me because we all know they have a personality; they’ve got a sensitivity about who they are and what they need. There’s a lot of wellbeing involved. So I got trained, and I get special experts coming into the office to train us all about understanding and recognising stress signals.”
My Pet Agency was founded in 2018, and now includes a digital arm that helps brands to launch products, as well as Woofest, Europe’s biggest pet festival.
“As I’m creating the pet agent business, I realised that there’s a lot of businesses that revolve around the pet world. It’s a huge market with so many dynamics. And there were no special agencies to help those brands navigate this market. There are general brands, the big agencies, but they have no clue how to talk about pets. They still treat animals like an object for adverts. So I started with hotel groups that are dog-friendly. We did a lot of stuff for The Body Shop because they don’t test on animals, and then we did Cathay Pacific and other airlines that fly pets. Then Amazon launched their section for pets.”
In terms of the animal clients he represents, Bérullier keeps it to a selective few megastars. “I call them talents and petfluencers,” he clarifies. “I fully represent about 15 of them globally. I am very selective.
“Since I started, I wanted to work with Choupette, firstly because my clients wanted to. They’re like, ‘OK, I’m sure you have Choupette’. I’m like, ‘Well, Karl is a little bit difficult to reach!’. The Karl Lagerfeld clan was very closed, never responded to any messages, and the day he actually died, Françoise [Caçot], who inherited the cat, needed help. So from 2019, my job was to continue what Karl started with her in terms of image, in terms of branding, in terms of projects.
“But she’s older now, so we’re really very selective of projects. We don’t bother her.”
And even when it came to the 2023 Met Gala, which honoured the life and legacy of Lagerfeld, Choupette’s needs came first.
“It’s hard to say no to such a project. We were invited to every hotel, every celebrity suite, to do every interview. It was very tempting, but no,” Bérullier says.
“When we said we were actually not physically going, we got a lot of applause saying, ‘Wow, we respect that’. So instead there was [actor] Jared Leto dressed up as her. That was good.”
Kim Kardashian also paid the feline a preparty visit. “It’s a big thing to travel with a cat on the red carpet. She’s not like a dog. It’s a loud location, it’s hectic. She’s not very confident … Kim was very lovely. She came to Paris, and we did the shoot, and we did a project for US Vogue with Naomi Campbell [the pair featured in the May 2023 issue shot in Paris by Annie Leibovitz]. So we were there without being there.”
Kardashian’s Choupette interaction, however, was not quite as cuddly as she had hoped. “[Choupette] is grumpy,” smiles Bérullier. The face-off resulted in a few swipes at Kardashian by the feisty feline. “She’s not ‘Grumpy Cat’, but she’s a little bit grumpy. For me, she’s a mixture of sophisticated and elegant, but also very individualistic. She used to have 500-square-metre apartments to herself with Karl; very quiet, very large spaces, a chef and a cleaner. And going to the vet every three weeks … I would say she’s hard to understand. And she’s in her own world, and many people say she’s like Karl.”
Of course, Choupette was first owned by French model Baptiste Giabiconi. He reportedly received the kitten on his birthday from friends and named her after the French word for “sweetie”. Lagerfeld babysat her once and Choupette never went back, hitting viral fame in 2012 when V magazine editor-in-chief Stephen Gan tweeted a photo of Choupette as Lagerfeld’s “new kitty”.
Today, Choupette remains closely linked to Lagerfeld’s influence, as well as a reminder for many of his inner circle of a time that has come to an end. “I think you have to close a chapter, move on, go to the next part of life, because it’s hard when someone like Karl has an impact on you,” reflects Bérullier. “When that person goes, you become yourself again. And there’s a bit of lost position, and Choupette reminds everyone in the Karl Lagerfeld group of the past.”
Bérullier now has his eye on another French talent: Kodi, who earned plenty of buzz at the recent Cannes Film Festival for his role in Le Procès du chien (Dog on Trial). “Most famous pets are French …” he smiles. “Most producers love to work with French trainers and French pets because of our excellence in that field,” he says, referring to another famous client, Messi, who starred in Anatomy of a Fall and walked this year’s Academy Awards red carpet with trainer Laura Martin Contini.
“The role in the film was something Laura’s done as a dog trainer,” he explains. “What I helped her with was to navigate through the success, making sure she would use that success for the good recognition of her passion and love for the dog.”
This story is from the July issue of WISH.
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