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Gucci heir François Pinault Jr engaged to 22-year-old glamorous German countess Lara Cosima

German-American aristocrat and socialite Lara Cosima has announced her engagement to Kering heir François Pinault Jr

Updated on: Apr 13, 2026 11:52 AM IST
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German-American aristocrat and socialite Lara Cosima has announced her engagement to Kering heir François Pinault Jr, following a year of dating. The news, shared on Instagram, brings together two of Europe’s most prominent and influential families.

Gucci-owner Kering's heir François Pinault Jr is engaged to Countess Lara Cosima (Instagram/@laracosima_)
Gucci-owner Kering's heir François Pinault Jr is engaged to Countess Lara Cosima (Instagram/@laracosima_)

Lara, 22, announced the engagement on Instagram with black and white photographs of herself and her fiance last month. “Got engaged to my best friend and the coolest boy in the world,” she wrote.

Who is Lara Cosima?

Countess Lara Cosima is a 22-year-old German-American model, socialite and social media influencer. Through her father, she is a member of the House of Henckel von Donnersmarck, an Austro-Hungarian noble family.

(Also read: The Princess of Greece who married an Indian-origin lawyer, visited Dehradun for haldi before royal wedding)

Lara is the daughter of the German count and filmmaker Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck and his wife Christiane Asschenfeldt.

Both her parents are German, but Lara was born and raised in the United States. She is a student of fashion design at Parsons School of Design in Manhattan, New York.

Who is François Pinault Jr?

François Pinault Jr is the son of Kering CEO François Pinault and his first wife, Dorothée Lepère. He is also the stepson of Salma Hayek.

The Kering luxury house owns fashion brands such as Saint Laurent, Alexander McQueen, Gucci, and Balenciaga, among others. The Pinault family has an estimated net worth of $28 billion, according to Forbes.

(Also read: Gucci owner splashes out €1.3 billion for building on Milan’s iconic shopping street)

François Pinault Jr was born in 1998. The Gen Z scion of Kering generally maintains a low profile and does not have a social media presence.

The engagement

The couple had gone public with their relationship on Valentine’s Day, revealing that they had been dating for a year. They announced their engagement a month later in an Instagram post that has collected over 75,000 ‘likes’ and more than 500 comments.

Lara Cosima’s social media stardom comes in part due to her aristocratic roots and her “old money” aesthetic.

“There's been a lot of interest in my family history,” she acknowledged in one TikTok video, adding: “My great-grandfather lost everything he had when Stalin's troops expelled all the Germans in his region [during the Second World War]”.

She has amassed thousands of followers on Instagram and TikTok. In 2023, she was presented to society at the famous Le Bal des débutantes in Paris — an ultra-exclusive, annual invitation-only debutante ball.

(Also read: A princess at Harvard: Belgium’s future Queen is currently enjoying American student life)

  • Sanya Jain
    ABOUT THE AUTHOR
    Sanya Jain

    Sanya Jain is an Assistant Editor with Hindustan Times Digital. She has nearly a decade of experience in covering offbeat stories that speak to the everyday experience - from viral videos to human interest copies that spark conversation. Her interests stretch across business, pop culture, social media trends, entertainment and global affairs. Before joining Hindustan Times, Sanya spent two years with Moneycontrol and five years with NDTV. She holds an undergraduate degree in English literature from St Stephen’s College, Delhi, and a master’s in journalism from the Xavier Institute of Communications, Mumbai. Sanya has a sharp eye for spotting emerging trends and looking for newsworthy angles to elevate viral posts into meaningful narratives. She was the first one, for example, to cover Narayana Murthy’s remark on 70-hour work weeks that sparked a national conversation. She is equally at ease writing about business leaders as about the common man, about issues of national importance and memes that amuse social media. Sanya enjoys speaking with content creators, newsmakers and entrepreneurs to transform everyday moments into engaging, slice-of-life stories that resonate with readers. When she is not working, Sanya can be found curled up with a good book. Born and raised in Lucknow, she has spent the last several years in Delhi. She is deeply interested in animal welfare and now spends a lot of her time running after her destructive orange cat.Read More

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