The boss of Eden Park arrives bearing gifts. “First, la Tour Eiffel,” says Franck Mesnel, in his usual French-English mix, presenting a six-inch tin replica of Paris’s most famous monument. “Next,” he giggles, “a very special pen.” He presses its top. It plays the Marseillaise very loudly, in its entirety. “And you will like this last one.” He dips into his bag and produces a bottle of Eden Park champagne.

Now you’re talking. If only every boss had my interests so much at heart, but then Mesnel — a rugby legend who won 56 caps for France in the 1980s before launching his own business — has always been a bit special.

He played centre and fly half, and made his name in France as part of a generation dedicated to beautiful, flowing rugby. He also subverted club games with fancy dress, wearing the occasional pink bow tie and beret for matches, once even serving his team champagne at half-time. His forwards at Racing Club de Paris dubbed his back line “Le Showbizz”.

Now he brings the same spirit to his rugby-linked clothing brand Eden Park. Its claim to fame is that it made the rugby shirt ubiquitous as leisure wear — but we’ll try not to hold that against him.

His marketing team will be out in force at Twickenham today, dishing out the hospitality before this year’s England v France international — Le Crunch, as it is known. On the pitch, neither side looks in sparkling form, and purists dread a dour battle. Mesnel, of course, is an optimist.

“If France can resist England for the first half, then they might start to run the ball in the second,” he ponders.

Either way, he wins. Mesnel, 47, has big ambitions for Eden Park in Britain. In his homeland, where the brand has 18 shops, 35 franchise stores and distribution in another 350 outlets, it has already broadened from clothing into jewellery, perfume and homeware, cultivating a niche in rugby chic that the French love.

Over here, where many of Eden Park’s Anglicisms have already been mass marketed by others, it is inevitably more difficult. Gant, Hackett, Lacoste and Polo Ralph Lauren already take the top end, the rest of the British high street below.

Mesnel, who trained as an architect and worked briefly as an adman, merely gives a Gallic shrug. “If you buy us once, you come back for the quality,” he says. “I know this is the key. We are quite expensive for such a casual brand, but it’s important we have the niche. I love things that are beautiful.”

Mesnel is anything but your average rugger-bugger. For a start, he oversees all Eden Park’s designs, and he looks the part. Compact, suave and darkly handsome, he pushes into London’s St Pancras Grand restaurant, hot off the Eurostar, dressed in Eden Park beige, with matching scarf knotted casually at the neck.

Over beers, he tells the story of building his business — named after the All-Blacks’ stadium where he played a World Cup final — and his determination to keep control. Europe is full of global groups running luxury brands that have cast covetous eyes over Eden Park, which now makes 20% of its €55m (£51m) revenue outside France.

Yet so far Mesnel, majority shareholder, has stood firm. He prefers to build slowly and organically. “Number one, I am stubborn,” says Mesnel, gesturing with his finger. “Number two, I don’t think we’re ready to open the door yet.”