{"id":24147,"date":"2019-08-24T12:04:07","date_gmt":"2019-08-24T16:04:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/?p=24147"},"modified":"2019-08-11T02:26:49","modified_gmt":"2019-08-11T06:26:49","slug":"how-to-party-with-hollywood-stars-and-supermodels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2019\/08\/24\/how-to-party-with-hollywood-stars-and-supermodels\/","title":{"rendered":"How to party with Hollywood Stars and Supermodels"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Billion Dollar Whale<\/a><\/em> is a fascinating story by two Wall Street Journal<\/em> reporters. The “whale” is a pudgy Malaysian-Chinese guy named Jho Low<\/a>. Aside from making friends with Arabs and stealing from Malaysian taxpayers, the authors don’t credit Mr. Low with any skills. Is that an obstacle to partying with movie stars and beautiful women?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Low rented a suite of rooms that cost $100,000 per month. The flashy new resident showed up at the building in a convoy of black Cadillac Escalades with a retinue of security, and he paid for a number of other apartments in the building for his entourage, which included Hamad Al Wazzan, his wealthy Kuwaiti friend from Wharton. Long-term residents complained about the bodyguards and the ostentation, but that was exactly Low\u2019s aim: to show he had arrived. He began to spend eye-popping amounts, running up a $160,000 bar bill at Avenue, a new club in New York\u2019s Chelsea district, on a single night during fall Fashion Week in 2009. On another occasion, Low sent twenty-three bottles of Cristal to actress Lindsay Lohan\u2019s table when he spotted her during a night out in Manhattan.<\/p>

It\u2019s a little-discussed secret that even the biggest movie stars take payment to attend events, and Low began to seek out the managers of top actors, or pull on the Strategic Group\u2019s network of club promoters, to get celebrities to his parties. The rumor that Low was a billionaire with unlimited funds made him an attractive person to know. Even for DiCaprio, one of the world\u2019s top-paid actors, with a sizable fortune of his own, the scope of Low\u2019s purported wealth was alluring. The night at the Palazzo in October 2009 was just the start of many parties the actor would enjoy with Low.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Robert De Niro, Charlize Theron, Swizz Beatz, Alicia Keys, and Jamie Foxx become some of the regulars as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where do all of these folks hang out?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was Fleet Week in Saint-Tropez, and the world\u2019s superyachts vied for berthing space at the town\u2019s marina. In July and August, the resort on the French Riviera, centered around a warren-like medieval old town of ochre-colored houses and old churches, is heaving with the world\u2019s richest people. They flock to the town for parties on yachts and in the town\u2019s bars and the daytime carousing at the clubs on nearby Pampelonne beach.<\/p>

The most illustrious of all is Les Caves du Roy, a fixture on the world party scene since the 1960s. Every inch of the club, situated in the basement of the Hotel Byblos, just a few hundred meters back from the port, is covered in gold. There are golden columns, which end in waves of fluting, a parody of the Corinthian style meant to evoke champagne bursting from a bottle. The dance floor is golden, as are the tables on which are perched gold leaf\u2013covered cocktail bowls.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Once there, Low spends 2 million euros on Champagne.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His friends also know how to party:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Abu Dhabi, Al Qubaisi wore the traditional emirati cloak and head covering, and had a family home, a sprawling villa, where his wife and four children lived. But like many rich emiratis, he conducted a different life overseas. At his villa on the C\u00f4te d\u2019Azur, with Bugattis and Ferraris parked outside, he partied with models, and he had a younger Moroccan wife in Paris. When abroad, he traded in traditional emirati dress for tight-fitting T-shirts, including one with a montage of images of Al Pacino\u2019s Tony Montana from the 1983 film Scarface. Once, when an executive showed up to Al Qubaisi\u2019s mansion in France to discuss business, he answered the door wearing a skimpy swimsuit, while women in bikinis lingered in the background.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

There is still time to appreciate art:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few weeks after the Wolf of Wall Street premiere, Low, posing as Eric Tan, sent DiCaprio a $3.3 million painting by Pablo Picasso as a late birthday present. The oil painting\u2014Nature Morte au Cr\u00e2ne de Taureau\u2014was accompanied with a handwritten note. \u201cDear Leonardo DiCaprio, Happy belated Birthday! This gift is for you,\u201d it read. Then, Low told a Swiss gallery that was storing a $9.2 million Basquiat\u2014a collage entitled Red Man One\u2014to transfer ownership to DiCaprio. The order, made in a letter also signed by DiCaprio, indemnified the actor from \u201cany liability whatsoever resulting directly or indirectly from these art-work.\u201d The actor also got a photograph by Diane Arbus\u2014cost $750,000\u2014from Low. In private, DiCaprio was happy to accept these gifts. On the red carpet, he was in a more philosophical mood. Some critics of the film\u2014including voting members of the Academy who heckled Scorsese at an official screening ahead of the Oscars\u2014complained it glamorized Jordan Belfort\u2019s fraud and was more likely to spawn financial malfeasance than serve as a cautionary tale. DiCaprio had carefully prepared his retort. \u201cThis is an indictment of all of Wall Street. But it\u2019s an indictment about something that\u2019s in our culture, this incessant need to consume and this incessant need to obtain more and more wealth with complete disregard for anyone except yourself,\u201d he told one interviewer.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Political donations lead to invitations to hang out (and take selfies) with President Obama and family at the White House.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What about sex with supermodels?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Miranda Kerr, the Australian supermodel, walked in. She had come from a formal event and was wearing a ball gown, at odds with the atmosphere in the down-to-earth eatery. With her soft brown curls, iridescent blue eyes, and trademark dimples, the thirty-year-old was instantly recognizable, … After winning an Australian modeling competition, aged only thirteen, she had eventually moved to the United States, where she became a Victoria\u2019s Secret model. In 2013, she earned $7 million, making her the second-best-paid female model in the world after Gisele B\u00fcndchen, and offers kept piling up\u2014from H&M, Swarovski, Unilever\u2014to promote products. But a supermodel\u2019s earnings aren\u2019t enough to launch a major business, and Kerr was interested in what Low had to offer. She had tired of modeling and was looking to transform herself into an entrepreneur. The next morning, she had a package of KORA products couriered over to Low\u2019s apartment in the Time Warner building. Back in October, Kerr had divorced actor Orlando Bloom, with whom she had a three-year-old son,<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Kerr explained her priorities:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSimple things, like, you know, a fresh bouquet of flowers makes me really happy, watching the sun rise or the sun set,\u201d she told one interviewer.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Low apparently did not realize that a floral bouquet would be sufficient:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few months later, he would buy Kerr yet more jewelry, a $3.8 million diamond pendant, making a grand total of over $8 million to acquire the supermodel\u2019s affections.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The $8 million is just for a rental, as it turns out…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kerr had split with Low after the first stories about him began to emerge in early 2015. In May 2017 she married Evan Spiegel, the billionaire founder of Snapchat, cutting all ties with Low.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

More: Read Billion Dollar Whale<\/a><\/em> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Billion Dollar Whale is a fascinating story by two Wall Street Journal reporters. The “whale” is a pudgy Malaysian-Chinese guy named Jho Low. 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