The co-founder and CEO of “hospitality exchange” Airbnb grew up in Niskayuna, New York and attended the Rhode Island School of Design. Brian Chesky jointly set up his business in 2008 in San Francisco and has connected over 17 million guests as of September 2014. Offerings on the website range from yurts through to the entire principality of Liechtenstein. Though worth some £928 million ($1.5 billion), Chesky believes in the “eating your own dog food” method and has not owned a home since 2010.
This Polish born, British raised fashion icon described herself as “a natural feminist” in a 2014 interview with The Observer. As the co-founder of BIBA with her late husband, Stephen Fitz-Simon (AKA “Fitz”), Barbara Hulanicki revolutionised design and her followers included Brigitte Bardot, Mick Jagger, David Bowie and Marianne Faithful. She only closed her store once – for Princess Anne – and has designed hotels for Ronnie Wood and Chris Blackwell of Island Records. Hulanicki’s diplomat father was murdered by a Zionist extremist group in 1940 and more recently she stated: “Now whenever I finish something I take some photographs and say ‘goodbye’. When you lose everything, you realise that the only thing you have is what’s in your head”.
Salvage Europe sell part of Argentina’s contribution to the Exposition Universelle of 1889
To mark the 100th anniversary of the storming of the Bastille, between May and October 1889, Paris held a fair named the Exposition Universelle. The main symbol and the most iconic building at the Expo was the Eiffel Tower but now Salvage Europe are selling part of the first prize winning Argentine Pavilion with a guide price of £50,000. (more…)
Arnold Schwarzenegger puts his Mercedes-Benz Unimog up for sale after replacing it with a Bugatti Veyron
Arnold ‘The Governator’ Schwarzenegger is a man who does it ‘large’. Aside from being built like a tank himself, this Austrian actor turned politician likes large cars and in putting his Mercedes-Benz Unimog up for sale and being spotted in a Bugatti Veyron this week, he showed his change in marital status hasn’t changed his tastes in how he likes to get around. (more…)
This wine loving chef was brought up in a council house but educated at Wellington. After finding that he and the army were “mutually incompatible”, Keith Floyd took a job as a vegetable peeler. From this humble start, he progressed to owning a number of restaurants and presenting cooking shows for the BBC. Married four times and bankrupted twice, Floyd left just £7,500 in his will.
A £1.375 million house in a Norfolk village with connections to James Blunt
The summer is nearly over but many of you no doubt will find yourselves continuing to hanker after the sun and sand. A new house named Marshlands in the village of Cley next the Sea in North Norfolk could offer you just that. (more…)
This wealth manager is the eldest grandson of Lilly Pulitzer and his wife runs an organic, gluten free and vegan West Palm Beach bakery named Sweet Ivey’s. This modest philanthropic couple held their wedding on North End Beach, Palm Beach and of her wedding dress, Ivey Leidy told Town & Country: “I don’t even know who made it”.
Mandy Rice-Davies provides a lesson in how to behave on Twitter
A misguided tweet cost Sally Bercow, the wife of the Speaker of the House of Commons, an estimated £100,000. Yesterday, when Mandy Rice-Davies, famous for her role in the Profumo scandal, took to Twitter to attack me in the wake of an article I published about George Galloway, Ms Bercow again came to mind. (more…)
This thrice married daughter of the novelist Dame Barbara Cartland was allegedly fathered by Prince George, Duke of Kent and has worked her way through five titles. Upwardly mobile, she’s been described as “larger than life” but was so unpopular with her step-children that they nicknamed her “Acid Raine”. During Mohamed Fayed’s ownership of Harrods, Raine Spencer was made a director and was often to be found manning the tills during sales. Her step-son, Earl Spencer, described this mother of four as having a taste in decoration that is akin to “the wedding cake vulgarity of a five-star hotel in Monaco”.
Could the most deprived area in Britain be the place to invest?
The city of Detroit has long been a no-go area and its decline from an automotive giant to a capital of deprivation has been well documented. Britain’s equivalent is a small seaside village named Jaywick, near Clacton-on-Sea in Essex. (more…)