Ca$hing In Like A Karda$hian - Princess Style

Outside of the British royals aka Windsor Inc., has there ever been a family so brazenly branded as the Kardashians?  No, I didn't think so.
And not surprisingly, the brains belong this brilliant branding campaign belong to the power mom, Kris Kardashian Jenner.

This woman is a genius.  No really she is.   There should be case studies written for the Harvard Business Review about how she turned her B list brood into the big buck$.  I have nothing but admiration for her marketing skills which begat a very successful and long running reality tv show making her girls into superstars. And now the biggest star of them all, Kim Kardashian, has just had her celebrity all star wedding.

In case you weren't invited to the ceremony, here's the exclusive video. I wonder if the amount that she made by selling the exclusive film rights to E! paid for the cost of the wedding...I bet it did and more. Kim, like her mother, is seriously  savvy (product endorsements, business ownership, self promotion, etc.) and honestly I admire her business acumen.


Kim is a truly beautiful girl, a true Hollywood princess. Don't you agree?
And doesn't she make a radiant bride?

And I am so thrilled that she chose to grasp the trend that we've been tirelessly promoting at Beladora. Yes, you know what trend I'm talking about...jewelry worn on your head, princess style.  We've been wearing necklaces on our heads for years, no really we have.

Here's a photo from a couple of years ago of  Miss de Ville wearing our Queen of the Nile emerald and diamond necklace on her head.  Seriously, there isn't a fancy necklace here at the HQ that doesn't at one time or another end up draped across a forehead or perched across the top of a head tiara style. So perhaps now, after the Kim Kardashian wedding photos, this trend will finally catch on.

So, if having your forehead draped in diamonds isn't your style, what about wearing a brooch that belonged to a Grand Duchess?

This story that we have on this diamond brooch was that it belonged to the Princess Juliane Henriette Ulrike of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld who married into the Russian royal family and became the the Grand Duchess Anna Feodorovna of Russia.

Here is her portrait by Elisabeth Louise Vigee LeBrun. 

The Grand Duchess led quite a life. Married at the age of 14, she was miserable in Russia and returned to Coburg after three years in 1799. After a brief reconciliation with the Grand Duke, she left him for good.  Later, like Germaine de Stael, she led the kind of libertine-intellectual life that was only available to women of her class.
According to Wikipedia

On 28 October 1808 Anna gave birth to an illegitimate son, named Eduard Edgar Schmidt-Löwe. The father of this child may have been Jules Gabriel Emile de Seigneux, a minor French nobleman. Eduard was ennobled by his mother's younger brother, Ernst I, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, and assumed the surname von Löwenfels by decree on 10 January 1818.



Later, Anna moved to Bern, Switzerland, and gave birth to a second illegitimate child in 1812, a daughter, named Louise Hilda Agnes d'Aubert. The father was Rodolphe Abraham de Schiferli, a Swiss surgeon, professor and chamberlain (French:Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur, German:Oberhofmeister) of Anna's household from 1812 to 1837. In order to cover another scandal in Anna's life, the baby was adopted by Jean François Joseph d'Aubert, a French refugee.


Two years later, in 1814, Constantine, accompanied by her brother Leopold, tried to get Anna to return to him but her firm opposition prevented this attempt from succeeding. That year, Anna acquired an estate on the banks of Aare River and gave it the name of Elfenau.[5] She spent the rest of her life there, and, as a lover of music, made her home a center for domestic and foreign musical society of the era.

I love her story and I can't wait to learn more about her.

Amy Winehouse - And She Said Blow, Blow, Blow

In my own contrarian way I have to admit that I am insufficiently sensitive when it comes to Amy  Winehouse's recent admission into The 27 Club.

It's not that I didn't appreciate her talent, I did.
And I do find it extraordinarily sad for any person, young or old, to be imprisoned by addiction.
But really, being found with heroin, cocaine, ecstasy and horse tranquilizer...WTF was wrong with her?

I've known young people who could barely come up with the funds to go through rehab.  They struggled not just physically and emotionally but financially to kick their habits. They had to quit their jobs spend months in treatment and start their careers all over again.
Winehouse on the other hand, leaving a 10 million GBP estate, she could handily afford the very best rehab program and long term treatment.
Sorry but like many others, she just didn't want to clean up her act.
From Lindsey Lohan to Charlie Sheen to Amy Winehouse, I guess that I'm just sick and tired of celebrities and their drug problems. 

Also, while watching the news on the TV at the gym over the weekend, I was amazed about how the major channels had virtually nothing to report about the tragedy in Norway and went on and on about Amy Winehouse. 

Now, you probably disagree with me and that's OK.
 Dash wrote a lovely and sensitive post about Amy Winehouse.

Don't Mess With Murdoch Unless You Want To Get Wailed By Wendy

I knew that Tabitha would be on this story in a New York Minute

Forget Tiger Mom - Here Comes Tiger Wife

Don't mess with Murdoch unless you want to get wailed by Wendy!

And You Thought Diana At 50 Was Bad

I love Vanity Fair magazine...have I told you that before?
They wasted no time on one-upping Tina Brown's tacky Newsweek cover

with their own take on dead royalty

This made my week.

Bilderberg Conference or Another Invitation Lost In The Mail

You know it was bad enough that my invitation to the World Economic Summit at Davos was lost in the mail and now this...

I didn't receive an invitation to the Bilderberg Conference being held at the Survretta Hotel in St. Moritz Switzerland.

How is this possible?

Here's the list of attendees from the US

Alexander, Keith B., Commander, USCYBERCOM; Director, National Security Agency
Altman, Roger C., Chairman, Evercore Partners Inc.
Bezos, Jeff, Founder and CEO, Amazon.com
Collins, Timothy C., CEO, Ripplewood Holdings, LLC
Feldstein, Martin S., George F. Baker Professor of Economics, Harvard University
Hoffman, Reid, Co-founder and Executive Chairman, LinkedIn
Hughes, Chris R., Co-founder, Facebook
Jacobs, Kenneth M., Chairman & CEO, Lazard
Johnson, James A., Vice Chairman, Perseus, LLC
Jordan, Jr., Vernon E., Senior Managing Director, Lazard Frères & Co. LLC
Keane, John M., Senior Partner, SCP Partners; General, US Army, Retired
Kissinger, Henry A., Chairman, Kissinger Associates, Inc.
Kleinfeld, Klaus, Chairman and CEO, Alcoa
Kravis, Henry R., Co-Chairman and co-CEO, Kohlberg Kravis, Roberts & Co.
Kravis, Marie-Josée, Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute, Inc.
Li, Cheng, Senior Fellow and Director of Research, John L. Thornton China Center, Brookings Institution
Mundie, Craig J., Chief Research and Strategy Officer, Microsoft Corporation
Orszag, Peter R., Vice Chairman, Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.
Perle, Richard N., Resident Fellow, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Rockefeller, David, Former Chairman, Chase Manhattan Bank
Rose, Charlie, Executive Editor and Anchor, Charlie Rose
Rubin, Robert E., Co-Chairman, Council on Foreign Relations; Former Secretary of the Treasury
Schmidt, Eric, Executive Chairman, Google Inc.
Steinberg, James B., Deputy Secretary of State
Thiel, Peter A., President, Clarium Capital Management, LLC
Varney, Christine A., Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust
Vaupel, James W., Founding Director, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research
Warsh, Kevin, Former Governor, Federal Reserve Board
Wolfensohn, James D., Chairman, Wolfensohn & Company, LLC

Come on now...if there's going to be a New World Order
I want to be in on it, don't you?
And besides, I think that it would be so much fun to have cocktails and chit-chat with the director of the NSA and the co-founder of Facebook.  I bet those guys can par-tay!

Instead of dealing with my buddies in the NWO
I've been busy making sure that the Beladora goods are out there on display

like this vintage watch chain being worn by Peter Facinelli at the MTV movie awards.

Naturally, I don't even know who Peter Facinelli is...
I heard a rumor that he's in some series called Twilight....whatever
But I am really liking how he rocks a 3 piece suit!

Happy Friday!

Man Style - Tom Brady From Hot To Not

What happened to Tom Brady, and I don't mean his quarterbacking which is better than ever.
I was watching his post game interview last night at the gym and couldn't concentrate on what he was saying because I had trouble recognizing him.

We used to have this look...the beautiful yet bad boy jock with the spurned girlfriend and illegitimate son

Who fell in love with a supermodel, got married and started a family

and seemed to have a rather normal domestic happy married life
with a new baby, maturity and thinning hair

But now what's with the long hair?
Has his Boston basic jock style become boring?
Has Giselle Brazillionized him?

Or has he just had the deep need to revert to his youth
before the responsibilities of being a husband, father and superstar quarterback weighed heavily on his life
Is the Justin Bieber hair just a manifestation of this?

I don't know, I'm just asking the question.

Wikileaks Celebrity TV Style

And who better than SNL to give Julian Assange his 15 minutes of fame
Happy Monday!
h/t the daily caller

Certain Celebrity Style or My Problem With Blogging

A long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away I worked in the financial services field for a division of an uber bank.  What was instilled into me at that firm through its rigorous training programs was to know what you are talking about, to have an opinion and to be able to back it up. As all of you know by now, I have an opinion. In fact I have lots of opinions and that's one of the reasons that I started this blog with a pseudonym.

But now, three years later I realize how careful I have to be about what I write here.  Conflicts of interests are always present.  There is what I need to do for business and what I really think.

Take for example my love hate relationships with fashion/style magazines.  There are some magazines that I enjoy reading, such as ELLE and others that are so syrupy in their celebrity sycophancy that they make me cringe. Yet cringing or not, I still want to see my product displayed in their glossy pages.
Like I said, conflict of interest.

Sometimes I seriously consider starting another blog, with an even more obscure pseudonym where I could voice my opinions more honestly.  If I had that blog I would probably write about the September issue of a highly popular fashion/style magazine which included an article about "celebrity designers".  The "celebrity designers" in this article were a middle aged pop star, who recently celebrated her 52nd birthday, and her 13 year old daughter with the name a Saint and the nickname of a demimonde.  According to the article her gal pal Stella McCartney solicits fashion feedback from her 13 year old child. Really Stella, is this the best that you can do?

Can anyone out there tell me what any 13 year old, precocious, entitled, spoiled, celebrity daughter or not, really has to say about fashion. In the back of my mind I'm thinking STFU about style, get out of your closet and go read a book or twenty.

But in our material world, because we are all material girls,
celebrities now make up our new Pantheon of Gods.
Everything we need to know we can learn from celebrity magazines...our new Oracle of Delphi
Isn't it enough already that we slather over them....and solicit their opinions on everything from environmental policy to international relations to economic strategy to fashion.
Do we have to bow down to their teenage daughters as well?

(Please note that in no way do I blame the child.  It's the mother pushing he child into the media spotlight that I find disturbing.)

Savvy Shopping - A Father's Day Suggestion For What Was The Sexiest Man Alive

Is this what happens to the Sexiest Man Alive after he signs on to raise a brood of 6 kids?

I think that Angelina needs spiff him up a bit by buying him this little black diamond wedding band for a Father's Day gift with a minute amount of her earnings from SALT.

Black Diamond Band Designed by Bez Ambar $2550 (retail $9,800)

Angelina, just gets better and better.

Perhaps she should have a few more kids.

It's All About US...Sort Of

Just showing you a little "look for less" love from US Magazine print edition.
The ring on the left side of the page,
the "less" look Sapphire and Diamond Ring in Platinum from Beladora
for a ridiculously low price of $3650
is shown as an alternative to Penelope Cruz's sapphire $40,000 sapphire and diamond ring.

Our thanks to Niki Ostin of PRlab

Wherever You Go - There You Are

Yesterday, a happy Sunday
Racing down the 405 freeway in the morning to get to Laguna Beach where the sky was blue and the tide was crazy high
Cafe creme and croissants at Jean Paul's bakery
Later lunch with an ocean view at the Coyote Grill
And then a quiet afternoon, sitting in the sun in my mother's spring garden

admiring her rosesand her blackberries

and her lavender

My mother had just returned from her vacation in Europe and she had a bunch of French magazines that she had bought for the flight home from Paris.

You know the usual Marie Claire, Vogue etc.

But in the group was a magazine that I had never seen before

Envy

with the tag line

Toutes Vos Envies Sont dans Envy

Sadly, it was frenchified version of OK or US magazine, complete with the usual celebrity nonsense....Kim Kardashian, Rachel Bilson, Victoria Beckham, Jessica Simpson, Beyonce, Jennifer Aniston,Tori Spelling, Lindsey Lohan, Jessica Alba...et al.

Kate Hudson & Cameron Diaz

La guerre est déclarée!
Belles et célibattantes: elles ont beaucoup en commun. Sûrement même un peu trop! Car depuis que Cameron sort avec l’ex de Kate, rien ne va plus...

So even France is polluted with B and C list American celebrities.

Wherever you to...there you are. You can't escape the cult of celebrity worship.

Sad, non?

Mariah Carey's Wedding Ring - Words Fail Me

When Mariah Carey and her husband Nick Cannon said "I do" to each other for the third time at their Beverly Hills home on Friday, Cannon, 29, presented his wife of two years with an unusual piece of bling: a huge, diamond- and sapphire-encrusted bauble designed to look like a high-end, thoroughly inedible version of the classic children's "ring pop" candy.

The ring is made of white gold, diamonds, and pink sapphires, and comes in a special box with a "spinner" so "you can see it sparkle under the lights inside," according to Jason Arasheben, the CEO of the Jason of Beverly Hills jewelery store where Nick purchased the ring. The spinner is another feature reminiscent of ring pop candy rings, some of which had spinners.Cannon reportedly proposed to Carey in 2008 with a real diamond hidden in a ring pop candy wrapper.

De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum

Around Town - The Los Angeles Antiques Show

Last night I was out and about with my fabulous client Sherry. Sherry is a major Beverly Hills party girl with a connoisseur's eye for fine estate jewelry. Basically she took me along as her chaperon, to keep her from getting into trouble with the all the bling and the boys at the opening night party at the Los Angeles Antiques Show.

The event was a super chic benefit to raise money for P.S. Arts which supports arts programs in the public school system.

P.S. Arts is supported primarily by the entertainment industry so no matter how impressive the antiques were, the people at the party were waaaay more gorgeous.

There was a nice celebrity turnout with Courtney Cox, Amber Valleta, Dita von Teese, Alexandra von Furstenberg, Marcia Cross, Lilly Collins and lots more.

Wire image has some photos.

(I was introduced to Lilly Collins last night by her mother Jill who I know through VRG and BHWC and I thought to myself what a lovely young girl. I had no idea that she played the role of the daughter in 'The Blind Side". If you haven't seen "The Blind Side" netflix it.)

SJP - Obviously Needs More Time At The Gym

Now if SJP just added an additional two hours a day to her daily two hour gym routine

she could look more like Madonna