Henley
Royal Regatta 2025
Tuesday,
1 July - Sunday, 6 July
Tickets
on Sale Now!
Henley
Royal Regatta is undoubtedly the best-known regatta in the world, and a
highlight of both the summer sporting calendar and the social season.
The
Regatta attracts thousands of visitors over the week, and spectators are
thrilled by over 400 races of an international standard, which can include
Olympic rowers, as well as crews new to the event.
Opinion
Guest Essay
The
Bezos-Sánchez Wedding and the Triumph of Tacky
June 25,
2025, 1:00 a.m. ET
By Amy Odell
Ms. Odell is
the author of “Anna: The Biography.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/25/opinion/jeff-bezos-lauren-sanchez-wedding.html
Some of the
world’s richest people are gathering for the wedding of Jeff Bezos, the world’s
third-richest man, in one of the world’s most touristy cities, Venice, and it’s
easy to ask: What happened to understatement and restraint? In the run-up to
the wedding, Mr. Bezos was photographed by paparazzi on the deck of his yacht
with his intended, Lauren Sánchez, both in their swimsuits, frolicking in foam
like a couple of college kids on spring break. Meanwhile, missiles and bombs
have been falling just a few time zones away,
Not so long
ago, members of high society were fixated on trying to low-key their way out of
the perils of income inequality. Minimalism and quiet luxury were in vogue. But
in the wake of President Trump’s second election, it’s the luxe life at full
volume. He gilded the White House, turning it into a Rococo Liberace lair.
Swaggy and braggy have replaced stealth wealth. Flaunting it is in. For women,
that means sequins, diamonds, tight silhouettes and big hair. TikTok’s latest
star, Becca Bloom, has drawn millions of fans by regularly sharing videos of
her lavish jewelry and Hermès shopping hauls. Even the bandage dress is
trending again. The breast implant business just keeps getting bigger and is
expected to reach $4.6 billion by 2030, up from nearly $3 billion in 2024.
For men, it
means a hypermasculine look: muscles and slicked-back hair; tight, tailored
suits with big Windsor knots.
And now
there are the Bezos-Sánchez nuptials, the most internationally notable
ruling-class wedding since the Ambani-Merchant union last year in India. It’s
already drawn protesters determined to make Venice the city “that did not bend
to oligarchs.” (The couple had to move their main reception to a new location
to avoid activists who threatened to fill the canals with inflatable
crocodiles.) Since news of Mr. Bezos and Ms. Sánchez’s relationship broke in a
tabloid scandal in early 2019, Ms. Sánchez has become an object of public
fascination, her every movement parsed by tabloids and gossipmongers. With this
much attention, she’s become one of the most visible women on (or off, as it
may be) the planet, and therefore a significant fashion influencer.
Her fiancé,
who shed his nerdy image and baggy office clothes for a personal-trained body,
tight polo shirts and aviators, has already been anointed an unlikely style
icon. Like the MAGA bros who favor traditional suiting and clean-shaven faces,
his athleisure emphasizes his power, not cutting-edge fashion sense.
Ms. Sánchez,
too, dresses to emphasize her clout. She’s long preferred belts with
noticeable-from-a-distance hardware, embellished dresses, stiletto heels,
low-cut necklines, high-cut hemlines and big jewelry. Her engagement ring is
thought to be in the vicinity of 30 carats and cost somewhere between $3
million and $5 million, but it was easily dwarfed by the diamond-encrusted
choker she wore to a gala in Cannes recently, with a stone that looked to be
the size of a bike reflector. There was nothing low-key about her recent
flaunty Paris bachelorette party, which was attended by stars such as Kim
Kardashian and Kris Jenner, and included a visit to the Hermès store with
executives from the brand.
The luxury
industry — which faces its first slowdown in 15 years, according to a recent
study — has economic interest in embracing Ms. Sánchez, who represents the
wealthy Very Important Clients who make up 2 percent of luxury customers and 40
percent of sales. “The customer driving global luxury is quite tacky in a lot
of cases, and no one really admits it,” an anonymous fashion investor told The
Cut for a 2024 article about this crucial group of shoppers. V.I.C.s are always
looking for a reason to get decked out in their designer finest, social norms
and sensitivities be damned, and Ms. Sánchez seems to embody the idea that if
you’re rich enough, you may as well.
What has
fascinated the public about Ms. Sánchez, like any number of women who personify
a certain period, is how she puts herself together. Seemingly unafraid to flout
sartorial norms, she attended a state dinner at the White House in 2024 wearing
a gown with a sheer lace corseted bodice, causing People to wonder if the dress
broke “White House protocol.” She later attended Mr. Trump’s inauguration with
what looked like lingerie peeking out of her white blazer, leaving a Vogue
headline to note that she “forgoes inauguration style codes.” She never
conformed to the look of oversized minimalism popularized in the 2010s by the
designer Phoebe Philo for Celine, still revered by elite crowds that live in
places like Manhattan and Montecito, Calif., and fancy themselves practitioners
of good taste.
Ms.
Sánchez’s journey from the tabloids to the pages of Vogue, which did a splashy
feature on her in its December 2023 issue, has fascinated and repelled
onlookers, the same way Ms. Kardashian’s entree to the magazine — and therefore
to the fashion world — did when she landed on its cover for the first time in
April 2014, pegged to her marriage to Kanye West. Ms. Kardashian had been a
tabloid star for many years, but until that point, Vogue hadn’t been featuring
her much.
After the
cover dropped, people threatened to cancel their subscriptions. But it was a
provocation worth making, Vogue’s editor in chief, Anna Wintour, later said. “I
was told that it was trashy, that it was beneath us, what was Vogue coming to?”
she recalled. “We were trying to respond to what we saw — a couple being [an]
undeniable force in our culture, and they were part of the conversation at that
time.” The same could be said about Ms. Sánchez and Mr. Bezos now.
Unsurprisingly, Vogue has reportedly been talking with the couple about an
exclusive.
Ms. Sánchez
recalls another unlikely Vogue subject: Ivana Trump. Ms. Wintour gave her a
cover in 1990, shortly before her divorce from Mr. Trump, after worrying, as I
reported in a biography of Ms. Wintour, that she was “too tacky.” Around the
time the cover came out, Ms. Trump was criticized for “dressing like a
Christmas tree.” The issue’s newsstand sales of 750,000 copies easily justified
Ms. Wintour’s decision.
As much as
those with more understated taste might turn up their noses at the crassness of
the Bezos-Sánchez wedding’s display, tacky is very clearly carrying the day.
Maybe hating on tacky oligarchs is itself just elitist. It’s doubtful anyone
attending the wedding cares very much what those of us who weren’t invited
think, anyway.
Amy Odell is
the author of the Back Row newsletter and “Anna: The Biography” and a
forthcoming biography of Gwyneth Paltrow.
Downton
Abbey: The Grand Finale is an upcoming historical drama film directed by Simon
Curtis from a screenplay by Julian Fellowes. It is the sequel to Downton Abbey:
A New Era (2022) and the third and final film in the Downton Abbey franchise.
Many of the original franchise's cast members, who also appeared in the
previous two films, will return. Paul Giamatti and Dominic West reprise their
roles as Harold Levinson from the television series and Guy Dexter from the
previous film, respectively, while Joely Richardson, Alessandro Nivola, Simon
Russell Beale and Arty Froushan join the cast.
Imelda
Staunton, who portrays Maud, stated in March 2024 that a third and final film
in the Downton Abbey franchise was being planned, with the main cast set to
return. Following the announcement of several cast members reprising their
roles in May, filming took place that month and concluded in August. The
official title was announced in March 2025. A teaser trailer was released in
June 2025.
Downton
Abbey: The Grand Finale is scheduled to be released by Focus Features on 12
September 2025.
The
Monster of Harrods: Al-Fayed and the secret, shameful history of a British
institution Hardcover – September 23, 2025
by Alison
Kervin (Author)
‘Sensational
new book’ – MAIL ON SUNDAY
‘Bombshell
book’ – THE SUN
‘Tell-all
book’ – MAIL ON SUNDAY
'Explosive
new book' – DAILY MAIL
AN
UNFLINCHING EXPOSÉ OF MOHAMED AL-FAYED'S 25-YEAR REIGN OF TERROR AT HARRODS
DECADES
OF ABUSE.
DOZENS OF
VICTIMS.
NO
CONSEQUENCES.
To the
public, he was the eccentric owner of one of the world’s great department
stores. But behind closed doors, Al-Fayed ruled with cruelty, humiliation and
unchecked abuse.
Why were
his crimes ignored?
Why did
those in power look the other way?
This
explosive investigation lays bare the power, corruption and complicity at the
heart of an iconic British institution.
Drawing
on firsthand interviews with former staff, allies, executives and police
officers, The Monster of Harrods exposes chilling accounts of misconduct, many
revealed here for the first time. Through court records, testimonies and
unpublished material, the book uncovers:
The
irreparable damage to victims’ lives
The NDAs,
threats and systemic failures that kept them silent
The
staggering indifference of those who knew but did nothing
This
isn’t just about one man’s abuse of power – it’s about the culture that enabled
him. The Monster of Harrods presents damning new evidence, and asks urgent
questions of the people and institutions who stood by.
Ultimately,
this is a book about courage – the courage of the survivors who have stepped
forward to reclaim their narratives from a man who tried to reduce them to
objects. Their testimony stands as both an indictment of the past and a warning
for the future.
Their
bravery demands nothing less than our complete attention.
'The
extraordinary courage of these survivors, who, despite everything, were willing
to relive their trauma in hope of finally being heard, should not be
underestimated. Many have waited decades for acknowledgement, carrying their
wounds in silence while their abuser was celebrated.'
French
furniture expert and restorer guilty of fake 18th-century chair scam
Bill Pallot
and Bruno Desnoues claimed chairs had adorned rooms of Marie Antoinette, in
multimillion-euro con
Angelique
Chrisafis in Paris
Wed 11 Jun
2025 15.49 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/11/french-furniture-expert-restorer-fake-chair-scam
A French
furniture expert and a renowned restorer have been found guilty of conning the
art world with a multimillion-euro scam in which they faked 18th-century chairs
they claimed had adorned the rooms of historic figures including Marie
Antoinette.
In one of
the biggest forgery scandals to hit the French art world for decades, the two
men duped not just wealthy collectors including a Qatari prince but also the
Palace of Versailles.
The chateau,
which before the French Revolution was home to Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette,
spent more than €1.5m (£1.3m) acquiring six royal chairs that were fakes. The
case was seen as extremely damaging to France’s reputation as a world centre
for heritage and museum collections. After the police investigation began, in
2016 the ministry of culture ordered an audit of Versailles’s acquisitions
policy.
Bill Pallot,
61, who was known as the world’s leading expert on 18th-century royal French
furniture, wrote the definitive book about seats of that era and was nicknamed
Père La Chaise. On Wednesday he was given a four-year suspended prison sentence
and a €200,000 fine. He was also sentenced to four months in prison, which he
had already served on remand after his arrest.
The judges
ruled that between 2008 and 2015, Pallot was behind the scam in which he and
one of France’s most acclaimed woodcarvers and restorers, Bruno Desnoues,
produced what the court in Pontoise heard were “extraordinarily convincing”
fake 18th-century chairs.
The court
was told that the scheme began as a bet between Pallot and Desnoues to see who
could be duped by fake seats. Pallot told the trial: “We said we’d do it as a
game, to see if the art market noticed or not.”
The men used
old wooden frames of real 18th-century chairs as a base so that the dating of
the wood could be authentic, but the trial was told that everything about the
chairs was fake. Soon, through some of Paris’s top galleries and auction
houses, the chairs were selling for hundreds of thousands of euros each to
wealthy collectors including a Qatari prince. The scam is estimated to have
caused €4.5m in damages.
Desnoues had
previously worked as a restorer of furniture for the Château de Versailles,
where he had once been commissioned for a restoration of Louis XVI’s bed. He
told the court: “I’m into work and sculpture. I’ve never been passionate about
money.”
During the
investigation, Desnoues’s wife described the antiques world her husband worked
in as “a detestable environment where antique dealers want to make money at any
cost”. Desnoues was given a three-year suspended prison sentence and a €100,000
fine. He was also given a four-month prison sentence, which he had already
served on remand.
The scam was
discovered in 2014 when tax authorities noticed suspicious financial and
property transactions for large sums being made by a couple outside Paris who
had a relatively low income. A money-laundering investigation led police to
find a link to Desnoues and what became known in France as the “fake chair”
scam. The investigation took nine years.
Laurent
Kraemer, an art and antiques dealer at the prestigious Kraemer Gallery, who
sold four of the chairs, told the court he and his team were “100% convinced,
without a doubt, that these were authentic chairs”. His gallery was acquitted
of charges of negligence.
Several
experts told the court that the fraud was “blatant” and could have been spotted
if the fakes had been compared with real chairs at Versailles. One expert said
anomalies in the chairs were visible to the naked eye, notably the absence of
signs that the wood had retracted with time.
Pallot told
the court: “It’s said there is no such thing as the perfect crime. There’s no
such thing as a perfect fake either. We could have done better. We’re not good
forgers. We didn’t make the wood retract.”
‘Everything
was fake but the money’: forgers in Versailles chair scandal await sentencing
Antiques
dealer Bill Pallot and accomplice Bruno Desnoues sold €3.7m worth of
counterfeit royal furniture
Vincent Noce
5 May 2025
Bill Pallot
has said that the scam started in 2007 as “a joke” to see if he could dupe
antiques experts Baptiste Giroudon/
It has been
almost a decade since the Parisian antiques dealer Bill Pallot stunned the art
world by confessing to faking a series of royal chairs. According to the case,
filed in 2016, 11 chairs and armchairs, presented as commissioned by relatives
of Louis XV and Louis XVI, were sold for a total of €3.7m through Parisian
galleries and Sotheby’s to the Château of Versailles as well as private
collectors including Prince Hamad Al Thani of Qatar and an heir to the Hermès
family. The ensuing investigation uncovered huge profits, off-shore companies
in Panama, Swiss bank accounts, hidden sums in cash and forged provenances—and
has shed light on the dark face of the antique furniture market.
In March,
Pallot, who was the expert of the Galerie Didier Aaron, faced trial for
commercial fraud, along with a carpenter and restorer, Bruno Desnoues, who
admitted to fabricating the forgeries. The prosecutor asked for three years of
prison time, including a two-year suspended sentence for Pallot, and two years,
with a one year suspended sentence, for Desnoues. Both could be banned from
their trade for five years. Their verdicts are expected on 11 June.
If the court
of Pontoise, near Versailles, follows the submissions then neither of the
accused, who spent five months in pre-trial detention, would go back to prison.
The prosecutor has asked for heavy fines: €300,000 for Pallot and €100,000 for
Desnoues, plus the confiscation of €200,000 found in cash in his bank safe.
Pallot also risks the seizure of his Paris apartment on Avenue Marceau, valued
at more than €1.5m. He has already had to sell around 900 objects from his
eclectic collection at auction to cover a €1.8m fiscal adjustment.
But the
heaviest fine—€700,000—was requested for the prestigious Galerie Kraemer, which
sold four of the fake seats. In one case, the gallery sold to Prince Al Thani a
pair of chairs for €2m, which it had purchased for €200,000; the collector was
refunded. Supposedly commissioned by Queen Marie Antoinette, the pair had been
classified by the French state as a “national treasure”, at the request of the
Château de Versailles, which had considered buying them. The prosecutor asked
for a one-year suspended prison sentence against Laurent Kraemer for
“negligence” in his expertise and the making of false provenances.
Kraemer, who
is also charged in another procedure for a series of allegedly fake Louis XIV
furniture, said he was convinced that the seats sold by his company were
genuine. “He is a victim of the fraud, not an accomplice,” his lawyer Martin
Reynaud stated, insisting that he never had direct contact with the forgers,
who were hiding behind a middleman, Guillaume Dillée. A close friend of Pallot,
this expert fled to Australia and was not summoned in court, nor was Sotheby’s
expert Patrick Leperlier.
The scam was
discovered when a delivery driver was arrested after his investment of more
than €1m in real estate in France and Portugal was flagged by the authorities.
He confessed to acting as a middleman for Desnoues, who, when pressed to
explain his hidden incomes, confessed to the forgeries.
Pallot was
the world’s leading specialist of royal seats, and in charge of antique
furniture at the Galerie Didier Aaron. He was a distinguished professor at the
École du Louvre and the Sorbonne and a scholar who curators would question if
they had a doubts about a royal armchair. “I was the head and Desnoues was the
hands,” he told the court. Desnoues was the main restorer of Versailles
furniture and was even invited to make a copy of Louis XVI’s bed for the royal
apartment.
There is
no way the curators could have guessed such diabolic forgeries
Corinne
Hershkovitch, lawyer
Pallot told
the court that their scam started in 2007 as “a joke”, a challenge to see if
they could dupe the best experts. “It went like a breeze,” he said, adding:
“Everything was fake but the money.” As the seats were mostly sold through his
middleman, he claimed he personally never “intended to cheat the palace of
Versailles”. However, Corinne Hershkovitch, the lawyer for Versailles, accused
him of having “trapped the château by making seats which were missing in the
royal apartments”. She tells The Art Newspaper: “There was no way the curators
could have guessed such diabolic forgeries made by these brilliant experts, who
were at the top of their trade.”
