My apologies for the Saturday email. This was supposed to land in your inbox yesterday, but I have had a very busy week. So my East Coast readers will have to forgive me and enjoy this with their morning coffee, my London readers can read it over a late, leisurely lunch, and my Los Angeles readers can decide whether this is bedtime reading after a rave or something to scroll through on the way to Pilates. A broad church, this newsletter. (And before anyone gets nervous, RPS will continue to arrive Monday, Wednesday and Friday, as God and my editorial calendar intended.)
We’re in London today. More precisely, Ham, the very leafy pocket of southwest London between Richmond Park and the Thames, where one of the city’s more extraordinary private houses has been looking for a new owner.
Ormeley Lodge was the longtime home of Lady Annabel Goldsmith, the society grande dame and namesake of Annabel’s, the Mayfair club her first husband, Mark Birley, opened in 1963. She was also the matriarch of one of Britain’s more complicated and interesting dynasties, including Robin Birley, who now owns 5 Hertford Street, Oswald’s and Maxime’s on New York’s Upper East Side. After Lady Annabel died last year, the family put Ormeley Lodge on the market for £25 million.
To call the house special is an understatement. The Grade II*-listed Queen Anne manor sits on 2.3 acres, surrounded on three sides by Ham Common, with Richmond Park beyond it. Architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner called the house “exquisite.” But something interesting has happened since the house went up for sale in July, and it has less to do with the house than with what is happening to the market for extremely expensive homes in Britain right now.
And in today’s letter, we’ll also be talking about: Gemini’s very strange FTX marketing strategy, a $1 million stainless-steel watch, how rich parents tell their children they’re rich, why Kirkland & Ellis is done talking about its profits, Silicon Valley’s $18,000 flirting conference, the Zara heiress almost no one knows, Jeff Bezos back at No. 2, Switzerland’s $94,000 chocolate suitcase, and the Goldman Sachs succession game now spreading several jobs down. All after the jump.
TODAY: I wanted to share something else for any New York City-based subscribers with kids. If you don’t have plans today, can I recommend taking them to the free Art Sundae workshop with Kenny Scharf at Rockefeller Center? And yes, Scharf himself will actually be there. It runs today from 10 a.m.-12p.m on the South Plaza outside 10 Rockefeller Plaza, is free and open to all ages, and you can register through Art Production Fund (or just show up!). Kids will paint Scharf-inspired planters that will later become part of a public installation. If you miss today, Art Sundae returns October 17, 24 and 31, although Scharf is only scheduled to appear today.
I went to the opening yesterday of his Rockefeller Center takeover, Scary and the Dancers!, presented by Art Production Fund. There is a 34-foot-tall orange-and-blue inflatable creature, six giant dancing sculptures, more than 100 Scharf-designed flags and a version of his Cosmic Cavern. It’s his largest sculptural commission to date and runs through November 1. For anyone who needs a refresher, Scharf came out of New York’s downtown art scene in the 1980s alongside Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. His Pop Surrealist work mixes cartoons, science fiction and popular culture, and he was included in the 1985 Whitney Biennial. So your child can spend a Saturday morning making art with someone who was there for one of the most mythologized periods in New York art history, for free. Hard to beat that.
