Blonde Ambition

by Annette Sharp

  Whereas in the past, luxury car dealers had traditionally openly promoted their associations with celebrities, car marketers had in recent times adopted more subversive strategies. #Jeep, #Range-Rover and #Audi worked effectively with the Instagram generation, as too did stars being routinely photographed by paparazzi behind the wheels of their cars. This subtle undisclosed car association was what constituted the modern car ambassadorship.

  Roxy posted photographs of her Bentley to Instagram—including one of her diamond- and Rolex-clad hand on her Bentley dashboard logo. Those suspecting a promotional tie-up with Bentley would become convinced of it after Roxy name-dropped the Bentley in a stinging email that was leaked to the press in July 2014. An incensed Roxy would take issue with former fashion publicist Sarah Stavrow, now boss of Sydney’s The Fashion Institute, a private education facility offering diplomas in fashion PR, after Stavrow told a member of Roxy’s staff she thought $2000 was an excessive sum to spend on an event. It hardly seemed an outrageous comment to make.

  An angry email from Roxy to Stavrow would make the pages of The Daily Telegraph: ‘We don’t work with people who gossip and at the same time big note themselves about how my business is or isn’t run. I certainly don’t need your business nor budgets of a ‘hefty’ $2000.00 believe me! Really that wouldn’t even cover a service of my Bentley!!!’ she blasted.

  When contacted by the newspaper for comment, Stavrow responded: ‘It’s a shame that a conversation in which I said that you and I have different business structures and styles has been blown up.’

  Roxy countered that Stavrow was in need of a ‘few lessons … on having a level of decorum’.

  By 2015, the immaculately serviced Bentley would be housed at Roxy’s new address, a glamorous beachfront apartment on North Bondi’s glamour strip. After announcing to the media her plans to buy ‘residential’ following the sale of her Edward Street, Woollahra home for $8.15 million at the end of 2014, Roxy would defy her own nature and rent.

  Her new 3-bedroom apartment was in the exclusive Coast building, completed by Priscilla, Queen of the Desert film-producer-turned-property-developer Rebel Penfold-Russell. The development on Ramsgate Avenue had been garnering rave reviews from property writers, architects and Bondi’s view-obsessed citizens alike for its pristine lines and natural marble and timber fit-out—something most agreed was tastefully in harmony with the coastline.

  Doreen Davis had become a tenant in the building before her daughter. In choosing the spectacular apartment on the rarely developed Ben Buckler Point, her own exceptional taste was on show. The new apartments were on the market for upwards of $5.5 million each. So glamorous were they that, in 2016, an actual Hollywood star, actor Hugh Jackman and his wife Deborra-Lee Furness, snapped up one of the penthouses for $5.9 million.

  With Curtis facing jail, it suited Roxy to have her mother close at hand to help care for Pixie and Hunter. Since the closure of Capitol Clothing, Roxy had also installed her mother at her Sweaty Betty offices where she worked for Roxy as her office administrator and, later, manager of special projects. With younger sister Ruby in the United States, Roxy and her mother had grown closer.

  The whisper in eastern suburbs finance circles was that Roxy and her husband negotiated to pay the rent on their apartment in advance. As the Supreme Court had heard, Curtis and his insider trading co-conspirator John Hartman paid their Notts Avenue landlord a year’s rent—$156 000 at $3000 a week—up-front in cash. Curtis and Roxy negotiated to do the same at Coast, the couple agreeing on the princely sum of $2600 a week and handing over approximately $135 000 to their landlords for the year.

  Roxy and Curtis had no joint bank accounts and no property in common.

  ‘Oli and I do not have any joint financial interests. We do not have any joint bank accounts. We have previously jointly owned a home together … however this was sold,’ she wrote to the court.

  Her parents’ unresolved divorce settlement, coupled with her husband’s frozen bank accounts, had surely brought Roxy’s own financial situation into sharp focus. Curtis was still adding up the costs of his criminal act. Without ever admitting guilt in the insider trading case, he had repaid $1.43 million to the Australian Federal Police, but the costs to the investment adviser were still mounting up. In addition to the $1 million spent on his legal defence, Curtis would forfeit his annual salary at Riverstone Advisory during his year in jail. The reputational damage was inestimable. Without her husband’s rumoured $9000-a-week salary, Roxy would feel the pinch. She acknowledged this, telling the court that although she could support her family while her husband was in jail, her ‘ability to provide … would be severely impacted’ if she were unable to maintain her regular long working hours.

  At the start of 2016, Roxy had three businesses. The recently consolidated Sweaty Betty PR agency, her new blogger’s talent bureau The Ministry of Talent and Pixie’s Bows. The first two she had bullishly valued at $10 million and $3 million each—valuations that had left industry veterans scratching their heads.

  Others who crunched the numbers said few PR businesses in the country were worth $13 million in the present climate. And no matter how many times Roxy’s rivals ran the numbers on The Ministry of Talent, they simply couldn’t see evidence it was turning huge profits.

  A staff member who worked at Ministry would claim in 2015 the blogger’s bureau was averaging about $4000 a week in business—which over a year would accrue to $208 000, but after staff salaries and the rent on Sweaty Betty’s new Double Bay headquarters was paid, would be much reduced. This was nowhere near the $11 500 a day the business would need to earn for it to be valued at $3 million.

  Similarly, rivals had taken a measuring stick to the boast that Sweaty Betty was a $10-million business. Without real estate attached to the business, the company would need to be taking around $800 000 a month. With Roxy’s known client list featuring budget brands like Avon, Napoleon Perdis, Harris Scarfe, Katies, Witchery, Donut Time and Cotton On, accounts said to be worth no more than $3000 per month, speculators found there would be a major shortfall.

  No-one knew what Pixie’s Bows was making, but it seemed to be doing well. That money, Roxy said, was being held for Pixie.

  She had only one property, the new commercial development in Paddington she had bought for $2.66 million. She also had half of the proceeds from the sale of the couple’s $8.15 million Edward Street home—minus the mortgage which had been repaid to Macquarie Bank—and her savings. Her ability to be self-sufficient was impressive and no-one doubted she had the means to survive Curtis’s jailing. Her plans for the Paddington development—which was rumoured to be being developed into four villas—might hint at her strategy for survival and also her ambitions to be become a property developer.

  There would also be royalties from her three books—which she promoted relentlessly—and the income generated by her public relations seminars—an annual event which had the potential to put $100 000 in her pocket with each seminar.

  While Curtis would learn to survive on just $100 a week in jail, Roxy would, to a lesser extent, also tighten her belt. She had always been a keen recycler.

  Over the years she had routinely turned her parents’ automotive gifts over—replacing the Audi with the Mercedes, and the Mercedes with the Porsche, and so on—selling each car to finance the next vehicle. Capitalising on her passion for sales, she had learned to do the same with fashion.

  In younger years, Roxy had happily resold her clothing at a market stall in Surry Hills. In 2014, she rediscovered this delight when she held a ‘garage sale’ at the Beaconsfield office she was vacating and off-loaded designer-label clothing belonging to her children and herself. ‘It’s jam-packed with items that no longer fit Pixie and Hunter as well as women’s wear from brands like Burberry, Gucci, Fendi, Tartin et Chocolat, Balmain and Isabel Marant,’ she posted to social media.

  In 2015, she would repeat the process on Instagram on her new private account @roxyjacenkosale.


  Roxy said she wasn’t motivated by financial troubles. ‘There’s nothing sinister behind it,’ she told Business Insider Australia of her plan to sell accessories including a $10 000 Chanel watch, Louboutin heels for $1500, a $12 000 Hermès Birkin handbag and $650 baby ski suit that had once belonged to Pixie. ‘I used to go to the markets near Crown Street [in Surry Hills] … but with Instagram you don’t need to do that.’

  Roxy had upwards of seventy-nine lots posted in her 2015 sale: ‘I put something up and in three minutes there are 20 requests. It’s addictive … it’s fun, it’s a no brainer,’ she said. ‘And if I’m not wearing it, why not? Normally it just hangs in the cupboard.’

  Society legend had it that it was her love of trading—even buying preloved treasures—that had led her to her first Birkin handbag. Roxy’s first two Birkins were rumoured to have once belonged to Hermès managing director Karin Upton Baker, former custodian of one of Sydney’s most opulent custom-designed boutique-sized wardrobes.

  Upton Baker, a former editor of Harper’s Bazaar, had run into financial problems in 2009 after her husband, the property developer Gary Baker, mortgaged the couple’s luxurious 3-storey $20 million Elizabeth Bay penthouse apartment to borrow money for the development of a block of apartments at Bondi Beach. Baker’s development plans collapsed after he failed in his quest to buy all eight apartments in the block. With only six—and a $12.2 million hole in his bank account—his plans were stymied. The property, at 6 Notts Avenue, was only three doors from the stylish apartment Curtis and Hartman were renting in 2008 with their insider trading proceeds.

  By 2011, Baker was bankrupt and selling off his fleet of luxury cars. His wife, who was regarded as one of Sydney’s best-dressed women at the time and was known for her gala event appearances in diamonds and furs, was facing a day at the Supreme Court over an unpaid $18 million mortgage on the couple’s 4-bedroom, 5-bathroom home.

  At the eleventh hour she struck an out-of-court settlement that would result in the Bakers selling their lavish home complete with rooftop garden, lap pool, billiards room, Roman-style bathhouse and fleet parking. Upton Baker’s financial predicament would see some of her cherished wardrobe pieces sold off along with her husband’s cars. Her prized Hermès Birkin handbags would be among lots discreetly sold off.

  Roxy liked to tell people the wonderful thing about Birkin bags was that they appreciated in value. ‘If you buy one for, let’s say $12 000, you can easily sell it for 14 or 15. Because they’re so hard to get, people will pay any amount of money to have one,’ she told Fairfax Media in 2013.

  The secret of whether she paid more for her treasures than had Upton Baker, would surely one day die with the Hermès MD.

  While Roxy never understood her privacy paradox—the contradiction of her complaining about a lack of privacy while simultaneously sharing her life with more than 100 000 followers on social media—her staff did. They had seen firsthand the lengths to which their boss would go to protect her public image as a businesswoman. Roxy may have wanted to emulate the American publicist and reality TV star Kelly Cutrone publicly, but privately she was deeply suspicious of people getting too close and betraying her.

  It was how her staff explained the regular turnover of Roxy’s senior managers. Once someone had become very close to Roxy, they sensed their days were numbered. One employee who had basked in Roxy’s love for years said there was a point at which she could see Roxy’s love run dry:

  I was told it would happen. It almost always did. She just started to turn. Nothing happened to prompt it. One day she started to take my clients away from me—possibly she thought I had grown too close to them. I honestly couldn’t tell you why it happened, but I’d been forewarned so I decided to resign.

  The departure of a senior staffer always made Roxy nervous. She didn’t want outsiders knowing what went on within the confines of her business. Lawyers helped with this. Having seen her parents dispatch lawyers during decades in business—in their battles with the council, with neighbours, and each other—and witnessing her husband sunk deep in his own legal maelstrom, Roxy had developed great faith in the legal system. She believed you could see off most people problems with a lawyer. You could also shut down talk that might not be in your best interests emanating from refugee Bettys.

  While most Bettys held their tongue when they’d been sacked, others beaten down by Roxy’s methods would feel compelled to speak to the media. Sara Hills endured public shaming for four years after being dismissed by Roxy in 2010. After marrying the Olympic swimmer Geoff Huegill, the new Mrs Huegill would address leaked rumours she had been sacked by Roxy after failing to consult her boss when sending $850 of unauthorised sample product off to an athlete friend, Matt Abood.

  ‘I am aware of these rumours and equally aware of the tactics employed by some unscrupulous industry participants to undermine potential competitors,’ she told the MailOnline in 2014.

  It was well known at the time that Ms Jacenko was actively looking to terminate my employment for reasons mostly unrelated to performance. In the end, the basis of my termination from Sweaty Betty PR was that I had not sought express authorisation from Ms Jacenko to distribute samples of client product to a third-party despite the distribution of client product to potential third-party endorsers being something the industry survives on and something Sweaty Betty PR did every single day.

  While some Bettys had taken Roxy to the Fair Work Commission—and won—others would have the last laugh by dating and marrying Roxy’s ex-loves. Natasha Tzaneros had worked for Roxy and fallen foul of the PR doyenne when she started a relationship with the ‘great love’ who got away, Nabil Gazal. Tzaneros would leave and then marry Adam Abrams, another of Roxy’s former beaus.

  Media covering Roxy’s life would often summarily be threatened with legal action. In 2010, she took issue with The Sydney Morning Herald mentioning her failure to appear at Downing Centre Local Court after being charged with failing to reverse a vehicle safely and not giving her particulars to the other driver after she allegedly crashed into a car in September 2009.

  In 2013, she had her lawyers send letters threatening legal action for defamation to the Herald and other media outlets after they sought to publish the infamous ‘Miss Karma’ letter. Over the course of years, she had threatened News Corp, A Current Affair and many media organisations.

  There were plenty of domestic matters too that prompted her to pick up a phone to lawyers. She of course threatened legal action over the doctored photos of her baby. She even threatened her husband’s ex-fiancée, Hermione Underwood, over the unpaid parking tickets.

  These instances didn’t surprise people who knew Roxy. What did surprise them were the legal threats she made to clients after they complained when their sample product went missing, or when they informed her she hadn’t fulfilled her brief and were quitting Sweaty Betty and taking their business elsewhere. Being a natural fighter, Roxy would hire lawyers to fight these matters too—though any wins were destined to be less sweet as clients left regardless, and Roxy’s legal bills only compounded the losses.

  CHAPTER 10

  Under the Velvet Rope

  It is not how I pictured my life and … not what I would have wanted it to be

  Roxy

  IF ROXY’S RIVALS needed proof she was the most famous PR boss in the country, it arrived eight weeks after Curtis was jailed on 21 August when the Nine Network’s flagship current affairs program, 60 Minutes, devoted most of its show to her.

  60 Minutes had had a difficult year following the detention of three crew members and star reporter Tara Brown in Lebanon after a bungled child recovery story. The program’s ratings were down on former glory years and producers were looking for a sizzling story to deliver them ratings. Roxy, they hoped, would tick that box, and did. The program was watched by an audience of 928 000 nationally—not the highest rating program of the year, which topped the million mark, but well above the lowest of the year to date, which was 641 000.

/>   Interviewer Allison Langdon recapped for the nation Roxy’s ‘baffling’ backstory. She was introduced as the reality TV star, convicted insider trader’s wife, mother of an Insta-famous preschooler and powerhouse publicist who was ‘in her darkest hour’. In the opening three minutes of the interview, Roxy—dressed in a zip-front seventies-inspired Louis Vuitton frock paired with her favourite black Azzedine Alaïa ankle-strap shoes—would drop the f-bomb and tell Langdon she found it infuriating that some believed the luxury lifestyle she documented on social media had been bought with the proceeds of her husband’s insider trading.

  ‘It’s very, very aggravating,’ she said, choosing her words. Roxy didn’t like the word ‘stressful’, she once said, and preferred to use the word ‘aggravated’.

  Roxy had good cause to feel ‘aggravated’. She had been labelled ‘a fake and a liar’, Langdon’s voice-over explained, after being diagnosed with breast cancer—a development revealed on page one of The Daily Telegraph on 13 July, three weeks after Curtis was sent to jail on 24 June. ‘The timing is extraordinary,’ Roxy admitted to the newspaper’s Briana Domjen.

  The PR boss said the past three weeks had been ‘the most shocking’ she had known. As Roxy would tell 60 Minutes on 21 August, and Woman’s Day and KIIS FM radio on 22 August—mere weeks after 7 July, the date she attached to her cancer detection—she discovered the cyst while removing a spray tan. In need of a second opinion, she enlisted 4-year-old Pixie, her ‘best friend’, to come and feel the area. Pixie confirmed the lump in her left breast with a ‘Eugggh mum!’

  ‘I’m tough but I’m also probably broken into a million pieces of glass on the inside,’ Roxy told Langdon, confirming she was scheduled for five weeks of radiation treatment after a lumpectomy. Chemotherapy would depend on the biopsy results.