The recession has not been good, relatively speaking, to Julie Macklowe. First, her father-in-law lost a ton of money and buildings. Then she got laid off from her job at Steve Cohen’s Sigma Capital Management. And now her friends are being kind of underminey about her efforts to start her own hedge fund, because she only has $250 million. Says fellow wealth manager and socialite Alexandra Lebenthal:
“While $250 million seems like an enormous amount of money, to a hedge fund it’s nothing. They spend that on lunch. Successful hedge funds are measured in billions of dollars, so $250 million is just not considered that significant.”
Ouch. And it’s not like Julie can go cry on the shoulders of the other “benefit-attending wives” on the circuit, since, according to the Observer, she “is not particularly popular” among them. Therefore, Julie is forced to escape into a world of her own making. A world of fashions. “You see all these amazing things on the runway, and very few people have the guts to wear them,” she says. Or the money. But Julie has both! Here, a slideshow of some of her gutsiest ensembles, for better or worse.
