Lynn Tilton, the CEO of $7 billion private-equity firm Patriarch Partners, “isn’t exactly your average CEO,” says NPR’s “Planet Money” host Alex Blumberg, who went with her on a tour of one of her recently acquired companies, Spiegel, accompanied by a couple of PR people, Lynn’s stylist, and a blinding piece of bling.
Blumberg asks Lynn to describe her outfit. “I’m wearing a Cavalli top, a Versace belt, a Gucci skirt, and I believe Prada boots,” she explains, throatily. She is also wearing four-inch stilettos.
“I need to look sufficiently fierce to make sure that I garner the respect that I deserve.”
On her wrist is a watch designed by Jacob the Jeweler that Blumberg describes as “the most bejeweled timepiece I have ever seen in my life” which he “could not stop staring at.” But this is apparently not even her fiercest outfit! A source tells Business Insider that usually, Lynn “wears tight leather and intimidates the sh%t out of everyone.” As it turns out, intimidating people is apparently something she enjoys. A lot. As the tour continues, Tilton shows the “Planet Money” hosts her latest innovation — the “Tassle Me” belt, a silk belt made out of tassels she’s marketing through Newport News, a subsidiary of Spiegel. The belt was inspired, Tilton explains, not just by the fact that she owned a distressed tassel company with extra inventory, but because, she informs the host saucily, “I had fond memories of what I had once done with tassels.” Ha! Fortunately for Alex Blumberg, you can’t hear blushing.
Podcast: A Private-Equity Boss In Four-Inch Stilettos [NPR via Business Insider]
Patriarch Partners [Official site]
