Giuliani's Princess Bride

Judith Giuliani always dreamed big, which got her out of small-town Pennsylvania, through two marriages, and into the arms of Rudy Giuliani. But, as her husband runs for president, people are asking, "Who does she think she is?"

Today she and Giuliani, when they are not boarding private Gulfstream IV jets to Europe or trying to woo voters, shuttle between a $4 million Hamptons house and a $5 million nine-room Upper East Side apartment near Madison Avenue, its dining room walnut-paneled and crammed with crystal, china, and linen from Scully & Scully.

Her annual salary has also improved: $125,000, evidently for helping to write some of the speeches Giuliani likes to give (for which he received $11.7 million between January 2006 and March 2007).

This comes as a surprise to at least one of Judith's acquaintances. Asked if he knew Judith was writing speeches, one former Giuliani aide replied, "Holy cow! God forbid!"

The details of Judith's life have also undergone some refurbishing. Her monogrammed hand-stitched napkins embraced by thick silver napkin rings are on display, along with the new cigar room designed for her husband, and a mantelpiece adorned with white porcelain figurines of Winston Churchill, the statesman with whom Giuliani likes to invite comparison.

She struck an odalisque pose in Hamptonstyle magazine, and appeared robed in a floor-length burgundy gown by Carolina Herrera on the cover of Avenue magazine, whose editorial director, Pamela Gross, accompanies her frequently, especially when TV cameras are present.

("Never get between Pamela, Judith, and a camera," advises one observer.)

Judith sits in the front rows of fashion shows, her hair freshly styled by a full-time assistant lured from Frédéric Fekkai, and, when asked to pose, thrusts out an obliging hip for the cameras.

Although she informed WWD, "I have no room for shopping in my life," she buys Dolce & Gabbana.

No one was surprised when Giuliani presented her with a $20,000 Ceylon sapphire-and-diamond ring, selected by the bride-to-be at a store in Atlanta, to which she had flown with one New York City police officer.

What did astonish friends was the venue where the couple exchanged vows before 400 guests: the lawn of Gracie Mansion, with Mayor Bloomberg officiating.

On May 24, 2003, Andrew Giuliani (as best man), Whitney Nathan (as maid of honor), Vera Wang, Barbara Walters, Henry Kissinger, and Donald Trump all witnessed Judith triumph at Donna's old home.

"It was definitely Judith's idea to have it at Gracie," a close confidant tells me. "Rudy—he doesn't give a shit about clothes, bags, suits, or where he gets married."

Judith, on the other hand, clearly put special thought into the occasion. The train of her pale Vera Wang dress was studded with Swarovski crystals; on her dark-red hair perched a Fred Leighton diamond-and-pearl-encrusted tiara.

"There is a reason why she wore that tiara at her wedding: she really does see herself as a princess," says another former Giuliani aide.

"Not as a queen. Queen is her goal. Queen is who she wants to be."

She has become used to getting her way. An organizer of a recent fashion shoot received a call from one of Rudy's business associates warning her to address his wife as Judith.

According to this source, Judith became so smitten with the dress she was modeling "that she simply didn't want to take it off. She didn't offer to pay.

She made it very clear she wanted it for free. You know how it is when someone stalls." Instead, says this source, Judith kept repeating a kind of mantra: "I'm a sample size, I'm a sample size."

The fashion insider sighs. "But the problem was the dress was a sample, and the designer's only sample. But she was very persistent. We had almost a metaphorical tugging of the dress away!"

And not just that dress. "There were a number of items she tried on she wanted. There was greed in the air. We finally brokered a deal with the designer to give her some sort of discount for the dress."

Around the office of Giuliani Partners, it is said, Sunny Mindel, Giuliani's communications director, spoke of the need for providing an entire plane seat for Judith's "Baby Louis"—a reference to her Louis Vuitton handbag, which sits in solitary splendor on her travels.

$52,500 for a Louis Vuitton Handbag

Somewhere in the Washington area is a woman whose bad taste is exceeded only by her big wallet -- and, I have to say, her skewed values.

The Washington Bag Lady has plunked down $52,500 -- yes, you read that right -- for the Louis Vuitton Tribute Patchwork pocketbook. She is, The Post's Ylan Q. Mui reports, one of only five lucky women in North America, and 24 in the world, who can call the bag their own.

Not that you'd want to. This is not the world's priciest handbag (that's the Hermes Croc Diamond-Encrusted Birkin) but it may be the ugliest. The Empress's New Purse is -- shh! -- a hideous hodgepodge of 14 recycled Louis Vuitton bags cut up, stitched back together and festooned with gold chains.

If Frankenstein's monster carried a purse, this is what it would look like. My theory is that Louis Vuitton executives had a bet about whether they could foist the bag on what one vice president called their "very sophisticated client."

Oui, madame, only the most discerning can appreciate its true beauty.

Indeed, phrased more politely, this is precisely the Louis Vuitton strategy: "You feel as if you must buy it . . . or else you won't be in the moment. You will be left behind," chief executive Bernard Arnault explained to Dana Thomas for her new book, "Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster."

Now, I understand the allure of a new purse as much as the next shopper, though mine tend to be more of the $59.99-and-that's-before-the-20-percent-off-coupon variety. If you're rich enough to treat yourself to a $500 pocketbook, or a $5,000 one, fine -- even without the coupon.

But no moral calculus can justify $52,500, no matter how much you've given to good works.

This expenditure makes Judith Giuliani look frugal in her reported relationship with her Louis Vuitton purse -- according to a Vanity Fair profile, she calls it Baby Louis and insists that it be accorded a separate seat on the Giulianis' chartered jet.

There are many lessons to be found in a handbag that costs more than my childhood home.

One is the remarkable growth in the ranks of the superwealthy. A new set of Internal Revenue Service statistics shows that the number of $1-million-plus earners grew by more than one-fourth between 2000 and 2005.

If you live in the elite confines of Richistan, as the Wall Street Journal's "wealth" reporter, Robert Frank, calls it, you must find ways to dispose of all this disposable income.

This isn't a problem unique to 21st-century tycoons -- think Nero, Marie Antoinette, Gatsby. Thorsten Veblen outlined his theory of conspicuous consumption in 1899, and he could have been writing about Louis Vuitton handbags when he described the "unremitting demonstration of ability to pay."

Still, as Frank writes, the rich in this gilded age "have made more money, more quickly, from more sources than any previous generation of wealth."

Simultaneously, however, there has been a democratization of luxury, which leads to the second point embedded in the purse story:

Today's very rich are not as different from you and me as they were in F. Scott Fitzgerald's day. If there is to be a Gucci in every closet, the ultrawealthy need ways to distinguish themselves.

Consider: 94.3 percent of Tokyo women in their 20s own Louis Vuitton products, and half have LV handbags, according to Saison Research Institute.

Thomas describes the oxymoronic phenomenon of the luxury outlet mall as "perhaps luxury's greatest ploy to get its goods into the hands of anyone and everyone."

It's also no surprise that one of the five lucky North American owners of the Tribute Patchwork is from the Washington area. (One was Beyonce Knowles; the others have, wisely, not outed themselves.)

Washington, once and perhaps eternally a fashion backwater, is now at least a place where money is spent on fashion.

Census figures released last week show that two Northern Virginia counties were the wealthiest in the nation: Fairfax, with a median household income of $100,318, and Loudoun, $99,371. Maryland was the highest-earning state, with a median income of $65,144.

Indeed, the amazing thing is that the identity of the Washington Bag Lady has not emerged since news of her purchase surfaced. Not so many years ago, there were only a few likely suspects.

Now, who knows? Could be high-tech money, real estate money, K Street money, international money, venture capital money.

So if you see the Bag Lady walking -- or being driven -- down the street, do let me know who she is. Or, you could just point at her, like the boy in Hans Christian Andersen's story.

tags: consumerism  capitalism  rich  wealthy  guiliani  president  2008  

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