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Click here to download the PDF Click here to read "Barry Diller on Serendipity,..." at the WSJ In a new memoir, ‘Who Knew,’ Diller credits luck over talent in helming multiple Hollywood studios and television networks: ‘It’s the timing, stupid.’ By Holly Peterson Illustration by HelloVon Studio for WSJ. Magazine May 20, 2025 11:00 am ET Success, they say, is inspiration plus perspiration. But what of sheer universe-vibration? We ask the most successful people we know to tell us what role luck plays in one’s career. ICONOCLASTS DON’T waste their time or ours. We know entertainment mogul Barry Diller bested most of his rivals, although a few— notably Sumner Redstone —outmaneuvered him. So when Diller takes his gloves off in his new memoir, he confronts what we couldn’t see. His backstage positioning to chomp entire companies whole; the contrast between working for someone else versus for himself; and, on a personal level, his demons. Case in point, Diller on his attraction to men: “I had wanted so desperately to alter my sexuality as a child and teenager and I had tried so hard and failed. I was left with an unquenchable need to be vigilant about every other aspect of my life.” On his much gossiped-about relationship with his now-wife, Diane von Furstenberg : “We aren’t just friends. Plain and simple, it was an explosion of passion that kept up for years.” Diller broke out of the William Morris mailroom at age 24 and turned the Movie of the Week at ABC into must-see TV, producing hits including Go Ask Alice and Brian’s Song . Ever heard of Saturday Night Fever or Raiders of the Lost Ark ? Both came out during his decadelong stewardship of Paramount from the mid-1970s to mid-1980s. After more than seven years running a second major studio, Twentieth Century Fox, and releasing blockbusters such as Home Alone , he left Hollywood and went on to acquire the Home Shopping Network (HSN). Before most of his peers understood the term interactivity , Diller had seized on the commercial potential of merging telephones and televisions. He also made a series of strategic acquisitions that transformed his media holdings into a diversified digital empire under IAC (formerly InterActiveCorp). Unlike many entertainment or business icons who write memoirs to bolster legacies and egos, Diller faces facts: No one can run or reposition several studios and networks without a few spectacular swan dives. He remembers a time in the mid-1990s when he was “a mogul manqué,” “nationally known damaged goods,” after losing his bid to buy Paramount. He recounts “glorious dead ends” and how Google “manhandled” him out of opportunities. But he never let these setbacks hamper his momentum. Instead, he owned the simple truth: They won. We lost. Next. On his relationship with his wife, Diane von Furstenberg: ‘We aren’t just friends. Plain and simple, it was an explosion of passion that kept up for years,’ Barry Diller writes in his memoir, ‘Who Knew.’ Photo: Barry Diller You are not a cynic. Why? Cynicism kills instinct. If you are cynical, it’s very difficult for your instincts to remain pure enough to be determinative about things. Naiveté is mandatory for keeping your instincts alive. It’s not true in technology, particularly, but in creative arts, instinct is mandatory. And being naive is just much better, by the way, it’s nothing you can decree. You either are or you’re not. Do you believe coping mechanisms that help you survive childhood screw you up in adulthood? How could they not? Compartmentalizing is efficient, but it builds up walls. It makes it very hard for you to bust through. It wouldn’t have been good if [as a child] I didn’t have the ability to find safety in the compartments. Yet when you do that, you draw such hard boxes around everything that you can’t easily bust out. So yeah, it ain’t a good thing. Your memoir tells of parents who were in the home, but emotionally absent to unimaginable levels. Never celebrating birthdays or holidays, no interest in who your friends were or how you fared in school. Talk to me about how that relates to your drive. I think the need to count is true in most people who are successful, particularly excessively so. It’s just so basic and powerful that it is a driver. Who do you know who’s a powerful and fierce leader, woman or man, who seems calm, generous, self-aware, confident in their skin, not screwed up. Can you think of one? I would give you Jamie Dimon as a good example. I don’t know any demons Jamie has, but he has an equanimity that I think is true in all phases. You love to be contrary. Are you fearless in business? So long as I was not having to assert myself, it gave me an extra weapon of not being afraid. So many people are afraid. You can see it in their inability to challenge, to be confrontational, to be direct. What about hiding your homosexuality? What role did it have in your success? As a teaching mechanism? Nothing. As for forcing me into being humanistic? I think everything. From left, Diller, Calvin Klein and Doug Cloutier in Malibu, Calif. Photo: Barry Diller Let’s talk about instinct versus data. If you like an idea, do you go for it, or study it with a team? What’s the idea? Full stop. Most research cannot tell whether an idea is good or not. The problem with testing anything is that research often leads you in the wrong direction. Give me a hardcore business example where your data people were putting flowcharts in front of you and you said, “No, I’m going with my instinct on this, I’m ignoring you all.” Most entrepreneurial pursuits of originality would be rejected by a deep data analysis. There are so many instances in my life where we’ve gone against research and data. When we got into the personals business [Match.com], all the data told us that the public would never adopt the online dating model. Do you believe you prepare for luck, so you recognize it when it comes? Or does it magically appear one day? It’s pure serendipity. Yes, we can break down the word luck, but to me serendipity perfectly describes events that are inexplicable. And I have so many of them in my life that to ignore it would be totally ridiculous. Why do you credit serendipitous moments—or, as you say in your memoir, “the timing, stupid”—over your talents when you took over entire entities and saved them? Who could have decreed that the day I joined ABC [in 1966] to work for a lower-middle-level executive they fired the boss levels above him, and he was named to run the whole operation? Where’s the prediction of that? Or, in 1984, I decided I had to leave Paramount. I get in the elevator, go downstairs, and there on the phone is a message from Marvin Davis, who owned Fox, offering me a way out. Where does that come from? Unlike many entertainment or business icons who write memoirs to bolster legacies and egos, Diller faces facts in ‘Who Knew.’ Photo: Simon & Schuster Many would say you earned those moments. When I hear people’s egos outsizing themselves on their accomplishments, and they think it’s about them solely and their wonderful talent—it is often not. It’s often about the timing of their circumstances. When you invested in QVC, you had this vision about the convergence of television and the telephone that was not in sync with your contemporaries. Some questioned your sanity. When I went to QVC, everyone thought I had truly lost my mind. What, are you kidding? The idea that I thought [home shopping] was primitive convergence, resulting in interactivity. They thought it was just crackers. Why would people reject that? It seems so obvious now. This is true of so many things. When people say, “God, what an obvious idea that is.” Well, guess what? At the moment the original idea comes, it ain’t at all obvious. What is obvious now—online dating, electric bikes, the internet—it’s only later that people say, Oh, yeah, of course. You’ve said qualified people with big prior positions are “mostly retreads.” Do you believe résumés are a good way to hire? Résumés are almost all exactly the same. They’re promotional tools, so they’re all alike. The best companies are where you bring people in early and promote them. Can you think of someone that you brought in from the outside that didn’t work? Sure I can, but I’m not going to tell you. Do you think some of the biggest jerks succeed because they trample everyone? Sure they do. In the mid ’90s when you lost the Paramount deal to Sumner Redstone, how did you move on? We decided not to make our last bid, and when we lost to Sumner and I had to think of, All right, what am I going to say about that? And rather than do what most people do, which is go on about relative values or all sorts of stuff, that’s just babble. This is the only truth: They won. We lost. Next. Diller bested most of his business rivals, although a few—notably Sumner Redstone—outmaneuvered him. Photo: Barry Diller Tell me about your front-row seat in the early 2000s to media companies giving content away for free. Why didn’t people put up paywalls sooner? At that time, it was perceived that the internet is free. That was the absolute governing rule: Paywalls couldn’t happen. Of course, over time it did happen, but all sorts of things had to take place before that was possible. You just cannot put your little fist up and say a technological improvement is going to be prevented by any law. You start off the book saying you had a lack of emotional plumbing and end it saying you’re something resembling a person. What changed? I got lucky. That is the word. Diane [von Furstenberg] and family forced me into emotional territory I had never prepared for before. Not that I wanted to, but I had no choice. Our family won’t permit any other behavior than complete emotional availability. You can’t hide. Everything is discussable. Well, you certainly weren’t trained for that growing up. I was thrown into that bath, and over time it warmed me. I’m now the result of it. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Holly Peterson is a journalist and the author of six books, including the novels “The Manny” and “It Happens in the Hamptons.”

Click here to download the PDF Click here to read "The Blood Sport of Competitive Table Setting" at WSJ Competition for the most remarkably chic table setting is savage, especially in rarefied pockets of society. Here, one obsessed player takes us inside. On the author’s table, one of her triumphs: a cone-shaped tumbler with glass-flower appliqués, sourced in Rome. Photo: Ross Whitaker By Holly Peterson March 13, 2025 10:00 am ET If you’re a strong-looking dude and I’m flirting with you in an airplane aisle, it’s not what you think. I cannot lift my rolling bag into the overhead compartment and I require your brawn. Inside my carry on: a bounty of ceramic platters, plates and hefty pitchers—all cushioned by mushed-up pajamas. Those like me who battle fiercely in the competitive art of table setting abide by certain rules. It’s not how much money you spend; it’s how much you don’t spend. We set out unique painted plates, found objets and colored glasses unearthed in back alleys and market fairs here and abroad. It’s a sport scored on originality and style. All over this country, among people of various incomes and backgrounds, you’ll find a breed of sweaty table-setting freaks like myself who get a tad too excited about unique finds. No traditional Wedgwood labels on our tables. Whether by placing antique jars on vintage cloths in the countryside or divine violet Venetian glasses on a snooty urban tablescape, the feeling we aim to project is, I’m cooler than you. The goal on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, where I live: Mix and match a cohesive still life on your dining table that would stop Henri Matisse in his tracks. You can’t walk into the seventh-floor housewares department at Bergdorf’s, fondle the napkins of a highly curated tablescape and say, “I’m late for my blowout. Just send me everything on that table. Sixteen of each.” That’s cheating. On so many tragic levels. The stakes always rise around major holidays. Easter is just around the corner, and one champion Fifth Avenue friend has already had the florist put patches of sod into her husband’s Yale and Andover sailing regatta chalices on tables around her home. You shake your head in disbelief as you take in little colonies of Herend china bunnies and painted eggs from Hungary she has set afloat grass strands. She’s a Ph.D-level table setter with honorary degrees from all seven Ivies. My treasures include place cards that are 3-inch shards of dark-gray slate, each with a bit of weathered twine to loop around a napkin, and white chalk for writing names. Or, sourced at a shop in Rome, cone-shaped water tumblers with little glass flowers stuck to the sides. You want your rapacious competitors to ask, “Where did you find these?” Then you can answer, “Oh, some island off Croatia.” The more far-flung the location, the more you piss them off. Gray slate place cards, one of the author’s prized pieces. Photo: Ross Whitaker I would say I hold a solid high-school equivalency degree in tablescapes. (My discerning gay best friend reading this has just spit out his Diet Coke; he’d say fourth grade, and remedial group at that.) I still maintain I have a flair for heavy plates and napkins in colors you can’t quite pronounce, such as coquelicot; it’s the put-it-all-together thing that often trips me up. My most recent whiffle: I imagined my mismatched wineglass collection together on one table glittering like a far-off town of uneven roof tops. It became clear it translated as junky shop table when the owlish Upper East Side guest who inspected it looked like she’d just sucked on a lemon. “Even if all the plates have a pattern, the way we set the table has to have some sort of improvisation. Cut some branches and pile clementines in a dish if you haven’t got flowers. Imagine Renaissance paintings with garlands of figs,” advised table-setting style-meister Carolina Irving, of Carolina Irving and Daughters, her textile and tabletop brand. “Candles are essential. A warm mood transpires in a table collected over the years. It’s the feeling of ‘Time is going to stand still, and we are going to have this wonderful time and conversation.’” For an example of the most unhinged table setters of our time, look no further than my dear friend the jewelry designer Joan Hornig. A woman who never repeats a table twice, she creates a huge reveal for her dinner guests and rents storage bins (yes, plural) for her plates and glasses. When I told Joan about the bunnies-in-the-grass lady, she answered, “That doesn’t sound like Ph.D level sh–t to me. I get real stuff. You know, those egg-shaped ecospheres with live shrimp in them that last for two years?” No, Joan, I don’t, but please go on. “Put miniature lady apples in piles,” Joan said. “Replant long vines temporarily in wine glasses, artichokes in shot glasses so they stay straight, Brussels sprouts laid out, but only if still on long stems.” Where the hell do you buy them still attached to stems? Joan’s go-to is unusual fruit and vegetables, in groupings of three. Never the same flower arrangements, even if the same vases are on the table. (And by the way, days after our interview Joan was still texting me her favorites.) Perhaps, like for me, real life limits your ability to express your decor talents and energies. For true table champions, it’s uncouth to sweat it too much. So, my apartment doesn’t carry an aroma of fresh-cut grass around Easter. My outfits and hairdos on airplanes project the care and flair of a hockey mom at 5 a.m. rink time. But friends leave my dinners smiling, and my flirting does the trick when I need a hand with luggage. When it comes to my table settings, I care, but not so much that it loses the fun. The author’s go-to tablescape sources Nashville-based Reed Smythe exhibits artisans from the South and beyond. The unusual shape of the Glazed Terra Cotta Pomegranate vase, below left, makes it a dapper choice. From $55 British brand Mrs. Alice sells entire tablescapes by themes, such as “Rattan Meadow,” and pieces a la carte, like the melamine Green Swirl Outdoor Glasses , below right. $89 for six The 13-inch Hand-Painted Oval Iron Tray below left typifies the diverse offerings of English purveyor Courthouse. By Turkish-design-inspired brand Les Ottomans, it’s made of durable iron. $110 Greenrow, a division of Williams Sonoma Inc. , is an easy American go-to for casual-setting pieces such as the vintage-like Narcissus Linen Ruffle Napkins below right. $79 for four Photo: Elizabeth Coetzee/WSJ (Napkin) An international brand created by a nostalgic expat now living outside Portugal, Luisa Paixao sells well-priced ceramics such as the Coimbra Ceramic 9-Inch Salad Bowl below left. $109 London-based Carolina Irving and Daughters specializes in products from family-owned ateliers that re-imagine ancient motifs—as does the Greek-inspired, nearly 5-inch tall Mini Attica Vase below right. $30 Holly Peterson is a journalist and the author of six books, including the novels “The Manny” and “It Happens in the Hamptons."

Click here to download the PDF Click here to read "How Thom Browne Launched a Multi-Million..." at WSJ The designer on dressing Doechii for the Grammys and his love of the color gray By Holly Peterson Illustration by HelloVon Studio for WSJ. Magazine March 13, 2025 10:00 am ET Success, they say, is inspiration plus perspiration. But what of sheer universe-vibration? We ask the most successful people we know to tell us what role luck plays in one’s career. As an altar boy in Allentown, Pennsylvania, Thom Browne was raised by parents who expected him to earn top grades at school and blue ribbons at swim meets. Even a second-rate fortuneteller would have predicted his acquiring an economics degree and freestyle medals at Notre Dame. Flash forward a couple of decades, and the crystal ball foretold a very different future: Browne showcasing his eponymous fashion brand by sending models down the runway in headless-horseman-inspired suits—and, later, by emerging from coffins or strolling alongside dogs in tweed coats that matched their human “owners.” At first, the public mocked his “shrunken” suits , but he eventually won devotees to his 1950s aesthetic of single-breasted gray suits with short sleeves, cut just above the wrists, with pants cropped high enough to reveal the ankles. His fantastical ideas now take in nearly $327 million in annual revenue. It’s hard to reckon with Thom Browne’s assertion that “I’m not that interesting.” His customers and fashion peers perceive him otherwise. Apart from designing rap artist Doechii’s showstopping look at this year’s Grammys , Browne now serves as chairman of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, as well as chief creative officer of his company, with 137 retail stores, flagships and shop-in-shops in 40 countries around the globe. Ninety-two percent of the company is owned by Ermenegildo Zegna Group, and it has been traded publicly on the New York Stock Exchange since 2018. And the suit he wears almost every day? “The idea of uniformity sometimes drives people crazy,” Browne says. “For me, it’s very liberating.” ‘I think it’s indirectly a pushback because it’s such a non-fashion color,’ Browne says about his use of the color gray. ‘It’s timeless. It never gets old.’ Photo: Joseph Maida You’ve said you feel like a father figure to your employees. Is this because you are the boss or older than most? It wasn’t an age thing. It was just that I subjected everybody to this thing that I wanted to do. For the first 15 years, it was just us, a family feeling, and I always felt paternal. I wanted them to own their part in it, in the same way that I needed to really own my part in their lives. Tell me about your own father and how he dressed. He was a classic. If he didn’t have a suit on, he was in bed. I don’t remember a time that he didn’t have his suit on. Occasionally in the summer he would have shorts on, but he looked so odd if he wasn’t dressed for work, even on a Saturday or Sunday. When you started, were you very set in what you wanted to make? I knew exactly what I wanted the brand to be, and that’s how it started. Nothing’s changed. It’s the same that it’s been for 24 years. You and I first met a decade out of college, when you were at Club Monaco. Did you attempt to make this vision work in an already established brand? I was kind of a nebulous creative director. Ralph [Lauren] had just bought Club Monaco and had a really good design team there. I did have ideas that were basically the start of my collection, but in the world of Club Monaco, they didn’t work. It just wasn’t right. Browne wears the same suit almost every day. ‘The idea of uniformity sometimes drives people crazy,’ he says. ‘For me, it’s very liberating.’ Photo: Thom Browne So are you flexible with design or not? In some ways, I am very inflexible, but I think in a productive way. I’m very focused on making sure that what I’ve started is evolving but essentially unchanged. Jack Welch at General Electric was known as someone who could turn the whole company on a dime. That’s how he led. Do you feel like you could be that person at all? Well, if I feel like something isn’t working, I’m very easily changed, for how I want to proceed or how I do things. Give me an example of something that just wasn’t working. Like in 2008 or 2009, when everybody was having financial challenges, and I was close to going out of business. For the first time, I needed to figure out something that would actually sell well, so we could rebound. I had the dumb idea of thinking I could do denim. It didn’t work. Because my interpretation wasn’t what people wanted. We sold some, but it wasn’t the thing that was going to turn us around. What role did luck play in your career? I think it’s luck or timing or even fate. They all kind of play into each other. I know I was lucky that I started what I was doing at a time that nobody else was doing it. I created something that was so personal, so unique in the world, and I think that’s the reason why people eventually responded to it. Did you do it because you knew it was unique? No, no, I did it because it was exactly what I wanted. I’ve been lucky for a long time in being able to do something that is so true to me that never has been done by others. I’m still doing something that’s so true to what I want. Do you think you prepare for luck? I think life leads you to a moment that you could see as being a lucky moment—like everything that led up to when I started the first gray suit. Tell me about intellect versus instinct. Do your designs start as an intellectual idea? Or is it more about instinct? I’m definitely more instinctual. Intellectually thinking about things inhibits creativity. It can really cripple you sometimes if you think about things too much. You don’t use mood boards. How come? I find mood boards intimidating. It’s so much better to work by just closing your eyes and thinking of what it can be. There are so many designers who work from mood boards, and unfortunately, you can tell that they know too much already. I want to make sure that everyone is challenged here, and that we’re creating something that’s as new in people’s eyes as it can be. LeBron James in one of Thom Browne’s signature suits. Photo: Getty Images You say “unique,” but you wear the same vest and shorts every day. Even Saturday mornings, to get a coffee, the same outfit. How on earth is that unique? I love the purity of it. Also the challenge as you grow, having to keep it as pure and keeping the bigger business as pure a feeling as you can. That’s the real challenge. So, if it’s pure, does that mean you or your brand are not multifaceted? I don’t care if people think I’m interesting. Because I’m not. However, I do think my work is interesting. That’s what I care about. I care about people seeing the work. My husband, Andrew [Bolton, curator of the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art], and I talk about this all the time. We love what we do, that’s why we never get away from it. We try, but we never do. It’s also a curse, because, you know, you lose sleep over it, you get depressed, you hold people up to standards that sometimes are unrealistic. Did you think your gray suit would work from the beginning? I didn’t think of it working or not. I remember the only time I thought, This has to work, was when I was going out of business. Tell me about gray. The artist Gerhard Richter says it’s the epitome of a non-statement. For you, everything is gray. Are you pushing back against nosiness and intrusiveness, against all the self-exposure on social media? I think it’s indirectly a pushback because it’s such a non-fashion color. It’s timeless. It never gets old. There’s so many shades you can use. But for me, it’s also personal. I love it on myself. Can you explain the [pre–fall 2022 collection] lobster moment, with that random huge claw on one hand? I’ve used lobster claws fairly often. It’s almost like, why not? Everybody sees the classic ideas as being very serious and somewhat rigid and rigorous. The idea of uniformity sometimes drives people crazy. For me, it’s very liberating; it really makes you look more interesting, but you have to add something that is pure nonsense. Just to make sure that people know—even if I’m not smiling, there’s somebody laughing inside. Thom Browne dressed the rapper Doechii at this year’s Grammys. ‘She embraced it and made it her own,’ the designer says. Photo: Getty Images for The Recording Academy There is a bit of fantasy in everything you do. Tell me about dressing Doechii for the Grammys. Were you both in on the same joke somehow? Doechii and I get along because we have a lot of noise and opinions around us and we both stay true to how we want things done. For the Grammys, it was important that a 24-year-old idea still feel relevant to a new customer today. Doechii allowed it to have the same purity, and she embraced it and made it her own. I remember at the very beginning, your suits were first shown lying out on your bed. I mean, your actual bedroom was your showroom. You didn’t even have a rack. Well, that’s the way it starts. Unfortunately, people nowadays think it’s going to happen so much quicker than it actually does. It should take a while. If you’re going to do something important, that’s going to have longevity, it has to be important enough that you create something that is almost like one image. The most important designers of the last 100 years, when you think of their name, you get an image. I think it’s important to ground everything in that at the beginning. Do you think you earned your luck? Well, some people are afraid of opportunity, they’re afraid of success. And I never really understood that until, as we get older, you see friends that you think should be successful, right? And you can see that they just don’t go for it, because you have to pursue it. You have to decide to be successful. Were you scared of success? No, I was never, never scared. Your dad dressed very consistently. They say consistency makes kids feel cared for. Both of my parents were very, very consistent. The only thing my parents really cared about was that we did well in school or at sports. Outside of that, it was like the easiest childhood. But it made us all very driven. All of us siblings. You didn’t want to disappoint them. No, we didn’t. But we were all driven to do it for ourselves. I don’t think any of us ever want to disappoint ourselves. Corrections & Amplifications Ermenegildo Zegna Group owns ninety-two percent of Thom Browne, which has 137 retail stores and shop-in-ships worldwide. A previous version of this article mistakenly cited Zegna’s stake as ninety percent and said the company has 107 stores. (Corrected on March 13) Holly Peterson is a journalist and the author of six books, including the novels “The Manny” and “It Happens in the Hamptons." This article appears in the March 2025 issue of WSJ. Magazine.

Click here to download the PDF Click here to read "The CEO Mindset ..." at the WSJ Ursula Burns on the roles that confidence, risk-taking and the joy of crushing her adversaries played in her trajectory from intern to chief executive By Holly Peterson Illustration by HelloVon for WSJ. Magazine February 12, 2025 8:00 am ET Success, they say, is inspiration plus perspiration. But what of sheer universe-vibration? We ask the most successful people we know to tell us what role luck plays in one’s career. AS A COLLEGE INTERN AT XEROX in 1980, Ursula Burns didn’t walk the halls assuming she would run the whole joint one day. Yet less than three decades later, she did just that, becoming CEO in 2009, and the first Black woman to run a Fortune 500 company. By then, interns were no longer being asked to “Xerox” papers. Turning the juggernaut on a dime, Burns guided Xerox as it shed its photocopier branding to become one of the most diversified business-services companies worldwide. In her third year, back-office IT services to process healthcare claims, retail transactions, E-ZPass and parking fees accounted for more than 50 % of its $22.2 billion revenue. As for the role of luck in one’s career decisions? Ursula Burns is clear: “There’s no such thing as pure luck. I work on preparedness. Besides, luck often comes at you in ugly forms.” It sure can: She started her tenure as CEO just as the country was emerging from a severe recession. In 2009, Burns became Xerox’s CEO and the first Black woman to run a Fortune 500 company. Photo: Lemouton Stephane/ABACA/Shutterstock Was there this one moment where it all came together? At unbelievably key points in my life, one person guided me to the better choice: Vernon Jordan . When I’d present to the board, he, as a director, did not miss an opportunity to sum up what was good or bad about what I’d said. I didn’t feel as though I was being educated but engaged. Sending me things to read, he’d write, “We were talking about this, read this.” And then, when I saw him again, he would test me on it. At first, he told me I talked too fast, but then he changed his mind. “It’s who you are; you’re in command of the facts. Keep that attribute as it is.” How do you react when people say they did it all alone? This delusion starts early. College kids I speak to often say they got here independently and paid their own way. And I say, “So the janitor, the person who cooks lunch for you, your parents, one or two of your teachers, had nothing to do with this?” It causes them to think about people around them and, even though incidental, how important they are, even if it’s a distant and weak connection to get them to the next step. People who can’t credit others are often insecure about their own abilities. How do you build confidence in yourself? Confidence comes from knowing that all success doesn’t come from me alone. I don’t walk into situations and say I am capable of doing anything. I know what I’m good at and what I’m not. And I approach projects I know less about with a group: I build a team, get advice, whatever the hell it is, differently than if I approached it confidently. And if we don’t engage others, then we probably are mitigating that situation. Men, in particular, don’t like this idea that you have to engage more people to get the task done right. What is your coping tactic with a narcissist adversary who’s also very brilliant? I am not the nicest person all the time. When I was younger, I took joy in crushing the person. The target became the actual person, not the task, and showing them just how wrong they were—not only about me as a leader, and the situation, but also wrong about themselves. Does impostor syndrome hurt or help? A unique differentiator for me is that, if it’s new to me, I doubt myself. That lack of confidence is part of the loop for me to get prepared. Former President Barack Obama and Burns at the president’s Export Council meeting in 2014. Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images When did you first start to understand that the top spot was within your grasp? Probably 15 years after I started working at Xerox. By that time, it was clear that I had the content to know what to do and get the best product out in the shortest amount of time. What do great leaders have in common? Leadership is about bringing many people along, and sometimes, literally, they bring you along. For every great success we had, certain people knew more about certain pieces of it than I did: I had to follow them as much as they had to follow me. What’s a mistake you’ve made that other head honchos keep repeating? Not firing people who need to be fired. Not acting on someone when you knew that this person was not the right person for the role. The more senior I got, the more dangerous this inability for me to say, I’m going to give up on Joe. How did your mom prepare you for a CEO role, raising you three kids alone in New York City? My mother didn’t allow dreams to crush her. No victimhood: She didn’t see the guys down the street who had more and felt slighted or angry. She looked at that and said, “My goodness, wouldn’t it be great if I could enable my kids to have that?” My mother was absolutely maniacal about controlling us in a way that limited the possibilities that we had of getting into trouble. You would never see us on the street. It just did not happen. My mother said, “There’s nothing there for you there.” What’s one thing in life that got you here? After my mom died, by the time I was 35 and going through something, I realized, “I’ve lived this before,” or “I saw this before.” She gave me a total and complete playbook on one way to handle each difficult situation I’ve faced. I needed that to make it clear that I could struggle through problems. If having a mother who is good with money is luck, I hit the jackpot. ‘Confidence comes from knowing that all success doesn’t come from me alone,’ Burns says. Photo: Jemal Countess/Getty Images What did you do to rise to the top with so many worthy, talented peers around you? I don’t think there was a single thing I said no to in the first 15 years of my career at Xerox. The first time I was sent to Japan, I was only asked because most everyone else said no, and that trip and what I accomplished was one of the most important moves I ever had in my career. This is something that I was trained to do by my mother and schooling: You did what you were asked, and you don’t hand in sloppy work. So, I think one of my superpowers is that I take very few things for granted. I hustle through everything. People try to get there without paying the dues. I didn’t think of them as dues. What’s your relationship with power and money? Does it make you calm? Does any part of it make you anxious? The more you get in life, the more you worry about not having it. More than the money and comforts, it’s also the power and position. I am never comfortable with where I am. I do worry about why I’m here and whether I am doing it right. Am I being reasonable in how I spend? I worry about all the things you would think would go away when you have as much power and influence, money and accessibility as I do: I worry from a different perspective about them. What role does luck play in one’s career? A lot of where we end up is preparedness. I work on preparedness. I can’t work on the luck. On the job, there’s no such thing as dumb luck or pure luck. It is this faulty idea that people have about luck in the world: that this guy just walked in the room, someone saw him, liked him and made him president. No, you walked into the room prepared to take advantage of the meeting and the opportunity. What about accidental inventions, like those 3M researchers who inadvertently made adhesive glue that created the first Post-it Notes? Not luck! Do you have any idea how many years and brutal hours those people worked in the lab to make that so-called mistake?! Holly Peterson is a journalist and the author of six books, including the novels “The Manny” and “It Happens in the Hamptons.” This article appears in the February 2025 issue of WSJ. Magazine.

Click here to download the PDF Click here to read "MAGA Madness Descends..." at WSJ Blue-blood locals don't know what to make of all the blockades, Cybertrucks and glitz. By Holly Peterson Photographs by Saul Martinez for WSJ January 10, 2024 11:04 am ET Beyond the discreet gates of frou-frou hotels and patrician country clubs, a tsunami swells from Mar-a-Lago’s gilded lobbies. The flotsam includes MAGA partyers in rinse/repeat celebration mode and a stream of Black SUVs for Donald Trump and his entourage. These centipede-like motorcades shut down traffic instantly, regularly and without warning. New security measures, introduced after the assassination attempts over the summer, have made travel by air, land and sea in Palm Beach a testing affair whenever Trump’s in town. The president-elect now crosses blockaded bridges like Brezhnev’s Soviet convoys speeding through Moscow’s emptied thoroughfares. For blue-blood locals who have crafted an otherwise frictionless existence here, these daily disruptions are maddening. Hell hath no fury like a blue-haired lady in a magnolia Lilly Pulitzer dress insisting on order. Illustration: Peter Arkle “The number one topic at any meal is parking and traffic,” says Tom Quinn, a partner at the Venable law firm in Washington, D.C., and a fixture on the Newport-Palm Beach axis, who’s owned a home here for five decades. “Wealthy people are used to paying their way out of travel inconveniences. When they can’t, they blow their top.” Yachts are now foiled by drawbridge delays. Private fliers to Palm Beach will have a painful choice: either submit to a TSA check or divert to another airport. Anyone who insists on having their Maybach drive straight to the Gulfstream steps will find themselves landing in nearby Lantana. One macher explained to me the tragedy of this compromise: “Stepping from car to plane is the number-one sweet moment of feeling like the most legit bigshot of all. You gotta consider that.” Palm Beach sits at the center of a narrow barrier island, 18 miles long and three-quarters of a mile wide at its thickest. Grand estates on some of the slimmest stretches are bookended by Lake Worth lagoon and the Atlantic. Marjorie Merriweather Post, the heiress, magnate, and one-time wealthiest woman in America, built her lavish estate here in the 1920s and named it “Mar-a-Lago,” Spanish for “sea to lake.” Trump bought it in 1985 for $8 million, a song. The two-lane S Ocean Blvd, the island’s north-south artery, separates many palatial homes from the sea. (Worry not: underground tunnels offer easy beach access.) It was bad enough when Tesla Cybertrucks began roaring past the apple green Rolls-Royces that rarely glide faster than 20 m.p.h. Worse, whenever Trump’s around, the Secret Service blocks the section of this boulevard that stretches alongside Mar-a-Lago, effectively splitting the island in two. Elon Musk accessorizes with a black tie and son at the Mar-a-Lago New Year’s Eve bash. Photo: marco bello/Reuters Trump’s centipede-like motorcades shut down Palm Beach traffic instantly, regularly and without warning. Photo: Saul Martinez/Getty Images This means the billionaires with estates within this mile-long zone need a special pass to get home. Everyone else living or working on either side of this zone has to drive over a drawbridge to the mainland, then back over another drawbridge onto the island again. What once took nine minutes can now take an hour, depending on the time of day. There’s a local saying on bumper stickers, “In Palm Beach, We Don’t Honk.” Good luck with that, Tripp and Muffie. Local officials have threatened to shut down Mar-a-Lago or yank the special agreements that allow for parties there. “In my mind, if the road is closed, the Mar-a-Lago Club is closed,” declared Palm Beach Mayor Danielle Moore at an August Town Council meeting. Good luck with that, too, Danielle. Despite the hassles, most everyone here reports that they and their wallets are pleased to know that 45 will soon be 47. The headaches certainly haven’t kept others from migrating like geese and competing, daggers out, for rare plots of pricey real estate. Enterprising developers may soon ensure that skyscrapers outnumber palm trees in West Palm Beach. So the moneyed Misérables persevere—and party hard—beyond the barricades. In these festive pre-transition days, it isn’t uncommon to juggle several cocktail-party invitations a night here, and that’s on weekdays. The local attire is like none I’ve ever experienced. When I invite neighbors for impromptu cocktails and the de rigueur “Palm Beach cheese puffs” at my condo, grown men arrive in pressed button-down shirts and coral-colored pants with embroidered sea turtles. For the women, it’s about achieving the perfect matchy-matchy look, with bamboo and turquoise earrings to reference the bamboo sandals and baby-blue dress. The ambition for everyone, it seems, is to look like an Easter egg. Mar-a-Lago hosts a “disco night” several nights a season, which I’ve experienced for myself. Given talk that the membership initiation fee has been climbing steadily from $200,000 a few years ago, I did not expect the club’s ornate furnishings and oversize vases to look like someone had exploited a going-out-of-business sale on Manhattan’s Seventh Avenue. The local attire is a steroidal variant of preppy. The ambition for everyone, it seems, is to look like an Easter egg. The headaches haven’t kept people from migrating like geese and competing, daggers out, for rare slivers of local real estate. Out on the veranda dining area, well past the metal detectors, we ran right into the Donald himself. In person, he’s King-Kong huge, with the graciousness of a birthday boy at his own party. “Welcome!” he greeted enthusiastically. At the bar, I met a gregarious chap who called himself Mr. Bang Bang. His jacket was Pepto Bismol pink and his diamonds were plentiful. He proudly flashed his Cartier panther ring the size of a boulder and a diamond “H” belt buckle. (Authentic Hermès? I’m not so sure.) Down a long marble staircase, past fountains with water-spewing swans, lies a baroque hall-of-mirrors salon, complete with Versailles-inspired gilded molding. The public got a glimpse of this room in the photos of classified documents stored at Mar-a-Lago that circulated in 2023. But instead of being piled with boxes, the stage had fluffer dancers in disco outfits to motivate sauced-up guests who needed zero encouragement. Trump loves his music. At the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm, where a Tiger Woods-style peanut gallery is often waiting for him, he has been known to approach the 18th hole with Andrea Bocelli’s “Con Te Partirò (“Time to Say Goodbye”) blasting from the loudspeakers. At Mar-a-Lago, Trump likes to use his iPad to control the club’s playlist. This can make for some unexpected transitions, such as Sinead O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2U” followed by a Phantom of the Opera ballad. But at Mar-a-Lago, people don’t question Trump’s choices, tempo or otherwise. Revelers just dance on, gamely if awkwardly. Ryan Williams, left, and Trump-supporter Felipe Calderon pose for portraits in Palm Beach. “Trump turns it up pretty loud,” says Philanthropist Sharon Bush, who lives in Palm Beach and frequents Mar-a-Lago. “Everyone is in such a good mood because we were so afraid he might lose. He always tells me I’m his favorite member of the Bush family.” For New Year’s Eve, Mar-a-Lago hosted a $5K-a-plate bash, complete with a wedding band and white flowers everywhere. Elon Musk, who’s been seen lying around the pool lately, donned a tux and a kid on his shoulders. He was there for Thanksgiving, too, which was when Jean Shafiroff, a philanthropist and socialite known for her glam gowns and long Audrey Hepburn gloves, decided to say hi. “I’m not scared of him!” She says. “I told him it was amazing what he’s done. He’s a genius!” Cybertrucks aside, the famed Worth Avenue still feels like a film set from a more luxurious Truman Show. Giddy shoppers spent the holidays buying vintage Rolexes and velvet slippers while Andy Williams crooned Christmas classics from outdoor speakers. A store called Trillion sells cashmere sweaters—Bernie Madoff reportedly had one in every color—and seemingly every shop carries monogrammed cocktail napkins with stitched little pineapples or King Charles puppies. In Palm Beach one learns that a Bentley can be lipstick pink and a men’s blazer can be pink and green and made from terry cloth (to be worn with swim trunks around the pool, of course). The sartorial choices of longtime Palm Beachers may be a steroidal variant of preppy, but the objective isn’t about “getting attention,” insists Ryan Williams, a Palm Beach insider and former Mitt Romney staffer, who owns four such terry blazers. Rather, it’s about reflecting “the aesthetic and motif of the area that’s existed for decades.” He adds that “there is a fine line between tasteful pastels and garish colors, just as there is a difference between actual style and the kind of over-the-top, sequined dragons on jackets that have been making appearances on the island lately. That’s definitely not the real Palm Beach.” In an atmosphere increasingly crowded with newcomers and hangers on, some take comfort in knowing what was exclusive here remains exclusive. Buccan restaurant co-owner Piper Quinn is one of 20 male “Coconuts,” making him a member of the oldest men’s club in Palm Beach, “a hundred years going.” The Coconut Ball, hosted by this esteemed fraternity every New Year’s Eve, is the most coveted invite of the season. I’ve been told that a number of deep-pocketed men have tried to finance these balls in the hopes of joining the club. But one can’t apply to become a Coconut, Piper explains. “You must be asked. It’s just not one of those clubs that you can join because you’d like to.” Money doesn’t buy everything, apparently. Even in Palm Beach. Blockades around Mar-a-Lago have turned nine minute drives into hourlong journeys. Despite the hassles, most everyone here reports that they and their wallets are pleased to know that 45 will soon be 47. Holly Peterson is a journalist and the author of six books, including the novels “The Manny” and “It Happens in the Hamptons.” Copyright ©2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Appeared in the January 11, 2025, print edition as 'MAGA Madness Descends on Palm Beach'.

Click here to download the PDF Click here to read "The Closely Guarded Secrets..." at WSJ From adulterous naughtiness to 6-foot-long-iguanas, the cheerful sentries see it all while watching over the snootiest buildings in the world. By Holly Peterson Illustrations by Zohar Lazar December 13, 2024 9:30 am ET ‘Tis the tipping season. Time to show appreciation for those making our lives better or easier: the hairdresser, the babysitter, the mail carrier. But in Manhattan’s high-end buildings, there’s another category of helper to reward: the doormen. The Big Apple version of the British beefeater, proud and loyal standard-bearers guarding some of the most expensive real estate in the world. In high-rise condos with 800 apartments and dozens of employees, workers generally receive $5 to $100 each. In the snootiest buildings, tips swing from the miserly to the munificent: $50 to $1,500. Non-New Yorkers might assume our trusty doormen only open doors, hail taxis and accept packages. That’s like saying a nanny just wipes up spilled milk. “We must think like engineers, architects, contractors, lawyers, gardeners, plumbers, firefighters, cops and parents,” said one super on Park Avenue. Photo: Getty Images To gauge a proper tip, let’s put ourselves in the doormen’s shoes—the behavior they witness, the goods going up and down, the secrets they keep. They have to be quick on their feet and more discreet than career diplomats. Especially on Fifth Avenue, where Astors and Vanderbilts built gilded “Millionaire’s Row” overlooking Central Park. Here reside families with what Wall Street types call “serious money.” Heave open those massive front doors and peek inside. Wealth turbocharges everything within: bigger purchases, more frequent travel, grander entertaining. According to one sentry: “One thing’s for sure: You’re not in your world, you’re in their world.” Unless your guests parachute in, doormen announce each one and handle every delivery, from rib roasts to Rothkos. For the fancy-pants people, elevators open to one massive apartment per floor. With one set of garbage bins per tenant, there’s no doubt who guzzled those empty Grey Goose bottles. “We must think like engineers, architects, contractors, lawyers, gardeners, plumbers, firefighters, cops and parents, to name a few,” Lenny, a building super on Park Avenue, told me. And the requests never stop. Certainly not from the four-dog, three-kid, full-on madness that is my apartment. These kind men have FedExed meds to our family during school break, placed dresses in a bag for a messenger to remedy my penchant for wardrobe malfunctions and emailed the forgotten term paper before 7th-grade English class. I trust them with everything in my life: They rifle through my medicine cabinet, wade through my messy closet and have the password to the family computer. At 2 a.m. all over the city, these guys maneuver stoned-out-of-their-gourds teens through the lobby. For adults straying from the Ward and June Cleaver norm, the guardians follow the rule of speak no evil. They whisk the wife’s trainer up the back for a post-workout romp or scurry the husband’s mistress out the front. When queried about who gives the biggest tips, all agree it’s the sneaky adulterers. “Each and every day, these guys are heroic, standing at the post. They have tough tenants, different personalities to greet and interact with,” explains John Santos, secretary-treasurer of Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union, which represents 36,000 residential building service workers in the city. Doormen can make over $28 an hour with good benefits. “These guys must be able to control their emotions in all situations.” In Chelsea on the West Side, doorman Carlos faced a furious girlfriend trying to get in without permission. He called the tenant, who instructed him to go up first and hide everything in the den. “What do I see? Cocaine dust and razors on the glass table,” he recounted. “More powder in a little glass box. I wipe the whole table with a wet Kleenex. I think I’m clear and done. Then I look to my left: two huge bags full of money—easily $100k in each bag. Birkin bags, but duffel size.” Split-second decisions can be incriminating. A wife once called downstairs, and the super Lenny rushed up to help her elderly husband, who’d fallen off the bed. “Only then did I realize I was dealing with a dead body,” he recounted. “My Irish cop friend said, ‘Never touch a dead body; the wife could have just smothered him with a pillow for all you know. You could be an accessory to murder.’” When a kid comes to the lobby with a more innocuous request, doormen like Michael Cartegena are eager to respond. “This one boy was a few years old when he came into the building,” the 36-year veteran working on 60th Street reminisced. “As he got older, he’d come down while I was working, and we’d talk about the Jets and sneakers. At 13, the family invited me to his bar mitzvah; he liked being around me.” When the kid became a chessmaster at 18, they’d play chess after work. Mentorship is priceless—but a hefty tip helps too. Then there are the frenzied or farcical requests that no doorman could see coming. Consider the courageous finance bro who, hours after Hurricane Sandy sucker-punched the city in 2012, descended to his 19th Street lobby with two masks and snorkels. “This guy was obsessed with saving his new custom Surefoot ski boots in the flooded basement storage cage,” recounts my cousin, Jay Peterson, who was the president of the building board. “I said, you’re nuts. You’re not diving down there.” But with the prospect of fresh powder on his brain, the tenant powered ahead. “This guy hands the doorman a mask and snorkel and said with a straight face, ‘Man, let’s do this!’” And the craziest part? They did. Jay confirms that a monster tip followed. No building employees deserved fatter envelopes than the men next door to my friend Clara Bingham (author of the new book, “The Movement: How Women’s Liberation Transformed America”). Her 13-year-old son Henry had an illegal 6-foot pet iguana living it up in her apartment. They called him Biggie: He swished out of his astro-turf-lined walk-in closet with rap-star swagger. One day, Clara left her window open inches and came home to find: no Biggie anywhere. Biggie the iguana hanging on for dear life above the streets of Manhattan. Photo: Clara Bingham She looked down 13 stories: nothing. She looked left: “Biggie was hanging on a ledge of that other building, very wan and unhappy.” She rushed to tell the neighboring doorman to look up and said, “‘We rescue that huge iguana, or he falls and splatters all over 81st Street. It’ll be violent and grotesque.’” The doorman grabbed two maintenance guys and rushed Clara into an apartment whose family wasn’t home. Five feet below a window, Biggie was hanging on for dear life. Clara crawled onto the sill. The maintenance men grabbed her by the ankles and lowered her down, and Clara grabbed Biggie with a huge fishing net. “They were absolutely heroic,” she said. “Ready to act, didn’t question anything.” There was one constant I encountered through all these tales of craziness and chivalry: Every tenant I interviewed claimed to be their building’s biggest tipper. But generosity at this season comes from all directions. One year, I wasn’t sure I’d handed a tip envelope to Carmine, the perennially silent overnight doorman in my building. When I asked, he said he had no recollection—in fact, no way of knowing. I was confused: “Carmine, how can you not know?” Surely, he wouldn’t overlook my thick, biggest-tipper-east-of-the-Mississippi envelope. “I never open them,” he explained. The man who never speaks spoke more. “I drop them at the Children’s Hospital on my way home.” Now that’s the Christmas spirit. In real time. Holly Peterson is a journalist and the author of six books, including the novels “The Manny” and “It Happens in the Hamptons.” Copyright ©2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Appeared in the December 14, 2024, print edition as 'The Closely Guarded Secrets Of Manhattan Doormen'.

Click here to download the PDF Click here to read "Of Course I Want to Know..." at the WSJ By Holly Peterson Illustrations by Diego Blanco October 31, 2024 9:00 pm ET No matter where you socialize, there are two types of dinner party guests: those who want to know the guest list ahead of time and others who prefer the serendipity of a naive encounter. Though attitudes on this issue differ, everyone agrees on one party foul: You cannot ask who else is coming before committing to a dinner. And if your host is the helpful type who discloses some or all of the attendees as the event approaches, no canceling because you find one of them annoying. “It is arrogant to ask,” says Gahl Burt, who perfected her entertaining chops as Nancy Reagan’s social secretary. “Plenty of people have their staff call, and I respond, ‘I’m still working on it.’” In other words: Ask not what the party can do for you. Ask what you can do for the party. The actor and comedian Larry David has other ideas. “The thing about the dinner party is you don’t know who’s going. That’s what really bothers me about it, that it’s such a f—king secret as to who you’re inviting. Why can’t I know? ” he recently pleaded on the Shameless podcast, a theme he has reprised in his TV show. I’m on team Larry. I love giving and going to dinner parties. Knowing something in advance about the other guests lets me size them up better in person, which is half the fun. That way I know that the guy droning on about the history of Sunni secularism is a self-obsessed bloviator and not the former U.S. station chief in Jordan. I say that giving your guests an idea of who will be there is downright good hosting manners. Having at least some attendee information lets us know what to expect, so we walk in feeling our best. We all have crater-sized holes of ignorance. You know what they say: The more you don’t know, the more you know you don’t know. Recently in Paris, my dinner partner dissected the blockbuster Surrealism exhibition at the Pompidou Center. He then paused, “You follow my work, right?” Way too proud to say, “Actually, no.” Instead, I answered, “Oh, yeah, sure, yeah, read you often.” He was too snooty to provide a life raft, so I dug myself deeper into the muck and offered platitudes that might engender hints. “Didn’t I hear you on…” or “Didn’t I read it in…” I then took an indelicate gulp of vintage Bordeaux to quell my stress of faking it. What’s worse than not knowing who your dinner companion is? Mistakenly assuming they are someone they are not. Many years ago, I had the glamorous bad-boy photographer Peter Beard as my dinner partner. A most regrettable placement by the hostess. I chattered about my favorite recipes because I thought he was the renowned, portly chef James Beard. Yet these risks of flubbing it or flunking it don’t scare off half the people I surveyed. In both Europe and the U.S., many consider free-flowing kismet much more amusing. “Ruins everything to know. If I know who’s coming, it feels like an advertising party, and my head of sales is taking me around with a crib sheet,” says Lauren Zalaznick, who ran a division at NBCUniversal. “If I’m invited to a friend’s house, it’s a club I’m a member of, and no need to ask. If I’m not a friend of the person, it’s a one-time commitment. If I say yes, it’s my decision, and I’m a big girl.” Comtesse Isabelle d’Ornano made a Mon Dieu! expression at the mere question. At 87, the French iconoclast—who combines the style of Catherine Deneuve with the command of Christine Lagarde—still oversees divisions at the Sisley cosmetics empire she co-founded with her husband. She told me that asking for a guest list is “pas tellement dans les habitudes françaises.” This is a titled woman’s way of saying, “No friggin’ way can you ask.” She continued, “Once, the president de la République was coming, and I didn’t even tell anyone in case he was too busy to show.” A good thing she didn’t invite me to that one: I might have confused a chef d’État with a chef de cuisine. Whether your guests know who’s who or what’s what, do arrange your dinner party with other key considerations in mind. Remember the “bucks or f—ks” rule. More politely said, people like to make money or make whoopee. So place people with either endgame in mind—or, I guess, both. No matter how successful your seating plan, also remember that nobody wants or needs three courses. Serve one course family style and move about for dessert. Ninety minutes is too long to talk to just the two people you’re sandwiched between. If dinner is over in half that time, it feels like the teacher let everyone out for recess early. Especially with New York’s high-octane achievers, chances are good you’ll be sitting next to someone with a healthy sense of self-regard. We all know the type: They won’t ask you one question, then wrap up saying, “Fascinating discussion!” The host may then make the whole table listen to this person. “Oh God, that is the worst of anything in the world. And, thankfully, they only do that in America,” exclaimed coveted British guest and decorator Nicky Haslam. He responded so emphatically that I had to turn the phone volume down. “You know,” he mimed with fake pretension, “‘So and so, please say a few words about Harvard or Elon Musk .’ These bloody communal subjects ruin a dinner party.” My aforementioned pride kept me from admitting to Haslam that I do this all the time. If you do have a one-conversation tradition, please ask a woman to expound, not a man. I can’t be alone in thinking that men have exceeded their dinner party lecture time limit in life. Worse, men play a game of “keep away,” throwing high-arched policy questions at each other to display their expertise. I’m very much an extrovert, but I go silent in these exchanges because I can’t pontificate about, say, the approaching cryptocurrency utopia or apocalypse. I usually offer, “How about we tackle the topic in a way where everyone has something to add?” Hereafter I will stop the dreaded clinking of my glass to get everyone’s attention for remarks. Haslam is right—it always feels like forced grandeur, like I take myself for Pamela Harriman. As Larry David puts it, “I’m golden ruling it.” I will host unto them as I want them to host unto me. Holly Peterson is a journalist and the author of six books, including the novel “It Happens in the Hamptons.” Copyright © 2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Click here to download the PDF Click here to read "How the Super-Rich Signal..." at the WSJ By Holly Peterson Illustration by Carl Godfrey September 20, 2024 11:00 am ET Sturdy red curtains cordon off the lives of plutocrats at play. To better hide their gilded world from the 99.9%, the super-rich avoid high-end labels, favoring “quiet luxury” and “stealth wealth.” When this affluent army enters our world, they camouflage themselves with earthy-colored cashmere and luxurious suede. Yank back those curtains, however, and a quandary emerges for the highest of high-net-worth individuals. How to signal to each other where they rank on the totem pole? Today, especially with talk of new wealth taxes heating up on the campaign trail, gauche display is out. A subtler set of cues and signifiers is required. The most straightforward symbols start with watches. One Wall Street macher explained, “You see a gold Rolex Daytona, that’s one thing. You see a Patek Perpetual and you say to yourself, OK, this guy’s playing a different game .” It’s not enough to go to St. Barts. Your friends need to know how you arrived. Photo: Sean Pavone/iStock For women, it’s about the jewelry. These days, gemstones are too go-go 1980s and flashy. Instead, it’s about the weight of gold, so they favor chains thick enough to secure a bike to a lamppost. Hefty charm necklaces from Foundrae are purposely designed to hang coins and medallions on separate links up the collarbone. The message is clear. Exclusivity brings you up a notch. “You want the thing that has only 10 in existence,” explains Plum Sykes, it-girl Vogue contributor and author of the recent novel “Wives Like Us.” “In England, with Range Rovers, the company invites people to buy them, like a Centurion Card or a table at the Met Gala. The highest limited edition of 10 is the bespoke SV Burford Edition. You could actually live in it.” Pretending to play down your wealth while emblazoning your net worth in neon requires a lightness of touch. You can’t say it outright, but you want it crystal clear. It’s extra tricky in Manhattan, where you can’t employ the usual clues of estates and automobiles. Here, people live in apartments many stories up from the sidewalk and out of view. They tend to interact at restaurants and galas, and they never drive. In Manhattan, where you can’t use the usual clues of estates and automobiles, everything depends on attitude. Photo: Lanna Apisukh for WSJ So everything depends on attitude. You must act like big things in life are, well, no biggie. When you can wrangle people to your abode, serve a tub of Ossetra caviar with Lay’s potato chips. Place it out like guacamole on the coffee table. Verbal cues confer insider status. High-rollers in the art world now refer to the most rarefied paintings as “pictures.” Thus, for a would-be bidder, a $40-million Abstract Expressionist canvas by Rothko is not a “masterpiece painting” but a “picture.” For most people, a picture is what your 4-year-old paints with a thick brush and primary colors for Mother’s Day. Travel may be the most efficient way to establish one’s place in the plutocratic pecking order. This month, for instance, couples fattened up by too much lobster and Hamptons rosé head to European mountain spas to “shed a few” for a week. They frequent the naturopathic Lanserhof or the VivaMayr in Austria, leaving with this huge takeaway: You have to chew better. Of course, how you travel is essential. As a former Wall Street bank chairman told me, “OK, so you went to St. Barts. So what? That tells me nothing. How’d you get there? That is key.” To telegraph that you flew private over commercial, those fluent in the language of wealth-speak have created new verbs. People say, “We NetJetted into Aspen. We just had to.” Pause. “Because of the dogs.” Transporting “the dogs” is somehow a constant justification for private travel. Owning your own jet is a huge notch up on the totem pole. The effort to be blasé about your new Gulfstream G650 can be positively tortured. To signal that your NetJetting days are over, you might drop into conversation with a sigh, “We’ve got to find a new pilot.” This should be said in the same tone as a wearied parent complaining about needing a new babysitter. ‘The Asprey,’ a Patek Philippe perpetual calendar chronograph, pictured before it sold at Sotheby’s for $3.88 million in 2018. Photo: denis balibouse/Reuters Arriving at the private terminal, avoid too much luggage with zippers because when you fly private, you don’t even need to close your bags. Anything you like can be placed on an empty seat or in the back area. Pack as if loading your station wagon for a weekend trip: a few garment bags and lots of stuffed tote bags. For a slam-dunk move, bring a farmstand tray of petunias you grabbed on the way. That will fortify your I-do-this-all-the-time status. Once seated in your jet, it’s all about projecting casual insouciance. The goal is to appear as cozy and familiar as in your living room. Maybe you go barefoot or lean back casually with hands clasped behind your head (try that on the Delta shuttle). Then you order a Diet Coke or beer and munch on pretzels. Real habitués don’t treat liquor and food on a private jet as if at Versailles. Not everyone is eager to drop hints. I know one elegant banker who owns his jet and has more fun hiding it than showing it off. When acquaintances dig for clues on his transport and ask when he’s leaving, he responds, “Flight leaves at 3:05 or 2:50,” the sort of irregular times that commercial airlines use. Language codes are crucial on the water, too. How to describe your floating palace? The uber-rich will call a seafaring vessel longer than a tennis court my “boat” (a word that conjures up fishing with buddies for most of us). For example, one might hear, “Would you like to spend a few days on our boat on the Amalfi Coast?” In reality, if there is an onboard pizza oven, screening room and a large crew in starched white polo shirts placing magnolias in your Tequila Sunrise, that’s a “yacht.” It’s important to treat travel on your Gulfstream G650ER like relaxing in your living room. Photo: SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg News For the beyond megawealthy, smaller “chaser boats” follow the big yachts stuffed with toys like helicopters, Jet Skis and mini-submarines. One yacht in Ibiza this summer had a boulangerie and chocolatier in tow. As an invitee, never act like a startled tourist in Teva sandals and a fanny pack. Know the rule about putting your shoes in a basket when you get on. After changing into your Orlebar Brown trunks or caftan from that darling shop in Capri, go to the stern and dangle your feet over the edge like Tom Sawyer on a rickety dock, enjoying a summer day. But all is not carefree in this rarefied world. There are stressful days. Sometimes the rules of the game make the game itself no fun. Imagine the finance guy at Manhattan’s 34th Street heliport. He’s just taken delivery of his AgustaWestland AW139 copter. Since “tricking out” one’s copter is key, he’s turned a tight 14-seat space into a super-comfy eight seats. He’s still miffed his buddy was offered the Hermès invite-only leather seats. He wasn’t, but, hey, it’s OK. It’s great to have your own AgustaWestland AW139 helicopter, but how you ‘trick it out’ is key. Photo: arnd wiegmann/Reuters Takeoff time is delayed, and the guy can’t express his frustration or his wife will thrash him with her weighty chains. Agita reverberates inside him, so he takes some deep breaths. It gets worse. He’s supposed to be happy in his spanking-new marvel, but finally buckling up, what he sees out the window makes him blow his top. Just as the blades begin to whir that rat-tat-tat beat, a rival hedgie-bro has driven up to the heliport, mere seconds too late to see who owns the copter. Holly Peterson is a journalist and the author of six books, including the novel “It Happens in the Hamptons. ” Copyright ©2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Appeared in the September 21, 2024, print edition as 'How the Super-Rich Signal Their Wealth to Each Other'.

Click here to download the PDF Click here to read "The Awful Quandry of the Super-Rich..." at WSJ By Holly Peterson Illustration by Robert Neubecker August 9, 2024 9:00 pm ET When rich people hang out, the conversations are always laced with one-upmanship. Tennis elbow? My orthopedist can fix all. Long Island to Cape Cod? Fly private from East Hampton—it’s the only way. It’s summertime, and wealthy New Yorkers who moved to Florida are back North. From East Hampton to Kennebunkport, everyone’s in the same sandbox now. It’s time to compare who has the shiniest bucket: those who decamped or those who stayed. Palm Beach: the best decision ever? Yep, or so they claim. They golf before work and take a dip on Billionaires’ Row beachfront after work. It’s only two hours by speedboat to go bonefishing in the Bahamas. On Worth Avenue, superwealthy Florida transplants can be seen well into June. They linger because they want to, not merely to avoid higher taxes. Photo: Jose More/VWPics/Associated Press But for true Manhattanites, moving somewhere for fishing ease seems positively boneheaded. Asked if he’d ditch New York for enduring sunshine, mega-developer Aby Rosen prefers the big-boy pond. “Wow, gee whiz, how great I’m so free, swimming with kids in the middle of a workweek,” he responded facetiously. “I mean, who does that? I don’t want to putz around. Midweek, I’d rather go to Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center or hear good jazz downtown. Kill me if I have to jump on a boat on a Wednesday evening!” Spending months straight in Florida during Covid changed people’s perspectives. Some had enough sea spray for a lifetime and couldn’t wait for New York to be New York again. Others fell in love with existing in Florida full-time. They changed residency for a mixture of eased pandemic rules, less crime and no state income tax. It isn’t an easy move. A fact pattern must emerge: fewer days in New York than in Florida. All possessions “near and dear” must go South—from framed photos to framed Basquiats. It can take years to prove to New York tax authorities that a second home in Florida is a true residence. They search cellphone locations and credit card receipts with the determination of truffle hounds. People use apps such as Tracking Days to tally their whereabouts because five minutes in Manhattan is considered a whole day. Asked if he’d ditch New York for enduring sunshine, mega-developer Aby Rosen (pictured in 2018) prefers the big-boy pond: “I don’t want to putz around.” Photo: Robin Platzer/Twin Images/Zuma Press Media mogul Barry Diller is a current New Yorker. Twenty years ago, he was carefully maintaining his California residency. One night at 11:45 p.m., he pulled over to wait 15 minutes before crossing from New Jersey to Manhattan on the George Washington Bridge. “I had no more days left in New York state except one. Only one,” he tells me. “I had a meeting the next day. I had to arrive in New York after midnight, so the day before could not count. And I thought, ‘This is not a life to lead.’ So, we jammed over the bridge to the city five minutes before midnight. The next day, I had exceeded the limit, became a New York City resident and never regretted it.” Stalwart Manhattanites believe a high heart rate gives them an edge. If a messenger on an electric bike clips their nose, it’s an opportunity to flip someone the bird, show ‘em you mean business. It gets them pumped up to compete with and crush the next guy who pisses them off. Those who fled the grit and grime of Manhattan repeat a common refrain: If New York doesn’t want to compete with other states on tax rates, people are under no obligation to stay. “Companies and employees can go anywhere to be competitive,” explains Ryan Williams, a consultant and former aide to Sen. Mitt Romney. “If I were a guest in your home and you weren’t accommodating, I would probably leave and not return.” Even after Memorial Day, the well-heeled stayed in South Florida through June’s 17 days of drenching rain. They risked life and Hermès-clad limb for that divine Cajun Chicken at Bilboquet. And with enough days away from New York to satisfy the tax authorities, Florida transplants are staying longer because they want to, not because they have to. At 9 p.m. on a mid-June Friday night outside the posh Buccan restaurant in Palm Beach, four parking valets ran around as if their lives depended on it. One opened the key cabinet to prove wealthy regulars remained. “Look: you got your Rolls, Ranges and Mercedes. Maybe the Bugattis are gone, but others are mostly still here.” The superwealthy may appreciate Central Park’s canopied walkways, but many have stopped and thought, “This one walk costs $40k in income taxes. Why don’t I walk free on sunny sand and do less of this?” Photo: timothy a. clary/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images Rich people move in clusters around the globe. They gather, they listen, they copycat and they charm. The money game in Florida is more efficient; with laxer regulations, deals close faster. Sinking a putt on a random Tuesday might impress your partner enough to get your “hundo” ($100 million) into an otherwise closed fund. Carl Icahn and Ken Griffin are among the major machers who have planted stakes on the Palm Beach-to-Miami axis. Investment firms building Florida outposts or headquarters include Millennium Management and Elliott Management, as well as private-equity giant General Atlantic. “Many young real estate guys, all here to capitalize on the booming market, have moved down,” explains Dylan Reiff, a 24-year-old licensed sales associate at the Corcoran Group’s office. “Palm Beach is the perfect place to put our feet in the water. Development moves at lightning speed compared with Manhattan. the West Palm region is a developer’s dreamland.” To boot, it’s a taxpayers’ haven. The superwealthy crowding Worth Avenue are saving cash they don’t need to save. Why? Avoiding higher taxes often has more to do with ideology than financial considerations. They appreciated Central Park’s canopied walkways, but they stopped and thought, “By being in New York today, this one walk costs $40k in income taxes. Why don’t I walk free on sunny sand and do less of this?” Media mogul Barry Diller, a stalwart New Yorker, with his fashion-designer wife Diane von Furstenberg on June 5. Photo: angela weiss/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images Big Apple loyalists counter that paying taxes is a duty to the city where you made all that cash in the first place. “Without the overall financial ecosystem and infrastructure, I would not have been a fraction as successful. I feel I owe a big debt to New York,” says Roger Altman, founder and senior chairman of Evercore and Deputy Secretary of the Treasury in the Clinton administration. “The city is like Dickens, a tale of two cities, constantly under stress. It needs all the help it can get.” I tried the “tax-as-duty” concept on a bulldog lawyer fresh off a cushy Palm Beach back nine. “I owe the city more taxes? Absolute f—king bulls—t. I paid millions and millions of dollars in real estate and income taxes to New York. I didn’t use the public school system or public health once. I called 311 every month: It took the city five years to cut down a dead and dangerous tree in front of my f—king home!” You can take the guy out of New York, but you can’t take New York out of the guy. Holly Peterson is a journalist and the author of six books, including the novel “It Happens in the Hamptons.”

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