OTT parties...
Taking their cue from The Great Gatsby playbook, a
fabulously-over extravagant party is every newly-
minted millionaire’s favoured means of announcing
their ascension to wadded-walletdom. Indeed,
once having arrived at such an enviable position,
a flash-the-cash bash is obligatory when marking
even the most mundane of milestones. Dog’s
100th day and still not fallen victim to one of the
4WDs? That’s a marquee for 120 close chums and
bespoke bone-shaped canapés all-round. 10 years
since the Financial Tsunami ravaged the global
banking system? Gathering of 200 or so valued
colleagues on a fleet of swan-shaped gondolas,
dress code: monetarily distressed. No event is
too trivial to pass up a chance to party, while each
shindig, of course, has to be far more lavish than
its predecessor. Putting being judgmental aside for
the briefest of moments, it has to be said that the
one upside of someone in your social circle suddenly
finding stratospheric success is that there’s a fair
to middling chance that you’ll instantly find yourself
invited to a better class of parties. And, darlings,
those foie gras profiteroles are just to die for...igafencu.com 123
High-flying...
Once you have your bright green Bugatti and your
fur-dashboarded Ferraris conspicuously displayed
on your drive, then what next? In this case, the
only way is up, with a private jet being the mark
of a true high-flier. Alternatively, you could opt
for a superyacht. Or why not spoil yourself and
have both? In truth, any self-respecting new-age
billionaire has a fleet of luxury vehicles – cars,
jets, yachts – at their beck and call as highly-visual
means of establishing their status. Admittedly,
they also come in useful when transiting to a
private island or swiftly moving on, should the
tax authorities come prowling. Wherever their
destination, however, you can be sure that even
in the most forsaken of wildernesses or on an
icy plain stretching out beyond the horizon, you
can be fairly sure that the trappings of luxury
will not have been left behind. So, do your best
to keep a straight face when any newly-affluent
acquaintance ‘shares’ the difficulty of getting a
really good pedicure when mid-Gobi.