Annette Sharp’s book release, Blonde Ambition: Roxy Jacenko Unfiltered
SYDNEY CONFIDENTIAL’S Annette Sharp goes behind the insta-filters and rumour mills to uncover the real Roxy in her new book, Blonde Ambition: Roxy Jacenko Unfiltered.
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SYDNEY CONFIDENTIAL writer Annette Sharp reveals in her new book, Blonde Ambition: Roxy Jacenko Unfiltered, the many faces of PR queen Roxy Jacenko.
Blonde Ambition goes behind the insta-filters and rumour mills to uncover the real Roxy. It’s the unspun story of Sydney’s most controversial PR identity.
Here is an exclusive excerpt from the book.
OLIVER Curtis had been engaged to another woman, PR account manager Hermione Underwood, when he fell for Roxy Jacenko’s undisputed charms.
Underwood was the best friend of swimwear model and Sydney “It” girl Lara Bingle, the one-time face of a controversial Tourism Australia “Where the bloody hell are you?” ad campaign and the model who had rocked AFL star Brendan Fevola’s marriage in 2006.
Bingle’s split from Australian cricket captain Michael Clarke in March 2010 was the celebrity bust-up story of the year. That Roxy had somehow stumbled into the drama was not all that surprising. After moving out of a luxury beachfront Bondi apartment she shared with Clarke, Bingle checked in — up the road — with her best friend of three years, Underwood, and her fiance Curtis.
Curtis’s friends at the time believed the young investment banker, who styled himself in the manner of a tidy and fashionable young prince, was living the Aussie male’s dream.
Though he had been sacked from Transocean the year before, he was rising meteorically through the executive ranks at his father’s investment advisory company Riverstone and still had money to splash around, which he did liberally.
News of a romance between Curtis, 25, and Roxy, 30, titillated gossip columnists anew.
“The ink was still wet on his wedding invitations for his planned marriage to Hermione when he took up with Roxy,” said one astonished guest, who was stunned to learn the wedding was off.
The new relationship wasn’t without its obstacles — one of whom proved to be Bingle.
When the mining investment adviser’s eye wandered after a couple of months dating Roxy, a paparazzi photographer would discover Curtis’s car outside Bingle’s new apartment and it would soon be reported in a newspaper column.
Roxy, a former member of her staff said, was behind the tip. She had made the call to the photographer in the hope of diverting Curtis’s attention.
It worked. The fledgling playboy rushed back to the spin doctor.
While Curtis was being distracted by Bingle, there were also whispers Roxy, ever the opportunist, had taken a run at Bingle’s ex, cricket captain Clarke, who was still getting over his breakup with the swimsuit model.
Predictably, Roxy had found herself with a front-row seat to a story that dominated newspapers, women’s magazines and television news — the story of the Australian cricket captain’s split with Bingle.
At the start of 2010, Bingle had been Sydney’s most famous Aston Martin driver.
By the end of the year — after Clarke had dispatched Bingle’s car to a showroom to be sold in the couple’s breakup fire sale — Roxy would be.
She would also be six weeks pregnant to her on-off boyfriend, Curtis.
ROXY’s nature had been confounding people for years.
Depending on which side of the Roxy divide one stood, the PR maverick was either the unluckiest person in the world or the luckiest, the most controlling or most careless, the most selfish or most generous. Anyone who knew her would likely agree she was hard to define. It was often said that she was cunning, ambitious, calculating, dispassionate, shrewd and brash. She would likely agree. She was also relentlessly hard- working, determined, fearless, innovative and fun.
Roxy was breathtakingly unapologetic about the characteristics some considered faults. In some circles she was labelled a bitch.
Name calling was to be expected in Sydney, a city where success was hard won and generally went hand-in-hand with suspicion, envy and a smear campaign.
Roxy had become a demanding boss in her quest to be the best and, after a dozen years in business, had worn some staff out entirely and lost the loyalty of many more.
“I’m an obsessive compulsive and people can either like it or loathe it,’” she would tell reporter Cara Waters in 2016.
Like refugee Bettys, the cute name Roxy had bestowed upon her staff, Roxy’s PR rivals were comfortable using the word “bitch” when referring to the Sweaty Betty boss.
They maintained Roxy had been undercutting them and stealing their clients for years. She had no respect for the established code that kept a dozen or so top agencies humming along sweetly without each cannibalising the others’ businesses too disruptively.
Frequently muttered, though often spat venomously, “bitch” was also in popular usage among a group of pretty eastern suburbs women when discussing Roxy’s romantic conquests.
Roxy had known more than a measure of success turning heads and stealing hearts. On occasion, she had laid claim to other women’s boyfriends and at least one fiance.
ON each and every day of her husband’s 12-day insider trading trial, Roxy arrived at the front door of the Supreme Court of NSW, punctually, with minutes to spare and just enough time to compose herself ahead of the Crown’s allotted 10am start.
As a large jostling scrum of press photographers and television crews would soon come to realise — just as key fashion, beauty, lifestyle and marketing writers across Sydney had discovered over the previous decade — Roxy was hardwired to produce a newsworthy “flashbulb moment” for any media good enough to attend one of her promotional events.
She had never disappointed when entertaining media on a client’s dime. It was hardly likely she would disappoint the biggest live media pool that destiny had yet divined for her. For almost three weeks, the 70-metre stretch of St James Road from Elizabeth Street to the courthouse became Roxy’s runway, her arena.
If her husband’s criminal charges, in a case news outlets were already calling “the insider trading trial of the decade”, were going to propel her into the unforgiving eye of a media storm, she was going to be prepared. She might have even been over-prepared — which may, in the end, have served her less well than she would hope in a critical media’s eyes. Not that she could have done anything else, for it was her way to give news agencies what she knew they wanted: something glamorous, captivating, sexy and a little shocking.
For the next three weeks it would be herself.
On May 11, 2016, day one of her husband’s trial, she wore a conservative knee-length Louis Vuitton dress, in black, with a logo belt and Yves Saint Laurent shoes.
On day two, she paired a Saint Laurent dress, black again, with a Balmain power blazer — she loved Balmain and had a blazer in every colour — and her favourite spaghetti-string ankle-tie shoes by Saint Laurent.
She would maintain a generally conservative style until, in week three, feeling more relaxed with the intense media spotlight, Roxy would give her love of floral art its head in a pretty Mary Katrantzou printed dress with Azzedine Alaïa stilettos.
The style was a departure for the practised power dresser but if there was one thing Roxy loved more than fashion it was an element of surprise.
For her twice-daily parade before the media pack camped outside the historic 1895 courthouse, Roxy would choose from an extensive wardrobe that made Sydney’s establishment and new rich green with envy. The feted names of the houses of Louis Vuitton, Balmain, Hermès, Yves Saint Laurent, Chanel, Gucci, Miu Miu and Céline would be uttered with less reverence in future days and weeks in Sydney’s privileged eastern suburbs as Roxy took luxury brands from the Paris catwalks and made them, shockingly said some, look outlandish in the sombre courtroom environment.
Each day, generally before the trial, she would snap a selfie in her apartment block elevator and upload the image to her social media app. A tag might also generate inquiries concerning the designs at retail level, which in turn may push sales. Who knew?
If there were enough inquiries for the garments and accessories at outlet level it might just feed through to the labels.
It would be a fabulous thing to be a poster girl for a luxury brand and possibly sign a client like Louis Vuitton to her PR agency, Sweaty Betty — an agency that was missing an elite fashion brand from its stable.
● This is an edited extract from Blonde Ambition: Roxy Jacenko Unfiltered by Annette Sharp (MUP, RRP $32.99, ebook $14.99), out on Tuesday. www.mup.com.au/items/198614.
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