Word: villa
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...spring 2001, Majed al-Sabah opened Villa Moda, a 100,000-sq.-ft. mall-cum-boutique (he calls it a "luxury bazaar") in a glass box on the outskirts of Kuwait City. The $20 million building is nearly as impressive as the swarm of big brands--Fendi, Marni, Ferragamo, Prada, Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent--clustered in mini shops inside, along with a Botox bar and a traditional Middle Eastern restaurant (with nontraditional Cappellini furniture) overlooking Kuwait Bay. To make sure the opening didn't go unnoticed, al-Sabah offered members of the international fashion set free business-class flights...
...Villa Moda shows why fashion is interested in Majed al-Sabah, but why is Majed al-Sabah interested in fashion? His stock answer, "I've always had a passion for fashion," hardly explains why a could-be leader of his country would annoy his relatives by deflecting suggestions that he become the country's next ambassador to Italy and instead go into a field so unseemly, so unmacho, so unimportant to global affairs...
...quickly developing a reputation as one of the suavest men on the fashion scene. The British magazine Tatler recently deemed him a style icon and made him a contributing editor. Yet al-Sabah wants to do more than bring the fashion set to Kuwait. He wants, says Tashfeen Niaz, Villa Moda's COO, "to prove that Kuwait is not someplace you can ignore...
Nguyen Gia Thieu's neighbors rarely saw him, except when they glimpsed his silver Mercedes gliding through the gates of his three-story villa in Ho Chi Minh City. His lifestyle?the house, the servants, the beauty-queen wife?befitted one of Vietnam's top entrepreneurs, but it infuriated the community. One neighbor snarls, "They are too rich to even look at ordinary people." So there was no sympathy on Jan. 7 when police arrested Thieu, 38, then raided his house, hauling off reams of documents and more than $250,000 in cash. The charge: his Dong Nam Telecom Trade...
...true, the allegations might explain the Berlusconi coalition's clean sweep of Sicily's 61 Parliament seats in the 2001 elections. In his court testimony, Giuffrè went on to say that during the late 1970s, top Mob boss Stefano Bontade used to visit Berlusconi at the businessman's villa on the outskirts of Milan. Speaking later with reporters, Berlusconi's lawyer flatly dismissed the testimony as "false" and an attempt to discredit the Prime Minister and his party. Dell'Utri remained calm throughout, but took the microphone at the very end for his right to "spontaneous remarks." "Mr. Giuffr...