Day: September 3, 2016

The Jennifer Lawrence Diary™

Pop quiz: Here are three of Louisville’s most profitable exports. Quick, name a fourth
  1. Autos and trucks (Ford)
  2. Home appliances (GE)
  3. Whiskey (Brown-Forman)
  4. __________________

Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock . . . ding!

The obvious answer, of course, is Jennifer Lawrence! The Louisville native earned $46 million this year, making her the world’s highest-paid actress and one of Louisville’s most famous exports.

Imagine Jennifer County, Ky.

If Lawrence, 26, were a Kentucky county based on annual income, she’d be a brand new one — nudging back Owsley ($37 million total) and making Robertson ($24.6 million) a No. 121, according to the latest available Census data. Owsley (pop. 4,755) and Robertson (2,282) are in historically impoverished eastern Kentucky.

Jennifer Lawrence
Lawrence

Here in Jefferson County, the actress’s $46 million paycheck is strikingly big from a different perspective.

Imagine everyone got paid once a year, and stood in line at the bank to deposit their paychecks at one of two teller windows. Lawrence could stand in a line all by herself to deposit one huge, oversized check, like you see in Publishers Clearing House TV commercials. And 1,738 other people earning the county average $26,473 a year would stand in one very long line for the other teller. It would take their combined earnings to equal Lawrence’s $46 million.

See for yourself, with Boulevard’s new Jennifer Lawrence Income Gauge™. (With obligatory ™ symbol!)

Latest Headlines

In a sharp rebuke, JG Brown foundation asks whether UofL foundation funds were improperly diverted, threatens to cut off future gifts

By Jim Hopkins
Boulevard Publisher

The white-shoe world of philanthropy is usually collegial and rarely combative, which makes the $355 million James Graham Brown Foundation‘s public accusations yesterday against the University of Louisville Foundation so extraordinary.

The Brown foundation, which has given $72 million to the school over the past six decades, sent the broadside in a letter from Chairman and CEO R. Alex Rankin and President Mason Rummel, according to The Courier-Journal.

They expressed concern that “expenditures may have been made that were not exclusively for the charitable and educational purposes of the university,” or were not consistent with UofL rules barring donors, members or trustees from personally profiting from the UofL foundation, according to the CJ’s Andrew Wolfson.

Alex Rankin
Rankin

Established in 1943, the Brown is second only to UofL’s among the city’s biggest philanthropic foundations based on asset size; UofL’s has about $820 million. That gives the Brown and Rankin extra clout, and could spur other big donors to also threaten funding cutoffs. Rankin is well-connected in the city’s power structure, sitting on the boards of Churchill Downs and Glenview Trust Co., where fellow directors have very strong UofL connections.

In their letter, Rankin and Rummel also said the Brown foundation is troubled the university hasn’t honored open- records requests from the chairman of the university’s board of trustees, Larry Benz, concerning UofL foundation accounting records, the CJ says.

Underscoring the gravity of their concerns, Rankin and Rummel threatened to cut off funding unless UofL hires a nationally recognized forensic accounting firm to review its finances. The specific request for a forensic accounting is striking because Continue reading “In a sharp rebuke, JG Brown foundation asks whether UofL foundation funds were improperly diverted, threatens to cut off future gifts” →

The Jennifer Lawrence Diary™

In newest Dior ads, Lawrence brings star power to style

Oscar-winning Louisville native Jennifer Lawrence has been a spokesmodel for Christian Dior since 2012. The legendary French fashion house just released photos for its newest campaign for a fresh line of Diorever bags. (How much are they? Keep reading.)

Dior photo one 400

Dior orange purse

 

Lawrence, 26, just named the world’s highest-paid actress ($20 million alone for December’s sci-fi thriller “Passengers”), says the bags are “chic, stylish and cool,” according to Women’s Wear Daily. Photographer Patrick Demarchelier shot the fall campaign in a New York studio, the trade site reports, with minimal props, gray walls and slanted light casting shadows on Lawrence’s prominent cheekbones and off-the-shoulder cable-knit sweaters.

Lawrence Dior blue bag

Unless Boulevard’s crack fashion editors are mistaken, Dior describes the bag immediately above as one in Midnight Blue prestige calfskin, with the following details:

  • Reversible flap in Imperial Purple smooth calfskin, Cannage topstitching.
  • Silver-tone jewelry.
  • Adjustable strap.
  • Can be carried in the hand or on the shoulder.
  • Dimensions: 30 x 23 x 16 cm, approximately 12 x 9 x 6 inches.

The other bags appear to be so new, Dior hasn’t added them to its online catalog.

What do they cost? If you have to ask . . . actually, you’ve come to the right place! Boulevard believes these are priced around $3,400. Each. That’s according to Spotted Fashion.

But it’s not a Kelly bag

The ladies who lunch in Anchorage, Glenview, Prospect, and other luxe local redoubts will tell you the famous Hermès bag is the only way to go. Once known as the “Sac à dépêches,” it earned its better-known name after another actress, Grace Kelly, gave it a cameo role in an Alfred Hitchcock film. The backstory, according to Wikipedia:

Kelly bag
$21,935 with tax.

“In 1954, Hitchcock allowed the costume designer Edith Head to purchase Hermès accessories for the film ‘To Catch a Thief,’ starring Grace Kelly. According to Head, Kelly ‘fell in love’ with the bag. Within months of her 1956 marriage to Prince Rainier III, the pregnant Princess of Monaco was photographed using the handbag to shield her growing belly from the paparazzi. That photograph was featured in Life magazine.”

Grace Kelly and the Kelly bag
Rainier, Kelly and the bag, about 1956.

Naturellement, you won’t see Lawrence carrying anything near the paparazzi but Dior. Still, given her eye-popping salary, she could well afford any number of Kelly bags, which this year sell for between $10,000 and $20,000-plus.

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Related: From Louisville to Monte-Carlo, an $88,000 Memorial Day Weekend.