Julie Macklowe, an Upper East Side social fixture, settled into a corner table at Sistina, a canteen for billionaire business types such as Jamie Dimon and Mike Bloomberg, to chat about the rich.
She was decked out in a $2,260 pink satin blazer from Philipp Plein, along with $1,820 matching drawstring trousers. She was sipping a whiskey that happens to be called the Macklowe after its founder — her.
“It’s basically a way to burn up money,” Macklowe said of her venture, “but it’s great to see your cocktail on a menu.”
A week earlier, she had put her name on something else: an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal with the headline “A Wealthy New Yorker’s Case for the Pied-à-Terre Tax.”
With it, she strode, in her bedazzled Gucci sneakers, directly into a debate about the taxes ultrawealthy part-time city dwellers avoid.
Rage at the uber-rich can be particularly acute in New York City, which has more Forbes billionaires than any place on earth.
That rage helped fuel Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign. It led to populist protest of the Met Gala, which takes place just across from the Fifth Avenue triplex where Macklowe lives with her husband, Billy Macklowe, scion of a real estate clan. (The Macklowes used to have one floor, but an upside to having really old neighbors, she said, is that each time one dies she gets to expand.)
And a feeling that the rich aren’t paying their fair share laid the foundation for a proposed tax on multimillion-dollar second homes.
So there was something surprising about seeing someone in her exceptionally privileged circumstances defending the tax, arguing that people who enjoy a spritz at Sant Ambroeus after a trip to the Frick also need to fund the subway.
Particularly since Macklowe is proud to say she voted for Donald Trump three times and is no fan of the mayor.
But attention-getting antics are a Macklowe specialty.
In 2022, she hosted a fetish-themed party at Cipriani to celebrate her 45th birthday. Her husband arrived in full leather; she wore an outfit that Page Six described as “a barely-there mesh and sequin creation.”
One minute, she’s admitting that she’s never been to a grocery store in her “entire life” and saying, “I can’t even boil an egg.” (At Sistina, she opted for the $34 pear-and-arugula salad.)
The next, she’s calling the current prices of Louis Vuitton and Prada “offensive” and pledging allegiance to the bevy of billionaire owners of fake Birkin bags.
“Obviously I own a fake Birkin,” she said. “And there are women all over the Upper East Side walking around with them because I gave them to them!”
She calls opposition to abortion “crazy,” then uses a similar descriptor for the president, who did nominate three of the five justices who overturned Roe v. Wade.
“He’s a sheer lunatic,” she said.
Yet she likes that Trump has been a staunch supporter of Israel and has forged an allegiance with Elon Musk, whose work in space she applauds, citing climate concerns.
“I believe we need to colonize Mars,” she said. “We’ve got to go somewhere!”
As Macklowe tells it, there was a collective sense of civic duty that disappeared over the past decade.
When the Covid pandemic shut down New York City, scores of rich people moved to Florida, where taxes were lower. Although benefit galas have returned to Manhattan, Macklowe said that influencers had replaced society swans.
The Met Gala, where she used to pay what she calls “the highest price for the worst seats,” has become “tacky,” she said.
The last time she attended was in 2019, and one of the few people she recognized was Jeff Bezos. She said she gave him a swig of whiskey from the flask beneath her dress.
Last month, Bezos, who has a Manhattan pied-à-terre himself, said that the tax was a “fine thing” to do.
Macklowe happened to agree, despite ordinarily being opposed to raising taxes on the wealthy.
“This isn’t a Republican or a Democrat thing,” she said. “It is that people are getting a free ride off those who choose to live here and be New Yorkers, and the others pop in and pretend they are New Yorkers but don’t actually pay any significant taxes.”
Shortly after Bezos went public with his views, Macklowe attended a dinner at the restaurant Caravaggio thrown by Andrew Stein, a former Democratic politician who in recent years has swung right.
At dinner, which began at 7:30, Stein was to her left. Woody Allen was to her right.
He was, Macklowe said, “falling asleep.”
“He was taking a rest,” Stein, the host, said.
(Allen couldn’t be reached for comment.)
Across from her was James Taranto, an editor at The Wall Street Journal.
Macklowe wound up talking to him about pied-à-terre owners — and the taxes they avoid — instead. “I went on a rant about how they live here 170 days a year and I live here 190,” Macklowe said.
After Taranto suggested she write about her views, she went home around 9:30 p.m. and barricaded herself for five hours inside her walk-in closet, where her desk is located. (“I like that in my work space, I’m surrounded by clothes and handbags,” she said, adding that, in fact, all but one of her 10 or so Hermès bags are real.)
By 7 a.m. she’d filed a draft. By 9 a.m. she was at the hair salon, getting $600 highlights.
She’d never written anything like it in her life, she said.
Now, the measure has passed and will go into effect next month. Macklowe has had some — discreet — encouragement, she said, with one woman at her golf club in Bridgehampton whispering, “I agree with you about everything.”
She has also received a number of “very unfriendly texts” from “very close friends” who live in Florida.
That is fine with her.
“I’m an Aspen person,” she said.
