“My Unorthodox Life” star Julia Haart made no secret that she wanted to be the “Jewish Kris Jenner.”
She made it known that she wanted to create an empire, signing up for Netflix cameras to follow her five-star life as CEO of Elite World Group. Those cameras caught her in all her finery — she is believed to be one of LVMH’s top global spenders annually — and followed her to luxury hotels as well as her $65 million Tribeca penthouse.
But the walls came tumbling down this week as Haart, 51, was fired from her job at Elite World Group, the company she co-owns with her husband, Italian mogul Silvio Scaglia. Hours after her exit on Tuesday, she filed for divorce from her husband of two years, later applying for a restraining order against him and accusing him of threatening to kill her, hating her kids and making anti-semitic slurs.
Scaglia, 63, retorted by suing her for $850,000 he claimed that she had “illegally taken” out of a company bank account they shared after she was sacked. A letter attached to a legal filing also claimed that Haart had abused her office as CEO and overspent.
To those who worked with Haart, none of this, they claim, comes as any surprise.
The Post spoke to three employees who worked with Haart and who paint a picture of what one called her “entitled” life. All declined to be named for fear of reprisal.
One former staffer told The Post how Haart’s vacation to South Africa over the 2019 Christmas holidays descended into chaos. The executive was joined on the trip by Scaglia, as well as three of her four children from her first marriage, Batsheva, Shlomo, Miriam. (She also has son Aron.)
Haart allegedly refused to fly direct to Johannesburg, because the only seats available were business class.
“Julia only flies private or first class,” claimed the former staffer “So the family flew to South Africa from New York via Dubai.”
The family were meant to have a private charter plane waiting in Johannesburg to take them to their resort. However, their flight from Dubai was delayed and they landed too late for the charter plane to take off.
“They arrived 30 minutes past the flight requirement … so they couldn’t get on the private plane due to safety requirements,” said the staffer. “Julia was livid at us, she berated us … It was terrible, so much screaming.
“We had to find a new five-star hotel in Johannesburg for them for that one night.”
Throughout the trip, the staffers — who were all meant to be on break from work — were constantly bothered by Haart. At one point, she woke them up on their shared phone group up at 3 a.m. to demand that they find a Starbucks where she could get her daily Skinny Vanilla Latte. When told there was no Starbucks nearby, she flipped out, they said.
The staffers were then tasked with finding a charter flight to fly a family member’s passport to Cape Town after it was left at another resort. This involved having the hotel manager drive to the airport, and ensure the passport was put on the flight.
“We had it hand-delivered to Cape Town,” said the staffer. “My entire Christmas was ruined, nothing else existed but them. All we got was just a ‘Thank you.'”
Haart also allegedly called her team to have a restaurant reservation changed while in South Africa, they said, adding: “She could have just had the hotel do it — but she called us at 3 a.m.”
One staffer added: “I slept with my phone under my pillow for years in case she called. I definitely suffer from PTSD, and talking about it brings up a lot … but I left that hell hole and I never looked back.”
Another former staffer told The Post how Haart spent “a fortune” every week on designer wear, buying clothes on company credit cards, either billed to Elite World Group or Women Management.
Every morning, the staffers claimed, they would meet in her gigantic closet. “Personal shoppers from all the big brands like Gucci and Fendi would come over. They adored Julia due to the commission they would make,” one said. “Once a week, they would come over with suitcases, and she would pick what she wanted and it had to be altered to her size.
“The bill was ridiculous. She would get us to pay with company credit cards.”
One staffer claimed that Haart refused to stay in any hotel room that was less than 3,000 square feet. Among her favorite spots were the pricey George V in Paris and the Bulgari Hotel in London.
“Every hotel had to have a jacuzzi because Julia said she had to detox every day for two hours in a jacuzzi bath. The jets had to be to be hand-cleaned with a Q-tip before she got in it.
“She had to have the staff unpack her clothes a certain way and the hotel manager would have to come out to greet her. I thinks she thought she was a duchess!”
Things got so bad, the staffer said, it was nearly impossible to sleep due to Haart’s late-night messages. “One time, I went on vacation and took my kids to a water park, and I remember just sitting on the side of the pool while they played with my computer and [I was] just crying … trying to figure out to make this woman’s life better.”
One night at 1 a.m., Haart phoned staffers when she could not figure out the updated WiFi password in her house, they claimed, telling them she was busy trying to write her memoir.
Haart — who was married to Yosef Hendler at the age of 19 — left her home in the Orthodox Jewish community of Monsey, NY, to come to Manhattan and make her way as a fashion star, launching her own shoe brand.
She rose to the ranks of creative director of La Perla, where she met owner Scaglia. The pair wed in 2019, the same year he made her CEO of Elite.
But, as The Post previously reported, some who knew her questioned her origin story.
Netflix started streaming her show last year, and rumblings of her marital discontent with Scaglia first surfaced on Page Six in December.
On Thursday night, as Haart made her bid for a restraining order against Scaglia, his legal team responded by filing a lawsuit, which including the letter informing her of her termination.
One complaint in that letter was that Haart’s office was allegedly responsible for a “huge increase in corporate costs and expenses.”
Asked what the tipping point was for her sacking, a source familiar with the company said “The way she ran this company as her personal pocketbook.”
An Elite insider who knows Haart said: “Julia was spending on extras like travel, glam, clothes, driver. She has a full-time driver and two Bentleys. She has a Hamptons rental, she flies private, she stays at the penthouse at luxury hotels … She has custom Chanel and Gucci. She’s one of the top spenders globally at Louis Vuitton.”
Court documents seen by Page Six claimed that Scaglia’s “suit arises from Defendant Julia Haart’s misappropriation of $850,000 out of the company’s [Freedom Holding] bank account.
“Haart made the illegal withdrawal upon receiving notice from the directors of Elite World Group LLC (‘EWG’), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Freedom Holding, that they would be voting at the next board meeting, February 11, 2022, on a proposal to dismiss her as chief executive officer. The very next day, Haart illegally transferred $850,000 from Freedom Holding to Defendant Haart Dynasty LLC, a limited liability company controlled by Haart,” the lawsuit alleges.
Netflix cameras are believed to be at Haart’s home for a second season of her show; she’s still living at the penthouse, while Scaglia has rented a home around the corner.
Asked if the cameras would be back at Elite, a company source said, “I think it’s safe to say there will be no more filming.”
Another former colleague told how Scaglia was so in love with his wife that he wanted to do anything to make her happy. That included spending, sources claimed, nearly $2 million on the launch of her own made-to-measure clothing line, e1972, named after Elite’s founding year.
It was launched in February 2020 at a fashion show where Bebe Rexha was paid to perform, and Olivia Palermo, Ashley Benson, Cody Simpson and Yungblud were paid to sit in the front row.
It’s understood the line did not do well, as the former colleague added: “It barely sold — it was $8,000 for a custom made skirt! Julia wanted to control her perfect image, she told everyone she wanted to be the Jewish Kris Jenner, but you can’t buy everything.”
One of the former staffers still has empathy, despite it all. “I don’t think that Julia started out like this,” the staffer said. “We watched as she somehow unraveled to become this unreal person. Silvio is a good human, I think he was just manipulated.”
1 comment:
I don't get it. This woman has shiurim on Youtube. Until she went OTD she was a pious inspiration. What snapped?
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