Murder On Her Skin.
On Bad Guys, Beauty PR, and the Balaguer regime.
I admit it, I love stories about bad guys, and I love to write stories about bad guys. In fact, I’m backlogged. Take my June trip to France.
I watched a famous American billionaire casually cuckold a Vatican banker, then I flew to Monaco where I intended to write a really nice story about Empirical Spirits and Prince Albert, except “the Prince’s office” called up Empirical and threatened them into retracting a fun anecdote that would have been the centerpiece of a Whisky Advocate article, then I boarded the yacht of a charming Serbian entrepreneur who, over too much wine at the Dior Cafe in St Tropez, got candid about the kidnapping of a famous Hollywood producer.
Funny story–in July, I traveled to Los Angeles, where I visited the home of a different famous Hollywood producer; I was there to pitch a documentary about some bad guys, that I’ve been developing for the past few years. I was flattered that everyone believed in my story enough to set up this meeting at her home, but I was a little intimidated. Her house was blurred on Google Maps. Intimidating!
Of course, I did my due diligence on her and I knew her resumé in and out by the time I arrived. So, as an icebreaker, I said to her, “you’re not going to believe this, but I just returned from cruising the French Riviera with this guy who threw one of your former producing partners in the trunk of a car and took him for a drive.”
She was dying to know which partner, but I refused to say. She thought about it for a minute and considered how many of them had money problems. She knew her stuff. “He’s the only one,” she said, “who could fit in the trunk of a car.”
Hollywood!
Anyway, summer is over now and everybody is back in town. New York Fashion Week is in full effect, and believe it or not I still read every pitch I get in an effort to keep up with what’s going on. One email in particular, because it was sent to me three times by two different publicists in a single day, caught my eye.
On Friday, there’s a beauty media and influencer brunch at the Crosby Street Hotel, followed by dinner at Gramercy Tavern, for a new skincare line called Amour’s Secrets, founded by “Dr. Ariadna Balaguer - Former First Daughter of the Dominican Republic.”
Right away I’m hooked. International intrigue and a gifting suite? Tell me more.
The last time I hung out with the progeny of a former world leader was last October. I was feasting on duck with Mosey in a room within a room within a room at 1o1 in Vienna. We hit it off talking about our love of Titane, and later that night, during his DJ set, he played This is America on repeat, smiling and pointing at me on the dance floor. Great guy, awesome time, incredible set. Swiss Menthols and champagne in the VIP all night long.
I only later learned Mosey’s dad was the former president of France, but it wouldn’t have made Childish Gambino sound any different. So why was Ariadna Balaguer’s lineage so important to selling her beauty line? Why not her failed run for Congress? When I read she was “following in her father's footsteps,” I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to look up “the former President of the Dominican Republic, Joaquin Antonio Balaguer…”
I had to be missing something. He must have made his name as some kind of celebrated Caribbean wellness guru during his rise to power, the Dominican Dr. Oz.
To Wikipedia!
Oh.
I began to think “his enigmatic, secretive personality” had less to do with his desire to pass on a proprietary skincare ritual to his daughter, and more to do with “his desire to perpetuate himself in power through dubious elections and state terrorism.”
I began to think he was a bad guy. I began to think she was a bad guy. These beauty publicists didn’t know me at all. They should have started with that. No one knows how important an effective cleanser is like someone with blood on their hands.
But then, they’re no Joaquin Balaguer. The man was a marketing genius.
Per Wikipedia, Balaguer’s most controversial book was his 1988 autobiography, Memorias de un Cortesano en la Era de Trujillo. In it, he chronicled his role in the 1975 murder of revolutionary journalist Orlando Martinez. Up to a point. “Balaguer left a blank page in the middle of the book to be filled in at the time of his death.”
According to an August 2000 BBC story, a Dominican court finally sentenced a retired air force general and three others to 30 years in prison for being members of the death squad ordered to kill Martinez for criticizing the Balaguer regime. At the same time, prosecutors announced they were reopening the case of another journalist who disappeared after criticizing Balaguer in 1994.
Balaguer was invited to testify during the trial, but he refused to fill in the blanks in his lifetime. He held to his convictions and avoided conviction; he was a salesman to the end.
Only time will tell if Ariadna Balaguer will channel her father’s resolve. If she does, I’d hate to be the beauty writer who criticizes her skincare regime(n).