Newlyweds: Pippa with hedge fund manager husband James Matthews
Pippa Middleton has had an eventful year. Just three months ago she wed hedge fund manager James Matthews in an ‘intimate’ family wedding, which is said to have cost £1.2 million.
Now, as she settles into married life, I can disclose that Her Royal Hotness is re-calibrating her affairs — by closing PXM Enterprises, the company which managed her ‘publishing activities’, including her widely mocked party-planning book Celebrate and her contributions to Waitrose magazine.
Pippa, who turns 34 next Wednesday, took the first step in the process yesterday, filing an application to have PXM struck from the register at Companies House just four years after its incorporation.
Last month she filed documents which confirmed that she was the company’s sole shareholder.
PXM’s existence has proved rather short-lived, just like its profit trajectory: the company made £115,000 in its first year and £50,700 in its second year.
Its diminishing returns also reflect Pippa’s chequered career.
Her fortnightly newspaper column inspired by her pursuits was axed in 2014 after just six months. In 2015, Pippa’s attempts to embark on a television career in America came to nothing. She was earmarked to become a special correspondent on NBC’s Today programme, but never made it onto the screen.
But it seems safe to say that purely commercial considerations have been of less pressing concern to Pippa since James Matthews slipped a £250,000 engagement ring on her finger and she moved into his £17 million Chelsea home.
Tidy desk, tidy mind: Vogue editor at work
Neat: It appears he favours the minimalist trend
Just one month in as Vogue editor, and Edward Enninful is making his mark.
The former stylist and model, who replaced Alexandra Shulman when she stepped down after 25 years, has been pictured for the first time at work at his London HQ.
It appears he favours the minimalist trend, as his glass desk is empty save for his laptop, notebook and phone.
The snap was shared online by Vogue magazine’s new contributing arts editor Alexander Gilkes, founder of auction site Paddle8.
Her wealthy financier husband has also shown the way when it comes to financial dexterity. His hedge fund, Eden Rock Management LLP, made a profit of £1.5 million in 2014 but paid just £3,143 — or 0.2 per cent — in tax.
The development is likely to be welcomed by Prince William, who is reported to have ‘quietly and diplomatically’ advised a diminution of Pippa’s commercial ventures, lest they inadvertently embarrass the Royal Family.
It also, of course, offers Pippa more time in which to turn her energies to other areas of productivity — by extending the numbers of the Matthews dynasty perhaps.
Royals cash in on Prince George with baby shawl
As Prince George embarks on his first lessons at Thomas’s Battersea school, his grandfather, the Prince of Wales, has sanctioned the sale of a baby shawl named the ‘George’ at his Highgrove shop.
Made from merino wool by a family business which supplied a shawl of the same design to the Prince when he emerged from St Mary’s Hospital, the George is ‘supremely soft’ and ‘bound to become an heirloom passed down through the generations’.
Its price tag is, accordingly, a regal £79.95 — nearly £15 more than Highgrove’s other new baby shawl, the Charlotte, which is described as a mere ‘keepsake’ and priced at just £65. The discrepancy is explained by the fact that the Charlotte is made from lambswool.
Alternatively, the discerning shopper may opt to buy directly from the family-run business supplying Highgrove, G. H. Hurt & Son. It holds a royal warrant and prices its merino shawl — of exactly the same specifications as the George — at £49.95.