Julie Macklowe

In 2009, backed by Millenium Partners, Macklowe opened her own $250 million hedge fund, Macklowe Asset Management. In October 2010, Macklowe closed the fund to pursue her own investments in fashion businesses.[9]

[10] In an interview the following year discussing her twelve years in finance, she said, "I haven’t looked at a stock since the day I left.”[11]

After leaving a career in hedge funds and finance, Macklowe turned to the fashion industry leveraging her prior business experience, understanding of the mechanics of the industry thanks to her family's clothing business, and her innate feel for style to search the fashion industry for good investments.[7]

In December 2010 Macklowe's first fashion industry investment, BaubleBar, launched with help from Accel Partners.[7] The online startup, founded by two Harvard business graduates with backgrounds in finance, sells jewelry direct from suppliers and designers which normally work with retailers.[12] Macklowe helped the company in its initial efforts, raising over $1 million and she currently sits on the company's board.[7]

Macklowe was the muse for Zang Toi, whom she met two years earlier, for his Spring 2013 collection and debuted on the runway show September 9, 2012.[13]

Macklowe launched her own skincare company, vbeauté on November 1, 2011.[14] Vbeauté started as a luxury, travel-friendly toiletry kit that meets TSA regulations for a carry on, called the "It Kit", which was developed by CRB, a research lab in Switzerland. It has been praised by the New York Times for its unique packaging. In September 2014, vbeauté launched a deal with the Home Shopping Network to be sold exclusively at HSN and select boutiques.[15][16][17] After its first year on HSN, vbeauté became one of the fastest growing beauty brands on television. Vbeauté currently sells a wide range of luxury skin care products, and is part of Macklowe's simple approach to skin care, where stem cells from the Alpine Rose flower are harvested as its main ingredient. The Alpine Rose is a small pink flower which is known for its resilient properties and which can only be found in the harsh climate of the Swiss alps, where it endures high altitudes, extreme temperatures, and dryness.[18]

The inspiration for this company came in 2009 as she was flying to her friend's wedding in France when her toiletries were confiscated by security. The replacement products she purchased in France gave her a severe allergic reaction. In 2011 her company raised $4 million and her product sold at 37 stores.[19] As of 2013, the product line is sold in roughly 44 stores.[20]

Macklowe stressed her dedication to being socially responsible when she launched the product line in New York City on her 34th birthday. When asked about the charitable component, she said: "Social responsibility was very important. I think more corporations should do it.".[21]

Macklowe said that she doesn't do things halfway, describing her search for a retailer for the vbeauté line—going through options one-by-one until she felt comfortable. She has utilized contacts that she has made throughout her time living in New York and expressed her enthusiasm for networking.[22]

In December 2021, Macklowe created a new category by launching The Macklowe, the first luxury American single malt whiskey label. The Macklowe is distilled in limited quantities and according to The New York Times, retails for $1,500,[23] and is available in select New York bars and restaurants.[24][25][26][27][28] Macklowe told The Wall Street Journal that decades of curating her own massive collection of high end whiskey (displayed in a $500,000 custom bar in her Manhattan apartment), inspired her to create her own.[29]

Decades ago, when Macklowe was traveling for her finance career, she made trips to Speyside, Paris, and Kentucky, searching out bottle shops and duty-free stands where she would stuff her suitcases for the trip home. One bottle led to another, and today Macklowe owns a collection of 1,000-plus whiskeys that she packs into three large bars and all the empty closets in her midtown Manhattan apartment. Her most prized bottles range from a 1982 Port Ellen Signatory, to Loch Lomond 50-year-old, to Hanyu 2000 Single Cask #359.[1] Over the years, she became known for her massive, comprehensive collection (Annabelle Selldorf designed the display and storage in Macklowe’s New York apartment of more than a thousand bottles, including Bowmore 1973 and Glen Grant 1958; her “ultimate favorite” is Glenlivet 1969 and 1973).[5]

“I started collecting whisky: the Far East, Europe, ending up in Speyside or Kentucky or Paris, everywhere I went I searched out the bottle shops and duty-free shops and stuffed my suitcases for the trip home.”[30] Her motto - deemed “The Macklowe Way” - is “drink what you like, not what you are told to like.” Macklowe claims, “I drink what I buy, I’m driven by my palate, not the price, and I love the entire range of flavors available from malted barley, from fruity and spicy all the way to smokey and peaty”.[30]

As whiskey values began to explode in the mid 2010s, Macklowe zeroed in on an amazing market opportunity to create what she considers a unicorn: a luxury single malt made in America.[5]

Her vision of The Macklowe is a personal one of luxury, and has been described as “the Ferrari of rye,” akin to possessing a Hermés bag, a Louis Vuitton suit, a Rolex. Once you own it, you are in a different league.[24]

To create this “liquid gold,” Macklowe teamed up with renowned Scottish distiller and blender Ian MacMillan, known for his work with Bunnahabhain and Bladnoch. “I do know what I’m drinking, and there’s an authority that comes with that,” Macklowe has said.[5]

“The overall quality of the maturing whiskies that Julie has sourced have been excellent. The final selection process was challenging, however the cask we eventually selected was of such sublime quality, I await with great anticipation the reactions from the very lucky purchasers of this wonderful and special American Single Malt,” states MacMillan.[31]

Macklowe has garnered a reputation in the whiskey world for being a bit of a trailblazer, forgoing some long held distilling traditions while combining others to create what she considers to be the ideal process for making luxury single malts.

In terms of production, The Scotch Whisky Regulations 2009—which govern how Scotch whiskey is made in the U.K.—dictate that single malts must be distilled using pot stills. However, since Macklowe is producing an American spirit, she and her team decided to challenge the norms by distilling her single malt in Kentucky the way bourbon is traditionally made, using a column still and copper doubler.[1]

“As far as we know, there are only two or three other distilleries in the world using columns for malt whiskey,” she says. She chose to produce a single malt because of the versatility of the base grain (barley) and the wide range of flavors—fruity, spicy, smokey, and peaty—it can elicit.[1]

Her farm-to-table philosophy includes starting with ultra premium, locally sourced 100% non-GMO 2 row, USDA Grade 1 malted barley and incorporating a proprietary fast-starting, high-yield yeast.[32] Her first releases - rare, impossible to replicate private casks of distinction[33] - were made in Oregon to her specifications and aged further in Kentucky, where the initial runs of her core product are made, matured, and bottled. Casks spend anywhere from 5–8 years in new American white oak, ISC 36 month-air-aged ISC barrels before being hand selected by Master Blender MacMillan.

The liquid gold then goes into hand-crafted, hand painted bottles that are purposefully reminiscent of the trusty flask that got Macklowe through her finance days. “I wanted something that would stand out, that wasn’t another boring whiskey bottle — the same way that I dress, which is, always stand out,” she said. “We wanted to create a whiskey bottle that women can relate to as well as men so that it wasn’t just this masculine object.”[25]

With notes of vanilla and hazelnuts on the nose, The Macklowe’s Cask No. 61 is a silky, full-bodied affair marked by flavors of coffee and leather, and lingering spice.[1]

The latest release of The Macklowe, Cask No. 60, has been observed to taste like cloves, citrus, vanilla, and brown sugar, with a pronounced oakiness; the nose is strong, the finish smooth, and the seven-year-old liquid registers as spicy and warm.[5]

Bloomberg called The Macklowe “the new whiskey that is taking over Wall Street,”[5] but at $1,500 a bottle, Macklowe didn’t launch her passion project without a few skeptics.[34] However, The Macklowe has consistently sold out each limited release of its Casks of Distinction within minutes of becoming available, with some bottles preallocated to New York City’s finest retailers and restaurateurs who made a point to stake their claim on it early. Renowned chef Daniel Boulud praises its “balance and purity,” while the most acclaimed restaurants in New York fight for even just one bottle to serve their most elite customers three figure pours.[5] Jean-Georges’ restaurants, Eleven Madison Park and Daniel, the Polo Bar, and institutions like Marea, Catch Steak, Carbone, Le Pavillon, Le Bilboquet, Casa Cipriani, Casa Lever, Lola Taverna, Bemelmans at the Carlyle, the Grill, the Lobster Club and Tutto il Giorno in the Hamptons serve it to hedge fund titans and New York’s socialites.[5]