Category: Business

• LVMH is the world's largest luxury goods conglomerate. It's owned by Bernard Arnault, the world's third-richest person.
• LVMH's portfolio includes 75 different brands, spanning fashion, Champagne, cosmetics, and more.
• These include Louis Vuitton, Dior, Sephora, Tiffany & Co, Moët & Chandon, and Fenty Beauty.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Bernard Arnault, the world's third-richest person and the wealthiest outside the US, heads the world's largest luxury goods conglomerate.

LVMH owns iconic brands such as Louis Vuitton, Dior, and Moët-Chandon.

It owns 75 brands, or "maisons," which it splits into six divisions: wines and spirits; fashion and leather goods; perfumes and cosmetics; watches and jewelry; selective retailing; and other activities. The fashion and leather goods division makes up about half of its revenues.

Its most recent major acquisition was US jeweler Tiffany and Co., which it bought for $15.8 billion in 2021 following a lengthy dispute. It broke records for being the luxury sector's biggest-ever deal.

LVMH's brands collectively have more than 6,000 stores, including about 2,500 in Asia, more than 1,000 in the US, and more than 500 in France. LVMH has more than 200,000 employees and reported revenues of 86.2 billion euros ($92.5 billion) for 2023.

Arnault has been at LVMH's helm for decades.

In 1984, after working at his family's real-estate company, Arnault bought consumer goods and manufacturing company Agache-Willot-Boussac, which owned Dior and department store Le Bon Marché. Arnault turned the "hodgepodge" company into a "treasure trove," The New York Times reported in 1989. He renamed it Financière Agache and sold almost all of the company's assets.

Meanwhile, Louis Vuitton and Moët Hennessy merged in 1987 to create LVMH. Arnault used the money from the sale of Financière Agache's assets to buy a controlling stake in the company, Bloomberg reported. In 1989, he became the conglomerate's majority shareholder, chairman, and CEO.

Le Bon Marché Rive Gauche

Paris department store Le Bon Marché opened in 1852 and was acquired by Arnault when he bought luxury goods company Agache-Willot-Boussac in 1984.

Le Bon Marché is recognized as being the world's first department store. The Paris store is noted for its high-end retail and careful selection of goods across the store. 

Year acquired by LVMH: 1984

Type of goods: Department store

Louis Vuitton

Louis Vuitton, founded in France in 1854, is known for its leather products, which are usually heavily emblazoned with its "LV" logo. Ready-to-wear clothing generates about 10% of the brand's sales, Bloomberg reported.

Year acquired by LVMH: 1987

Type of goods: Fashion and leather goods

Hennessy

Hennessy, founded in 1765, is one of the most famous cognac brands in the world. The brand's headquarters are in Cognac, France, about a five-hour drive from Paris.

Year acquired by LVMH: 1987

Type of goods: Cognac

Moët & Chandon

Founded in 1743, Moët & Chandon has since become one of the most popular Champagne brands in the world. Visitors to its site in the Champagne region of France can tour the UNESCO World Heritage site's wine cellars, spread over about 17 miles of tunnels.

Year acquired by LVMH: 1987

Type of goods: Champagne

Dom Pérignon

Champagne maker Dom Pérignon, one of the oldest companies in LVMH's portfolio, was founded in 1668. 

Year acquired by LVMH: 1987

Type of goods: Champagne

Givenchy

Givenchy, founded in 1952, is perhaps best known for creating the iconic little black dress Audrey Hepburn wore in the film "Breakfast at Tiffany's." 

Year acquired by LVMH: 1988

Type of goods: Fashion and leather goods

Berluti

Menswear brand Berluti dates back to 1895, when Italian shoemaker Alessandro Berluti started making footwear in France. The brand has since made shoes for the Duke of Windsor, Jean Cocteau, and Andy Warhol, and expanded into leather goods in 2005 and ready-to-wear clothing in 2011, according to LVMH.

Year acquired by LVMH: 1993

Type of goods: Menswear, especially footwear

Loewe

Spanish fashion brand Loewe was founded in Madrid in 1846. Since 2013, Jonathan Anderson — founder of label JW Anderson — has been its creative director. Some of its flagship stores are in the CASA Loewe format, which LVMH says are "designed to feel like the townhouse of a sophisticated art collector."

Year acquired by LVMH: 1996

Type of goods: Fashion and leather goods

Sephora

Sephora operates hundreds of beauty stores selling items like makeup, skincare products, hair care items, and fragrances. Its stores sell own-brand products as well as dozens of other lines, including brands LVMH brands Fenty Beauty, KVD Beauty, and Ulta.

Sephora has more store locations than its rival, Ulta. More than half of its over 3,000 points of sale are in North America, with its range carried by hundreds of Kohl's stores.

Year acquired by LVMH: 1997

Type of goods: Cosmetics

Marc Jacobs

Designer Marc Jacobs founded the eponymous brand in 1984. Jacobs went on to become creative director of womenswear for Louis Vuitton between 1997 and 2013, leaving to focus on his own brand.

Year acquired by LVMH: 1997

Type of goods: Fashion and leather goods

Benefit Cosmetics

Benefit Cosmetics was founded by twin sisters Jean and Jane Ford in 1976 in San Francisco. LVMH says that it has more than 3,000 BrowBar Beauty Bars around the world and that a Benefit brow product is sold every two seconds.

Year acquired by LVMH: 1999

Type of goods: Cosmetics

Tag Heuer

The Swiss watchmaker was founded by Edouard Heuer in 1860 and given its present name after it was acquired by Techniques d'Avant Garde in 1985. From 2020 to 2024, the company's CEO was Frédéric Arnault, the second-youngest of Bernard Arnault's five children.

Ambassadors over the years have included Steve McQueen, Chris Hemsworth, Patrick Dempsey, and a number of sports stars, including tennis player Maria Sharapova.

Year acquired by LVMH: 1999

Type of goods: Watches

Fendi

The 99-year-old luxury Italian brand is best known for its signature "F" print and was once led by legendary designer Karl Lagerfeld. Fendi was previously owned by both Prada and LVMH, until the latter bought out Prada in 2001.

Year acquired by LVMH: 2000

Type of goods: Fashion and leather goods

Fresh

Fresh was launched in Boston in 1991 and is known for its expansive collection of natural skincare products.

Year acquired by LVMH: 2000

Type of goods: Cosmetics

Cheval Blanc

Luxury hotel chain Cheval Blanc, created by LVMH, started with the opening of a boutique ski resort in Courchevel in the French Alps in 2006. It has since opened or acquired four other hotels in Paris, the Maldives, on Caribbean island Saint Barthélemy, and in French Riviera town Saint-Tropez.

Year created by LVMH: 2006

Type of goods: Hotels

KVD Beauty

The cosmetics line, which has also been known as Kat Von D Beauty and KVD Vegan Beauty, was founded by tattoo artist and model Kat Von D in 2008. Its designs are inspired by tattoo artistry, and the company says its name now stands for "Kara, Veritas, Decora" or "Value, Truth, Beauty."

The brand says it was cruelty-free when it launched and was reformulated to become fully vegan in 2016.

Year acquired by LVMH: 2008

Type of goods: Cosmetics

Royal Van Lent

The Dutch shipyard on Kaag Island dates back to the Van Lent family in 1849. It was awarded a royal charter in 2001.

The shipyard's roughly 300 workers launch on average two superyachts a year. It has also opened a shipyard in Amsterdam.

Year acquired by LVMH: 2008

Type of goods: Shipyard

Bulgari

Luxury jewelry brand Bulgari, founded in 1884, is known for its watches and diamond necklaces. LVMH acquired the brand from the Bulgari family in an all-share deal in 2011.

Year acquired by LVMH: 2011

Type of goods: Jewelry 

Le Parisien

Le Parisien is one of the most notable tabloids in France, along with Le Figaro and Le Liberation. LVMH bought the 80-year-old daily newspaper and sister publication Aujourd'hui en France in 2015, and they had a print circulation of about 260,000 in 2023.

LVMH also owns the financial newspaper Les Echos, the monthly arts magazine Connaissance des Arts, and the French commercial station Radio Classique.

Year acquired by LVMH: 2015

Type of goods: Tabloid

Dior

LVMH acquired Dior in a $13.1 billion deal in 2017. Previously, the brand, which was founded in 1947, was owned by Arnault's Groupe Arnault.

Dior is best known for its gowns and handbags. Celebrities such as Rihanna, Rosalía, Jennifer Lawrence, and Anya Taylor-Joy have been faces of the brand. 

Year acquired by LVMH: 2017

Type of goods: Fashion and leather goods

Fenty Beauty

Rihanna launched Fenty Beauty, named after her last name, with LVMH in 2017, when she was 29. She launched a 40-shade range of foundations, which helped to revolutionize diversity in the beauty industry. The shade range has since expanded to 50 shades.

Rihanna also launched her clothing line Fenty with LVMH in 2019, but it closed just two years later.

Year acquired by LVMH: 2017

Type of goods: Cosmetics

Belmond

Belmond is a luxury travel company with 32 properties around the world and two safari lodges in Botswana. It also operates luxury train services, including the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, which runs between London and Venice, the Royal Scotsman, and the Andean Explorer.

Year acquired by LVMH: 2019

Type of goods: Hotels

Tiffany & Co.

Following a lengthy dispute, which involved two lawsuits and LVMH threatening to pull out of the deal, the luxury conglomerate acquired US jeweler Tiffany & Co. for $15.8 billion in 2021. It broke records for being the luxury sector's biggest-ever deal.

Year acquired by LVMH: 2021

Type of goods: Jewelry

Dominic-Madori Davis contributed to an earlier version of this article.

• Rizz is an AI-powered dating app that generates pickup lines, responses, and decodes screenshots.
• The app aims to help users build rapport and meet in person, moving beyond dating apps.
• I uploaded about 30 screenshots and tested out the app's effectiveness. 

Texting in the early stages of dating be feel like an art — you have to master the timing, come up with witty banter, and accurately read between the lines.

Now, apps like Rizz exist to help you out.

Rizz co-founder Roman Khaves said he used to share screenshots of texts with a love interest and draft responses in a groupchat with his friends. So he created Rizz to help out people like him. Rizz, an AI-powered app that generates pickup lines and responses, now has a "Decode" feature that analyzes screenshots from your conversations.

The app offers a free trial and subscription for $7 per week or $20 per month. It currently has 7 million downloads and thousands of subscriptions, Khaves told me.

I take pride in being a good texter so when I heard about Rizz, I was eager to test it out and see how it compares. I ended up uploading about 30 screenshots to see how it works.

Khaves said the app is meant for the beginning stages of dating and I've been in a relationship for over a year, so some of the decoding and suggestions weren't as useful for me.

To get a full picture of the app, I uploaded around 30 screenshots of our conversations that covered a range of topics and stages in our relationship.

There's a focus on building rapport and meeting up

The "Decode" response often advised me to build "rapport" and suggested meeting up in person, no matter what the topic of conversation was. The overall message was to get to know the person better and take the conversation offline.

Khaves said Rizz is designed to get people off the dating apps and meeting in real life.

"We kind of move you along this dating journey because otherwise people are just kind of stuck and they kind of just go in circles," Khaves said. "They never end up at the date."

Overall, the feature worked well. It picked up when there was mutual interest and had solid suggestions on where to steer the conversation. Since the app is meant for the early stages of dating, it often came up with "Decode" responses that advised me to play it cool and said to come across as "relaxed and confident, not desperate."

It also suggested against double texting.

Limitations

The main limitation of this app is the inability to add context.

You can't upload multiple screenshots at a time and you can't provide any written context. That limits the effectiveness of the "Decode" feature and suggestions for how to respond.

Khaves said Rizz is working on adding a feature that would let users share more information about the person in the screenshot.

I don't think the lack of context is fully negative though. Getting complete analysis for every text could lead some people to become overly reliant on the app. Especially since, unlike your friends, it's available 24/7 and has practically endless suggestions, Khaves said.

Right now, Rizz serves more as a guide rather than a blueprint for dating — and I think that's a good place to be.

How it compares to other AI platforms

After trying Rizz, I was curious how it would compare to other AI chatbots that aren't designed specifically for dating.

I tried the "Decode" approach on Gemini and Character.Ai, which is a platform for interacting with AI characters. I chose to interact with a relationship coach chatbot on Character.Ai. Gemini has the option to upload screenshots so it provided the most similar type of service, but it was more thorough and offered a deeper analysis with action items.

Character.AI doesn't offer the ability to upload screenshots, so instead I came up with an imaginary scenario and asked it how to respond. It asked good follow-up questions and provided a more concise version of advice.

Although chatbots like Gemini or Character.Ai provided more thorough dating advice and suggestions, I would probably be more likely to use an app like Rizz that's built and branded for dating purposes.

But if I were going to purchase a subscription for $20 a month, it would need to be personalized to my dating needs and preferences and offer complete dating coach services.

• Investors are heading into Nvidia's annual shareholder meeting this week much less bullish.
• The chip giant has suffered a $431 billion wipeout since Friday, after a rally reminiscent of the dot-com boom.
• After growing by $3 trillion and then losing hundreds of billions, investors will be asking: is this a crash?

When Cisco became the world's most valuable company in March 2000, celebrations were short-lived.

The dot-com bubble had reached its limit, and despite previous forecasts that the Silicon Valley giant's hardware was vital to the internet's future, its value crashed 80% within the next two years.

Now, investors will be wondering if Nvidia faces a similar fate. The parallels are unnerving: like Cisco, Nvidia became the world's most valuable company when it briefly surpassed Microsoft last week with a market capitalization of $3.34 trillion. Like Cisco, investors hope its hardware is key to the online future.

After one of the most dramatic rallies in US stock market history (it was valued at just $364 billion in January 2023), the chip giant's CEO Jensen Huang will host its annual shareholder meeting on Wednesday, having already lost the title of the world's biggest company.

Since Friday, it has shed about $431 billion from its market capitalization, bringing volatility to a stock that has become one of the strongest indicators of AI mania.

CEOs like Sam Altman, Satya Nadella, and Elon Musk see Nvidia's chips, known as GPUs as essential components in powering the generative AI boom sparked by the release of ChatGPT.

But with Nvidia's fortunes suddenly turning after an all-time high, investors will be desperate to figure out if the AI rally is about to pop.

Nvidia faces tough questions

The release of ChatGPT in November 2022 triggered generative AI mania that has powered Nvidia's rise.

Last month, it reported record quarterly revenue of $26 billion for the first quarter of its fiscal year, up 18% from the previous quarter and 262% from a year ago.

In January, Mark Zuckerberg said he would have 350,000 of Nvidia's H100 GPUs — one of the company's most powerful offerings — by the end of 2024 as part of a broader stockpile of hardware to power Meta's AI ambitions.

CUDA, Nvidia's software platform, has a competitive advantage thanks to its extensive network of developers and ability to make GPUs as simple to use as a plug-and-play system, no matter how varied or complex a company's AI workload is.

But Nvidia's enormous influence has been enough to make investors worried.

The company has single-handedly contributed a third of the gains made by the S&P 500 this year, raising concerns about whether a single stock should be responsible for so much growth.

Peter Bates, portfolio manager of the global select equity strategy at T. Rowe Price, an investment management firm, told The Wall Street Journal on Monday, amid Nvidia's falling stock price, that he's nervous about "the heft of Nvidia's market cap."

Manish Kabra, head of US equity strategy at Société Générale, told the Financial Times on Monday that the market rally could broaden out but could also "form a bubble" in tech stocks "that we don't yet have."

For all the concerns, no one is questioning the demand for Nvidia's product. AI-first companies like Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic remain locked in an intense battle over the technology as they attempt to put out the best large language model.

That will require a lot of chips. But Nvidia faces a growing threat from competitors, such as chip designer AMD, which is increasing its efforts to produce GPUs that rival Nvidia's.

But this didn't dampen predictions that Nvidia's rise would continue.

Analysts at Wedbush, including Nvidia bull Dan Ives, predicted last week — before the current sell-off — that the chip giant was still on course to reach a $4 trillion valuation.

"We believe over the next year the race to $4 trillion market cap in tech will be front and center between Nvidia, Apple, and Microsoft," the analysts wrote in a research note on June 20.

Investors heading into Wednesday's meeting will be wondering how much room Nvidia still has to run, and whether its heady trajectory is about to end. They'll also be hoping history doesn't repeat itself.

More than two decades after its heyday, Cisco's market capitalization makes it the world's 64th most valuable company.

• Julian Assange spent over 5 years in a 2×3 meter cell before his release, according to WikiLeaks.
• He was isolated for 23 hours a day before a London court granted him bail on Monday, it said.
• The prison he was in gained prominence for detaining foreign suspects in the 2000s.

Julian Assange spent more than five years in a 2×3 meter cell, isolated 23 hours a day before his release on bail, WikiLeaks said in a statement on Tuesday.

The WikiLeaks cofounder was released on Monday after being detained for 1901 days, from April 2019 until June 2024, in the UK's Belmarsh maximum-security prison during a yearslong legal fight over his potential extradition to the US.

Assange was arrested in the UK in 2019 for breaching bail conditions after seeking asylum in Ecuador's London Embassy to avoid extradition.

He was facing various charges, including those related to his role in publishing classified US documents provided by Chelsea Manning.

On Monday, the High Court of London granted Assange bail, the WikiLeaks statement said, allowing him to board a plane at 5 p.m. local time and leave the UK.

Assange's release was the result of a global campaign that "created the space for a long period of negotiations with the US Department of Justice, leading to a deal that has not yet been formally finalized," the statement continued.

According to court documents published on Tuesday by the United States District Court For The Northern Mariana Islands, Assange was charged under the Espionage Act with conspiring to obtain and disclose classified national defense documents.

US prosecutors anticipate that he will enter a guilty plea during a court hearing in the Northern Mariana Islands scheduled for Wednesday at 9 a.m. local time, according to a letter from Justice Department official Matthew McKenzie.

Britain's 'Guantánamo Bay'

Before his release, Assange spent half a decade detained in a prison once dubbed the UK's "Guantánamo Bay."

Belmarsh Prison, located in southeast London, gained prominence in the early 2000s for detaining terror suspects without charge or trial.

Nine foreign nationals were detained in December 2001 and held in prison without knowing why under post-9/11 anti-terrorism legislation, according to a 2004 BBC News article.

The nine men were kept in their cells for up to 22 hours a day without access to the evidence collected against them, the outlet reported.

As a result, the prison earned the epithet 'Britain's Guantánamo Bay.'

Judges ruled in 2004 that the indefinite detention of foreign prisoners in Belmarsh without trial under anti-terrorism legislation was incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights.

Annual independent inspections of the Belmarsh prison have been conducted since 2003.

In 2022, inspectors returning to the prison said they were "encouraged" to see progress had been made since their last inspection in 2021, with reduced levels of violence and more time out of cell for prisoners.

However, the latest report by the Independent Monitoring Boards in 2023 found that a quarter of prisoners spent up to 22 hours a day locked in their cells.

As part of the plea agreement, Assange is expected to plead guilty to one count, with a proposed sentence of time served.

The US will then withdraw its extradition request, and he will be able to return home to Australia a free man.

• Jerry Bruckheimer hasn't even seen "Beverly Hills Cop III," says director Mark Molloy.
• Molloy, the director of Netflix's "Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F," told BI he focused on paying tribute to the first two movies.
• "I love the first two films, and I've grabbed onto them with both hands with a lot of love," Molloy said.

When director Mark Molloy signed on to direct "Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F," the fourth movie in the beloved action comedy franchise starring Eddie Murphy, he had to admit something to the franchise's producer Jerry Bruckheimer.

"I said to him, 'Jerry, I've never seen the third one,'" Molloy recalled to Business Insider, referring to 1994's "Beverly Hills Cop III." "Jerry told me, 'You don't need to watch that one. I didn't make the third one. I've never watched it.'"

The first movie, "Beverly Hills Cop," came out in 1984 and turned Murphy into one of the biggest box-office draws in the world. Three years later, the sequel, "Beverly Hills Cop II," was another hit, solidifying Bruckheimer and producing partner Dom Simpson's "high concept" style of moviemaking with its straightforward, easy-to-understand but exhilarating stories.

So the 1994 release of "Beverly Hills Cop III" was highly anticipated. The problem was that Bruckheimer and Simpson (who were also known for "Flashdance" and "Top Gun") had exited the franchise due to creative differences. Murphy went forward alongside new producers and director John Landis ("Animal House," Michael Jackson's "Thriller" music video).

The movie, which found Murphy's wise-cracking Detroit cop Axel Foley fighting crime at an amusement park and featured an out-of-left-field cameo by "Star Wars" creator George Lucas, was universally panned by critics and has since been criticized by Murphy himself.

The star described the movie as "atrocious" in a 2006 episode of "Inside the Actors Studio."

"The character was kind of banished for a while [from Hollywood]," Murphy said in the episode, referring to the reception of the third movie.

Now, Bruckheimer has returned to the franchise and has been working with everyone from Brett Ratner to new "Bad Boys" franchise directors Adil and Bilall to get a fourth movie just right.

With Netflix backing and Molloy at the helm, "Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F" will be released on the streaming giant on July 3. It marks Molloy's feature-directing debut after years of commercial work and brings the franchise back to its roots with thrilling action sequences and R-rated humor.

"Whatever has been said about the third one, I'm not going to say a word," Molloy said. "I love the first two films, and I've grabbed onto them with both hands with a lot of love."

• We asked interior designers to share their best decorating tips that didn't cost money to follow.
• To spruce up your space, try moving pillows from one room to another and color-coding bookshelves.
• Interior designers also suggested using leftover paint or branches from outside to decorate with.

First off, decluttering your space can make a huge difference.

Javier Fernandez, an interior designer at Transitional Designs, said decluttering can change the look and feel of any room.

"Look at your dining room," he said. "Is the dining table stocked high with mail and projects that you had planned to get to? Well, there's no time like the present to clear and organize it."

Give the carpets in your home a deep, thorough clean.

Washing your carpets is another free way to spruce up your space, Courtney Turk, the owner of and interior designer at Courtney Turk Interiors, told Business Insider. 

"Get your hands dirty and scrub your rugs," Turk said. "By giving your rugs a deep clean, it will refresh your home and also help to prolong the life of your carpet as well."

Rearrange some items you already have and turn them into decorative, or useful, accents.

Once you've decluttered, consider adding streamlined accents. These types of carefully curated accents can accentuate a room while keeping the space clean and uncluttered, according to Christina Nielsen, an interior designer at Christina Nielsen Design.

Nielsen suggested placing a bowl of fruit or a stack of lemons on top of some cookbooks in your kitchen or adding a small plant or floral arrangement in your entryway. These accents can be practical, too.

"If you have a console table in the foyer, make sure everything is easily accessible," she said. "Create a spot for your keys — I love leaving a little dish out for this."

Organize your bookshelves and try sorting them by color or separating them with pretty knickknacks.

Turk said that if you have shelves filled with books, you should try displaying them in a more unconventional way.

"Stack them on top of one another, and add in a few favorite pictures or vases you may have stored away to create some depth and character on the shelf," she told BI.

You can also place books of similar colors together and try to create variations to display them.

Go "shopping" in your home to find items you may not be using or could be displaying somewhere else.

Sometimes the best "shopping" is quite literally done in your own home, Fernandez said.

"Check the attic, storage room, and closets. You'll likely find something you put away a while ago," he told BI. "Now, with fresh eyes, you can see how it might work in one of your rooms."

For example, he said, a den or a living room can be easily transformed if you hang up different curtains or change the wattage on your light bulbs to create mood lighting.

 

 

Try angling your furniture differently or positioning it in a new way.

Rearranging your accent pieces and furniture is one of the quickest and easiest ways to change the look of a room, according to Fernandez. 

"Adjust the lines of your room by angling your sofa and chairs differently, making sure natural light is the highlight here to enhance the spatiality of a room," Nielsen added. 

Use leftover paint to breathe new life into a room.

"Just about everyone I know has some leftover paint sitting in storage," Fernandez said. "In my opinion, there's nothing like a fresh coat of paint."

If you don't have enough paint to freshen an entire room, you can just paint one wall as an accent. Or, he added, you can use painter's tape and a bit of precision to create a pattern on the ceiling.

Use branches and wildflowers from outside to add natural decor into your home.

Flowers can help brighten up a space and bring nature indoors, Fernandez said. 

"Gather some branches and florals [from] outdoors for a seamless and cost-effective way to update your home instantly," Nielsen told BI. "In the spring, a large array of cherry blossoms are my favorite."

Try adding accents and new touches to pieces you already own.

If you want to get crafty, try using some of the leftover fabrics, buttons, and lace you may have found while decluttering.

These adornments can be used to revamp curtains, throw pillows, or blankets, Fernandez said. 

"Taking a simple ribbon and adding it as trim to your existing curtains will immediately change the look of them," Fernandez told BI. "Go through the bag of spare buttons, take out the colorful one, and go to town applying them to that old throw pillow."

 

Rearrange your pillows or move them to a different spot.

Moving your pillows from one room to another is also a way to update your home's look, Nielsen said.

"Rearrange them on your sofa, swap in a pillow from another room, eliminate some pillows to create a sleeker space, or stack pillows on top of your bedding — preferably all white — for a crisp effect," she told BI.  

 

Find a new way to hide your wires and cables to create a neater space.

Another great way to neaten up your space is to hide the unsightly cables and wires that may be sticking out of your television or internet router.

"By doing so, it immediately upgrades the space from feeling disheveled and incomplete to put-together and high-end," Turk said.

Numerous hacks exist to hide them from sight, such as pushing them behind furniture, tucking them into a drawer, or using cord covers.

Swap out the photos in your frames.

Another great way to update your space is to swap out photos in your picture frames with newly printed ones or old ones that you've stored away. 

If you have wall space, you can also create a gallery wall of your favorite photos, Fernandez added.

This story was originally published on April 6, 2020, and most recently updated on June 25, 2024.

• Star real estate broker Tal Alexander takes leave from brokerage firm after rape allegation.
• A woman accused Tal and his brother Alon of raping her in 2012 while another brother Oren watched.
• Oren also recently stepped down from brokerage firm Official Partners amid rape accusations.

Tal Alexander, a real estate agent whose star-studded résumé includes the sale of America's priciest ever home, is stepping away from the brokerage firm he helped found after a woman alleged in a civil lawsuit that he raped her more than a decade ago.

In a statement provided to Business Insider, an attorney for Alexander said he would "take a leave from" the real estate sales firm Official Partners "to focus fully on clearing his name."

Alexander's lawyer, Deanna Paul, is also seeking to move the case against him from New York state civil court to federal court.

"Tal is eager for the case to be heard in federal court as soon as possible and rejoin the Official team in short order," Paul said in the statement.

The announcement caps a dizzying fall from the pinnacle of the residential real estate business for both Tal and his brokerage partner and brother Oren Alexander amid sordid allegations.

Tal and Oren spent more than a decade at the brokerage firm Douglas Elliman, establishing themselves as big-name sellers of ultra-pricey homes. Among the notable deals they helped negotiate was the 2019 sale of a four floor penthouse at 220 Central Park South in Manhattan to the hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin for a record $240 million.

In 2022, the pair broke off from Elliman and cofounded Official Partners, a firm that focuses exclusively on the uppermost tier of the residential sales market.

Earlier this month, however, The Real Deal, a real estate-focused publication, reported that two women had filed civil lawsuits separately in New York State civil court in March that accuse Oren and another brother, Alon Alexander, of raping them in 2012. Oren and Alon have denied the allegations.

In the days after the allegations came to light, Oren announced via a post on social media that he would take a "pause" from Official Partners "as I shift my focus towards fighting these baseless civil claims."

Soon after, the company clarified his remarks, stating that he was being removed permanently from the business.

Nicole Oge, a top executive and cofounder of Official Parters, said in a statement that the firm's "values were deeply violated when the disturbing allegations against our former partner Oren Alexander were uncovered."

Oge said that Oren's brokerage licenses had been separated from the company "and the process of removing him from ownership is well underway."

Last week, a woman named Angelica Parker filed a lawsuit in New York state court that accuses Tal of raping her in 2012 in his Manhattan apartment with Alon as Oren watched.

Tal's attorney, in her statement, said the allegation was "false" but said the claim had become a "distraction to" Official and its clients. She also said that the decision to step aside was mutually made by Tal and Official.

"Given the salacious nature of this false allegation and impact on Official, Tal and his partners have decided he will take a leave from the company," Deanna Paul, the attorney, said.

In a statement, Official said, "We are committed to safeguarding and growing the business, and in the coming days, Official will be announcing details about how the company will be reconfigured and fortified for the future."

• Pamela Druckerman wrote "Bringing Up Bébé" arguing that parenting in France is superior to the US.
• The 2012 book caused a sensation because it said Americans could learn from French moms and dads.
• Druckerman's kids are now teens and she largely believes similar lessons apply today.

When Pamela Druckerman published her ground-breaking book, "Bringing Up Bébé," in 2012, her daughter was 5, and her twin sons were just 2.

It caused a stir because the author compared the parenting style of the French with that of the US. Druckerman, a transplant to Paris from Miami, concluded that, unlike in America, moms and dads in France called the shots in the family, not the kids.

The book's title in the UK was "French Children Don't Throw Food," summing up her observation that they were better behaved because of the less angsty approach.

Now Druckerman's kids are 18 and 15, she has returned to her theory. She told Business Insider that while a few US parenting styles had begun to cross the Atlantic, most French parents raise their older children differently.

She said they shared some concerns with their American counterparts — particularly over the influence of social media — but highlighted three common attitudes from which US parents might learn.

Most French parents don't track their teens' location

In "Bringing Up Bébé," Druckerman noted that so-called Helicopter Parenting — when parents hover over their kids and cater to their whims — was an alien concept to many French people.

She said that, as is often the case in America, they don't follow them around the playground.

Instead, adults can have interrupted conversations while their children are left alone to play independently and manage their own interactions.

She said the same "hands-off" approach extends to the teenage years when parents rarely interfere in their relationships with friends.

"In America, I've met plenty of parents who monitor their teenagers quite closely, feeling entitled to read their private text messages," Druckerman said.

She said it was unusual for French parents to track their adolescents' location using the GPS on their phones.

"I don't see that happening," she added. "Parents expect them to have a private life."

They respect their privacy in terms of sex after the age of consent of 15

Druckerman said the age at which kids in France have sex for the first time is around 17. She said the average American loses their virginity at a similar age.

She said what's different is that the French tend to acknowledge it, while Americans prefer to shy away from the fact.

"There is a lot of discussion here about adolescent sexuality — an expectation that teens will be having sex," the author said, adding that they're afforded their privacy. "In the US, I get the impression that parents pretend it's not happening when, of course, it is," she told BI.

French pharmacies dispense free condoms to young people under the age of 26, and girls have easy access to birth control and morning-after pills funded by the public health system.

"There are no questions asked, and parents aren't consulted," Druckerman said.

Most French moms and dads ensure their children know they have a life outside parenting

Druckerman cited research by the Financial Times showing that parents in most developed countries, including the UK, Spain, and Canada, spend more time with their children than in the past.

The study found that, in 2020, Americans spent three hours a day practicing "hands-on" parenting, such as helping with homework or playing with their kids, up from two hours in 1965.

In contrast, French parents spent almost an hour less "together time" with their kids in 2020 than they did 55 years earlier.

"It had gone up dramatically in almost every single country that they tracked except for France, where the number of hours parents spend per day with their kids has declined," Druckerman said.

The mom added that French parents ensure that they are not defined as such. "They have their own lives to lead," she said. "Children are raised to see them as individuals who need time and space for themselves."

Do you have an interesting story highlighting the differences between parenting in the US and other countries? If you'd like to share it with Business Insider, please send details to jridley@businessinsider.com.

• Researchers have found 230 million tons of precious minerals off a remote island over 1,200 miles from Tokyo.
• The motherlode contains enough cobalt and nickel to supply Japan for over a decade.
• Both materials are crucial in building EV batteries, with a global race underway to find new supplies.

The world is scrambling to secure precious metals to build EV batteries — and Japan may have just hit the jackpot.

Researchers have found a motherlode of around 230 million metric tons of minerals crucial to making electric car batteries on the seabed off a remote island around 1,200 miles from Tokyo.

The cache of manganese nodules lying 5,000 meters below the ocean surface contains enough cobalt to supply Japan for around 75 years.

It also contains more than a decade's worth of the country's annual nickel consumption, according to a press release provided by The Nippon Foundation, which conducted the survey in collaboration with the University of Tokyo.

Both minerals are crucial components of electric vehicle batteries, and the transition to EVs has sparked a global race to secure sources of the precious metals. Nikkei first reported on the discovery.

Researchers told Nikkei that the seabed around Minami-Torishima island contains around 610,000 metric tons of cobalt and 740,000 metric tons of nickel.

They scoured the area earlier this year with mining equipment and remote-controlled underwater vehicles and plan to begin extracting the first minerals in 2025.

Despite being an automotive powerhouse, Japan has lagged behind many of its global rivals in the race to build electric vehicles.

Just 2.2% of new passenger cars sold in Japan in 2023 were electric, according to data from industry bodies, compared to 25% in EV pace-setter China.

The discovery of vast nickel, cobalt, and manganese reserves will raise hopes that will soon change.

Harvesting the materials on a commercial scale, which is expected to begin in 2026, will not be without challenges. Deep sea mining is costly, technically difficult, and often controversial, with Norway facing opposition from environmentalists over its own deep sea mining proposals.

The reward will likely be worth it, however. Demand for nickel and cobalt is expected to skyrocket in the coming decades, with a White House paper estimating that demand will rise 400 to 600% as battery-powered technology replaces oil and gas.

For other materials used in EV batteries, such as lithium and graphite, that rise could be as much as 4,000%, according to US government figures.

Many of those metals are currently sourced from countries including Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where reports have suggested some workers face abuse, low wages, and a high risk of accidents.