Oprah_ A Biography - Kitty Kelley [221]
Speaking at a fund-raiser for a community school in Baltimore, she said, “I have lots of things like all these Manolo Blahniks. I have all that and I think it’s great. I’m not one of these people, like, ‘Well, we must renounce ourselves.’ No. I have a closet full of shoes, and it’s a good thing.” She told the well-heeled crowd she enjoyed her money without guilt or apology. “I was coming back from Africa on one of my trips. I had taken one of my wealthy friends with me. She said, ‘Don’t you just feel guilty? Don’t you feel terrible?’ I said, ‘No, I don’t. I do not know how my being destitute is going to help them.’ Then I said when we got home, ‘I’m going home to sleep on my Pratesi sheets right now and I’ll feel good about it.’ ”
She recalled for her magazine readers that on her forty-second birthday she and Gayle were in Miami, where she decided to buy herself a big Cartier watch as a present. En route, she spotted a black Bentley Azure in a dealership window. “Oh, my God,” she said. “That is the most beautiful car.” She bought the Bentley on the spot. “It’s a convertible. The top is down and guess what? It starts to rain. It’s pouring.” Oprah did not put the top up on her $365,000 car. “Because I want[ed] to ride in a convertible on my birthday.” Next stop: the Cartier boutique for the Diabolo small model watch in yellow gold with alldiamond bezel, case, dial, and bracelet for $117,000.
She told viewers after attending her first couture show in Paris, “I could have bought a home for what I bought the Chanel outfits for.” She entertained at the same apex of luxury, spending millions to host parties. “Eyes have not seen, nor ears heard,” said Vernon Winfrey as he tried to describe the sumptuous events his daughter staged for Maya Angelou’s birthday every five years. Many guests recalled Maya’s seventieth, in April 1998, as Oprah’s most opulent. She rented the Seabourn Pride for a week’s cruise in the Caribbean, invited two hundred people, and gave each a suite with a balcony on the luxury ship. “She even had two thousand yellow rubber duckies dropped into the ship’s pool so we could play like children in a bathtub,” recalled one guest. Their invitations arrived four months before the Easter event asking everyone for shirt size; pant size; shoe size; champagne preference; favorite liquors, foods, cosmetics, fragrances, and body lotions—all of which were stocked in their suites, along with terry-cloth robes stitched with their names. “I think she spent four million dollars on that party,” said Vernon, shaking his head as he recalled the many stops the ship made for lavish lunches on white beaches, the silk-lined tents for dinners, and the moonlit concerts with Nancy Wilson singing under the stars. Oprah threw a similar bash for Maya when she turned seventy-five; on Angelou’s eightieth birthday, Oprah rented Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach for a weekend and arranged special performances by Michael Feinstein, Natalie Cole, Jessye Norman, and Tony Bennett.
In 2005, at her Montecito mansion, Oprah hosted her most lavish event, which she billed as “A Bridge to Now—A Celebration for Remarkable Women During Remarkable Times,” with cameras filming every moment for a special on ABC titled Oprah Winfrey’s Legends Ball. A year and a half in the planning, the event honoring black women gave the network its biggest non-sports ratings in three years. The year before, 2004, Oprah had devoted two shows to celebrating her fiftieth birthday, the first of which was said to be a “surprise” hosted by “my best friend” (Gayle King) and “my favorite white man” (John Travolta). That show, called a “modest little Super Bowl of Love” by the Chicago Sun-Times, was followed by an after-party at Harpo for 500 employees