Quick, where can you get a $150,000 vape? Los Angeles. (Surprised?) What real estate move confers serious financial status in New York? Buying not one, not two, but three townhouses and "Frankenmansion-ing" them together into one mega-compound — hey, it’s what all the Russian oligarchs like Roman Abramovich, fashion scions like David Lauren and movie stars like Sarah Jessica Parker are doing! Jay Z appears on two cities’ most-wanted guests lists of 2017 (New York and Los Angeles), while Washington, D.C., hosts a secret media dinner that’s gone from a girls’-night-in to the biggest power invite in town, attracting multiple senators (but no husbands allowed). To decode the signals of influence in the three American power centers, THR takes you behind the privacy walls of the uber-privileged.
Additional reporting by Jon Alain Guzik, Gary Baum, Vincent Boucher, Alexandra Cheney, Meg Hemphill, Beth Landman and Elycia Rubin.
