The son of the richest art dealer married a famous model. What happened at a private wedding of Joe Nahmad and Madison Headrick?
Sheikhs and stars came to the closed wedding of Joe Nahmad and Madison Headrick
At the end of May, a quiet but fabulously expensive celebration took place in Sardinia , Italy. Billionaire Joe Nahmad, the son of the most famous and influential art dealer in the world, David Nahmad , married American supermodel Madison Headrick. Western stars, Eastern sheikhs and even members of the British royal family came to the closed Jewish ceremony, which, according to experts, cost 12 million euros. How Nahmad and his sons made their fortune and what was going on behind the closed doors of the holiday - Lenta.ru found out.
"Monet and Picasso are like Microsoft and Coca-Cola"
Art dealer Joseph Nahmad continues the work of his father, Monegasque billionaire David Nahmad, whose ancestors were from the Syrian city of Aleppo. There is Joseph's grandfather,Sephardic banker Hillel Nahmad, lived until the end of World War II. AfterAden pogrom in 1947 he fled to Lebanon , and when the situation escalated there, Hillel with his wife and three sons - Joseph (Giuseppe), Ezra and David (David) moved to Milan .
Europe inspired the brothers. In the 1960s, as teenagers, they became interested in art, and in their free time from school they traded on the Italian stock market. Once, at an exhibition of the Spanish artist Juan Gris , which was held in Rome at the initiative of the French dealer Daniel-Henri Kahnweiler, Ezra and David purchased two paintings. On that day, young people became the only buyers of Kahnweiler, which instantly fascinated him. In the future, the gallery owner sold them the work of Picasso, Braque and the same Gris.
Things went uphill until a criminal gang began to operate in Milan"Red Brigades" . In the 1970s, the city became too dangerous to live in, and the Nahmads were again forced to change their place of residence. Joseph and Ezra moved to Monaco, while David went to conquer New York .
David Nahmad with wife Colette and son Joe, 2007 Photo: Arnaldo Magnani / Getty Images Today David Nahmad's eldest son Hillel (known as Helly) runs the Helly Nahmad Gallery on Madison Avenue. In his collection, among other things, there is Picasso's painting "Young Girl with a Flower Basket", which was bought in 2018 from the Rockefeller family for $ 115 million (more than seven billion rubles at the exchange rate of that time) at the auction house Christie's.
Halley made headlines in 2014 when he made over $100 million in a gambling business that attracted the attention of Hollywood stars Tobey Maguire, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. The entrepreneur was taken into custody, but in 2021 he was pardoned by Donald Trump , who was then President of the United States .
The Nahmad family owns the largest collection of Picasso's works. Its cost is one billion dollars (80 billion rubles at the current exchange rate). In total, they own more than 4.5 thousand paintings stored in a building with an area of 1.4 thousand square meters in Switzerland.
“Monet and Picasso are like Microsoft and Coca-Cola. The exhaust [from their work] is less than from modern painting, but at least it is more reliable,” says David Nahmad. However, his second son Joe (Joseph) thinks otherwise. In 2013, he opened his own gallery, Nahmad Contemporary, which focuses exclusively on contemporary artists who rose to prominence in the 1980s.
Joe is an absolute genius. You can call him at three in the morning, and he will remember how much he paid for the painting, in what currency he paid and what was the exchange rate at that time David Nash New York art dealer, formerly head of impressionist and contemporary painting at Sotheby's auction house Joe Nahmad in 2017 Photo: Bertrand Rindoff Petroff / Getty Images
According to Forbes , in the 1990s, the ArtNews newspaper published an article about the arrest of another Nahmad, Joseph, who was famous for his love of a luxurious life, and especially for Ferrari and Rolls-Royce cars. Since then and to this day, this material is the only major article about the Nahmad family. In 1957, David's older brother was allegedly imprisoned and fined in Italy for possession of $70,000 worth of stolen British pounds. A few years later, he was accused of tax evasion on $ 92 million, which he received during transactions in the stock market.
Joseph, now 75, claims he "unwittingly" received the money as part of a commercial operation and his detention ended with one interrogation. And to questions about the tax investigation, he answered briefly: "It's a lie."
And although little is known about the Nahmad family - they still keep their personal lives secret - the main fact is available to the public: these people are still the most powerful buying force in the art industry. “And the market needs just that kind of power to function,” says Jeffrey Deutsch, director of the Museum of Modern Art in Los Angeles .
beauty connoisseurs
Helly and Joe have a particular soft spot for supermodels. According to Huffpost , Halley had a romantic relationship with Brazilian fashion model Ana Beatriz Barros before switching to her compatriot and colleague Gisele Bündchen . They wrote that it was Nahmad who introduced Giselle to her future (and now past) lover Leonardo DiCaprio , his close friend.
But Joe does not lag behind his brother: the 33-year-old billionaire chose the advertising star of the Calvin Klein underwear brand Madison Hedrick as his chosen one. The billionaire proposed to the fair-haired beauty despite rumors about her relationship with the same DiCaprio, who is famous for his passion for young fashion models. At the beginning of the year, several foreign media published paparazzi pictures at once, in which Hedrick was captured in the company of an actor on board a luxury yacht during a party off the coast of St. Barth.
Joe Nahmad and Madison Headrick Joe Nahmad and Madison Headrick Photo: @madison.headrick Unlike a secretive spouse, Madison loves popularity: she is the face of world brands Polo Ralph Lauren, Vera Wang, Max Mara, Hugo Boss and Balmain, and her portraits are printed in glossy magazines Vogue, Harper's Bazaar and Playboy . However, the modeling business is not Hedrick's only hobby, as befits the wife of one of the most influential people on the planet. She also runs her own brand, Care.e.on, which makes travel-friendly beauty products.
And in social networks, Madison, as befits a well-known model, publishes photographs in which she adorns cityscapes, social events and, of course, the gallery of her beloved spouse. In the latest posted on Instagram (a social network banned in Russia ; owned by Meta Corporation, a recognized extremist organization and banned in the Russian Federation), the model poses in a white bodycon dress. “Let’s go,” she gives the go-ahead in the description and marks the Italian island of Sardinia in the geolocation, the place where her multimillion-dollar celebration took place on the last weekend of May.
Model Madison Headrick, Jimmy Choo 2022 ad campaign Photo: Claire Rothstein / Jimmy Choo
Secret wedding
The closed Jewish ceremony, which brought together the richest and most famous people in the world, was held at the luxurious Hotel Cala di Volpe in the Monte Moro valley on the Emerald Coast. According to Page Six , the cost of a night in one of the rooms of this hotel is almost 4 thousand dollars (323 thousand rubles at the current exchange rate).
According to the local newspaper Italy 24 News , the list of guests of the holiday included Prince William with his wife Kate Middleton, daughter of US President Joe Biden Ashley, actor Leonardo DiCaprio, football player Tom Brady , tennis player Serena Williams and one of the Gallagher brothers, the founders of the British rock band Oasis . Eastern dignitaries, kings, princes, and even the richest Arab in the world, Nassef Sawiris, the head of Orascom Construction Industries, whose fortune was estimated at $8.7 billion in 2021 (540 billion rubles at the exchange rate of that time) were also present.
12 million Euro or a billion rubles - the total cost of the wedding of Joe Nahmad and Madison Hedrick Wedding Venue of Joe Nahmad and Madison Headrick in Sardinia Photo: Cobra Team / BACKGRID / Legion-media.ru
According to Jewish custom, the official ceremony took place at noon, but the festivities continued until late at night. Everything that happens at the wedding is kept secret, but some details are still leaked to the network. For example, Serena Williams posted a photo on social networks surrounded by thousands of live white roses in the room where they spent the main part of the celebration. It is also known that, among others, the musical group Jamiroquai, one of the most prominent representatives of British acid jazz of the 1990s, performed for the newlyweds' friends. Probably, it was under her tracks that Leonardo DiCaprio danced with a new passion - an unknown blonde, whose identity has not yet been revealed.