The Financial Times had faced considerable flak after publishing an article about how the 1% rich had to make tough choices in observing their luxurious lifestyle during coronavirus pandemic.
Now, journalist Shruti Advani has admitted that the article was slated to be an ironical piece. Speaking to The Times, she said,
“It was meant to take the piss out of people like me. Maybe I’m a shitty satirist. What can I say?”
In her article she had revealed that she had trebled her order of fresh flowers from Freddie’s Flowers, something that was “essential” and “the obvious place to start”. She had then moved her children’s nanny into one of the two spare rooms in her South Kensington home.
Born in India, Advani usually writes about private banking. In her latest article however, she wrote that she had been “blessed” with an inheritance and a financier husband working at Goldman Sachs and that she knew that her lifestyle must seem fantastical to most. She had also detailed how her pre-coronavirus wardrobe was split between Chanel tweed blazers for interviews and “athleisure for when I toil in front of a computer”. Neither, she wrote, seemed suitable for the brave new world of working from home. A personal shopper had advised her to wear “casual but groomed” clothes, but Advani instead opted for Olivia von Halle silk pyjamas — £400 a pair — “in colours guaranteed to make the dullest Zoom meeting come alive”.
Following the article, Advani said that she had received more than 3,000 emails in response to her article, including one calling her “an entitled little bitch”. Many of the emails, she said, had contained racist and sexist slurs.
