And the current leader of the Australian modelling brigade, South Sudanese-born Adut Akech, also gave the shows a miss. PS hears she opted for a family holiday in Kenya. Among one of the highest-paid models in the world, she’s certainly earned a break.

Meanwhile, teaching the next generation of models a thing or two about social media was Elle Macpherson, who made it clear not to mess with The Body on Instagram.

Having already sustained an onslaught of questions over what filters she had or hadn’t used during her outings at the Paris shows this week, Macpherson had clearly had enough when she showed one of her followers on social media who’s boss.

The model took her detractor head-on after he claimed she had been less than gracious during a previous meeting in a luxury fashion boutique, accusing the veteran supermodel of having been “soo rude in person”.

But rather than simply deleting the comment, Macpherson posted on her feed: “So not my natural way of being – DM me and let me know what happened?”

But rather than taking things private, her accuser doubled down on Macpherson’s public timeline, claiming she “didn’t say thank you” during a visit to the store where they were working, and had allegedly “thrown clothes on the floor” before “storming off”, apparently annoyed she had also copped a parking ticket outside.

Sadly, we may never know how the fracas ended, as the exchange has since been deleted.

Too big a boat to float

The final chapter in a quintessentially Sydney saga of status symbols, the lure of new money and big boats was played out in court this week, bringing an end to a six-year stoush.

The wealthy owner of a waterfront Sydney mansion has lost her appeal against a court ruling forcing her to pay damages of $62,720, awarded against her after she refused to close on a deal to buy a luxury yacht she later claimed was too big to moor at her multi-million-dollar north shore home.

Motor Yacht Sales Australia had demanded hundreds of thousands of dollars from Woolwich woman Jian Ling Cheng over the sale of a $1.6 million 48ft Princess sports yacht that was left languishing in Sydney’s picturesque waterways for months after the deal went sour in October 2016.

In 2020, the matter went before the NSW Supreme Court, which heard Cheng had “limited ... experience and knowledge of boats”. Her lawyers claimed the sale of the yacht was contingent upon it being able to fit at the mooring out the front of her palatial home, which she bought in 2015 for almost $10 million.

“The defendant had no experience and did not know whether the mooring located at the defendant’s home at ... Woolwich would be suitable for the mooring of, and would be able to moor, the Princess Yacht V48,” Cheng claimed in a defence filed on her behalf.

She also claimed she spoke Mandarin and, like her husband, could not read, speak or write in English, instead enlisting the help of her son and a taxi driver friend – who both spoke and wrote limited English – to communicate with the boat seller.

But the boat seller denied Cheng’s claims there was “unequal bargaining power” between her and the seller, and the business applied “unfair pressure ... and unfair tactics” in carrying out the deal, including executing a contract that didn’t acknowledge the boat’s mooring suitability.

The business, which trades as The Boutique Boat Company, claimed two of its representatives motored the boat to the pontoon of Cheng’s home, where her son, husband, and another Asian man, woman and two children boarded the vessel for an hour-long joyride around Sydney Harbour.

The seller claimed Cheng’s guests were “laughing and chatting among themselves for the duration of the cruise”, and its representatives were able to berth the boat at the Woolwich pontoon with ease to allow passengers to get on and off the vessel.

The business alleged in an amended statement of claim it discounted the cost of the vessel to $1,180,000 because Cheng offered to pay cash in full, but after handing over a $20,000 deposit she failed to deliver the balance.

Following demands for payment, Cheng then tried to cancel the contract and request the return of the $20,000 deposit before failing to show up at a dispute resolution meeting. The boat seller later terminated the contract and kept the deposit.

The business sold the boat to another buyer for $600,000 plus a trade-in vessel in March 2017, later selling the trade-in to end up with a shortfall of $85,000.

Barilaro chapter begins ... and ends

Despite former NSW deputy premier John Barilaro not responding to the Herald’s queries about his intriguing corporate bedfellows in his role with Sydney’s Coronation Property, the former pollie managed to update his LinkedIn profile on the same day our forensic report was published on July 5, changing the employment status of his executive director position to “former”.

Last week PS reported on Coronation Property, which has two directors – prominent Sydney lawyer and property investor John Landerer, 74, who made headlines in February after selling his Vaucluse mansion for $62 million, and property developer Joe Nahas, who has clearly overcome serious financial obstacles in recent years and is currently building one of Sydney’s most ambitious and expensive homes in Darling Point. The company’s website says it has “over $5.3 billion in mixed-use projects in the pipeline”.

When Barilaro took the executive director’s job at Coronation earlier this year he posted on LinkedIn: “It’s rare in life to come across an opportunity where the vision excites you and the passion of the individuals behind the name is so infectious that it captures you. Let me introduce to you, #CoronationProperty. My next chapter begins.”

On Tuesday, Landerer declined to comment on how Barilaro came to be employed by Coronation or whether he still had the job. However, Landerer did offer that “I have never met or spoken to Mr Barilaro in my life”.

Many happy returns

As the ambitious construction at Joe Nahas and wife Danielle Elkorr’s new family mansion looks set to continue for some time yet in Darling Point, PS hears his brother Andy Nahas, who is also a secretary of Coronation Property, and his wife Carly Sahyoun, quietly pocketed a neat $21.5million after selling their own five-bedroom Bellevue Hill mansion. That’s a hefty $10 million profit on what Sahyoun paid for the place just two years ago.

Carly and Andy have not been in the news much since their glitzy wedding caused a sensation back in 2015. The Sunday Telegraph reported that the wedding included an “explosion of white orchids, roses, asparagus fern and metre-long hanging leaves with hundreds of candles softly lighting up the room”. The 700 guests got to indulge in the couple’s seven-tier wedding cake that was detailed to match the netting in Carly’s wedding gown.

It was certainly a far cry from media reports in 2009 of Andy Nahas being charged over a bikie kidnapping, charges which were later dismissed.

Ahead of his peers

From door-to-door sales selling lamps and fashions in the back of a Kombi van to a billion-dollar-plus global business empire, Sydney’s Bill Roche was a man who left an impressive legacy by any measure, especially considering he left school at 15.

But to his family, he was also the “cheeky” and humble patriarch, who along with his wife Imelda, epitomised the spirit of “can do” self-made success.

Roche – who built the Nutrimetics empire with Imelda after she spotted an ad from the company’s US owners searching for local partners – went on to become a successful property developer and a prominent figure within the Hunter Valley wine industry. He died on June 30, aged 87.

His daughter Clare remembered a “cheeky man with a twinkle in his eye” who considered his greatest business achievement wasn’t the creation of a vast fortune, but rather “watching other people benefit from the same hard work he and mum had put into it”.

At its peak, Nutrimetics had more than 100,000 consultants – overwhelmingly women – travelling around Australia selling its range of skincare products.

“We’d give them a new car every two years, back then for many of those families that was their first family car. It gave women an opportunity to earn an income and still run their home,” Imelda Roche told PS.

Roche was working as a sales representative for Kellogg’s when he first met Imelda, who was training cash register operators at a new grocery store in Canberra during the early 1950s.

“I thought he was a very impressive man back then, and we agreed to meet up back in Sydney,” Imelda said. “He asked me how old I was. I said 23, and he said he was too. It was only when we married I discovered he was actually two years younger than me. The family has long joked I was the original cougar, to which I tell them he needed my wisdom.

“But in all seriousness, I really think Bill was ahead of his time when it comes to his male peers in that era and working with women. He was able to work with his wife successfully. We allowed each other to focus on what we were good at, rather than second-guessing each other. I became the public face of Nutrimetics, and he ran the backend. Other couples would tell us they wouldn’t be able to do a garage sale together, but for us it was a seamless working relationship, even as husband and wife.”

After establishing Nutrimetics in Australia in 1968, they sold the skincare and cosmetics company to Sara Lee in 1997.

The couple also own Roche Group, a property development company that includes Roche Estate, Hunter Valley Gardens and Harrigan’s Irish Pub in Pokolbin.

The Roches have four children and 13 grandchildren.