What, No Gold-Plated Rubber Ducky?
With all the mud that’s been sticking to corporate America lately, you could imagine that any self-respecting CEO might want to hit the showers. But even there, former Tyco tycoon L. Dennis Kozlowski evidently couldn’t stay out of hot water.
Many words have already been published about allegations that the 55-year-old executive raided millions in Tyco funds to underwrite a lavish lifestyle. But none are likely to have more staying power than these: $6,000 shower curtain.
According to reports published this week in the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere, Kozlowski is under investigation for finagling more than $135 million in Tyco funds to pay for such perks as antiques, art and furnishings for his Manhattan duplex and half the $2.1-million cost of a junket to the Mediterranean island of Sardinia for his wife’s 40th birthday.
But a $6,000 shower curtain? Even if cleanliness is next to godliness, isn’t that kinda steep?
“Either he really got ripped off, which I doubt, or I’m sure it had to have some type of precious metal in it,” said Ellen Seay, licensing director for Paul Brant Design Company, a Panama City, Fla., outfit that sells printed shower curtains, bedding, wallpaper and other domestic furnishings. “I think the most one of ours has ever retailed for is 40 bucks.”
But others suggested that paying the equivalent of a year’s state-college tuition for a shower curtain might not be quite as outlandish as it sounds. “It could easily happen. With the price of labor in New York and fabric, things add up,” said an associate at A. Michael Krieger Inc., a New York interior design and decorating firm, who asked that his name not be used.
If you picked out “some really, really expensive fabric,” the associate said, plus an expensive inner lining, plus some nice fringe work, you could be talking in the thousands. However, he said, “I think you’d have to work hard at it.”
A saleswoman at ABC Home and Carpet in lower Manhattan said the upscale store’s most expensive shower curtain costs $195. That’s for a handmade floral design printed on off-white linen.
“It’s a very good price, with all the work that’s on it,” said the saleswoman, who would identify herself only as Benita. “Six thousand dollars, that’s crazy. We have tourists coming in here, actors, actresses coming in here, and they don’t expect to pay that much. You could do a complete [bedroom] for that.”
Perhaps spending big bucks for a shower curtain was merely Koz- lowski’s way of supporting the widespread call for more “transparency” in corporate America? Alas, that theory doesn’t hold water: The curtain in question was described as a gold-and-burgundy floral-patterned model.
Seay speculated that the curtain “couldn’t have been functional, it must have been for looks or prestige or whatever. I’m sure it wasn’t in a bathroom that was used.” If she owned a $6,000 shower curtain, she said, “nobody would ever be taking a bath in the bathtub.”
