TALK OF THE TOWN: Beauty mogul Charlotte Tilbury upsets locals - by turning getaway into a 'mini-Ibiza'
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She's making up to £1 billion by selling the make-up company that she built from scratch – but Charlotte Tilbury is causing upset with how she’s spending her fortune. The cosmetics queen, who counts Kate Moss and Amal Clooney as close friends, has amassed an impressive property portfolio on the exclusive Kenyan getaway islands of Lamu and Manda, I can reveal, including two sprawling homes and an ‘off-grid’ bar.
![[Locals are concerned that her feted celebrity parties are turning the exclusive Kenyan islands of Lamu and Manda into an ‘African Ibiza']](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/12/29/00/93548453-14232897-image-a-148_1735431221860.jpg)
But locals are concerned that her feted celebrity parties are turning the low-key resorts into an ‘African Ibiza’. And, worse, they fear the influx of wealth may attract pirates from neighbouring Somalia to the tranquil paradise. A local tells me that the cosmetics tycoon, right, is ‘intent on buying more land’ in the area, which has been a favourite of the gliteratti since the 1930s, and has hosted the likes of the Obamas, Princess Beatrice (whose husband Edo Mapelli Mozzi has a family estate on Lamu) and The Crown star Dominic West. But locals complain that the parties thrown by 51-year-old.
![[Tabitha Willett attends the Gentleman's Journal Big Christmas Party on December 12]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/12/29/00/93548563-14232897-image-m-151_1735431742023.jpg)
Tilbury, who grew up on Ibiza, are too rowdy. One resident said: ‘It’s a quiet place and now we are worried about pirate trouble. Soon it’s going to be a no-go area.’. It is not an unfounded fear. In 2011, British tourist Judith Tebbutt was seized from Lamu by Somali gunmen who killed her husband David. Tourism took years to recover.
Tilbury, who last week announced that she will hand full ownership of her eponymous brand to Spanish luxury goods firm Puig by 2031, has been snapping up properties, including a watering hole called Gerald’s Bar, which has been renamed George’s Bar after her husband George Waud, a film producer.
![[Alison Oliver at the BRIT Awards 2024 at The O2 Arena, London in March]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/12/29/00/93548833-14232897-image-m-159_1735432762107.jpg)
