Why Swimwear Star Rebecca Klodinsky Walked Away From a Celebrity-Favourite Brand
She built a cult global swimwear label worn by Kim Kardashian and Hailey Bieber. Now, Rebecca Klodinsky opens up about the emotional decision to shut it down — and how starting over led to her next big success in ethical luxury.
2 min
From the outside, it looked like a dream. Rebecca Klodinsky had built a globally recognised swimwear label from scratch. IIXIIST, the brand she launched in 2013 with just $2,000 and a vision, became an instant cult hit — worn by the likes of Kim Kardashian, Kylie Jenner, and Hailey Bieber, and stocked internationally. For years, it defined her.
But in 2023, Klodinsky walked away.
“IIXIIST was my first business, my breakthrough, my identity for almost a decade,” she reflects. “Closing it wasn’t easy. It wasn’t clean. But it was necessary.”
The decision, she says, was about more than business. It was personal. “Letting go of IIXIIST felt like a death. Not just of a brand, but of a version of myself that I’d spent years building from scratch,” Klodinsky explains. “Over time, it became heavy. The pace, the pressure, the expectations. I was evolving, but the business stayed the same.”
And so, after a decade of high-speed success and global recognition, she shut the doors.
“There’s this idea that quitting means you’ve failed. But no one really talks about the bravery it takes to walk away from something successful—just because it no longer fits.”
That space — the space left behind — would become The Prestwick Place.
Launched in 2019 on the Gold Coast with her now-husband, former AFL player Lachie Henderson, The Prestwick Place is everything IIXIIST wasn’t: slower, intentional, and rooted in ethical luxury. The label specialises in lab-grown diamonds and handcrafted fine jewellery, with full pricing transparency and zero mass production.
“From day one it felt different,” says Klodinsky. “It was slower, more meaningful, and deeply aligned with who I’d become. For the first time in a long time, I wasn’t chasing. I was choosing.”
The numbers speak for themselves. With more than $3 million in annual revenue, 89% customer retention, and 75% of sales happening on a customer’s first visit — most via Instagram — The Prestwick Place has quietly become a category leader in the luxury jewellery space.
Still, Klodinsky is candid about what it took to get here. “Letting go of IIXIIST wasn’t just a business decision—it was emotional. I grieved it. I questioned myself. But I learned that just because something is working doesn’t mean it’s right.”
Now fully immersed in her new venture, Klodinsky says the shift has given her something far more valuable than profile or prestige: clarity.
“What IIXIIST gave me was invaluable. But what The Prestwick Place gave me was space—to grow, to evolve, and to build something that reflects where I am now.”
Her next chapter isn’t just about jewellery. It’s about alignment. About building something that fits not just the market — but the maker.
From making unpopular decisions to learning when to listen, leaders from five businesses reveal what nobody prepared them for — and how running a company has challenged their expectations.
Technology and semiconductor shares fell sharply as investors questioned the debt financing the AI infrastructure boom and confronted higher rates and Chinese competition.
Elon Musk is exploring a potential merger between Tesla and SpaceX, a deal that could reshape the future of AI, robotics, autonomous vehicles and space technology. With a combined valuation potentially reaching $3.5 trillion, the move could bring Musk’s vision of an interconnected technology ecosystem closer to reality, although a deal remains uncertain.
5 min
Elon Musk has engineered ties between Tesla TSLA 3.41%increase; up pointing triangle and SpaceX SPCX 7.79%increase; up pointing triangle that are hard to break, and now he wants to fuse them together permanently.
Musk has run both Tesla and SpaceX concurrently over the past two decades, using a schedule that dictated which days he spent focused on each business.
The companies have often shared resources and personnel, signaling their close ties. Last year, SpaceX looked into creating a spacesuit for Tesla’s humanoid robot Optimus, a person familiar with the matter said. Tesla last week showed off its new Roadster, a vehicle featuring SpaceX rocket thrusters that it hopes to soon bring to market.
And in recent months, Musk has repositioned both companies by expanding beyond their core operations toward a shared mission centered on artificial intelligence.
The world’s richest man on Tuesday signaled his interest in tying up SpaceX and Tesla, marking what would be the biggest corporate merger of all time. Because he serves as chief executive of SpaceX and Tesla, Musk said committees of independent directors at both companies are evaluating a possible deal, adding that a transaction might not come to fruition.
The committees will likely evaluate, with lawyers and bankers, how each company would fare in a potential deal and how a deal might best be structured. They then present their conclusions to their respective boards, who typically vote on whether to proceed.
“It’s an odd Kabuki dance where two groups of people are talking and I can’t be in the conversation,” Musk told SpaceX investors on Tuesday in response to an analyst’s question about a potential deal.
For Musk, the merger supports his vision of a world full of autonomous cars, humanoid robots and weekly rocket launches, as well as the data centers and satellites required to keep the whole thing running.
Some investors and analysts said they expect a transaction would be structured as an all-stock deal, with SpaceX potentially paying a modest premium for Tesla shares.
SpaceX, which has a market value of about $2 trillion, said it is seeing sharp growth in revenue across its businesses, which include operating data centers, launching rockets and operating satellite networks such as the internet service Starlink. Tesla is valued at about $1.5 trillion and is expanding its operations beyond its automotive and energy business. Shares in both companies traded higher following the news Tuesday.
Musk’s substantial ownership stakes in both companies, along with voting control at SpaceX, has enabled him to set the deal in motion. Analysts and investors said the deal will probably face regulatory scrutiny internationally, though some see Musk’s close relationship with the Trump administration as an asset to getting approval.
Blurred lines
The companies haven’t said which directors are on the special committees evaluating a potential deal. Several SpaceX and Tesla board members have either personal or business ties to Musk. And like Musk, venture capitalist Ira Ehrenpreis sits on both boards.
In a filing this week, Tesla outlined millions of dollars in business agreements with SpaceX and its subsidiaries last year, including $143 million in car sales to SpaceX, $3.3 million in advertising that it bought on the social-media platform X and $430 million in revenue from the sale of Megapack batteries for SpaceX’s data centers.
The companies also split the cost of resources including the use of Musk’s SpaceX jet and the bill for his personal security, which he runs through a private company.
Employees at both companies routinely move between companies to work on special projects, and some executives have dual roles, including Charles Kuehmann, vice president of materials engineering at both SpaceX and Tesla, and Ashok Elluswamy, the vice president of AI software at Tesla who runs a joint venture with SpaceX called Digital Optimus.
Over the years, Musk has launched new startups within his empire, including brain-implant company Neuralink, underground-tunnel developer the Boring Company and xAI, the AI startup that merged with SpaceX in February.
It is that AI business that Musk thinks can serve a market worth tens of trillions of dollars, justifying the need for a merger.
The business case goes like this: Tesla is developing robotaxis and robots, which it calls “physical AI.” SpaceX is working on the back end of physical AI: the data-center capacity and internet connection required for those robotaxis and robots to operate continuously.
“I don’t see what the value of Tesla is if it’s not merged with SpaceX,” said investment adviser Ross Gerber, a former Tesla bull turned critic invested in both companies. “If they don’t merge, the brains of everything that runs Tesla is owned by another company.”
On top of it all, both companies face constraints on the supply chains they need to make this world a reality, particularly when it comes to chips. To address this, Musk earlier this year announced a joint venture between Tesla, SpaceX and Intel to design and manufacture chips in Texas. “The most epic chip-building exercise by far,” he has said.
Musk at the wheel
For Musk, a merger would also solve two problems: demands on his attention and his lack of control at Tesla.
Tesla for years was Musk’s only public company, a status that came with greater scrutiny. There, Musk reports to a public board, as well as individual investors who make up around 30% of Tesla’s voting power, according to FactSet.
The question of Musk’s attention became a particular focus for investors and the board in recent years after he acquired Twitter in 2022 and launched xAI in 2023, and again in 2025 as he spent time in Washington, D.C., running the Department of Government Efficiency in the early months of President Trump’s second term.
As Tesla’s car business suffered in 2025, Musk threatened to take his AI ambitions outside the company if he wasn’t granted 25% voting control. Last November, Tesla shareholders approved a new pay package for Musk, which created a path for him to vastly expand his stake.
As of Sept. 30, Musk owned a roughly 20% stake in Tesla, according to the company’s proxy filing.
The SpaceX IPO gave Musk a different path. When SpaceX went public in June, the deal’s structure enabled him to have more than 80% voting power at the company—so much that he can’t be fired and decisions can’t be made without his support.
If SpaceX acquires Tesla, he will likely stay in control.
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All three vehicles will form part of a broader charitable initiative benefiting Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, the American Red Cross and Starlight Children’s Foundation
