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.
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In a series of social-media posts, the eldest child of David and Victoria Beckham threw stones at the image of a ‘perfect family’.
3 min
David Beckham was at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday with Bank of America chief executive Brian Moynihan to promote their new partnership. But all anyone wanted to talk about was his son.
After the obligatory questions about business and the World Cup, a host on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” lobbed Beckham an out-of-left-field query about how young people can preserve their mental health in the age of social media.
“Children are allowed to make mistakes,” Beckham, 50, said. “That’s how they learn. So, that’s what I try to teach my kids, but you have to sometimes let them make those mistakes as well.”
Just a day earlier, his 26-year-old son Brooklyn Beckham had posted a series of accusations about his soccer-famous father and pop-star-turned-fashion-designer mother, Victoria Beckham.
He said that his parents had controlled him for years, lied about him to the press and sought to damage his relationship with his wife, Nicola Peltz Beckham. Their goal, he said, was to affect the image of a “perfect family.”
“My family values public promotion and endorsements above all else,” he wrote on Instagram. “Brand Beckham comes first.”
That brand has been burnished over decades of professional triumphs, tabloid scandals and slick dealmaking.
Recently, both David and Victoria Beckham put their legacies on-screen in docuseries that cast them as hardworking entrepreneurs and devoted parents. Their image appeared stronger than ever. Now their firstborn child is throwing stones.
Representatives for David Beckham, Victoria Beckham and Brooklyn Beckham did not respond to requests for comment. A representative for Nicola Peltz Beckham declined to comment.
In the U.K., the Beckhams are as close as you can get to royalty without sharing Windsor DNA. David is perhaps the most famous English player in soccer history, while Victoria parlayed her Spice Girls fame into a career as a respected fashion designer.
Their partnership was forged in the cauldron of 1990s celebrity gossip, with their every move—in their careers, their bumpy personal lives and their adventurous senses of personal style—subject to tabloid scrutiny.
“They were Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce before Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce,” said Elaine Lui, founder of the website Lainey Gossip.
Over time, the couple became savvy managers of their own brand, a sprawling modern empire including a professional soccer team, fashion and beauty lines, investment deals and commercial partnerships.
In recent years they each released a Netflix docuseries—“Beckham” in 2023, “Victoria Beckham” in 2025—featuring scenes from their private family life. (Brooklyn and Nicola appeared in David’s series, but not Victoria’s.)
“The way they’ve performed their celebrity has been togetherness,” Lui said: Appearing and engaging with the world as a happily married couple, in both relative calm and amid scandal. And as their family grew, their four children became smiling ambassadors for Brand Beckham, too.
Until Monday night. In a series of Instagram Story posts, Brooklyn accused his parents of “trying endlessly to ruin” his marriage to Nicola, an actress and model, and the daughter of billionaire investor Nelson Peltz . Brooklyn declared, “I do not want to reconcile with my family.”
Where Victoria and David seemed to see press scrutiny as part of the job, Brooklyn and Nicola are operating in a manner more typical of their own generation. Brooklyn’s posts call to mind the “no contact” boundaries some children have enforced with their parents in recent years to much pop-psych chatter.
Andrew Friedman, managing director of crisis communications at Orchestra, said he’d advised many clients through family drama. “Going public,” he said, should be a “last resort.”
He’s also warned clients that using social media to air grievances opens a can of worms. “Nuance is not welcome in social-media feeding frenzies,” Friedman said. “Sensational and unusual details will overshadow the central issue.”
Brooklyn, the eldest of the Beckhams’ four children, has built a following in his parents’ image, though without the benefit (or burden) of a steady career.
He’s worked as a model, photographer, cooking-show host and most recently founded a hot-sauce brand. Brooklyn and Nicola went public with their relationship in 2020 and married in a lavish 2022 ceremony at her family estate in Palm Beach, Fla.
Rumors of a family feud flared almost immediately after the wedding, including whispers about the fact that Nicola didn’t wear a dress made by her fashion-designer mother-in-law.
Brooklyn on Monday recounted further grievances related to a mother-son dance and the seating chart. In the months and years that followed, celebrity journalists and fans closely tracked both generations of the family, looking for cracks in the relationship.
But official dispatches from Beckham World suggested that things were just fine. In a scene from the final episode of David’s Netflix series, the Beckham family, including Brooklyn and Nicola, joke around on a visit to their country home. It’s a picture of familial bliss.
“We’ve tried to give our children the most normal upbringing as possible. But you’ve got a dad that was England captain and a mom that was Posh Spice,” David says in voice-over.
“And they could be little s—s. And they’re not. And that’s why I say I’m so proud of my children, and I’m so in awe of my children, the way they’ve turned out.”
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