Faith hope consolo biography

Ms.
Although Consolo's pedigree was fake, many of her achievements were real: She brokered deals for top international brands such as Cartier, Zara.
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Faith Hope Consolo, ‘Queen of Retail,’ Dies at 69

Faith Hope Consolo, chairman of The Retail Group of Douglas Elliman Real Estate and among the highest-profile executives in her field, died suddenly Sunday morning in her home in Manhattan. She was 69.

“This is a shock to all of us. She was a driving force in a very specific segment of the New York commercial market,” Steven James, president and chief executive officer, New York City, Douglas Elliman Real Estate, told WWD.

“Retailers relied on her to get the job done and she got the job done. She believed in the market despite all the press that retail is over. She knew there was room for both the physical retail and online businesses.”

Faith Hope Consolo was nicknamed the “Queen of Retail” because of her huge personality, outspoken nature, and high visibility at industry functions and in the press, and her deep understanding of retail real estate markets domestically and abroad. She had a long track record landing retailers on major corridors such as Fifth and Madison

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Faith Hope Consolo: Chairwoman for retail real estate at Prudential Douglas Elliman

I’m working on a new portfolio now that was just handed to me: 15 buildings and 75 stores, all over Harlem. These are existing buildings in renovation, and we’re putting in better shops and services.

What people don’t know about Harlem is that certain areas have great demographics, great untapped spending. They want better restaurants, better food markets, just better everything. They say: “Faith, bring us a better tailor, bring us a better food market. Just bring us the same as they have in Midtown.”

It’s going to be a resurgence of mom-and-pop stores, but a better version. I’m going to go into every residential neighborhood, and I’m going to canvass great-looking retailers who are the butcher, the baker, the great dry cleaner, the great card store. And some very good restaurants. I’m already talking to Danny Meyer about going there with a cafe. And I’m working on several different high-profile national and international designers. One of my retailers makes fragrances named after neighbor

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The real story behind Faith Hope Consolo’s glamorous life

She positioned herself as a child of privilege, a product of the right schools and someone very much at home in the tony world of luxury New York City real estate.

But in reality, Faith Hope Consolo grew up on a dead-end street in Brooklyn’s Sheepshead Bay, born to a father with an extensive criminal background and a mother who was a hairdresser, according to the New York Times. And Consolo, who chaired Douglas Elliman’s retail division until her death in 2018 and brought top global brands to the city’s real estate market, fiercely guarded those secrets from nearly everyone in her life, including her close friends and business partners.

Her father was not a real estate executive who died when she was a toddler but a serial swindler who lived to 94 and did time in a federal penitentiary in Kansas and at Alcatraz for gambling, armed robbery and dealing heroin, the Times reported. Her mother was not an acclaimed child psychiatrist as Consolo claimed, but a hairdresser at a Downtown Brooklyn department store.

She also claim