Samuel Hains, the backwards overall-wearing “Melbourne man” whose hipster face was rocketed to the front page of the Age before he admitted his interview for the paper’s street style column was a performance piece, is apparently worth a fortune.
Hains, whose alter ego Samuel Davide Hains was dubbed “the most Melbourne man ever” after describing his personal style as “bucolic socialist with improvised elements (like jazz)”, is in fact a member of the bourgeois, according to the Australian. His grandfather, David Hains, is worth an estimated $2.48bn.
David Hains, whose fortune and investment firm Portland House Group is now managed by his children, is the 14th richest person in Australia, according to the 2016 BRW Rich 200 list. He breeds Cox Plate-winning racehorses in his spare time and is known for being extremely private, a trait which, the Australian notes, appears to have skipped his ironically bereted grandson.
Hains the youngest became internet famous last week for a street style profile in the Age in which he claimed to admire the style of Albert Einstein and “Trotsky in leather”.
In a subsequent interview with Vice he admitted his outfit of backwards Osh Kosh B’Gosh overalls (“found in a vintage store in Tokyo,” said Davide), a black turtleneck, a beret (“given to me by a favourite uncle”) and a tote bag that proclaimed “Feeling Myself” had been thrown together with the help of street style columnist Tara Kenny, who lost her gig with the paper when the fabrication was revealed.
Samuel Davide, Hains explained to Vice, was a “satirical character” fabricated to “avoid the embarrassment of doing the column sincerely”.
“Davide is not a person, but he is a persona – there are elements of my authentic self in Davide,” he said, adding: “My character was very confused, if not in serious crisis. I was worried about Davide. Why would a self-confessed Maoist intellectual be fashion-fabulous? Yet, why not? I think people responded to Davide’s confusion. He is broken.”
Hains said the media reaction to his profile going viral, which included an interview with the Independent in which he listed another historical fashion inspiration as “Linus Torvalds for utilitarian pragma-wear”, proved the “media machine” was “as diabolical as I’d always suspected … It’s not an ethical beast, it does what it will for content.”
The Portland House Group refused to confirm the connection, but his mother Jane Badler, the US actor turned nightclub jazz singer who moved to Australia and married Stephen Hains in 1990, supported her son’s antics on social media.
Happy birthday to a very funny young man ..https://t.co/XkDmuaw3xn. @sam_hains
— Jane Badler (@janebadler) July 4, 2016
Badler has also been retweeting a Samuel Davide parody account.
Before i become irrational, let me create sublime internet fiction
— Samuel Davide (@samuel_davide_) July 7, 2016
Fairfax responded to the interview by sacking Kenny, a journalism student who had written the column as a freelancer, saying: “Fairfax Media expects all journalists to report truthfully and fairly on all subjects in all sections.”
Kenny told Mumbrella she hoped the furore over the profile did not ruin her career.
“I understand that there are journalistic principles of integrity that need to be adhered to, but personally see a rather significant distinction between making up content for hard news stories and exaggerating a character for a street fashion column,” she said.
