Imelda Marcos Born To Shop Rule

In the 1970s and ’80s, Imelda Marcos’ name was synonymous with excess, as was her husband’s with a repressive, dictatorial regime in the Philippines. Now, at 90, the Marcos matriarch is back, and looking once again to become the power behind the president. William Langley reports.

- William Langley

Perched on a Louis XIV sofa, beneath a gilt-framed Picasso, Imelda Marcos is explaining how tough the job used to be. “When I became First Lady, it was very demanding,” she says. “I had to dress up and make myself more beautiful because the poor are always looking for a star in the dark of the night.”

With a perceptible creak of her pink silk gown, Imelda, 90, rises, adjusts her raven perm, and is soon speeding into Manila, the down-at-heel capital of the Philippines, which she once used as a gigantic shopping trolley for all the finest things in the world. The poor are waiting, and at traffic lights she hands out crisp banknotes to children. “See how they love me,” she says.

These are among the opening scenes of a new documentary film about the infamous ‘Steel Butterfly’, which has caused outrage and apprehension in a country that still hasn’t recovered from the consequences of Imelda’s two-decade spending spree. Investigators estimate that around US$10 billion was plundered from the state’s coffers by Imelda and her husband, the late President Ferdinand Marcos, a substantial portion of which is still missing.

Much of it went into an eye-popping portfolio of properties including grand homes in Paris, Beverly Hills, the Swiss Alps, and an entire skyscraper in New York. Hundreds of millions more went on Imelda’s jewellery collection, later found to include a rare pink diamond “the size of a grape”, a Cartier tiara and a 150-carat Burmese ruby.