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Controversial influencer Arielle Charnas, dubbed the “poster child for what not to do in a pandemic,” got a loan of up to $350,000 for her fashion line Something Navy, Page Six can reveal. Charnas — who has 1.3 million followers on Instagram — was due to relaunch her brand in March, but it was delayed …
Controversial influencer Arielle Charnas, dubbed the “poster child for what not to do in a pandemic,” got a loan of up to $350,000 for her fashion line Something Navy, Page Six can reveal.
Charnas — who has 1.3 million followers on Instagram — was due to relaunch her brand in March, but it was delayed by the pandemic.
But somehow she managed to get to the front of the line for the Paycheck Protection Program — forgivable loans of public money to small businesses to keep their workers on the payroll — and got a loan of $150,000 to $350,000 through JPMorgan Chase on April 13, 10 days after the program launched. The loan was made to Something Navy, registered to her home address on East 21st Street. In her application, she said she retained 25 employees.
CNBC reported that a recent funding round for the brand valued it at $45 million. Charnas herself is said to be worth about $2.5 million.
She previously sparked outrage when she used her connections to get a coronavirus test when nobody else could obtain one. She tested positive, and days later decamped to her mansion in the Hamptons with her kids and nanny, where she posted pictures of herself outdoors and at a pool, with the caption “Fresh air.”
She then posted a weepy video apologizing for the faux pas — while claiming her family had received death threats. “Um, I never in a million years wanted to hurt anyone and, um, we’re not bad people,” Charnas said.
But the blogger’s decision to uproot her family after the positive diagnosis had the Internet seething at the “covidiot.” Nordstrom — with which she had a splashy deal — issued a statement that their partnership “ended in 2019, and we have no foreseeable collaborations.”
A spokesperson for Something Navy told us, “Like many companies, the pandemic had a significant impact on our business, and we participated in the PPP to help protect the jobs of our employees. All of the money was used towards our payroll to avoid job or schedule reductions during the worst of the economic downturn caused by COVID-19 — what it was intended to do.
“We did not make this decision lightly, but after careful consideration of all our financial options, we believed that we had a responsibility to our staff to apply for this program to help us manage the financial realities of the current environment.”
