Department: Craig Drake and All That Glittered

Always the life of the party, Drake was a jet-setting jeweler who catered to Philadelphia’s wealthiest clients and hosted the city’s most lavish soirees. Then, suddenly, the party stopped

FOR THE NEXT THREE DECADES, the Legend of Drake only grew. His relentless pursuit of Philadelphia’s wealthy and their safes resulted in his rise as a boldface name right along with them. He became known as the go-to dealer for gorgeous yellow canary diamonds, and his exclusive salon took on an air of glamorous mystery. In 1988 he brought his son, nicknamed Craiger, into the business, and together the pair cornered the ultra-high-end market. (In 1992, a two-carat diamond he’d sold to Campbell Soup heir John Dorrance became the centerpiece of a juicy court battle over Dorrance’s estate.) He became a staple at Le Bec-Fin, where for more than 20 years he hosted an annual black-tie “Men’s Night” for dozens of the city’s most successful gentlemen, who gorged on French food, smoked cigars, and bought lavish, sparkly Christmas gifts from Drake for their wives, their girlfriends, and often both. “Jewelry is a very personal business,” says Frank Giordano, a South Jersey trucking magnate who befriended Drake in the mid-1990s. “You weren’t just buying a stone. You were buying something from Craig Drake.”

Drake’s reputation as a boozy, if slightly frat-boyish, raconteur became as much his calling card as his jewels. “He was the life of the party,” recalls a Gladwyne socialite who once bumped into Drake at the Lafayette Club on St. Barts. “He probably didn’t know anybody there but us, but he was buying the whole place drinks and had on some big obnoxious t-shirt about being drunk and seeing double or something.”

“He’s too much at times,” adds another member of the Main Line social clique who’s known Drake for years. “He’s like Barbra Streisand, or Robin Williams. You can only take so much of him. But he will be the first one to get a private table in St. Tropez, and the first one to pay for rounds. He was very generous.”

By the late 1980s, Drake had split from his first wife, Christine, and had dated a string of high-profile glamour-pusses, among them Action News man-eater Monica Malpass and Beverly Sassoon, the ex-wife of hair mogul Vidal. He courted the woman who would become his second wife, Tania, in Rio, where he introduced himself as “Bond, James Bond,” and gave her a ring that once belonged to Eva Perón. Tania Drake, now 47, is slinky and sensual, with flawless tawny skin and a come-hither growl. Armed with a new dance partner, Craig Drake’s conga line shimmied on; he became so well-known in Rio that he was nicknamed “the mayor of the Copacabana Palace,” the city’s glitziest hotel, where he once led a three-piece party band in a march around the pool and then jumped in. Giordano and his wife went with the Drakes to Carnivale in 2006 and found themselves swept up in the party cyclone, bedecked in feathers and doing the samba in the middle of the street. “After a bottle of vodka at two o’clock in the morning in 90-degree weather and 500 people doing it, you get the hang of it,” Giordano says wryly.

Back in Philadelphia, the Drakes settled into their quirky adobe home atop the Touraine, a space now cluttered with the antiques and trinkets that document their Sidney Sheldon life, along with the framed letters, notes and magazine articles that reinforce Craig’s standing as a Very Important Person. Until recently, the Drakes hosted massive barbecues on their expansive terraces, with their stunning views of the city, up to five times a summer. The Drake barbecue became a must-attend for city and Main Line sophisticates. “It always ended up in disco dancing,” says Judy Munroe, the CEO of a Philadelphia-based creative services firm who was a regular. “And there would be gorgeous tall models dancing with 85-year-old billionaires, and inevitably half of them would fall down and get hurt. There would always be an accident. And then the party would be over.”

“I mean, the view from the deck on that house, it’s simply spectacular,” adds one Main Line doyenne who was also a habitual attendee. “The house is like Craig, actually. Craig liked to be on top of the world.