Mark Ellwood
British-born, New York-based Mark Ellwood has lived out of a suitcase for most of his life.
After studying for an undergraduate degree in English Literature at Cambridge University in England and a Masters on a scholarship to the University of Chicago, he spent several years as a tour director leading art tours around cities like Florence, Rome and Paris. After college, Mark moved to New York to become a print and broadcast journalist, specializing in luxury goods: travel, fashion and contemporary art. He has written regularly for the Financial Times Weekend and How To Spend It Magazine, T: New York Times style magazine, Wall Street Journal Weekend, Bloomberg Business Week and Departures among others. He has interviewed the world’s oldest supermodel (she’s 75 and counting), trekked to a $10bn art island in rural Japan that looked like a Bond villain’s lair (he brought his own white cat) spent a weekend in an all-psychic town (and yes, they did know he was coming because he called) and confirmed where & when men first slipped into a speedo (Sydney, 1961).
Ellwood is the author of Bargain Fever: How to Shop in a Discounted World (Penguin-Portfolio) where he examines our culture’s newfound obsession with deals, discounts and never paying full price, such as the unadvertised discount savvy shoppers can wrestle out of Prada staff with a few choice words or the woman who earns more than a $1m a year reselling coupons.
Mark is also a seasoned TV host and producer. He regularly guests on NBC’s Today Show and ABC News, commenting on lifestyle and pop culture trends and is co-host of CNBC’s new primetime lifestyle show, The Filthy Rich Guide. Ellwood has guested on ABC’s 20/20, CBS Sunday Morning, Access Hollywood, The Queen Latifah Show, The Rachael Ray Show and Extra among others. He was also one of the longtime onscreen talents for luxury network Plum TV, hosting the magazine show Plum Daily in cities from Aspen to Miami Beach, as well as devising and presenting its first ever travel show, Local Currency.
Favorite assignments have included hitting the nightclubs of Maputo in Mozambique with Europe’s twentysomething jetset, watching the cowboy poets of Wyoming rap by the campfire, and judging the finer points of vodka-swigging at the cocktail set’s answer to Miss World in New Zealand. He’s also spent a weekend trawling through the menswear stores of Tokyo trying to find something large enough to fit.
