Christina Oxenberg

Christina Oxenberg (Serbian: Кристина Оксенберг, born December 27, 1962) is a Serbian-American writer, humorist, and fashion designer.^[1][2][3] She has written 7 books,^[4] and her writing has been featured in magazines and publications like Allure, The Sunday Times, Penthouse, and others.^[5] Her two knitwear clothing lines, "Christina Oxenberg" and "Ox," have appeared in Barneys, Bloomingdale's, and luxury boutiques throughout the world.^[2][5][6] Oxenberg is also the daughter of HRH Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia and is a descendant of the Serbian House of Karageorgevic.^[1][7]

Early life

Christina Oxenberg was born on December 27, 1962 in New York City to HRH Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia.^[7] Her parents separated when she was 3, and she moved to London along with her mother and sister. Growing up, Christina attended 14 different schools in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Spain.^[1][2][8] She graduated from the Colorado Rocky Mountain School in Carbondale, Colorado in 1981.^[1]

Career

After high school, Oxenberg worked various jobs in New York ranging from a secretary to a roller-rink attendant. She would then go on a backpacking trip around the world before returning to New York City. Upon her return, Oxenberg secured a job at Studio 54.^[9] Between 1984 and 1985, she worked as a research assistant for historian, Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd, on his book Blenheim Revisited.^[10] In 1986, she published her first book, Taxi, a collection of celebrity anecdotes and personal observations revolving around experiences in taxicabs. In Taxi, Andy Warhol, Bob Costas, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., and numerous others are featured.^[9]

Oxenberg married painter, Damian Elwes, near Amman, Jordan in 1986. The two traveled frequently to places like Costa Rica, Morocco, Paris, Colombia, and elsewhere. Elwes would paint and Oxenberg would promote his art. They later divorced.^[1][11]

In 1994, Simon & Schuster commissioned Oxenberg to write a semi-autobiographical novel that would eventually be published as Royal Blue. The novel was released in 1997 in the United States and was published by Quartet in the United Kingdom in 1998. The book is fictional but contains true elements.^{[1][7][12][13]} The book received generally favorable reviews from publications like The Independent^[13] The Guardian,^[14] and The Times.^[15] As a result of the book, Oxenberg appeared on the cover of New York Magazine^[7] and was profiled in People.^[1] It was called "darkly funny" by the Chicago Tribune.^[16]

In 2000, Oxenberg went on hiatus from writing and took a job at Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Waterkeeper Alliance.^[17] Through that job she met Fernando Alvarez, a Peruvian businessman living in Banff, Alberta, Canada. The two discussed the possibility of a clothing line using Oxenberg's name. They designed, produced and wholesaled a collection of luxury knitwear. The pair used exclusively deluxe fibers such as the guanaco from Patagonia, the suri-alpaca from the high Andes and the muskox from the indigenous population in the North West Territories of Canada. From 2002 to 2010, Oxenberg produced two clothing lines (Christina Oxenberg and Ox) and her items were sold in Barneys, Bloomingdale's, and luxury boutiques throughout the world.^[2][6]

Oxenberg would go on to self-publish several collections of short stories between 2010 and 2014, including Do These Gloves Make My Ass Look Fat?, Life is Short: Read Short Stories, and When in Doubt...Double the Dosage.^[4][18][19] Additionally, her writing has appeared in publications like Allure, Penthouse, The Sunday Times, Takimag (where she published a weekly column),^[5] The Huffington Post (where she currently publishes weekly columns), and others.^[20]

In 2011, she moved from the Northeastern United States to Key West, Florida. Many of the stories in her short story collections like Will Write for Compliments and Life is Short: Read Short Stories are about or set in Key West. Since 2012 Oxenberg has contributed articles to Key West weekly magazine Konk Life.^[21][22][23] In 2014, Oxenberg helped organize a visit by John Hemingway (Ernest Hemingway's grandson) to David Wolkowsky's Tennessee Williams Collection.^[24]

In 2015, Oxenberg moved to Serbia for a year to write and research her book, Royal Dynasty – An Insider's History of the Serbian Royal Family, which was published in Serbian in 2015 and English in 2016 by the publisher, Laguna. For her work, Oxenberg received an award from the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts in 2016.^[25][26]

Bibliography

Novels

• Royal Blue (1997)

Short story collections

• Taxi (1986, non-fiction)
• Do These Gloves Make My Ass Look Fat? (2010)
• Will Write for Compliments (2012)
• Life is Short: Read Short Stories (2013)
• When in Doubt...Double the Dosage: Sharp, Short, Snappy Stories (2014)

Autobiographies

• Royal Dynasty – An Insider’s History of the Serbian Royal Family (2015)

Ancestry

Christina Oxenberg is a direct descendant of Karageorge, the modern liberator of Serbia and founder of the Karageorgevic Dynasty.^[25] She is also a direct descendant of George I of Greece and Tsar Alexander II of Russia.^[27] As of 2011, Oxenberg was estimated to be 3,939th in the line of succession to the British throne.^[28] She is also descended from King George II of Great Britain, Catherine II the Great, and Genghis Khan. She is distantly related to Russian author, Leo Tolstoy, and Russian poet Alexander Pushkin's wife, Natalia Pushkina.^[29]

References

External links

• Official website