Yes, I Will Explain the Arielle Charnas Rumors to You

If you stand at the Southwest corner of Gansevoort and Greenwich in Manhattan’s Meatpacking district and the wind blows the exact right way, you might hear the faintest whisper of the name “Arielle Charnas.” And you might think, where have I heard that name? What does it mean? Is she in danger?

But it is getting cold outside and I don’t want you standing out there too long, so I’m going to explain what’s going on with this woman; her company, Something Navy; and her husband. To be clear, as is the case with all good gossip, there might be absolutely nothing afoot, and this is just another case of noisy but ultimately empty Deux Moi and Reddit gossip tornadoes colliding. But then again, my darling, what if you fly!?

Let me start from the beginning. Arielle Who? Arielle Charnas is a prototypical fashion blogger who got her start posting fit pics to her blog, “Something Navy,” right after the 2008 market crash. There’s nothing particularly outstanding about her, aside from her being an early settler in the influencer-sphere, and many elder millennials have grown up digitally hate-following her for the majority of their young adult lives. I would say a cardinal sin of hers is not indulging in posts like “believe me my life isn’t perfect” that have endeared us to other beautiful, thin online women. For the most part, she’s content sharing snaps of herself living an effortlessly chic life. The gall.

Oh, also she faced a ton of backlash in March 2020 for testing positive for covid and traveling to the Hamptons, despite doctor’s orders to quarantine. Then, of course, she documented her ill-advised journey for everyone to (rightly) judge.

In 2017, Charnas transitioned her blog into a lifestyle brand, keeping the name Something Navy. (Her youngest child is also named Navy, for some reason.) Charnas described the style as “elevated basic,” and it has certainly elevated her financial status beyond basic. As of 2020, the company is worth around $45 million.

OK, so here’s what has people loose-lipped: On Tuesday, gossipmonger Deux Moi (consistently unreliable, consistently fun) posted a blind item that Arielle’s husband, Brandon Charnas, has been embezzling funds from Something Navy. This has coincided with fans noticing that Arielle’s ring finger has been bare in her last few posts.

Brandon Charnas is the co-founder of Current Real Estate, a company that uses the following words to describe what it does: “Through a disruptive way of thinking, we develop customized strategies for you to maximize value creation.” ’K. Being the modern woman that she is, Arielle has a podcast to go along with her lifestyle brand, and listeners have long rolled their eyes at early episodes where she interviewed Brandon about how they met. The general consensus is that he is not a great dude, and the term “gaslighter” has been thrown around a number of times on Reddit.

Those Deux Moi rumors caused enough ruckus that not only did Arielle post a photo of their SUV coffee date this morning, and not only did Page Six run an exclusive quoting the couple’s rep saying that the divorce rumor “is patently false” and that “they are happily married and in love,” but Something Navy’s CEO also hopped in the ring to deny the embezzlement rumors to Women’s Wear Daily, saying that Brandon has “no access points” to the company. But internet sleuths also noticed that Brandon apparently deleted all photos of his wife and kids from his Instagram before going private, and Arielle has turned off comments on all posts that show her naked ring finger.

So what, you may ask, keeps this rumor mill churning? Well, there has been substantial chatter about an upcoming Business Insider exposé about Something Navy. Folks on Reddit and Deux Moi have speculated about its contents for a while now. And Business Insider wouldn’t be writing a story about the influencer couple’s divorce on its own. They’re going to write about something going on inside…the…business, I have to assume.

Haters and fans alike are waiting with bated breath for this article to drop. If and when it does, it holds the power and schadenfreude to confirm the suspicions of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of terminally online geriatric millennials that the ginormous sunglasses and billowing cashmere empire Arielle has built is not as sturdy and effortless as her posts made it seem. We shall see!