One of Australia’s most reclusive socialites, Pixie Skase died in Melbourne aged 83 on Tuesday.

Wife of the disgraced fugitive Australian businessman, Christopher Skase, who died of stomach cancer in 2001, Pixie died on November 15 while surrounded by a close-knit family circle.

“Our beloved beautiful mother Pixie [has] passed away peacefully,” eldest daughter from an earlier marriage, Amanda Larkins (neé Argenti), confirmed on Instagram on November 19.

“We have had no words to express our loss, and still don’t. She was greatly loved and leaves a hole in our hearts.”

The epitome of 1980s excess in Australia with their Qintex media and leisure empire, Christopher and Pixie Skase were the “it” couple, the A-listers who hosted extravagant parties and corporate events on boats and in hotels, their wealth on show in the social columns of the daily press.

The Melbourne-born financier’s corporate wealth included the Seven Network, an AFL club and lavish Mirage resorts on the Gold Coast and in Port Douglas.

Fall from grace

She wore big hair, diamonds, Hermes scarves, 18-carat gold emerald and diamond dress rings, and even reportedly had an Archibald portrait of her as a young girl painted by artist Douglas Colquhoun.

Folklore says that for one party, Skase had his private jet fly from Port Douglas to Melbourne to pick up a dress for Pixie.

Then it came crashing down, “quickly and hard”.

The embattled couple’s fall from grace was unprecedented as Skase’s empire collapsed, fleeing to Spain in 1991 with a reported debt of $170 million and corporate debts of $1.7 billion.

They bought a reported $3.3 million Mallorca villa. He ducked and dodged Australian authorities, and even veteran TV host Andrew Denton resorted to publicly raising $200,000 to have Skase kidnapped by a bounty hunter, which didn’t happen.

He became one of Australia’s most famous white-collar fugitives.

‘Could do no wrong’

“Throughout the 1980s … Skase could do no wrong,” wrote Tony Larkins, Amanda’s husband, who lived with the Skases for 11 years.

“The Australian businessman had the golden touch, turning a pot of $20,000 into a global development, tourism and media conglomerate worth billions,” Larkins, a former film technician who worked on Crocodile Dundee and Phar Lap, wrote in his 2016 memoir, Skase, Spain and Me: Never a Dull Day.

Larkins wrote that “with glamorous wife Pixie by his side, the French champagne flowed. Yachts, parties, Rolls-Royces, jets, the world was the couple’s oyster, and they were rarely out of the headlines”.

Christopher and Pixie Skase in 1997. Photo: AAP

Pixie’s exiled life

Larkins, who worked with Skase in Mallorca to try and re-establish his business, credibility and his life, said it was a series of “commercial and national events combined to strike like an economic tsunami and suddenly the name Qintex was being washed away forever”.

“The next decade was spent on … Mallorca, the cash and the high life long gone, as they tried to recover their losses and start afresh.”

But Skase fell ill.

Pixie held a rare, impromptu press conference with Larkins in Mallorca in 1999 after he allegedly had lung surgery in Valencia, according to AAP.

Lawyer Antonio Coll said Skase was unfit to be deported from Spain to face trial in Australia where he was wanted after the collapse of Qintex and the hotel resort empire.

He died aged 52.

Home for good

Pixie Skase remained in Spain, and it wouldn’t be for almost a decade before she returned permanently to the elite Melbourne suburb of Toorak.

In 2005, she appealed against a federal government decision to deny her Australian citizenship, and was seen leaving the Administrative Appeals Tribunal in Melbourne.

Paperwork was eventually finalised, and just before Christmas in 2008 she told Melbourne’s Herald Sun newspaper the time was right to move home.

“I walk in Toorak Village and I see old friends and I have to think hard who they are,” she said.

“And strangers come up to me in the street and say, ‘You don’t know me Pixie, but I’m glad you’re back. How long are you staying? Are you staying for good?’

“I’m happy, so extraordinarily happy, to be able to have daily contact with my daughters Amanda, Kate and Felicity.”

In 2018, she parted ways with 197 items from her 1980s collection of jewellery, a Louis Vuitton briefcase, clothing and memorabilia totalling $100,000, with Leonard Joel auctioneers billing it as the ‘‘last luxury from the Skase era’’.

‘A true character’

Larkins, who has previously shared decades of cherished family photographs on her social media, only wished her mother a happy 82nd birthday last year.

“Mum, winner of the Fabulon Ironing competition, hosted by Safeway!! Happy 82nd birthday to you”.

Also a grandmother, tributes flowed as Larkins publicly confirmed Pixie’s death this week, a testament to her loyal family and friendship group.

Former Marie Claire editor Jackie Frank, whose socialite hairdresser mother Lillian was a Toorak darling, wrote “your mum was an amazing woman”.

“[A] fabulous friend to lil and a true character!”

Keeping a low profile in recent years – Pixie was photographed in 2016 at the races – home stylists and interior decorators posted messages of a “so glamorous and elegant” friend.

“I hope soon you’re all able to be together talking about the wonderful moments, crying but also laughing,” wrote one.