Once news broke of the seven-month affair between Vanderpump Rules castmates Tom Sandoval and Rachel Leviss — and his subsequent breakup with his partner of a decade, fellow star Ariana Madix — the ramifications of #Scandoval bordered on Biblical. The hidden-in-plain-sight evidence of their public infidelity became subject to the kind of collective exegesis unknown outside the context of Taylor Swift liner notes or possibly the Zapruder film. It was like an Easter egg hunt if all the eggs were rotten. Within a kaleidoscope of white-painted fingernails, dumpling lattes, and vengeful doggy ghosts, no single Vanderpump Rules artifact was more emblematic of the brazenness of Sandoval and Leviss’s betrayal than an unassuming lightning-bolt necklace. In a testament to just how tight a grip Scandoval exerted on pop culture, that very same cursed piece of jewelry became a runaway best seller.
The Scandoval news cycle moved fast. On March 3 of this year, TMZ broke the story of the affair. On March 4, Reddit user Cocoapebbles12 shared a pair of photos to the Vanderpump Rules subreddit: Sandoval and Leviss (who was then going by Raquel, though her birth name is actually Rachel; long story) in similar lightning-bolt necklaces, which they had each been photographed wearing repeatedly. The post — titled, in part, “Coincidence or Hinting?? 🤔” — had garnered more than 100 comments by March 6. At the season-ten reunion in June, Leviss finally confirmed fan speculation: Her lightning-bolt necklace was in fact a covert symbol of her relationship with Sandoval. (Sandoval’s lightning bolt came first; his necklace was designed by his friend, jeweler Kyle Chan.)
Surreally, the very moment Leviss purchased her necklace, at the West Hollywood boutique Polkadots & Moonbeams, was captured on camera in September 2022 and aired on Vanderpump Rules in May. Out of context, it’s an innocuous scene — kind of boring, even. Shopping with castmate Charli Burnett, Leviss peers into the glass jewelry case by the register and asks to try on a dainty gold lightning-bolt necklace. It’s $780, which gives her pause, but she decides to treat herself anyway. “You’re never going to regret buying good jewelry,” Charli says. “You really should work here,” jokes the man behind the counter.
Like all of us, the lightning bolt was born innocent. Designer Caitlin Diina of Caitlin Nicole Jewelry — specializing in solid 14-karat yellow gold, handmade in Los Angeles — wanted to produce pieces that could be easily engraved. She came up with a trio of charms, conceived to be customized with the initial of the customer’s choosing: a heart, a star, and a lightning bolt. It just so happened that the samples she gave to Polkadots & Moonbeams hadn’t been engraved yet. “I thought, They’re cute. Let’s just see what happens,” she said.
According to Polkadots & Moonbeams owner Wendy Freedman, Leviss is a long-time customer, along with other Vanderpump Rules cast members like Stassi Schroeder. The boutique even carries Kristina Kelly’s Heartspring line of lip balm and skin-care products. The man behind the counter that day was Gaspar Cello, then a sales associate. He was surprised he made the episode. “I’m just the guy who works at the store. Who cares?” he said. “I thought maybe my hand was going to be shown or something.” For Cello, the presence of the VPR cameras was business as usual: “We would get calls all the time in the store for people to shoot.” He knew cast members shopped there and recognized Leviss as a regular but was only “generally aware” of the show. Once previews for the episode began to air, friends explained to Cello the significance of what he had unknowingly borne witness to. “When it was happening, everything seemed so normal,” he said.
A “huge Bravo fan,” Diina had watched Vanderpump Rules since the beginning but hadn’t yet crossed paths with Leviss when the reality star bought her jewelry. (In an odd coincidence, this was not Diina’s first brush with reality TV; working at a store in Brentwood, she appears in the background when Spencer Pratt buys an engagement ring for Heidi Montag on season three of The Hills.) Leviss connected with the designer on Instagram after posting her work, shortly after making her purchase; Diina would go on to style her. She found Leviss to be “super-sweet” and “super-pleasant.” They’re still in touch.
Much has been made of the necklace’s steep $780 price tag, but did Leviss even pay retail? A “Never Before Scene” clip from Vanderpump Rules revealed that Leviss asked for a discount in exchange for posting her Polkadots & Moonbeams purchases on social media. In a June 9 episode of the podcast So Bad It’s Good, host Ryan Bailey said he’d heard from a Polkadots & Moonbeams employee that Leviss received a 50 percent discount. Although Diina acknowledged that she did approve a price cut for the Vanderpump Rules star, both she and Freedman categorically denied that they had ever granted Leviss — or any customer — as much as half off their purchase. (Word to the wise: The “mini” version will only run you $480.)
The lightning bolt was not the only Caitlin Nicole piece Leviss added to her collection that day — nor is it the only Caitlin Nicole piece she can be seen modeling on Vanderpump Rules. In the same episode, Leviss wore two of the company’s star necklaces in the infamous scene wherein she questions Madix about her sex life with Sandoval, an exchange Lisa Vanderpump would later call “the most mind-boggling, gobsmacking, astounding piece of film I have ever seen.” Leviss purchased those at the same time as the lightning bolt, Diina said, as well as a diamond-and-blue-topaz evil-eye “protection” necklace.
The Scandoval economy proved to be vast: Madix’s lucrative ads for the likes of Duracell and Bic, Lala Kent’s “Send it to Darrell” hoodies, Lisa Vanderpump’s newly green-lit Vanderpump Villa spinoff series. But unlike these other carpe diem marketing opportunities, the lightning bolt carried a uniquely negative emotional charge thanks to its association with the saga’s unequivocal villains. Nevertheless, its notoriety brought about an “absolutely wild” boom for Caitlin Nicole Jewelry, beginning all the way back in March, months before the premiere of the episode that featured it, when publications like “Page Six “first picked up the story of the matching necklaces and identified Diina as the designer of Leviss’s version. She estimates that her sales doubled sitewide and demand for the lightning bolt itself tripled.
Any publicity is, indeed, good publicity. Polkadots & Moonbeams was “flooded” with Bravo fans on pilgrimages, Cello said, many of whom recognized him from his several fateful seconds of screentime. “There’s a very loyal Vanderpump fanbase, obviously, and in the Reddit threads, they were like, ‘Where’s the store? It’s so cute!’”
“It was crazy to me,” recalled Freedman, who, for the record, has only positive things to say about her personal experiences with Leviss, to this day a loyal Polkadots & Moonbeams customer. “People of all different ages were rushing to see this necklace.” Polkadots & Moonbeams has since sold out of the lightning bolt more than once. “It has been great for me and for sales,” she said. “I don’t like the vitriol, but I can’t control that.”
Although her business had already benefited, Diina found herself afflicted with a “little stomachache” in advance of the lightning-bolt-necklace episode. “Of course, I don’t want to be associated with anything that hurt someone. I felt really bad when everything was playing out for Ariana, the pain she was going through,” she said. “But I was completely blind to the whole thing.” Even though she — duh — didn’t bear any responsibility for the affair, Diina was nervous about the reception that might await her and the necklace she designed in a pointedly #TeamAriana climate. But to her surprise, and her relief, that negativity never came. “There was literally nothing except sales,” she said.
Freedman suggested the necklace’s appeal isn’t entirely to do with Leviss, but reflects a deeper, more abstract affinity for the show — a desire to make reality TV feel like reality. “Fans want to come see where all those cool people shop. They want to come see where all those beautiful people shop. They want to be beautiful, too.”
Nine months later, the embers of Scandoval have largely cooled. And yet sales of the lightning-bolt necklace continue to overperform, far outpacing those of Caitlin Nicole Jewelry’s heart and star. Diina has no doubt she still has VPR fans to thank for that. Even Cello continues to make the most of his incidental association with the lightning bolt — he recently played himself in a comedy sketch about Leviss’s purchase, shot on location at Polkadots & Moonbeams, in which he complains that all his funny lines were cut from Vanderpump Rules.
But Leviss’s lightning bolt is no more. In October, she auctioned off the necklace (and two TomTom sweatshirts) to benefit the National Alliance of Mental Illness. It sold for $5,300.
Diina sent Andy Cohen a matching pendant of his own, but she suspects he might be scared to wear it. And if he is? “They need to frame it and put it in the clubhouse.”
