Parisian Real Estate Porn, or All About Yves (and Pierre)

SELLER: Pierre Bergé for the estate of Yves Saint Laurent
LOCATION: 7th Arrondisement, Paris, France
PRICE: €23,500,000
SIZE: 5,600 square feet, 4 bedrooms plus staff quarters

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Although tomorrow is America's most patriotic holiday, Your Mama thought the children might appreciate a little Parisian real estate dee-lishusness to get y'all through the endless parades, fireworks, and flag waving.

In early May of 2010 it was widely reported that Pierre Bergé, the long-time man-mate and bizness partner of famed French fashion icon Yves Saint Laurent hoisted the couple's historic apartment in Paris on the market with an asking price of €23,500,000. A quick consult with Your Mama's currency conversion contraption reveals that comes to a toe curling 29,459,400 American clams at current rates.

Messieurs Laurent and Bergé moved into the elegant apartment on the Rue de Babylone in the heart of the Faubourg Saint-Germain district in 1970–or 1972 depending on who you ask or what you read–and then purchased the prestigious and aristocratic doo-plex digs in 1978. The couple occupied the art-filled apartment until 2008 when Monsieur Laurent when to meet the great pattern maker in the sky.

In February of 2009, in a greatly anticipated and much ballyhooed and auction at Christie's Paris of the private art collection of Messieurs Laurent and Bergé fetched a heart stopping €373,900,000, or $468,717,000 for all us Americanos at today's rates. The legendary collection of art, furniture and high class baubles and bagatelles featured substantial works from artists such as Brancusi, Pablo Picasso, Fernand Leger, James Ensor, and Thomas Gainsborough. Eileen Gray's Dragon chair, a small, funky, and swoopy wood and leather chair, alone brought in an unimaginable €21,905,000 otherwise known as 27,459,900 American dollars. In November of 2009, a second sale netted around €9,000,000 ($11,282,300 at today's rates).

The sophisticated residence of Messieurs Laurent and Bergé, which measures approximately 5,600 square feet, has a private entry on the 2nd floor and an elongated oval entrance hall with mottled black marble floors, red lacquered walls inspired by the color of Monsieur Laurent's signature fragrance Opium, and an arching, uplit gold leaf ceiling. The theatrical entry leads directly into the 750 square foot main salon that features 12.5' high ceilings, a fireplace with glitzy and glammy mirrored surround, wall to wall carpeting that Your Mama loathes, luscious and sleek, marquetry-free oak paneling, and 5 gigantic windows that open to and overlook the apartment's gorgeous gardens. The formal dining room has a fireplace and overlooks the rear gardens while a music room has three tall windows that overlook the building's courtyard.

Three of the apartment's four bedrooms are located on the second level and include a master suite bathed in aquatic blues done up by apotheosized French decorator Jacques Grange. The garden view suite also includes a fireplace, dressing room and private pooper. The second floor is completed by laundry facilities, linen room, staff quarters and a pantry with dumbwaiter for hauling food up from the first level kitchen.

A dramatic lower level lobby has more of the dreaded wall to wall carpeting, more dee-voon and emotionally unrestrained lacquered walls that bounce the dim light around the room, and an adjacent "treasure room" lined with curio cabinets where the prolific collectors kept and displayed some of their vast accumulation of swank tchotchke, trinkets, and objet d'art.

A 750 square foot salon/library on the lower floor has heavenly, large scale herringbone patterned hardwood floors, a fireplace, and floor to ceiling bookshelves opens to the rear terrace through five floor to ceiling French doors. Also on the lower level is the kitchen–a room Your Mama imagines the fussy Messieurs Laurent and Bergé rarely entered–a staff sitting room, and a large, oak-paneled chambre with fireplace, French doors that open to the rear terrace, and private pooper.

A wide, stone terrace extends from the back of the apartment and into 4,700 square foot private garden that according to listing information is "without overviewing," which means Messieurs Laurent and Bergé could sunbathe and frolic nekkid as jaybirds in their backyard should they have been so inclined. Remember kiddies, these two sybarites moved into this apartment in the hedonistic 1970s when it really would not have been so unusual for a couple of fey French fashion fellows to host parties of a somewhat lurid nature.

Anyhoo, the next owner of the apartment will certainly pay a premium for owning and occupying the long time home of a French icon of style and elegance. Your Mama hopes the new owners will also place a premium on maintaining at least some of Monsieur Laurent's architectural and decorative stamp because, really, let's be honest bunnies, is there really any need to change anything in that elongated oval entrance hall that sends goose bumps of the good kind up and down Your Mama's spine?

Messieurs Laurent and Bergé maintained a fat portfolio of seriously luxurious and high priced properties around the world that have little by little been listed and, in some cases, sold off.

In the 2005, long before Monsieur Laurent went to wherever genius gay couturiers go to heaven, the luxe-living couple listed Chateau Gabriel, their beloved and seriously sophisticated Proust inspired country retreat just outside the resort town of Deauville, France that was blessed with breathtaking interiors worked over by none other than fab French decorator Jacques Grange. The property was first listed at twenty million Euros, but in the fall of 2007 the two men opted to keep 15 acres and a small Russian dacha style cottage on the property and re-listed the remaining 52 acres that includes a large, Napoleon III era house with an asking price of twelve million Euros, which at the time translated into about $17,800,000. The property was reportedly sold in February of 2009 for €9,600,000–just over $12,000,000–to a couple of Russian tycoons.

In November of 2006, he and his man-friend Pierre Bergé listed their New York City apartment at The Pierre for $8,500,000. The 2 bedroom and 2.5 pooper pied a terre that included flaw-less leather lined dressing areas was finally sold in August of 2007 for $7,500,000 to another fashion icon, the two tan Italian fashion virtuoso Valentino and his former man-friend and long-time bidness partner Giancarlo Giammetti.

In August of 2009, the high-class couple's retreat in Tangiers (Morocco) was listed with an undisclosed asking price. The Villa Mabrouka, or the House of Luck as it was dubbed, sits atop a cliff with panoramic views of the Strait of Gibralter and has 5 bedrooms 4+ poopers, a swimming pool carved into the rocks with an adjacent 650 square foot pool house, a 1,200 square foot staff facility, a guard house, and a 6,500 square foot roof top terrace. As of this day, the somewhat prissy but still magnificent property remains unsold.

Lori Loughlin Lists Lavish Bel Air Spread

SELLER: Lori Loughlin and Mossimo Giannulli
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA (Bel Air)
PRICE: $19,500,000
SIZE: 5 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Every now and then, along comes a Los Angeles, CA listing that lives up to its toe curling and awe inspiring asking price. In this case, it's a perfectly polished, newly renovated Georgian style mansion sitting on 1.5 flat acres in a particularly posh part of Bel Air with a not inconsequential asking price of $19,500,000. The owners, as it turns out are actress Lori Loughlin and her habiliment honcho husband Mossimo Giannulli.

Miz Loughlin–that's pronounced Lock-lin bunnies–has been catting around Hollywood for a very long time. The blond mommy of two, who reportedly turned down the lead role in Blue Lagoon that went to Brooke Shields, didn't rise to the top of the Tinseltown heap until the mid 1980s when she began a long, 153 episode run as sexy John Stamos' gal pal cum wifey on Full House. Once that show was canceled, she appeared on the short lived situation comedy Hudson Street. Next came a long dry spell until the mid-naughts when she popped up for a season or two on boob-toob drama Summerland and then a single season on some Your Mama ain't never heard of show called In Case of Emergency. For the last few years Miz Loughlin has been cashing paychecks from her gig on 90210, the silly but popular redux of the 1990s cult boob-toob hit Beverly Hills 90210.

Signore Mossimo Giannulli is, of course, the creator of the wildly successful mid-range clothing line Mossimo, mostly available at big box discount retailers like Target. High fashion the Mossimo brand is not, but that's clearly of no matter to our Signore Giannulli who is probably laughing hysterically at the high fallutin' but cash strapped couturiers all the way to the bank and then back home again to his twenty million dollar estate in Bel Air.

Property records show that Signore Giannulli and Miz Loughlin purchased their Bel Air property in March of 2002 for $8,010,580. At that time, according to the Los Angeles county tax man, the 1.43 acre estate, all flat as a damn pancake and ringed by massive and mature trees, included a much more modest, 4,928 square foot mini-mansion built in 1942. The couple proceeded to hire noted classically minded Ferguson & Shamamian Architects to work over and expand the main house and add a few this and thats including a guest house and pool pavilion.

Once the building and banging was complete, Signore Giannulli and Miz Loughlin had renowned nice, gay decorator Michael Smith come in and do up the interiors in a very dignified, genteel, and traditional manner. Although the day-core is rigorously conceived, meticulously executed and unquestionably correct, Your Mama finds it all a little decoratively turgid, fussy, and even predictable. But then, East Coast Grandmother-chic really isn't our decorative cup of tea. Some of the children surely already know that Michael Smith–who is called Granny Smith by more than a few sharp tongued tarts in the interior day-core industry–is the very man hired by President and Missus Obama to do over the interiors of the White House's private quarters. So, you know, he's a big deal and despite our affinity for something less faux aristocratic, Miss Smith knows what she's doing when it comes to high end and purdy if somewhat bland day-core that strains to be anything but edgy or modern.

Let's digress for just a moment, shall we? After an extensive renovation that included moving the swimming pool and adding a lot of chintz things, Smith sold his recently completed and somewhat feminine house in Brentwood area of Los Angeles in February of 2010 for, according to property records, $10,000,000. That house, a one-time 1950s ranch, was also reconceived by Ferguson & Shamamian Architects. Mister Smith, who may or may not have bought a new crib in LaLa Land, decamped for a doo-plex penthouse pied a terre in New York City that once belonged to Inge and Osbourn "Oz" Elliott, he being the former editor of Newsweek, she being the founder of fabric emporium China Seas, and they being the inspiration for the cosmopolitan couple Flan and Ouisa Kittredge in the play (and later film) Six Degrees of Separation.

The Loughlin/Giannulli home is approached via one of two electronically controlled drive gates connected by a wide gravel driveway that arches up to the mostly symmetrical front facade, all white brick, cornflower blue shutters, chunky quoins, multi-paned sash windows, and slim columns that direct traffic through the slim portico to the off-center front door that is topped with a traditional scrolled pediment.

The entrance gallery, which runs from the front to the back of the house, has black and white marble on the floor in a checkerboard pattern, a gently curving staircase, and slate and a gray vertically striped wall covering. Nestled into the curve of the stairway a round table is covered with a fringed tablecloth and holds a spray of what appear to be orchids–ugh–and a small collection of antique globes. This might be a good place for Miz Loughlin and Signore Giannulli to set their car keys when coming into the house iffin Mister Smith had left any room for the homeowners to actually set their keys on the over-stuffed table.

To one side of the entry is the ballroom sized formal living room with hardwood floors, double height vaulted ceiling, fireplace and a lot of fussy furniture. At the center of the formal dining room is a very shiny, round dining room table surrounded by 8 chairs with dark rose colored cushions that may or may not be silk. The intricate pattern of the rug is paired with the intricate pattern of the wallpaper that are both set against the intricate pattern in the plaster ceilings. All together and despite all the patterns, it's a well balanced room that could just as easily be in a the sprawling Park Avenue apartment of a socialite or in the Connecticut country house of an aged industrialist and his third, much younger and bored wife who has little more to do with her time than shop, have her hair and toes did, and redecorate.

The "country kitchen," which Your Mama finds surprisingly small for a house of this magnitude, has white cabinetry, marble counter tops, a long breakfast bar, and a complete coterie of high grade stainless steel appliances that combined cost more than Your Mama's big BMW. The kitchen is open to the breakfast room where a blond table and a few French looking chairs with elaborately scrolled backs sit below a chinoiserie style pendant lamp. The adjacent family room has built in bookshelves, and wood burning fireplace, more of Mister Smith's signature mixy-matchy upholstered furniture and French doors that open to the rear terrace.

According to listing information, the main house has 5 bedrooms and 5 poopers, including what information calls a "master wing" and a "separate outside" guest bedroom and pooper. There are two more bedrooms (and an unknown number of terliting and bathing facilities) in a guest house that Your Mama is guessing is located in the detached building on the far side of the back motor court where there is garaging for at least 4 dee-luxe and lavishly expensive automobiles and SUVs.

The manicured and well-watered grounds encompass vast expanses of lush and unnaturally green lawns large enough to have several competitive games of pre-dinner croquet going at once, a number of terraces at the back of the house that overlook the gigantic swimming pool and pool pavilion that is fronted by a vine shaded pergola and contains a double height ceiling, fireplace, built in wet bar, pool table and a couple of over-stuffed sofas covered in a very Palm Beach leaf print pattern. Beyond the pool and pavilion is a lighted north/south aligned tennis court and around one side of the house sits a silly, circus tent like folly where, Your Mama hears through the well-heeled Bel Air real estate grapevine, Miz Loughlin keeps all her body torture equipment that enable her to maintain her, Hollywood slim and hard bodied girlish figure even as she begins the downward side of her forties.

In addition to a lot of big bizness bigwigs and entertainment executives most people have never heard of, Mister Giannulli and Miz Loughlin's nearby neighbors include Emmy winning Will & Grace alum Debra Messing, Rick and Kathy Hilton (that would be Paris the heiress' lucky lucky lucky parents), former Yahoo! CEO Terry Semel, ousted Disney CEO Michel Eisner, Bob Newhart, and financially beleaguered actor Nic Cage, who no longer lives in the 'hood because he lost his nearby estate to foreclosure in the spring of 2010.

Your Mama really has no clue or inside information about why Miz Loughlin and Signore Giannulli would opt to sell their Bel Air estate so soon after completing what was clearly an expensive and time consuming endeavor. Conventional real estate wisdom dictates that this sort sort of scenario indicates money or marriage troubles, but Your Mama would not bet that's the case here. We're far more inclined to go with the classic, often perplexing and all too frequent explanation of rich and famous folks having a real estate change of heart. We shall see.