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.

Hair Honcho Sally Herschberger Lists Penthouse Pad

SELLER: Sally Hershberger
LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $5,900,000
SIZE: 905 square feet, 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: If the children will get into their mental time machines and go back to the spring of 2007, y'all may recall when scissor sister Sally Hershberger, the hair stylist to the rich and famous who will charge you an astonishing $800 just to cut your damn hair, unsuccessfully attempted to unload her Beverly Hills, CA home. Miss Hershberger, a gal Your Mama thinks of as the She-ra of the Shag, listed her 3 bedroom and 5 pooper contemporary crib in the Trousdale Estates neighborhood with an asking price of $6,500,000. Five months later, the Hershberger house was taken off the market without a price reduction and without a buyer.

Skipping forward to late June of 2010 and we learn from our prolific informant Hot Chocolate that Miss Hershberger has now listed her itty-bitty New York City penthouse apartment with a porcine asking price of $5,900,000. It certainly isn't unusual for a terraced penthouse pad in the West Village to carry a price tag of nearly six million clams. What isn't so common is that the penthouse Miss Hershberger hopes will pour five or six million smackers into her bank accounts measures less than 1,000 square feet and includes just 1 bedroom and 1 pooper.

Miss Hershberger, who comes from a substantial Kansas oil fortune, owns three eponymous salons including her home base on Los Angeles' La Cienega Boulevard, which happens to be located in the same contemporary building as maximalist decorator and shelter rag darling Kelly Wearstler's office. In New York, Miss Hershberger camps out in a second floor salon in the sadly over-developed Meatpacking District–may Florent rest in peace–that's wedged between the Alexander McQueen–may he also rest in peace–and Stella McCartney boo-teeks. She recently opened a second Manhattan outpost on the top two floors of a spectacular townhouse on E. 71st Street that presumably caters to the uppity Junior League and Ladees Who Lunch sets.

Property records show Miss Hershberger bought her downtown digs in August of 2001, paying $1,850,000 for the 905 square foot aerie located in a much desired pre-war Bing and Bing building. Technically, Miss Hershberger's penthouse is in the West Village but it's so damn close to the Meatpacking District that it may as well be in the Meatpacking District.

The children may find it interesting to know that this penthouse is not the only apartment Miss Hershberger has owned in the building. In November of 1998, records show she purchased a 1 bedroom unit on the 9th floor for $425,000 and sold it in June of 2001 for $790,000 to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's former Press Secretary Nina Blackwell and her huzband Mark Solomons who in turn sold it in August of 2007 for $1,850,000 to the family of San Francisco-based billionaire Ray Dolby.

Miss Hershberger is a ladee of taste and style and her wee penthouse reflects that bent. The small apartment is blessed with a generous but not large entrance hall. Opposite the front door, in front of a frosted panel of floor to ceiling glass, sits a pedestal topped with a gigantic spiky white crystal, a form echoed with the wall mirror constructed of a myriad of different sized pyramids. Miss Hershberger's nice, gay decorator also introduces a dead animal skin motif in the entry that, like the crystal, plays itself out repeatedly throughout the petite penthouse.

The corner living room has large casement windows that suck up the panoramic views and a set of casement French doors that open the room to the expansive wrap around terrace. There are hardwood floors, a vintage Vernor Panton capiz shell chandelier, a very expensive Arne Jacobson Egg Chair that we'd bet our pinky toes is the real deal, a black and white spotted cow skin rug, and a pair of fluffy sheepskin pillows that could probably double as a pet in a pinch. Hanging on the wall behind a petite mid-century modern table and chairs is a large abstract canvas with a series of red, yellow and orange geometric forms placed on a white background that Your Mama thinks reflects the spiky nature of the crystal in the entrance and, more importantly, would look a-may-zing in Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter's dining room.

The small but functional kitchen is open to the living room and is fitted with sleek, matte white and flat fronted cabinets, a baby 4-burner Viking range, 24" wide stainless steel Sub-Zero fridge and freezer, a large work island lit by a linear crystal chandelier–there's them crystals again–and a microwave that is, thank the lawd, mounted under the cabinets and off the counter top. There does not appear to be a dishwasher, which does not mean there isn't one, but sitting atop the work island is, we regret, a dreaded orchid plant. There really isn't anything wrong with an orchid plant per se, but they've become so cliche in real estate listing photos that it makes Your Mama cringe and cower with decorative annoyance every time we see one.

Miss Hershberger's corner bedroom has three casement windows that open out onto the terrace, a gitzy tubular chandelier with a ring of turquoise accents at the top and bottom, another dead cow rug, a stool covered in zebra skin, a platform bed with linens the color of the the Dalai Lama's robes, and behind the bed a series of photographs of what appear to be spiritual leaders. The children will note the extensive collection of crystals on the bureau. Miss Hershberger appears to have a more than a touch of the New Age in her.

The wrap around terraces have both brick and narrow plank decking and rows of rectangular planters bulging with sea grass line and soften the perimeter. One section, where Miss Hershberger placed a couple of teak chaise lounges for sucking up the sun, has unobstructed views north towards the London Terrace apartment complex–where Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter once lived in a dee-vine doo-plex apartment–and the Empire State building. Another section, near the kitchen has a round table with four wire Saarinen Bertoia chairs with the seat pads. The chairs and pads cost well upwards of $600 apiece which means, according few flicks of the well worn beads of our bejeweled abacus, that Miss Hershberger's outdoor dining set cost her at least three grand.

Eagle eyed children will note that the actual apartment layout is somewhat altered from the floor plan included with listing and marketing materials. In the Hershberger penthouse, the kitchen has been opened up into the living/dining room and a kind of hallway from the foyer to the pooper has been created by eliminating the walk in closet that once opened into the bedroom. While it's never desirable to cut down on closet space in small Manhattan apartments, it's far more unacceptable to have guests wander through the bedroom in order to get to the pooper. It's unclear if the bedroom can be properly divided from the hallway but we'd be 12 kinds of flummoxed and flabbergasted if Miss Hershberger's smart architect did not include the option of closing off the bedroom from the hallway, otherwise it's a six million dollar studio apartment.

It does seem a rather optimistic to ask nearly six million bucks for a small 1 bedroom penthouse apartment but consider that in June of 2008 a smaller, 690 square foot doo-plex penthouse apartment with 1 bedroom, 2 poopers and 600 square feet of terraces sold for a blood curdling $5,250,000, an amount that according to StreetEasy comes in at a heart stopping $7,608 per square foot. With that as a barometer, at its current asking price of $5,900,000, Miss Hershberger's penthouse may be a bit of bargain for a deep pocketed buyer at just $6,519 per square foot.

In addition to her mid-century modern in Beverly Hills that she bought in January of 2004 for $2,400,000 and her pricey penthouse in New York, Miss Hershberger also own a weekend retreat in the Hamptons, natch. Property records show that in December of 1999 Miss Hershberger paid $930,000 for the waterfront retreat that's located in a less expensive area of East Hampton known as The Springs.