Celebrities|News

Hollywood power couple Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher are looking to shake things up in LA’s high-end real estate market, which has lately been mired in the doldrums—a byproduct of coronavirus chaos. The actors-turned-successful investors are asking $14 million for their Coldwater Canyon home, the duo’s primary residence and the first marital property they ever purchased. Tucked into the mountains above Beverly Hills, the house is sited in a neighborhood known as Beverly Hills Post Office (BHPO), and within a guard-gated community known as Hidden Valley.

But it’s not particularly surprising that the Kunis-Kutchers have chosen to unload their longtime main home; the pair are midway through construction on a titanic modern compound elsewhere in the BHPO area. That place, many years in the making, rather makes their current for-sale home look like a comparative hovel. And while they await completion of their dream megamansion, they won’t be homeless—they’re quarantining in a $10 million oceanfront getaway up north, in the beautiful town of Carpinteria, Calif.

Back in BHPO, the stately residence—described in the listing as a “timeless traditional”—was built in 1999 and features an attractive facade with a mix of stone and cedar siding. Kutcher and Kunis purchased the two-story, 7,351 square-foot abode in 2014 for about $10.2 million, Dirt previously reported. Previously, the house had been owned by former Viacom CEO Tom Freston.

Cocoa brown hardwood floors envelop the entire three-story home, which offers five bedrooms and a total of 5.5 baths. The main level has well-scaled public rooms, including a living room with fireplace and hand-crafted moldings, a step-up formal dining room and a gigantic, all-white cook’s kitchen with a mix of vintage and modern appliances, a breakfast nook with built-in banquette and an adjacent family room with another fireplace.

Upstairs are the home’s four family bedrooms, all of them with ensuite baths and closets. And downstairs—in the partially subterranean lower level—is a guest/staff bedroom, along with a full array of luxe recreational amenities: a temperature-controlled wine room with space for hundreds of bottles, a gym and sauna. Multiple sets of French doors allow easy access to fresh mountain air.

Outside, the lushly-landscaped yard spans just over a half-acre, with rolling lawns and mature weeping willows, plus a stone terrace with an outdoor kitchen and bar. Set into the patio is a lagoon-style swimming pool that’s partially shaded by a towering hedge, and is outfitted with a grotto and raised spa.

Whoever buys the Kunis-Kutcher abode will find themselves practically choked by celebrity—Hidden Valley is perhaps LA’s most star-studded gated enclave of them all, and nearly every home in the community is owned by someone with deep Hollywood ties. Folks within easy sugar-borrowing distance include Adele, Jennifer Lawrence, Katy Perry, Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban, Cameron Diaz and Benji Madden, Nicole Richie and Joel Madden, Nick and Joanna Swisher, Penelope Cruz, Zoe Saldana and Ziggy Marley, just to name a few.

The charmed residence that T.J. Oshie—forward for hockey’s Capitals in Washington, D.C.—has scored with spouse Lauren Oshie was destined to be photographed: The gorgeous duo has close to 500,000 Instagram followers between them. The home that the Oshies share with their three children (and two dogs) features fashionable choices that promise to influence, such as bronze fixtures and lush plants in cream-colored rooms. To realize this, the Oshies hired Marie Flanigan Interiors’ Marie Flanigan. T.J. says: “Lauren would always show me Marie’s Instagram and the things that she loved. I’m not extremely interested in home design and things like that, but she really did a fantastic job. It was a dream come true for Lauren to be able to design her home.”

The five-bedroom manse in McLean, Virginia, is traditional and French-influenced. The gardens contribute to the sense of romance, featuring climbing roses and hedges. In the back, multisectioned seating—perfect for entertaining T.J.’s NHL team and their families—has been created from teakwood chairs from RH. The Oshies have considered a putting green, but T.J. says, “It’s an ongoing debate, a work in progress.”

Inside, furnishings honor the home’s bones but with a careful eye to feeling fresh and modern. “The house is provincial, sort of French countryside,” says Flanigan. “But on the inside, we wanted to keep a modern aesthetic—almost organic modern.” (Lauren’s design references included the 1 Hotels brand.) The decorative scheme is largely monochrome, and texture has been introduced largely through the fabrics, which range from leathers to linens. “Doing an all-white interior is harder than one might think, because you need to add that depth and texture and layering,” notes Flanigan. “Velvet can show a saturated tone like no other fabric.” The collection of Oushak rugs throughout the house, all sourced in Houston, ground the rooms. So, too, do the linen curtains from Pindler.

From the beginning of the process, Lauren relied on Instagram for design inspiration. That was where she discovered Flanigan—and it was where she sourced the brand that designed the cabinets in the kitchen (O’Brien Harris, based in Chicago). “As you know, Instagram is such a great tool for interior design. I find a lot of my inspiration through Instagram,” Lauren says. “I knew that I wanted everything to be very neutral and light, and I love adding texture and layering texture to add interest rather than adding a lot of color.”

So, is there room for T.J.’s sports memorabilia in this polished home? The Oshies have chosen to house these items in the basement den, which is decorated with framed jerseys and a recliner from RH. “I really wanted a reclining chair, which was something that my grandparents always had,” says T.J. “I think Lauren did a great job of selecting one.” Reflecting on the overall project, Kelsey Grant—Marie Flanigan Interiors’ creative director, who managed this collaboration—says: “Above all, [the Oshies] wanted to create a relaxing environment that would be enjoyed comfortably with their friends, families, and teammates.” Goal!

 

via@ArchitecturalDidest

via@Architectural Digest

In the world of fashion, it can be difficult to find a quiet moment. For Italian luxury menswear designer Stefano Ricci, his sprawling estate in the Tuscan hills of Mugello provides a welcome escape.

At Poggio ai Segugi, built on land once owned by the Medici family, Ricci finds the inspiration for many of his designs. His bespoke suits and shirts have been worn by the likes of Nelson Mandela, opera singer Andrea Bocelli, and Hollywood star Tom Cruise.

Nature features significantly in his work—the 1,650 acres of virtually unspoiled countryside surrounding his estate is teeming with wild animals, including different breeds of deer, Tuscan wild boars, and falcons. Ricci says it’s like a paradise where he can unwind and concentrate on new projects.

The house’s eight bedroom suites are adorned with cloths woven by Florentine artisans at L’Antico Setificio Fiorentino, one of the oldest silk workshops in Europe, whose looms date to the 18th century. A warping—or weaving—machine designed by Leonardo da Vinci creates threads used to make silk fabrics, tassels, and trimmings.

The workshop, which Ricci bought from the Emilio Pucci family in 2010, still produces Renaissance-style fabrics, including the Damaschi collection, composed of single-color damask fabrics with stylized or floral designs created in a shiny and low-luster finish. This fabric was first made in Florence on mechanical looms from before the early 1800s and is sold for between €280 and €1,300 per meter. In 2016, Ricci presented Pope Francis with a silk damask chasuble—the outermost liturgical vestment worn by clergy—that was woven at the mill.

Ricci’s own property, with its starkly modern and opulent decor, couldn’t be more different in style from the old-world romance of the workshop. At the center of the main house is the Great Hall, featuring a 7.5-meter crystal table and china from his porcelain homeware collection, all of which are made in Italy.

The estate’s cavernous basement houses 15 classic and vintage cars. He has a soft spot for Aston Martins—especially in British racing green, calling the classic car “an expression of things that are handmade, of style and elegance.” Ricci has five prized Aston Martins and a Lancia in the garage, protected behind glass. One stands out as his personal favorite: a 1933 Aston Martin Le Mans.

Ricci prefers to hit the track in his 1953 Lancia Aurelia Series III. The Ricci family has previously sponsored historic events, such as the Mille Miglia race in Italy, founded in 1927, a motorsport endurance race with 400 classic cars competing across 1,000 miles from Brescia to Rome and back. His wife, Claudia, has also participated, in a Jaguar XK140.

Ricci is also the organizer of the 10-year-old Stefano Ricci Heritage Trophy concours, held in Florence.

Despite their increasing in value, he hasn’t sold any of the cars in his collection. Except for one: Ricci started his business by selling the Porsche 914/6 that his father gave him when he was 21.

That company—launched from his kitchen table—has evolved into a business empire with more than 68 boutiques around the world, from London to Milan and Shanghai to Cambodia.

Many Ricci suits are made from limited-edition fabrics and the company provides customers with a master tailor who regularly flies around the world for fittings. “Nowadays, contemporary designers often come out of the finest schools and define styles without actually knowing how to sew,” Ricci says.

The business generated €148 million in sales in 2018, up from €144 million in 2017. Ricci was one of the first luxury brands to move into China in 1993. There are 14 boutiques in the country, including a 22,000-square-foot mansion in Shanghai with a private club available for high-spending clients.

This year will also see Ricci open more boutiques in Seoul and Taipei. But when he wants to retreat from the noise of his growing empire, he can always return to his home in the Tuscan hills, where the “silence is only broken by the sounds of nature.”

via@Barrons

Photograph by Paolo Prendin

True to his word, the artist’s outlandish furnishings were removed, and, today, the mansion exudes understated elegance. The main residence boasts 10 bedrooms and 13 baths, along with all manner of grand amenities, including a ballroom, wine room, rooftop tennis court, gym and indoor sports court, a four-car garage,  a pool with a swim-up bar and waterslide and a secretive grotto.

Not to be completely upstaged, the second 3,300-square-foot residence located at 1255 Sierra Alta Way boasts a fully appointed, high-end kitchen, bar and billiards room, den, spa, a two-car garage and, of course, its own pool.

Ready to call the palace your own? The estate can be purchased for $30 million via The Oppenheim Group. If that’s a little too steep, you can do as Prince did and rent the main residence for $80,000 a month. Just don’t get any grand ideas about painting the walls.

via@Robb Report

When it’s finally safe to release ourselves from social distancing and entertain with friends again, Tony and Martel Hale would like to have you over. In fact, the Emmy winners (she for makeup, and he for Veep) designed their three-bedroom Los Angeles home, where they live with their daughter, Loy, to be just the type of welcoming respite where their loved ones can walk in, kick off their shoes, watch an episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race, and maybe even stay the night. (There’s a guest house with a Murphy bed for that.)

And should you be the lucky recipient of a dinner party invitation at the Hales’, the Southern pair (she’s from Anniston, Alabama; he grew up in Tallahassee, Florida) probably serve up cheese straws and a one-pan rosemary-lemon chicken, a Southern Living recipe that’s their go-to. “We love to have people visit,” Tony says. “When someone walks into the house, we want them to feel joy. There’s a cozy, sit-by-the-fire, have-a-glass-of-wine vibe to the house.” Who among us couldn’t use a little of that right now?

When the couple moved into the Studio City ranch house five years ago, they called upon friend and Martin & Brockett interior designer Jason Martin, who had worked on their first house in Griffith Park, to give it a homey feel. “I wanted it pretty, and I wanted it Southern; a bit modern, and a bit traditional,” says Martel in her Alabama drawl. And a relaxed feel was key: “I remember saying I don’t want to sacrifice comfort for something just being cool or looking good,” Tony says.

So Martin filled the space and its guest house with tufted furniture, cozy monochromatic shades, and the kind of showers you’d want to spend all day in. The couple’s master bedroom is a prime example of their comfort-based philosophy: You could literally roll from the bed onto a tufted sofa, then right onto cozy overstuffed ottomans, never once encountering a hard surface.

The couple’s homey atmosphere is also thanks to plenty of personal touches, like the Saturday Night Live costume sketches lining a wall in the kitchen—Martel salvaged them from the trash when she was on the makeup team there in the late ’90s to early ’00s. Their kitchen table was a wedding present from Martel’s mother. In the living room, the couple hung photographs by a production coordinator from Arrested Development. Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Tony’s Veep costar, told them about the artist whose work they now display in their powder room. But most importantly, the pair and their daughter use every room of the house. “There’s a puzzle on our dining room table as we speak,” Martel says.

As Martin can attest (he and his husband have been hanging out with the Hales on an almost-weekly basis for the last 16 years) their unpretentious love of home and hosting isn’t just a line. Even during my interview with the duo and in subsequent emails, Tony and Martel invited me to come over the next time I’m in L.A., a request I’m holding them to when this is all over. “That’s what’s so exciting about having a home with a design aspect to it,” Tony says. “It’s a real gift to anybody who comes into the house. It’s a service to them. I just want you to have just a real, restful time here.”

via@Architectual Digest 

When Casey Wilson and her husband, David Caspe, started their search for a family home, she knew exactly what her dream house was: The problem was that she didn’t know if it actually existed in Los Angeles. “Maybe this is kind of cheesy, but I’ve always loved the movie Father of the Bride, and I had this idea in my head of the white house with the dark trim,” the Black Monday actress says. The couple’s favorite neighborhood, Los Feliz, however, was filled with a preponderance of Mediterranean and modern homes, and not many in that traditional East Coast vein. Luckily, their friend Doug Levine, an interior designer and architect, had been keeping a close eye on the real estate market in the area and alerted the couple as soon as a listing for a private almost farmhouse-like home became available.

Although they lost out with their first bid, the approximately 4,000-square-foot house hit the market again a few months later, and the couple quickly snatched it up. But as picture-perfect as its exterior was, they knew a major renovation of the 1938 home was in order. Its current state was dark and claustrophobic: exactly what Wilson, a lover of warm and comfortable spaces, didn’t want. To realize her and Caspe’s vision for a welcoming home that was perfect for entertaining—“Our favorite thing in life is sharing a meal or drink with friends,” she says—they enlisted not only Levine to work on the interior architecture but also firm Nickey Kehoe to create the interior design. It was an unusual arrangement for Levine, who normally focuses on interior design himself, but working with Nickey proved the men were perfect foils. “At the beginning, we didn’t want to step on each other’s toes,” Levine says. “But it was actually so easy. It’s really fun watching someone else with talent take what you’ve done and add their layer on to it.”

Levine’s goal was to open up each floor’s layout: On the first floor, which is where the family does their entertaining, he added in a proper foyer by expanding out into the house’s substantial front veranda. When it was completed, “it looked like it was always there,” Levine says. Upstairs, in the more private areas, he blew out the ceilings in the bedrooms to cathedral-like proportions and added in larger windows to take advantage of the property’s lush green landscape. The basement, which was the former owner’s secondary closet, is now a sleek dark bar space with room for up to 100 people. “We’ve done Thanksgiving and Christmas parties there; everybody’s loving it,” Wilson says.

For the interior design, Wilson relayed to Nickey that she loved pattern and color. “We wanted the whole house to feel warm when you came in,” she says. “Like it was a hug and welcoming to everyone.” Caspe found he did have to be the voice of reason when it came to some of Wilson’s design wishes, though. “He said, ‘If you had your ideal way, we would just strap two mattresses to you and you would just lie down wherever you were,” she laughs. “’At a certain point, we have to have a chair; it can’t also be a couch and a bed.’ ” Nickey toed the line by imbuing the home with bright color, multiple patterns, and prints, all of which read as inviting. “We wanted to create a space they are super-comfortable in and that feels casual enough in the less formal areas of the house but then formal enough that entertaining still feels like it’s an elevated experience,” says Nickey.

The family also embraced wallpaper, which can be found everywhere from the powder room (a floral Sandberg) to the guest bedroom (a subtle salmon-colored print by Lee Jofa). The most arresting, however, is the outdoor-scene Iksel wallpaper in the forest-green dining room, which lends a refined, traditional air to the room. “It’s unbelievable,” Wilson says of the print. Although Wilson initially protested Nickey’s use of green in the home, he was finally able to convince her of the color’s utility in everywhere from the striking dining room to the cheery mint-green in the kitchen. “There are so many beautiful vistas in the exterior; everywhere you look outside, it’s green. So we incorporated the outdoors inside. It just felt like such a natural thing,” Nickey says. “Todd got me good with green and now I love it,” Wilson says. “I always said, ‘You know, I hated it, and now I hate it so much, I love it.’ ”

via@Architectual Digest 

An antiques and taxidermy obsessive, Von Teese holds the past—its sensibility and attention to detail—in reverence. She was adamantly opposed to bulldozing through with a conventional modern-things-up design approach. “I like feeling like I am living in this house in a very similar way to the way somebody did in the ’20s or ’30s,” says Von Teese. “It made a big difference to me when I was buying the house that someone lived here for so long and raised their children here. The owner even got married here.”

“I bought this house [in part] because the kitchen wasn’t overly renovated. I like to keep things as historical as possible.” Still, the kitchen was…brown, and so she immediately started to make her mark there: “Brown is my least favorite color in the entire world.”

via@Architectural Digest

With the help of designer David Cafiero, the Hollywood hitmaker lovingly preserved the studio in the Cape Cod fishing village

Four years ago, TV maestro Ryan Murphy ushered his husband, photographer David Miller, into the Province­town studio where Abstract Expressionist Hans Hofmann once painted and taught. Thanks to the efforts of later owners, its best features had survived—a mammoth window, a humongous hearth, and above it, a dizzying perch that let Hofmann’s acolytes peer down at art in the making. As Murphy and Miller flipped through archival photos of Hofmann arranging still lifes or the limbs of human models, they shared an impulse: Protect this space.

“The room is its own work of art,” notes Murphy, who, like Hofmann, has done much to boost Provincetown’s creative culture. Seven years ago, he and Miller married here in the dunes, later purchasing a waterfront house—near where the Pilgrims first landed—for them and their two sons to breathe in salt air. (The good vibes have clearly done Murphy well; last year he signed a $300 million contract with Netflix, then the largest Hollywood deal of its kind.) Hofmann, on the other hand, arrived at the Cape Cod fishing village in 1935, taking up residency at Provincetown’s legendary painting school, the Hawthorne barn, before buying his own studio from fellow artist Frederick Waugh in 1945. For the next two decades, Hofmann used the complex to feed fresh talents some avant-garde concepts. If you’ve ever taken a painting class, then Hofmann has kinda, sorta taught you. Pushing shapes to the foreground through color, pulling the viewer’s eye deeper into the canvas, any mention of “plasticity” at all—those lessons bear the Teutonic accent of his guiding voice.

Upon taking stewardship of the studio, with the goal of adapting it as a guesthouse for entertaining, Murphy and Miller handed the keys to Manhattan-based designer David Cafiero, also a pillar of P-Town. He listened for whatever notes could still be struck in the chapel-like space, marveling at the nautical planks that Waugh had fused into walls and nooks. Something of a salvage artist himself—the designer had just restored the Hawthorne barn—Cafiero found wood boards and ship timbers that could be fashioned into a more spare and spacious kitchen. “The happiest discovery was under the linoleum, where we found floor planks that match those in the main room,” says Cafiero, who also replaced prefab kitchen cabinetry with whitewashed shiplap. At the couple’s insistence, all appliances live below the counter, making room for a shelf dotted with finds from Murphy’s antiques-shop rounds—just not too many. “It’s a big space,” says Murphy, “but we wanted to empty it, not fill it.”

Throughout the studio, the couple thought small, situating treasures at eye level. In the main room, a bronze statue of Narcissus points toward a German-porcelain Pan. A life-size bust of Joan of Arc sits next to a delicate cast of Barbra Streisand’s head (made for a puppet show at the 1964 World’s Fair). And two black-and-white Herb Ritts portraits converse from across the room: one a mud-crusted profile of Madonna-ex Tony Ward, the other a smiling Elizabeth Taylor, fully made-up but shorn and scarred after brain surgery. The latter was a gift from Julia Roberts, star of Murphy’s 2014 adaptation of The Normal Heart. She, like La Liz, Miss Streisand, and Bette Davis, who stayed at the studio in the 1980s, is the inspiration for a chapter in the memoir that Murphy has been writing in the perch above the hearth. The book’s working title, naturally, is Ladies.

 

The challenge for Murphy was to make the space both his and Hofmann’s. Then he considered a modest remnant of the artist’s classes: an easel marked with strokes of paint, where the brush had surpassed the canvas edge. It must have felt “hauntingly familiar,” to use the words of another Murphy leading lady, Stevie Nicks. With stints first at Paramount and later at Fox, Murphy has commandeered the scenic loft where artists once made giant backdrops, leaving many drips and slashes. Murphy kept those happy accidents for all to see when he made the spaces into offices, wishing his writers might commune with the visionaries who preceded them. The Hofmann easel has that same feeling, and so too does its accompanying paint-­plastered stool, which the artist used as a palette. “Those pieces, the tools of his trade—those are our Hofmann works of art,” Murphy says. “They’re beautiful and they’re personal.”

On television, Murphy revives spirits, real and imagined, so he’s keenly aware that some still find refuge in the Hofmann studio. “You feel it the minute you walk in; so many have been here, and some may have stayed,” he says. He’ll leave the séances to TV, but he does have a ritual that keeps the place alive. After chatty dinners at their main residence, Murphy walks guests the few blocks to the Hofmann studio. Miller has gone ahead to light the giant Georgian chandelier, held aloft by ship rigging and warm with the glow of thick taper candles. Cafiero has witnessed the spectacle, with studio executives, starlets, writers, and local artists among the wide-eyed visitors. “You get dinner and a show,” the designer says, “only the floor show is on the ceiling.”