Maurice Marciano Goes Modern In Beverly Hills

BUYER: Maurice Marciano
LOCATION: Beverly Hills, CA
PRICE: $10,000,000
SIZE: 9,000 square feet (approx.), 5 bedrooms, 7 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Oh lo-ward children Your Mama has people streaming in and out of our house for days, tying up the guest room and taking up more of our time than we got to give. We love us some house guests, especially when those house guests are Bunny, Flower and the Chicken, but they are just so damn distracting. So forgive us out "just the facts maam" point of view today.

Anyhoo, today we're going to pop over to Beverly Hills, CA to discuss a fully renovated and very contemporary house that property records reveal was recently purchased by denim tycoon Maurice Marciano for a spine tingling $10,000,000.

Along with his two brothers, Mister Marciano is the co-founder and current chairman of Guess?, the company that made tight jeans sexy in the early 1980s, introduced and inflicted stone washed denim into the market and, for better or worse, made that tortured and deceased Anna Nicole Smith ladeee a household name.

Located just a stone's throw from Greystone Park and a block down from the mansion Christina Aguilera and Jordan Bratman bought from Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne for $11,500,000 back in the summer of 2007, the rehabilitated residence was did up and done over by a group that include Michael Hahn and John Bersci. These group of high end house flippers–for those who do not recognize their names–are responsible for a fair number of high end house flips in the Platinum Triangle including the Holmby Hills house that billionaire Ron Tutor bought in October of 2009 for $13,200,000.

Property records show that Mister Hahn purchased the property in August of 2006 for $6,000,000. At the time it was purchased, the house was a real mid-century modern fixer with outdated everything, shag carpeting and an indoor swimming pool. The overhaul did away with the indoor pool and replaced most of the more authentic mid-century elements with a new-fangled, sexed-up and very L.A. kind of contemporary with vast expanses of glass that slide back into the walls, lots of right angles and clean lines, and scads of sleek surfaces that include white marble floors throughout much of the house, rich paneling in the dining room and a horizontally striated material in the master bathroom that is of an unknown material but looks far to perfect to be natural.

Prior to the renovation and expansion, the single story house measured 4,651 square feet with 3 bedrooms and 5 poopers. Now, according to listing information, the super slick crib weighs in at approximately 9,000 square feet and includes 5 bedrooms, 7 poopers, several water features, 6 fireplaces and off-street parking for up to 20 automobiles. The winter white interior spaces flow organically into each other making for a perfect party house but not one that feels particularly cozy except, not even the screening room that space feels oddly proportioned and a week bit big and square to feel like the sort of room we'd want to curl up on the velveteen sofa and spend the evening watching those ca-ray-zee bitches from The Real Housewives of New york City who are going to eviscerate each other this season right on national freaking tee-vee. Fortunately there is another, more intimately scaled room wrapped in paneling and warmed by a fireplace for long evening with a pitcher of gin & tonics and the boob-toob.

The u-shaped residence wraps around an interior courtyard where a flat green lawn surrounds a rectangular swimming pool and party-sized spa. Many of the rooms open to the courtyard/backyard through massive walls of glass that slide open and disappear into the walls blurring the distinction between what is indoors and what is outdoors. The kitchen not only opens to the exteriors through big panes of glass it's flanked by a couple of private patios, one for cocktailing and the other with a built in barbecue center with a mirrored back splash that was, in our humble and meaningless opinion, a mistake.

Given that property records show that Mister Marciano continues to own a 19,299 square foot beast on 2.69 acres in the Benedict Canyon area of Beverly Hills that he purchased in April of 1987 for $2,825,000, it's unclear if he plans to downsize and occupy the new house or if here is some other reason that he'd want to spend ten million smackers for a house in a town where he already owns a serious estate. Records show the Benedict Canyon domicile contains 8 bedrooms and an unlucky 13 poopers, a number that ensures that Mister Marciano would never be able to poach our hardworking–and autocratic–house gurl Svetlana who will not go anywhere near a house with 13 of anything, particularly 13 terlits.

Previous reports show that in August of 2006 Mister Marciano scooped up another house in the Benedict Canyon area of Beverly hills paying $3,750,000 for a 4,000 square foot house with 4 bedrooms and 4 poopers. He flipped the property just a year later at a $50,000 loss and quickly snatched up a 2,325 square foot Bev Hills condo for $1,600,000.