SELLER: Christian AudigierLOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $8,299,000
SIZE: 8,276 square feet, 7 bedrooms, 7 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Listen Bunnies, even though we have a tendency to go on and on and on, we are going to try and keep this one on the short and sassy side because we're about to jump on an airplane for an emergency trip to San Francisco where our b.f.f. Fiona Trambeau has fallen and can't get up.
Yesterday afternoon, not two minutes after we espied the listing for an exuberantly glam mansion in Los Angeles' Hancock Park (adjacent) neighborhood we received a covert communique from our informant The Rolling Stone who snitched that the property, just listed with an asking price of $8,299,000, belongs to publicity seeking "fashion designer" Christian Audigier.
The French born Monsieur Audigier is, of course, the man responsible for foisting too many completely questionable sartorial trends on the world such as the Von Dutch trucker's cap that became so boringly ubiquitous and those brazen, bedazzled and bizarre Ed Hardy t-shirts that famous people used to wear with pride but not allow their maids to use to wipe up the doggy doo on the back patio. Say what you will about Monsieur Audigier, his flamboyant brands, and his shameless courting of the press, but the man has managed to tap into (and/or create) more than one flash in the pan "fashion" zeitgeist with his Von Dutch and Ed Hardy brands. As a result, he made gazillions of clams that he spends living a large life.
In addition to the Kapital "K" Klassy act of putting his name on a line of condoms and flavored sex lube, Monsieur Audigier also put his special brand of tacky on a line of custom Cadillac Escalades–natch–fitted with stoopid-ass luxuries such as 24-carat gold exhaust pipes, a cigar humidor, two flat screen tee-vees, and reclining bucket back seats that look like the sorts of things some rich ladee in Moscow might sit in when getting a mani-pedi from an illegal Korean ladee.
Most recently Monsieur Audigier made the headlines of all the west coast real estate gossip columns when, just weeks after Michael Jackson's death in June of 2009, he so tactfully announced that he planned to lease the very same overly opulent (and oddly squat looking) Richard Landry designed Holmby Hills mansion where The King of Pop died from an overdose of Propofol. The massive manse, the children may recall, is owned by Roxanne and Herbert Guez who happens to be the current CEO of Ed Hardy. Your Mama is pretty damn sure that Monsieur Audigier never actually moved into the the 13 pooper pile where The White Lady met his maker–it was, after all, recently heaved back on the market with an asking price of $28,995,000–but we do know that he has decided to sell his Hancock Park (adjacent house) that property records show he picked up in January of 2007 for $4,780,000.
Listing information shows Monsieur Audiger's 1920 Mediterranean mansion measures 8,276 square feet and includes 7 bedrooms and 7 poopers. A double gated circular drive snakes across the palm tree dotted front yard to the entry and 4-car garage. One need only open the front door to know that this isn't your typical Mercedes driving doyenne's Mediterranean mansion in Hancock Park: It's kooky, campy, whimsical, eclectic, exaggerated, glitzy, glam, heavily textured, super stylized, a little predictable, a lot self-indulgent and, unfortunately, oddly impersonal like a boo-teek hotel in Miami or, well, Los Angeles.
Listen chickens, we're probably going to take a bullet for saying this, but when we set our decorative expectations for Monsieur Audiger's residence aside, we actually think the fanciful far from traditional day-core displayed in his mansion isn't without some redeeming decorative moments. These rooms are not, surprisingly, the equivalent of the disturbing blinged-out Ed Hardy wear slathered with tattoo imagery and glittering rhinestones that Your Mama expected to find. Let's just sum it up as, for better or worse, Philippe Starck without the haughty hammy surrealist streak.
Guests are greeted in the foyer with an irreverent gesture to artist Damien Hirst by a large table created from the mold of a hippopotamus that's been sawed in half horizontally leaving only four heavy feet, a portion of the neck and a shiny flat surface on top of which are a some knick-knacks, paper things are other gewgaws that Your Mama imagines have something to do with Monsieur Audigier and/or one of his several clothing labels.
The formal living room had glossy dark coffee colored hardwood floors, a fireplace,
and a pair of identical extra-long shocking pink tufted velvet sofas with brass rivet accents and dramatic rolled arms. Fuzzy fur pillows and blankets drape dramatically over the the pink sofas, which look like they might have been stolen from one of the kooky suites at the Madonna Inn, one of the better bordellos outside of Las Vegas, or maybe even from Miss Piggy's pad. The more sedate formal dining room has a crisp white dining table surrounded by eight bucket chairs upholstered with navy blue fabric with gold piping accents. Seven or eight lantern style pendant lights clustered over the table form a kind of chandelier. It's too too for our taste, but it's not tasteless by any means.
The kitchen, with it's classic white Shaker style cabinets and combination of marble and butcher block counter tops seems quite ordinary and out of place compared to the razzle dazzle of the rest of the house. In fact it looks it could be in the upscale McMansion of a custom built tract house in Calabasas or any other upscale suburb in the United States. Your Mama is more that a tad bit surprised to find a very middle-brow side by side refrigerator in the kitchen as opposed to a pair of side by side Sub-Zeros that cost as much as a damn submarine. This is, as far as Your Mama is concerned, a serious mistake in a house with an eight million dollar plus asking price.
Additional rooms in Monsieur Audigier's mansion, according to listing information, include a den with fireplace, library, family room, media/music room and and office. Lush tropical plantings cover the .8 acre oasis-like grounds that include number of al fresco dining areas, fountains, a vast swimming pool lined with deep blue tiles and, on opposite sides of the swimming pool, over-sized twin cabanas with eating and lounging areas, a "sleek blt-in 20-foot long hotel bar" (whatever that is), and a fully equipped outdoor grilling kitchen.
Listing information shows that Monsieur Audigier will toss in a Rolls Royce Phantom 5 with the purchase of his house. Since Your Mama thinks those chunky Rolls Royce's are kind of douchy, we'd rather take four hundred grand off the top of the asking price than get the car. We'd be embarrassed to have that thing parked in our driveway, even it it was the driveway of a six or eight million dollar mansion. But, hunnies, that's just us and our deep seated need not to make a display of ourselves every time we go to Ralphs for some terlit paper, a banana and some fat free half and half.
Where oh where will Monsieur Audigier go now. Some will surely speculate that the precipitous and quick decline in popularity of his brands will necessitate a real estate down sizing, but iffin Your Mama was makin' bets, we'd put our money on Monsieur Audigier moving to another mansion that's even bigger and more expensive that this one. We shall see puppies, we shall see.
Wherever he may land, property records reveal that Monsieur Audigier will be far from homeless when he manages to unload his house in Hancock Park. The lavish living Frenchman also owns a high-floor condos at Miami's sleek and slick Blue building, which he purchased in March of 2008 for $1,275,000 and records also indicate Monsieur Audigier also owns a few other Los Angeles properties including a modest hideaway in the Glenview area of Topanga Canyon that he bought in July of 2008 for $2,075,000, and a 3,300 square foot house in the Larchmont Village area picked up in September of 2007 for $2,695,000.
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