Living in Luxury
An old friend, New York interior designer Geoffrey Bradfield sends me his latest 295-page tome A 21st Century Palace Asia, featuring a 250,000 sq. ft. 36-bedroom home in China on 30 acres, which took four years to complete.
Geoffrey, who has worked on homes with quite stratospheric budgets in Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Jakarta and Japan, is listed by the Robb Report as one of its Top Ten designers.
The Louis XIV-style grand chateau, which makes Versailles look like a fixer-upper, uses Geoffrey’s knowledge of feng shui, the Chinese system of geomancy used to ensure harmony and balance.
Canadian-born architect Richard Landry, whose clients include footballer Tom Brady, Eddie Murphy, Mark Wahlberg, Sylvester Stallone, and Rod Stewart, also worked on the extraordinary project.
Land of the Rich
Montecito is ranked at 44 with an average household income of $265,940 in Bloomberg’s Richest Places just released annual index.
Atherton, a town of 7,000 in the heart of Silicon Valley, tops the list for the fourth consecutive year with an annual income of $525,324.
Scarsdale, New York, a town in wealthy Westchester County, north of Manhattan, is ranked number two, with more than half the towns on the list in New York or California.
Malibu is at number 37 with an average household income of $275,675.
Surf’s Up
The fact that Prince Harry and wife Meghan Markle are looking at a 12,249 square foot $7 million home on 1.75 acres in Malibu will come as absolutely no surprise to readers of this illustrious organ.
I have been reporting for some time the tony twosome are keen to relocate to California, where they would also be close to Meghan’s mother, Doria Ragland, Hollywood, and Silicon Valley.
The pad in question is an eight-bedroom mansion in a securely gated community formerly owned by Baywatch star David Charvet with near neighbors including Mel Gibson, Robert Downey Jr., Dick Van Dyke, and Caitlyn Jenner.
Stay tuned…
On the Market
One of America’s 400 richest people, Peter Sperling, 60, son of John Sperling, the founder of the University of Phoenix, who sold his Montecito three and a half acre estate, formerly owned by British actress Jane Seymour for $10.5 million in 2015, is now selling his eight bedroom, 14 bath Spanish-style Holmby Hills property for $18.995 million.
The 11,653 sq. ft.1927 property on 1.65 acres, formerly owned by actor Vincent Price, was originally on the market last year for around $21 million.
Audition Evacuations
Singer Katy Perry and her fellow American Idol judges had to evacuate the set of the hit ABC show during auditions in Sunriver, Oregon, because of a gas leak.
In a clip from the show, the former Dos Pueblos High students becomes increasingly alarmed about a strong propane smell, saying:
“Do you guys smell gas?”
As fire alarms go off, Katy eventually picks up her belongings and makes for the exit, along with the show’s bemused contestants.
The clip, on People magazine’s website, shows her complaining of a headache before dropping to the ground as EMTs arrive to revive her.
Ink Slip
Santa Barbara warbler Katy Perry’s British actor fiancée Orlando Bloom has just corrected a tattoo blunder.
Bloom, who starred in Lord of the Rings and Pirates of the Caribbean, had the inking on his arm featuring a thin black line and a series of numbers – representing the date and time of the birth of his son Flynn, 9, with actress Miranda Kerr –, with Morse code supposed to spell his son’s name. But instead it spelled ‘Frynn.’
The 43-year-old corrected the spelling error and went on Instagram, blaming Pinterest for the initial mistake.
“Finally dot it right! How do you make a mistake like that? #Pinterest fail.”
Natural Beauty
It was a no maquillage moment when Montecito actress Gwyneth Paltrow threw an A-list party in Beverly Hills.
The Oscar winner invited Demi Moore, 57, Kate Hudson, 40, and Los Angeles-based artist, Alexandra Grant, 47, who is dating actor Keanu Reeves, but made it clear it was makeup-free event.
The bash was to promote her new Goop Glow skin products.
Moore, ex-wife of actor Bruce Willis and Carpinteria actor Ashton Kutcher, seemed particularly delighted to ditch makeup.
“Beauty is more than what you see, it is what you feel,” she raved on Instagram. “A powerful, memorable and meaningful evening!”
