Reed Krakoff Double Whammy (Beach)

SELLER: Reed Krakoff
LOCATION: Southampton, NY
PRICE: $12,000,000
SIZE: 3.3 acres, 4,000 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 5.5 bathrooms
DESCRIPTION: Privacy and beauty combine in this modern 5 bedroom, 6 bathroom home on 3.3 acres in estate section. Century-old property with pool, pool house, playhouse, greenhouse. Slate terraces overlook award-winning mature landscaping that borders adjacent farm fields. Room for tennis and large home.

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: We know all you folks out in places like Portland, Peoria, and Piscataway may not think this Reed person is a "celebrity." But trust Your Mama when we tell you, in New York design, art, and business circles, he and wifey Delphine are at the top of the heap.

When the Krakoff clan heads East from their super-deluxe townhouse in Manhattan for a weekend of sun, sand, and barbecue, this is dwelling to which they are chauffeured. The flag-lot property sits smack in the middle of Southampton's most exclusive neighborhood and is just a few minutes bike ride to Coopers Neck Beach. The Krakoff house also happens to be a few doors down from "Old Trees," the tremendous, old-school lakefront estate being offered at the stunning price of $48,000,000. That should tell you a little something about the quality of the location.

Like their townhouse in the city (the old one, not the new one), this place has been photographed and swooned over in high-style publications, most notably last September in Elle Decor. Your Mama thinks that Mr. Krakoff--a smart, savvy guy, and very well connected dude--calls up a few of his big-time homies and gently asks for his homes to be written up in a fancy magazine or two just as their coming to market. Thereby grabbing a little free press, not to mention being able to add a few pennies to the price for the cache of purchasing a "published" celebrity house. If you're friendly with all the right people, Your Mama recommends this strategy highly.

Even though we have a lovely little house at the beach ourselves, Your Mama would be happy to swap out our wee farmhouse for this rather severe assemblage of white cubes. The uniform articulation of windows on the back facade just makes us feel calm and visually soothed. The vine covered pergola thing, while not particularly clever, is absolutely effective in softening the austere nature of the architecture, not to mention providing some necessary shade. With global warming and all that crap, we all have to be more conscious of having a shady place to recline on those blistering summer days.

The kitchen we're digging due to it's studied and well ordered cacophony of styles. The master bedroom on the other hand is a little fussy for our taste. Your Mama is quite sure having a big old raccoon pelt on the bed is not a good idea. Oh, we get that it adds texture and luxury and all that horseshit, but no. These sorts of blankets are just a high-minded, design-y version of a big stuffed deer head hanging on the wall of the den. Come on now. Please. Put that fuzzy thing in the cold storage and get a nice hand-woven mohair something or other.

Your Mama thinks that enormous stretch of lawn is just beyond. It must take an army of gardeners and a wheelbarrow of money to keep that lawn looking the way it does; lush, even colored and not a brown spot anywhere. Your Mama thinks xeriscaping is truly the next wave in landscaping, but we still find ourselves drawn to a well maintained lawn.

One of the things Your Mama likes about the super-rich is how they pepper their grounds with artwork. The Krakoffs, big art lovers and consumers, also like expensive backyard sculpture. Did you notice the cute little wooden sheep? And of course the giant Tony Rosenthal cube probably set the Krakoff's back more than you make in a year.

We are disappointed not to find a tennis court here, as we've come to expect that of estate properties in the Hamptons. But the posh Bridgehampton Tennis & Surf Club is nearby and can be joined for the not so modest fee of about $7,700 for a family membership.

The wind is howling outside and the ground is frozen. So it's an excellent time to sit back and think about the coming summer months. Your Mama has a long list of Hamptons properties to bring you in the coming weeks, so stick around and we'll show you how the East Coast richie-riches summer in style and comfort.

Sources: NY Observer, Sotheby's International, DebbieGuide

Golden Snow Globes

Touché, Suzanne Somers!

Last week in this space, I took the credit, I mean blame, for accidentally setting Malibu on fire by lighting a match after my Little Toot, which was a hit children’s song for The Andrews Sisters but a total disaster for me, which caused the inadvertent destruction of one of Suzanne Somers's houses, destroying dozens of unsold Thigh-Masters, and thus liberating a host of Butt-Slaves. (And who doesn't love a good Butt-Slave?) I apologized, but that apparently wasn’t enough for the vengeful Mrs. Hamil.

On Wednesday afternoon of this week, I woke up outside my magnificent movie star mansion, Morehead Heights, mounted firmly astride (Well, not really all that firmly anymore.) awe-inspiring Tumescent Tor, at the northwest end of Malibu, deep within my overwhelmingly complex hedge-labyrinth. This in and of itself isn’t really unusual. The list of weird places where I have woken up is longer than the extended DVD edition of The Lord of the Rings. It’s a relief when it’s someplace as close as my backyard, although finding one’s way out of my hedge-labyrinth can be quite a challenge. I go through Japanese hedge-trimmers faster than cases of vodka, which is frustrating, since I know they’re all still in there somewhere, probably setting up their own society, reverting to savagery to survive, like Morlocks, or the Bush Cabinet. And we’re still looking for Shelley Long, who wandered into the labyrinth seven years ago and hasn’t been seen since, although we are the only ones still looking.

What was unusual was that I was covered in snow! Now I have been accused of many, many things in my life. In fact there was an ugly trial back in 1947, which you can find thoroughly documented in my nearly-praised autobiography, My Lush Life (Chapter 22, My Kampf), as well as in Humphrey Brigand’s best-selling account When Justice Was Glad to Be Blind: The Trial of Tallulah Morehead, The Nearly-Living Legend, published in 1950, but still in print today. But the one thing I have never been accused of is being frigid. Only the high alcohol content of my blood kept me from freezing to death. Saved by booze, once again!

One of the primary reasons we live in Southern California is that it does not snow here, yet on Wednesday, January 17, 2007, it snowed in Malibu. I guess Dubya was right about Golden Global Warming. Barely over a week earlier, Malibu was on fire. There’s no question what was going on here: The Revenge of Suzanne Somers! I’ve had some freezing stares and cold shoulders from jealous women before, but Suzanne is in a class by herself. She clearly intended to freeze me solid. Well Suzanne, you are foiled again! My blood is the best anti-freeze on earth. Maybe you should try drinking to excess yourself. After all, nothing exceeds like excess.

There may have been a blizzard all day Tuesday for all I know. I was waking up from the Golden Globe Awards Monday Night. The Golden Globes, an award named after my chest, is the only award ceremony I routinely attend since, unlike the meaningless Oscars, you can drink all you want all through the show. How well I remember drinking Lucille Ball under the table at the Golden Globes every year, back in the 60s, no small feat in itself.

After the show, having been intrigued by Sasha Baron Cohen’s erotic description of the special charms of his Borat co-star Azamat’s formerly private parts (Well, just how private are parts that have been splayed across the mini-screens of America’s multiplexes?), I invited Azzie to join me for a vodka and a chaser of rancid air, and the next thing I know, I’m lying in my hedge-labyrinth, and my own legendary Golden Globes are now Golden Snow Globes.

I tried calling up the Hollywood Foreign Press (Which was exactly what Azzie had given me, a Hollywood Foreign Press) to find out what happened, only to learn that Warren Beatty was still making his Lifetime Achievement Award acceptance speech. Really Warren, the speech isn’t supposed to last a lifetime! Warren only got that award because Bob Denver died before he could receive it, and the Hollywood Foreign Press settled for third best. Bob of course, played Stanley Kowalski to my Blanch Dubois years ago on tour, and he was an actor of unique talents. Every astonished critic who saw our production agreed, his Stanley was like no other before or since. No one ever accused Bob of imitating Brando. Max Shulmann showed he understood where True Talent lay when he billed Warren Beatty below Bob in the Dobie Gillis credits each week.

I was puzzled by the multiple awards given to that British trollop Helen Mirrin. They gave her two different awards for playing the same old queen? She gets one award for playing Queen Elizabeth at the start of her reign, back in the 17th Century, and a second for playing her in the 20th Century, celebrating the death of Lady Di? I don’t get it. At least when I marry a queen, and I’ve married a bunch of them, it’s always a different queen each time. By the way, why was everyone so surprised at the death of Princess Di? I always thought her name was a dead giveaway.

I’m afraid it is customary for me to sleep in until mid-afternoon these days. Back when I was making movies, I was an early riser, but as I haven’t made a movie since 1969, I’ve developed the habit of sleeping in until my story comes on each afternoon.

But now, I may have no reason to get up any more at all. NBC has announced that they have canceled Passions, my favorite soap oprah, and The Most Realistic Show on Television. Life will not seem worth living without a daily screenfull of shirtless Lopez-Fitzgerald boys.

I particularly loved this show because it stars - no, starred - Juliet Mills. She is my heroine! Oh it’s not her acting. Get real. That whole Mills Family was vastly overrated as actors anyway. And why on earth did they insist on calling Juliet and Haley "The Mills Brothers"? That makes no sense to me at all, unless they were hiding a Distasteful Secret. Did Walt Disney unknowingly employ the world's youngest tranny?

No, the reason I worship Juliet Mills, former star of Mary Poppins, The Sit-Com, is because she has been married for decades to the gorgeous stud Maxwell Caulfield. There’s nothing I approve of more than elderly actresses being married to young, handsome hunks decades their junior, except drinking to excess of course. My own most-recent husband, at least as far as I can recall, Trevor Berman, was some 78 years younger than myself. And although that marriage failed, it did not fail because of our age difference. It failed because of his habit of having sex with men. The soles of his feet were more sunburned than mine.

Trevor also talked me into doing embarrassing product endorsements. Honestly, me endorsing milk? The last time I drank a glass of milk was back in the 19th Century. I was in my first of three (so far) infancies at the time, and I still spat that fetid fluid out. And then there was that mortifying slogan: "Drink Tallulah Morehead’s Milk, Fresh Sucked Daily." My poor, sagging Golden Globes haven’t dispensed that mucusie muck since my daughter Pattycakes stopped breast-feeding back in 1938. I was udderly humiliated. And my milk was 70-proof.

It was odd that I was able to breast-feed at all, since my daughter was adopted. I wasn’t even married at the time. It seems that my devotion to my poor daughter, who looked a lot like my revolting mother, to whom she was not related, and who grew to be more than six feet tall, and to have an enormous nose, not unlike the prominent proboscis of the over-six-foot tall character actor C. Aubrey Smith, with whom I co-starred in the classic romantic-fantasy-adventure HER! some nine months before someone other than me gave birth to Patty, caused me to experience the rare medical condition "Sympathetic Lactation", which made my breasts give what is called Irish Milk, until the doctor made me stop breast-feeding her, as it was damaging her developing infant liver, the big baby.

But I still hold out hope that I may yet find my dream hunk, and live happily ever after, just like Juliet Mills, and of course, Liza Minnelli.

Cheers Darlings.

Editor's Note: Art Buchwald died Wednesday. He was a giant in a world of ants, an inspiration to me, and he died when we need him more than ever. I would write something pithy and amusing about his passing, except that nothing I could write would be worthy of him, nor as funny as his own writings on his mortality. Art was an artist. He will be missed, but never replaced.

- Douglas McEwan

Reed Krakoff Double Whammy (City)

SELLER: Reed Krakoff
LOCATION: East 61st Street, NYC
PRICE: $14,995,000 (list)
SIZE: 5+ floors, 4 bedrooms, 3 full and 3 half bathrooms
DESCRIPTION: (considerably reduced from listing agent's website) The splendid building was just gut renovated and entirely rebuilt by C-Square under the close supervision of the present owners. It contains several stunning features: a double height living room with a 26' wall of glass over a planted garden, an exquisite master floor, a second master with a terrace over the garden, and a top floor loft space flooded with with light. An elevator serves all five levels.

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Okay children, settle down, Your Mama is going to tell y'all who this Reed Krakoff is and how it is he has so much scratch he is able to live in such tasteful and expensive opulence. This man is the "Divisional President" of Coach. We don't know what a Divisional President does either, so don't be emailing and asking us about that shit. This man previously did stints over at Tommy Hilfiger and Polo/Ralph Lauren but ultimately, this is just one of several houses all your medium priced handbags and wallets bought.

In his capacity as king of the leather carryall, Mr. Krakoff earns enough of the green stuff to make all your heads spin right off your bodies. Are you sitting down? According to Forbes, $26,183,375 in salary, bonus, and exercised stock options was deposited into Mr. Krakoff's bank accounts in the fiscal 2006 year. And puppies, this does not even include the $24,361,284 in un-exercised stock options he also received.

It was widely reported in the New York papers and publications that last September Mr. Krakoff and his interior designer wife Delphine purchased another townhouse over on East 70th Street for $17,000,000. This is the same fancy pants block that Mr. Woody Allen and his much younger wife/daughter/whatever currently live in their $25,900,000 townhouse.

So up for sale goes this palace of pulchritude. According to the listing, "an army of French craftsman" carved, fabricated, and worked over this townhouse to within an inch of it's life. The results have been lauded, cheered, and swooned over in peacocky publications like Vogue and House & Garden.

Your Mama rarely comes across a property we'd move into lock stock and barrel. But babies, even though we're not Upper East Side types, we'd pack up our Chelsea duplex and haul it uptown quicker than Jack the Ripper could slit a throat.

The listing states the parquet floors on the first and second floors are Louis XVI and were imported from France. Hunnies, you know it takes some serious effort and cabbage to haul parquet floors across the Atlantic. We're adoring the excessively high ceiling in the living room and that wall of ivy in the back courtyard has us peeing our pants. We're a little curious about the choice for such a petit dining room in such a large house, but as we've mentioned in a previous post, Your Mama actually likes to take our meals in smallish rooms, so it's just fine by us.

Up a floor in the elevator to the second level is a library/loft area leading to a quiet study facing the street. The master suite occupies the entire sweep of the third level. In the en suite, a delicious Louis XVI fireplace, one of nine in the house, is flanked by twin vanities.

On the fourth level, family bedrooms include a large suite with dressing room and en suite, as well as two smaller bedrooms and another bath. No doubt the Krakoff's housed their trio of progeny on this level. While it would work for us because we've only got our two little bitches Linda and Beverly to shelter, we imagine the Krakoffs were looking for a little more square footage for their multiple kiddies in their new townhouse.

Up one more level and the Krakoffs have designed an all-white aerie that is causing Your Mamas pits to sweat and heart to skip a beat or two. We know all that white furniture is totally impractical and impossible to keep clean. And we understand some people find white walls to be stark and unfriendly. But not Your Mama. We're happy to ride on that cloud of plain and peace, thank you very much.

The Krakoff clan is also selling their Bridgehampton beach house. Stay tuned now because we'll be bringing you the 411 on that property in our next post so all you children out there can see how the New York leisure class summers.

Sources: NY Observer, Forbes, Brown Harris Stevens