From Homes of the Rich:
--Real estate developer, Lee Najjar, the rumored "Big Poppa" of "Real Housewives of Atlanta" housewife Kim Zolciak has put his Atlanta mansion up for sale for $25 million. The nine-bedroom home, shown above, was completed this year but retained the original 1920s facade. It has multiple kitchens, a ballroom, theater, hair/nail salon, smoking room and recording studio.

Stockworth Realty Group is selling Orlando Magic star Dwight Howard's four-bedroom home near southwest Orlando. It is listed at $2.95 million.


From the Chicago Tribune's Elite Street:
--NBA player Ben Wallace has reduced the price on his former Lake Forest, Illinois mansion. It is now listed at $2.49 million.

--Former Bears quarterback and current ESPN commentator Brian Griese has sold his four-bedroom house in Glencoe, Illinois for $2.125 million.

From the NY Post:
--Houston Rockets owner Leslie Alexander has just closed on a $25 million penthouse at the new Superior Ink condo building in the West Village. Superior Ink already has a list of buyers in contract that includes Hilary Swank, Marc Jacobs and NASCAR star Jimmie Johnson. But a week later the unit has hit the market for $39.5 million (via Curbed). His Hamptons home is for sale for $20.5 million.
--Designer Tory Burch has bought the Howard Gittis home at 500 Ox Pasture Lane in Southampton. Sources say the mansion and an adjacent parcel of land was sold separately to Burch and another buyer for around $40 million. The home had been on the market at a variety of prices over the years but Corcoran Group broker Tim Davis split up the estate into different parcels to attract buyers. Burch bought the house, and a neighbor bought an adjacent parcel because he didn't want to see anything developed on the land.
--Kimberly Dawn Neumann, a 39-year-old Broadway actress is the winner of the contest conducted by discount clothing retailer Daffy's that offered a two-bedroom apartment in the West Village for $700 a month for 10 months.
--An Italian-born real estate mogul and diplomat, Daniele Bodini,has just bought an apartment above Sting's duplex at 88 Central Park West.Bodini paid $10.9 million for the seventh-floor, 3,500-square-foot co-op. Sting's 6,600-square-foot apartment has been on and off the market, it currently remains on at $19 million.


From Cityfile's Buyers and Sellers:
--The townhouse at 11 East 82nd Street that we covered earlier this year as an estate of the day has gone into contract after more than a year and a half on the market. The limestone mansion was most recently priced at $29.5 million.

--Filmmaker Keiko Ibi put her one-bedroom condo at 15 Central Park West on the market for $3.75 million earlier this year. Now she and her seventh floor neighbors, Young-oh and Byungwha Yoon, have listed their two apartments together for a combined $10.285 million. The listing is here.
--Three months after he paid $12 million for a 49th-floor apartment at One Beacon Court, Archibald "Archie" Cox, Jr. has sold his former apartment in the same building for $5 million.
--via the NY Times, Hedge funder John Griffin and his wife Amy, who paid $32.25 million for a full-floor apartment at 1030 Fifth Avenue last year have listed their old apartment in the same building for $16.5 million.
--Photographer Kelly Klein, Calvin Klein's second ex-wife, has paid $2.091 million for a two-bedroom co-op at 2 West 67th Street.
--Bjork and Matthew Barney have closed on the purchase of a condo at 160 Henry Street in Brooklyn Heights. Their former place at 180 West Houston Street is still on the market for $1.7 million.
--Attorney Bruce Kaye and his wife Deborah have sold their two-bedroom condo at 15 Cenral Park West for $11.7 million. They paid $7.8 million in July 2008.
--Brandon Fradd, founder of the hedge fund Apollo Medical Partners, has sold his apartment at 68 Jane Street for $3.7 million.
--Investor Paul Cejas has dropped the price of his apartment at 834 Fifth Avenue from $18.5 million to $16.5 million. The listing is here.
--via NY Mag, Alec Baldwin has taken his apartment at the El Dorado off the market just a month after listing it. Will he be sticking around?

--Artist Bruce Robbins has dropped the price of his loft at 43 Clarkson Street. It was first listed for $4.895 million back in 2008 and is now for sale for $3.249 million.
--via Real Deal, Turkish tycoon Turgay Ciner has picked up a second apartment at the Plaza. He paid $10.725 million for an apartment two floors below the 17th-floor apartment he bought in January 2008 for $9.16 million.
--via Curbed, Paul O'Reilly-Hyland and Joelle Wyser-Pratte, who are both managing partners at Ounavarra Capital, have put their 4,700-square-foot Sutton Place townhouse on the market. The renovated manse at 3 Riverview Terrace is currently listed for $19 million.
--via Curbed, NYC's skinniest townhouse has had a price cut, from $2.75 million to $2.499 million.

From the NY Observer's Manhattan Transfers:
--An apartment which was once on the market for $80 million has sold for $37.5 million.

--A condo at the 40 Mercer Street building designed by architect, Jean Nouvel has sold for $4.22 million. It was once listed as high as $7.25 million.
--Andrei Vavilov, the Russian oligarch who sued the Plaza last year over a duplex penthouse and triplex penthouse he was supposed to buy there for $53.5 million, then paid $11 million for another unit, has finally left the building. He sold his apartment for $8.4 million.

From Homes and Property UK:
--A home in the Notting Hill area of London which was lived in for three years by Salman Rushdie is now listed for £2.25 million.

From the LA Times Hot Properties:
--Actress Jennifer Carpenter, who stars on "Dexter" with her husband, Michael C. Hall, has listed her two-bedroom Hollywood Hills home for $695,000. The listing is here.
--Phoenix Pictures Chairman and co-founder Mike Medavoy and his wife, Irena, have purchased a Beverly Hills home for $5.85 million.
---A 1929 Los Feliz home once owned actor Cary Grant and, later, drummer Chad Smith of the Red Hot Chili Peppers has come on the market at $3.485 million. The listing is here.

There happens to be a lot of traffic moving through Palm Springs this weekend as music fans make their way out to the Coachella music festival in Indio, California. So what better time to look at the real estate in Palm Springs. This resort town has taken a huge hit in the real estate market over the past year but it boasts some of southern California's best architecture. Two iconic estates each once owned by two entertainment legends illustrate this perfectly.

Up first, a home once owned by singer Dinah Shore. The Wall Street Journal reports that Ms. Shore had the home built in 1963, the same year that she stopped hosting "The Dinah Shore Chevy Show." The modernist home was designed by architect Donald Wexler who also designed the Palm Springs International Airport in the 1960s. The 7,000 square foot home has six bedrooms, a fireplace, pool and space. The current owner, who is a television writer bought the home in 2002 for around $3 million and has restored the home and relandscaped the property. It is listed at $5.95 million.

The other home, Las Palomas, belonged to Cary Grant for two decades starting in 1952 and offers a different style of Palm Springs classic. It is one of only a few of the 1920s era Spanish Estates left in Palm Springs. It was built as a copy of an 19th-century Andalusian Spanish Farmhouse and has six bedrooms. It is listed at $4.95 million.

Drinking, if done well and stylishly, can lead to literary inspiration. Or at least not impede it too much. Take that great chronicler of wealth and society F. Scott Fitzgerald, for instance, whose 112th birthday is about to be celebrated; some of his best work was clearly done under the influence. Just look at Tender Is the Night (1934). Of course the intemperate author, left entirely to his own devices, might have been less poetical in his consumption of alcohol and thereby rendered a less perfect work of art. But his great friends, patrons and mentors Gerald and Sara Murphy, upon whom Tender Is the Night is based, showed him how to do the thing properly.

The beautiful, rich and clever Murphys, central figures of expatriate social and cultural life of the Jazz Age in France, held court at their villa on the French Riviera in Antibes - this was long before the Russian billionaires arrived, before there even was such a thing in fact - and dispensed cocktails at the dazzling dinner parties immortalized in the book. Gerald tried to limit his guests' consumption of same in order to prevent the gatherings from devolving into total inebriation, though Fitzgerald usually managed to down more than his fair share. This often led to breakages, shouting matches and even suicide attempts, proving Murphy right.

The Fitzgeralds of course, were legendary boozers. When they later lived in shabby gentility in Great Neck, Long Island, they would drive back and forth to Manhattan for binges in a second-hand Rolls-Royce. Their houseboy would frequently find them passed out on the lawn in the morning, the car more or less in the driveway. For Murphy, however, drink-making was a stylish ritual imparted by his father, owner of the Mark Cross luxury goods company.

2009 marks the 100th anniversary of a true American sartorial institution: Haspel, makers of the classic seersucker suit that has come to epitomize elegance in the summer months for dapper gentlemen from coast to coast. The company's history dates back to New Orleans in 1909 when haberdasher Joseph Haspel began making suits in lightweight fabrics, allowing men to remain dressed to the nines even in oppressive climes.

After passing out of family hands for nearly two decades and being allowed to stagnate somewhat, the brand is now being revived on the eve of its centenary by Joseph's great-granddaughter Laurie Haspel Aronson. She is giving the label a much-needed facelift, introducing new clothing lines and updating its storied styles while remaining true to her ancestor's values of maintaining an elegant appearance no matter the conditions.

It was those values married to quality workmanship and classic style that led to Haspel's being favored by the likes of presidents Calvin Coolidge, Harry Truman and Franklin D. Roosevelt, as well as dapper movie stars like Humphrey Bogart, Gregory Peck, who wore Haspel seersucker in To Kill A Mockingbird (1962), and Cary Grant, who sported Haspel suits in Charade (1963), while becoming a staple of Ivy League style on college campuses everywhere.

Aquascutum, the London luxury brand founded in 1851, has brought back Brazilian bombshell Gisele Bundchen to star in its new Fall ad campaign. The pictures, co-starring model Jamie Doran, were shot at London's historic St. Paul's Cathedral, Vogue UK reports.

Meanwhile, the company which invented and patented several waterproof materials and pioneered the trench coat, is introducing its first ever line of bags for both men and women. The traditional brand began its foray into high fashion a couple years back when it hired Pierce Brosnan to star in a series of James Bond-style ads.

Over the years Aquascutum coats have sheathed the likes of the Queen Mother, Winston Churchill, Sophia Loren, Greta Garbo, Sean Connery, Cary Grant, Humphrey Bogart and Sir Edmund Hillary.

If I had the means I could easily wear nothing but Loro Piana for the rest of my life. They make the most comfortable, classic, stylish and subtly luxurious clothes I've ever had the pleasure of putting on. World-famous for their cashmere, the 200-year-old Italian company, which began as a textile merchant, has also branched out into other areas (including accessories and women's clothing) in more recent years with equal success.

Loro Piana's motto has it that true luxury is "knowing, not showing," i.e. dressing for yourself, not to impress others. It's "an inner satisfaction that comes from an aesthetic, intellectual, tactile pleasure, stemming from tradition, research and genuine quality." What could be better than that?

Their latest innovation is called Baby Cashmere®. To make this fabric the company first had to spend several years convincing Mongolian and Chinese breeders to comb the fine underfleece of the Hyrcus goat kid when it is 3-12 months old. Each combing yields no more than 30 grams of the rare, precious and incredibly soft fibre. Baby Cashmere crops up in Loro Piana's luxe Fall/Winter 2008 collection, which is about to hit stores; as usual we want it all.

We love the knitted stretch cashmere Davenport jacket pictured here, which like a lot of their designs calls to mind a cross between Cary Grant and Steve McQueen. And also like many of their best designs it captures that ineffable quality of effortless elegance the Italians call sprezzatura. This is the kind of thing you wear for a drive to your villa on Lake Como in your Maserati Gran Turismo. Even better, merely putting on this jacket for a trip to the liquor store can make you feel like you're driving to your villa in a Maserati, which is the real test of its worth (The jacket retails for $3,995).

An ultra-rare 1933 Rolls-Royce Phantom II drophead coupe built for the original "Poor Little Rich Girl," Barbara Hutton, is being auctioned off on eBay with a starting bid of $1.1 million. The Woolworth Heiress originally purchased the car, one of only two ever made (and the only known example now in existence), for her first husband, the Russian Prince Alexis Mdivani. With coachwork by Thrupp & Maberly, the car cost $20,000 at the time.

This historic Rolls has something of a tragic history; Mdivani, who only stayed married to Hutton for one year (she had seven husbands in all including Cary Grant) was killed while driving it in France shortly after their divorce. Following the macabre accident, the Rolls was sent back to Thrupp & Maberly and fully restored, though the Prince was not. On the plus side, it only has 9,999 miles on it and is in beautiful shape.

[via Men.Style]