Oceana, an international nonprofit based in Washington, D.C. dedicated to protecting and restoring the world's oceans, celebrated the launch of Oceana New York on Monday night with a star-studded bash at the stunning penthouse of socialite philanthropists Alexander and Brenda Schweickhardt (above, far right). A tableaux vivant of mermaids entertained guests at the event, which was sponsored by Tiffany & Co., including Sam Waterston and Sue Cohn Rockefeller (above, far left), John Varvatos and wife Joyce (above, center) Jeff Goldblum, Gina Gershon, Tommy Hilfiger and wife Dee, New York Jets tackle Damien Woody, New York Gubernatorial candidate Rick Lazio, and socialtes Denise Rich, Bettina Zilkha and Jean Shafiroff. Since its founding in 2001, Oceana has achieved several major victories including protecting more than 640 million acres of ocean habitat.

From the LA Times Hot Properties:
--Celebrity manager Rick Yorn has sold his Brentwood house for $9.35 million.
-- Wrestler Stone Cold Steve Austin listed his 3,881-square-foot house in Malibu for $3,895,000 originally, it just sold for $2.5 million.
--The home belonging to Kanye West's mom, Donda West is expected to get another price cut, to $1.595 million. The contemporary home in the Playa del Rey area of Los Angeles was originally priced at $1.945 million and was dropped to $1.745 million at the end of May. The listing is here.
--The Polaroid house, shown above, is located on Malibu's Carbon Beach, has been home to plenty of A-list parties but with Malibu's new paparazzi crackdown the home is looking for just one owner. The property has 80 feet of beach frontage and has approved plans to build a 6,000 square foot estate with a beachfront pool and spa as well as the existing home. It is listed at $32 million.

From the NY Post's Real Estate section:
--Fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger is about to list his Plaza apartment for $50 million. The apartment is located in the northeast dome on the 18th and 19th floors of the building and includes four bedrooms, a formal dining room, large living room, library and gourmet kitchen.
--Paul McCartney is looking for a New York City apartment closer to the Upper East Side apartment of his new flame Nancy Shevell.
--Denis Leary's TV series "Rescue Me" has just signed a six-month lease with Loft 14, the 10-story condominium building at 135 W. 14th St., where taping of their fifth season will begin this month. The lease is for $14,000 a month and the apartment has a real asking price of $2,375 million.

From Berg Properties Big Time Listings:
--Actor Chris O'Donnell has paid an undisclosed amount for a house in Pacific Palisades. The seller bought it last year for $4.675 million. He sold his last house in Pacific Palisades for $5.05 million.
--Jamie Foxx has sold his Tarzana home. It was our estate of the day back in June.
--Nicolas Cage's Bel Air home is back on the market, this time for $29.999 million. It hit the market last September for $35 million and was later pulled. The listing for the classic home which has been owned by both Dean Martin and Tom Jones is here.
--Glenn Frey has paid $7.75 million for a six-bedroom estate in Hana, Hawaii, on Maui.
--Kiefer Sutherland has paid $8.25 million for a t five-story town house in Manhattan's West Village.

From the Real Estalker:
--Looks like neither Donald Trump nor the mystery buyer have picked up Ed McMahon's house. It is still listed at $4.6 million.
--Rumor has it that Cher has sold her Malibu mansion which was listed at $45 million.
--Stevie Wonder has put his home in Los Feliz on the market for $3.2 million.
--Nascar racer Denny Hamlin has put his North Carolina home on the market. It's our estate of the day later today.
----via Boston.com, quarterback Tom Brady is a real estate winner. He converted a Beacon Street town house into four condos and sold three of them saving the top floors floors for himself. As a result he earned back more than he paid two years ago for the building. His total proceeds were $7.95 million which is $1.71 million more than he paid for the entire building, according to public deed records.
--via Nashville City Paper, country singer Kix Brooks of Brooks & Dunn and his wife Barbara are the buyers in Nashville's biggest home sale of the year. They paid $5.45 million in August for a new house in Forest Hills.
--via the Real Deal, Moby sold his penthouse at the El Dorado, the twin-towered cooperative apartment at 300 Central Park West near 90th Street, for $6.7 million. It was our estate of the day in July of 2007 when it was priced at $7.5 million.
--Dane Cook has picked up a four-bedroom home in the Hollywood Hills for $7,078,412.

From the Wall Street Journal's Private Properties:
--Basketball player Allen Iverson has reduced the price on his Villanova, Pennsylvania home by 37%. We will be checking this out as our estate of the day on Monday.
--Basketball player Rasheed Wallace has cut the price on his Portland, Oregon home. It will be our estate of the day on Tuesday.
--Actor Matthew Modine has purchased a condominium in New York's Chelsea section for $1.7 million.
--Leonard Ross who put the Hearst estate in Beverly Hills on the market for $165 million has taken it off the market. He has decided to keep the home.

From the NY Observer's Manhattan Transfers:
-- A co-op penthouse in 1060 Fifith Avenue has sold for $48,836,000 setting a new co-op price record in Manhattan. Hedge fund manager Scott Bommer and wife Donya. The couple bought the home for $46 million penthouse back in January. The buyer is listed anonymously on the deed as Park View Trust.
--Writer Ian Buruma spent $1,495,000 on an apartment at the Kalahari on West 116th Street. He and Eri Hotta, who taught at Oxford until 2005, closed last month.
--Ben Stiller spent $10 million on a duplex in a prewar orange-brick co-op on Riverside Drive in the West 80s, the same building that his parents, Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, have lived in for years.

Leonardo DiCaprio's gorgeous Israeli model girlfriend Bar Refaeli has landed the fall ad campaign for classic California surf company Hurley. The ads (above) which showcase Refaeli's ample charms will debut in magazines this fall, and she will also appear in the brand's Spring 2009 runway show during Los Angeles Fashion Week in October. You can watch a video of her shooting the campaign here. Refaeli, the first Israeli model to appear in Sports Illustrated's Swimsuit Issue, was also recently named Best Body of 2008 by Arena magazine, and will appear in Tommy Hilfiger's Iconic America TV special this fall.



[via Kempt]

The world of online television takes a fashionable turn with the launch of Tommy TV, the new online television station launched by Tommy Hilfiger and Sony BMG. The channel is an online evolution of the Hilfiger Sessions music series which features high profile artists playing with new and upcoming talent in intimate gigs in cities around the world. Tommy TV shows live recordings of The Hilfiger Sessions as well as artist interviews and backstage footage. Hilfiger Auditions will also showcase new artists offering a chance to upload your own music. As "Fred Gehring, chief executive office of Tommy Hilfiger Group sees it, music and fashion go hand in hand. The website won't sell Tommy Hilfiger clothing directly but it will link to the Hilfiger online store.

[via WWD]

I was going to leave this one for the Sunday Real Estate Round-Up but I couldn't wait. Stone Hill in Greenwich, Connecticut is one of the homes belonging to Tommy Hilfiger. According to information from the NY Post the designer will be moving into the Plaza in Manhattan when his duplex is completed. Hilfiger bought this new home in 2005 for $18 million and worked his decorator magic. The 20,000-square-foot home has seven bedrooms, 13 bathrooms, a massive great room, basketball court, spa with a waterfall, theater, gym and a huge 2,000-bottle wine cellar.

I'm a little embarrassed by just how much I love the decor on this one. In general I'm not a fan of a home decorated to within an inch of its life but this one is an excellent product of the Ralph Lauren/Tommy Hilfiger luxe American style.The decorator did a great job incorporating the art and the home is luxurious without being overly formal. It's similar in style to his Further Lane property (which he recently sold for $26.5 million) right down to the use of orange accents. This one is listed at $27.9 million.

UPDATE: As of January 2009, Hilfiger has reduced the price to $21.995 million. Cindy Rinfret of Rinfret, Ltd. was the decorator for Stone Hill. Rinfret has designed eleven of Tommy's homes, and is currently working on his duplex Plaza apartment.

[Thanks, Lana]

I first heard about this home last spring when Tommy Hilfiger bought in on Further Lane in East Hampton. It was reported that Hilfiger spend around $18 million and planned to create his own furniture for the home. Fast forward a few months and Tommy is ready to move on. The home has five bedrooms, a media room, Boffi kitchen and an outdoor mahogany pavilion. There is also a vanishing edge pool and a private boardwalk leading to the ocean. About that furniture, Hilfiger did go to Bali and oversee the design of it. According to the Wall Street Journal article by Ben Casselman, the $24.5 million asking price doesn't include the furniture although it can be bougt separately. After the jump, a deliciously judicious use of orange as an accent color.

From the NY Post's Gimme Shelter:
--The former Fifth Avenue home of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis has been sold to an unidentified buyer. It was listed at $32 million and the current owner bought it for $9.5 million in 1995. Koch spent another $10 million renovating the  co-op apartment but now the apartment is too small for his growing family.
--Charlie Sheen has picked up a 7,500-square-foot estate on Mulholland Drive and his soon-to-be ex-wife Denise Richards has picked up a home in the Hidden Hills area.
--Steven Roth has moved into his prewar co-op apartment on Park Avenue and is selling his vacated residence a few blocks away.His full-floor 10-room co-op at 800 Park Avenue, show above is listed at $9 million. The unit has three family bedrooms,  servants' quarters with two bedrooms, a living room with a wood-burning fireplace, a library and an office. The listing is here.
--Gregory Olsen, the man who once paid $20 million to the Russian government to ride in a spaceship, has sold his Time Warner Center condo for $12.5 million to a Greek businessman.
--500 square feet, no kitchen, $2.4 million. The ultimate in expensive in New York is a studio in the St. Regis. The residences are some of the most expensive rooms in the city.
--Elle Macpherson is apartment hunting in Manhattan. She has been seen checking out the Armani-designed 20 Pine Street and 15 Broad Street.
--Interior designer Kitty Hawks has sold her two-bedroom apartment for just over $2 million.

From the NY Observer's Manhattan Transfers:
--Tina Fey and her husband, musician Jeff Richmond, have picked up an Upper West Side apartment for $550,000 that they will use as an office.
--Billionaire and MBNA heir Randolph Lerner purchased the  $27.5 million penthouse apartment at 740 Park Avenue. The apartment was formerly owned by Enid A. Haupt. As reported earlier in the NY Post, the family with four children may have a hard time negotiating this apartment which only has two bedrooms plus two smaller bedrooms in the staff quarters.
--The conversion of the Stanhope Hotel seems not to be going so well. The apartments which are listed at between $10 and $47 million have nine-foot-ceilings which can seem low in massively-sized apartments. The developer says its doing well but the brokers are less enthused by the low ceilings and high maintenance costs which make it hard to move the apartments.
 
From the NY Times Big Deal:
--No one seems to know how much was paid for a Convent Avenue townhouse which went to a Yale professor. The deed says $3.89 million but the buyer John Geanakoplos says it sold for less than that due to some special deal he won't give the details on.
--Tommy Hilfiger, the fashion designer who recently made news for his fight with Axl Rose, has agreed to pay about $18 million for a five-bedroom house on Further Lane in East Hampton. He plans to move in this summer and is creating his own furniture for the house.
--Hotelier Andre Balazs has put the loft apartment he lives in at 158 Mercer on the market for $10 million.

From the LA Times Hot Property:
--Weatherman Dallas Raines and his wife have bought a Pasadena house for just under $2 million.
--Norm Pattiz, the founder of Westwood One, has listed his Beverly Hills home for $27.5 million. The estate which was built in 1940 formerly belonged to Marlo Thomas and David Geffen. The listing is here.
--Agent Patrick Whitesell and his wife, newscaster Lauren Sanchez are looking for a family home in the San Fernando valley and have sold their  Pacific Palisades home for nearly $3.3 million.
--DJ Paul Oakenfold has sold his Hollywood Hills house for about $2.3 million.

From the Wall Street Journal:
--Former GE CEO, Jack Welch has sold his Fairfield, Connecticut home for $6.9 million, a little over half what he once asked for it. He paid  $3.25 million for the house known as Windswept back in 1990 and later bought two additional acres. The house sat on the market for three years.