SELLER: Kelly HoppenLOCATION: London, UK
PRICE: £6,000,000
SIZE: 2,574 square feet, 2 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Thanks to Our Man in London, we've learned that world-renowned celebrity interior designer Kelly Hoppen has put her two-bedroom townhouse in London's natty Notting Hill on the market with an asking price of £6,000,000. That's $9,671,940US at today's rates according to Your Mama's trusty currency conversion contraption.
That's correct, cupcakes, it's a two-bedroom house with a hefty price tag of nearly ten million clams. Have mercy! That just about leaves a body breathless, don't it? Even after this grim real estate recession the last few years the stratospheric prices in London still manage to flummox and flabbergast this somewhat jaded real estate gossip.
Anyhoodles poodles, the ginger-locked South African-born and London-based designer pals around in a very posh crowd which we imagine not only helped her secure a serious celebrity clientele but to also become one of Britain's leading interior decorating tour de forces. Miz Hoppen, who lucratively hawks a variety of home day-core products on the QVC, has reportedly worked her sophisticated signature style of moody, multi-textural and rigorously neutral palettes on the homes of many high-profile people such as Gwyneth Paltrow, Sir Elton John, Sir Anthony Hopkins and Vicki Beckham and her high-voiced hottie huzband David. She also happens to be the former step-mum of British ack-tress Sienna Miller. Miz Hoppen was married to and dee-vorced from Miss Miller's daddy Ed. This means, natch, that Miz Hoppen gets to claim Miss Miller as a client too. In fact, it was Miz Hoppen who was responsible for the wealthy-bohemian-gal-in-the-city-style day-core of wee London townhouse Miss Miller sold back in 2009 and, according to Our Man in London, Miz Hoppen is currently engaged in a decorative overhaul of the significant mansion Miss Miller and her on-again/off-again/on-again actor-lover Jude Law recently snagged on a celebrity-lined street in London's Highgate 'hood.
Iffin we're being honest–and we always are–we'd confess that we really haven't a clue when exactly Miz Hoppen purchased this property or what she may have paid for it. However, the decorating dervish is on record as being a person who like to buy, renovate, decorate and sell at a fairly rapid pace so we're guessing that she's only owned this townhouse since sometime around 2008 or '09 when she sold a wildly spacious apartment in South London's gritty and not particularly charming Battersea.
Listing information and marketing materials for Miz Hoppen's house shows the 4-floor Georgian-style townhouse spans a modest but far from tiny 2,574 square feet and has, as mentioned above, just two bedrooms and 2.5 poopers. The front door of the mildly-trapezoidal residence opens into a narrow stair hall stripped bare of moldings, baseboards and other architectural frippery that can often be expected of a townhouse of this age. Immediately to the right a series of sliding doors slip into the walls to reveal a sleek, dramatic and insanely expensive Boffi kitchen with high-gloss black cabinetry. To her decorative credit, Miz Hoppen smartly created a necessary tension in the room by pairing the dark-hued cutting edge kitchen fittings and theatrical lighting programs with white walls and an antique rug with a complex pattern. Beyond the kitchen a dining room opens to a terrace with stairs down to the courtyard-style backyard that Miz Hoppen has not surprisingly done up with an equal amount of monochromatic theatricality as the interiors.
The entire second floor consists of a luxe and louche 28-foot long drawing room–that's a living room to all us Americanos–with a black glass chimney breast that conceals a tee-vee and a substantial terrace that looks over the backyard. The all black and white room has a kind of late 1970s cocaine glamor and looks like the sort of room one must languish seductively in bare feet and a vintage Halston Kaftan dress.
One flight up from the drawing room on the top level the master bedroom provides a multi-textured vision in putty with a black plantation shutters and an entire wall of Japanese-inspired wardrobes. The en suite, all right angles and a mixture of glistening white tiles and softly-sheened ebony wood accents, features a separate shower, soaking tub and–in keeping with current trends in terlit day-core–a wall-mounted crapper.
The lower ground level–this is called the basement in America–Miz Hoppen has installed a home-gym with mirrored walls and Union Jack flag pattern accents. Also down in the basement is a large dressing room–presumably this is a place to store out of season clothing and little used ball gowns–and a powder pooper. This facility is the only one accessible without having to clumsily traverse through a bedroom. That means if a person visiting Miz Hoppen in her black and white drawing gets an uncontrollable urge to tinkle or squat they'll need to descend two full flights of stairs and then climb the two flights back up. Better, perhaps, for all the heavy boozers who need to pee a lot to just wear a diaper when visiting Miz Hoppen for drinky-poos in the drawing room.
At the rear of the basement is an all-white guest bedroom with en suite facilities and a pair of French doors that open the room to a lower-level terrace in the backyard. Stairs lead up to the main part of the yard, a decked area with dining table and conversation area..
Naturally, Your Mama hasn't a clue where Miz Hoppen will alight next but wherever it may be we're quite certain she's work the place over to within an inch of its life with a tightly controlled color scheme and super-luxurious tactility.
listing photos and floor plan: Crayson
