Clothing Designer Christian Audigier Lists Topanga (CA) Compound

SELLER: Christian Audigier
LOCATION: Topanga, CA
PRICE: $3,299,000
SIZE: 3.15 acres, 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Your Mama apologizes for today's delay. It's been a trying week to begin with and this morning we were down and out with a still not entirely cleared up technical issue in the form or a misbehaving lap top computer. Almost as soon as we managed to get the lap top bandaged and running on three cylinders we had to dart out to our Beverly Hills dermatologist to have a little thing removed. Needless to say, we're a bit bedraggled and definitely behind the eight ball this Friday and, indeed, this entire week. We will be properly back up in the celebrity real estate saddle soon. Anyhoo, we only digress in our complaints.

Today's celebrity real estate subject comes courtesy of an historic and decoratively idiosyncratic Topanga, CA compound owned by consummate self-promoter/clothing designer Christian Audigier and recently put on the open market with an asking price of $3,299,000. According to the fine folks at Trulia, the neo-Mexi-western meets Tinseltown style compound is also available for lease at a rate of $16,500 per month.

In his teen-aged youth French-born and bred Mister Audigier worked for iconic 1980s Italian fashion label Fiorucci and became–according to the interweb–an in-demand wunderkind of denim who consulted for this, that and a bunch of other designers. Eventually Mister Audigier landed in Los Angeles and lit out on his own. His first real claim to household name fame was the formerly ubiquitous Von Dutch trucker that used to be worn by scad of celebs like Britney Spears and Ashton Kutcher and made Mister Audigier a mountain of money and famous the world over.

He followed up Von Dutch, amongst other projects, with Ed Hardy, a casual but glittery brand that consists of anything and everything that can be blinged-out, bedazzled and/or brazenly emblazoned with graffiti and/or a vintage tattoo design: Swarovski crystal-encrusted tennis shoes, you ask? They got 'em; Rhinestone-studded t-shirts for men? Oh yes indeed, children, but only if you dare; Smart phone cases and chintzy key chains? But of course, mon chéri; Mister Audigier, bless his heart, even gets people to pay him–pay him, children–to drive cars that besides getting its owner from place to place acts as a free and moving billboard advertisement for Mister Audigier's Ed Hardy brand.

At some point, it seems, Mister Audigier realized the salad days of too-tan men wearing gold chains and low-rise tattoo-printed jeans have come to a close. A quick perusal of their online shopping portal reveals that much of the newer Ed Hardy merchandise presents itself in a much less sparkly and flamboyant manner than for which it became (in)famous.

Listen chickens, we don't mean to be mean here but let's be dead honest. Whatever one may think of or however one may judge Mister Audigier's unsubtle self-promoting ways, his flashy (and some might say trashy) lifestyle, and his many fad-oriented fashion brands, the man mastered the fine and gruesome retail art of selling bizarrely bedazzled shit for whole lotta shinola. Y'all can crucify him for making bank on all his over-labeled brands but it's not his fault vast numbers of fashion fools were willing to pay upwards of $200 for a t-shirt with a giant rhinestone studded skull on it. It might be harsh for Your Mama to blast off like this but those people who were all too willing to spend real money on Ed Hardy hairdryers and corny sneakers jazzed up with a glittery dragon should have known better. Don't hate the playa, baby, hate the game.

Anyhoo, property records show that it was in July 2008 that Mister Audigier purchased his semi-remote spread nestled high in the Santa Monica Mountains. Tucked into a tight hair pin curve on a winding road that runs between Malibu and Woodland Hills, the irregularly shaped 3.15 acre estate cost Mister Audigier, as per property records, $2,075,000.

Listing information shows the electronically gated compound–the arched sign over the driveway identifies it, natch, as the C-A Ranch–includes a 3 bedroom and 2 bathroom Spanish style main house from 1931 and a quartet of guest cottages. A one-time–and, we presume, deconsecrated–chapel on the property can now used for more heathen purposes generically identified in the listing as "entertainment." We're not sure but we wonder if that stone-walled space shown in listing photographs, the one where several over-sized and differently colored chandeliers are hung low in a wacky cluster over the coffee table, is the old chapel hall. Whatever that room is, it's a miracle some babe in a bedazzled bikini or shirtless male model with a crystal-studded cell phone case haven't sued Mister Audiger after bumping their pretty heads on those darkly beautiful but dangerous-looking things.

 Anyhoo, throughout the house there are vintage Malibu-style tile details and, from the few listing images available, Mister Audigier appears to have done up and worked over the interior spaces with mixy-matchy sort of day-core that includes a saddle or two; one giant ball crafted with itty-bitty bits of driftwood; an Indonesian-looking carved wood fireplace mantel; worn, tufted leather sofas; wall-mounted animal skulls laden with multi-colored cowboy hats; fur bedspreads and pillow shams; deer antler table lamps; and fancy looking guitars set around in unlikely spots. It's visually aggressive and certainly feels to Your Mama more than a little self-conscious. We, in fact, had to steel our battered nerves with a handful of Tootsie Rolls when we really gave the listing photographs a good inspection. Even still, we'd rather stuff our face with candy and look at decorating derring-do like this than one of those mortifying milquetoast (mc)mansions where everything is brown and beige.

A flagstone terrace surrounds surrounds a long and dark-bottomed rectilinear swimming pool. One side of the pool is lined, boo-teek hotel-like, with 10 or 12 chaise lounges, matching market umbrellas and a couple of curtain-lined poolside cabanas for dining and lounging in a shaded environment.

Lush green lawns mix with more desert-friendly landscaping around the house. Pathways meander through thickets of mature oak, pine and olive trees to the various corners of the property that includes a stream and what listing information calls a "young vineyard."

His neo-Mexi-western meets Tinseltown-style compound in Topanga is not, as it turns out, the only of Mister Audigier's decadently dressed homes currently on the market. Just over a year ago, Mister Audigier heaved his highly-styled 8,276 square foot mansion in Los Angeles' hoity-toity Hancock Park 'hood on the market with an $8,299,000 price tag. Since then, Mister Audigier, who bought the 7 bedroom and 7 bathroom residence in early 2007 for $4,780,000, has had the architecturally dignified (but tarted up) 1920s era mansion off and on the market a couple of times. It was re-listed about two weeks ago with a reduced asking price of $7,650,000.

listing photos (both properties): Sotheby's International Realty