“If You Don’t Have Tchotchkes, I Don’t Trust You”: Celebrity Real Estate Wisdom

What would Real Estate month be if we didn’t get to drool over, or eye suspiciously, some really fancy living spaces? Refinery 29 has a slideshow interview of Stacy London, the delightfully mouthy former host of TLC’s long-running show “What Not To Wear,” in the home she’s owned for 10 years. She is not an entirely streamlined person. When asked about the toy dinosaurs and other humorous touches here and there, she says, “If you don’t have tchotchkes, I don’t trust you.”

London is also honest about how weird it can be to inhabit a space, even once you have purchased it and it’s, seemingly, yours.

It was my first apartment buy, and I had no idea what I was doing. It’s taken 10 years of moving through this space to understand what I wanted it to feel like. That’s why I have such huge respect for architects and interior designers. The way you understand space is key. I haven’t completely figured it out, but I’m getting there.

She decorated the apartment in part off of Etsy which ❤ ❤ ❤

And she does divest herself of that which she no longer needs:

What’s your purging philosophy?
“I have a sale every year. Everything is $40, and whatever I make I match and then donate to the animal-rescue center.”

If you are thinking of ditching the tchotchkes and/or purging your place yourself, there’s still time to join in with 40 Bags in 40 Days, the annual decluttering challenge.

Anyway, treat yourself to some eye candy. Then, if you’d like more, check out this off-the-charts crazy — but fun to look at — “Moorcrest” mansion bought six months ago or so by indie power couple Andy Samberg and Joanna Newsom. Charlie Chaplin and Mary Astor once lived there.

it is damn spectacular. These photos are, in a word, nuts. We’d heard that the lavish residence combined several styles, from Moorish to Art Nouveau, but who could have imagined this? The large glass bubble visible in earlier aerial shots of the property is a beautiful, light-flooded atrium; the pool in the backyard is more like a movie set, with a little (man-made) cave and a stepping-stone path. Nearly every inch of the house is covered in what look like painstakingly-detailed patterns.

Moorcrest was built for the utopian Krotona Colony in Beachwood Canyon and was designed by Marie Russak Hotchener, a rare-for-the-time female architect who designed several buildings for the Theosophist community; Moorcrest is considered one of her most famous and out-there pieces.They just do not build ’em like this anymore.

The seller is listed as a trust, but it appears to be Andrew Meieran, the producer/nightlife guy who’s slowly fixing up the Downtown Clifton’s and also owns The Edison; we hear he put a lot of work into rehabbing the place before first listing it for sale in 2006. Samberg and Newsom bought the property in an off-market deal for $6.25 million.

That seems like a good deal to me, if you can handle all that stained glass and tile and Orientalism without getting migraines.

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