Tamara Mellon's New Jimmy Choo-plex

BUYER: Tamara Mellon
LOCATION: East 95th Street, New York, NY
PRICE: $20,000,000
SIZE: 7,140 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms (as per listing)
DESCRIPTION: The present 7,140sf duplex penthouse encompasses 10 rooms and 6 fabulous terraces all enhanced with the finest finishes and appointments. Amount the primary rooms are a grand 40' LR w/ 12' ceiling, 22' FDR, 20' WEIK and maid's quarters. There are options to create a master suite on the upper level with access to a sun filled 48' x 20' terrace and another 5th bedroom.

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: All the New York City nabobs and snooty international real estate queens like Your Mama have done chewed their fingernails to the nubbins wondering and worrying was to become of the palatial penthouse doo-plex of the newly cut up Carhart Mansion which booze baron and entertainment tycoon Edgar Bronfman Jr. scooped up in November of 2007 for $18,750,000 and promptly put back on the market in less time than it takes a hooker to straighten her skirt and reapply lipstick.

Well children, thanks to vaunted celebrity real estate gossip Braden Keil at the NY Post, now we know. After reducing the asking price to $21,750,000, the penthouse on East 95th street was snatched up by an early forty something and exceedingly rich international socialite and bizness ladee named Tamara Mellon for a reported $20,000,000.

While Your Mama realizes that most middle class mall walkers probably know diddly-squat about Miz Moneybags Mellon, the long haired broo-nette is a particularly well shod regular on the international social circuit having been married to (and bitterly dee-vorced from) troubled oil and banking heir Matthew Mellon of the insanely rich Pittsburgh Mellon family, natch. However, Miz Mellon doesn't live like the jet setting pampered princess she is on the back of on her ex-huzbands big fat (and inherited) bank account, she's also an enormously successful and well respected bizness woman in her own right who with the financial assistance of her rich daddy founded the Jimmy Choo shoo empire and subsequently transformed the swanky brand into a must-have among shoe fetishists and others who think $600 or more for a pair of strappy summer sandals is not only affordable, but also a reasonable price to pay.

According to Mister Keil, Miz Mellon lives primarily in London with her young daughter so why the former party queen turned shoe queen needs a tremendous $20,000,000 Manhattan pied a terre with taxes and maintenance fees in excess of $25,000 per month is a bit of a mystery to common pee-pole like Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter who do not run in the same couture-clad crowd as Miz Mellon.

According to listing information for the East 95th Street doo-plex penthouse, Miz Mellon's new Choo-plex measures in at 7,140 square feet. The dee-luxe digs appear to be currently configured with four principle bedrooms, four full and 2 half bathrooms plus one punishingly puny staff room and bath tucked back behind the kitchen.

The principal rooms include a forty-one foot living room with a wood buring fireplace, herringbone patterned par-kay flooring and access to a both an enclosed solarium and one of the penthouse's half dozen terraces. A second wood burning fireplace warms the formal dining room and a 320 square foot kitchen is well lit by a wall of windows and three sky lights.

All four bedrooms, including the master with its dual dressing room and large bathroom are on the main level and, unfortunately, flank the public spaces. The entire second floor of the penthouse is devoted almost entirely to a large room labeled "solarium" on the floor plan. A windowless half bathroom and a pantry area for whipping up snacks without having to expend the energy to walk down a flight of stairs fill out the remainder of the second floor square footage.

Quite frankly, Your Mama thinks the current configuration sucks. Not only do we find the traffic pattern constipated and quirky in an annoying way, the children will note with some flabbergast that the current layout in this hideously expensive apartment does not even include a damn library or a proper laundry room for Lucinda the Laundress to work her stain removal magic every Tuesday and Thursday mornings.

Fortunately, according to listing information, the seller–that would be Mister Edgar Bronfman Jr.–hired a smart architect to rework and re-imagine the floor plan. We have included that plan on the right of the floor plan image. Your Mama can only hope that the Christian Slater dater has a Birkin bag full of bucks left over after buying this big apartment in order to implement at least some of the ideas in Mister Bronfman's much more resolved and better considered floor plan.

So what do the children think? Which is the better layout? What works? What doesn't? Do any of you spatially inclined types want to take a crack at redesigning the floor plan? If Your Mama gets a few floor plan choices to choose from we'll pop them online next week and let the children bicker and vote for their favorite.

Your Mama isn't sure to which high priced property Mister Bronfman will be decamping with his half dozen children. What we do know is that in the last few years he dumped a reported $31,00,000 on a big house in Bridgehampton, flipped an (approx.) $20,000,000 co-operative apartment in Jackie-O's old building at 1040 Fifth Avenue as well as sold an extravagantly scaled East 64th Street townhouse for $50,000,000. Most recently he finally unloaded a 6 bedroom and 7.5 bathroom house on 3.2 acres in Amagansett which was last listed at $14,700,000.