Latest news with #SouthernCalifornian
7NEWS
a day ago
- Entertainment
- 7NEWS
Life in the fast lane: Inside the real estate portfolio of F1 star Brad Pitt
Star of the new hit sports film F1, Brad Pitt is most widely known for his award-winning film roles. However, in real estate circles the star is just as well known as an architecture aficionado, having purchased multiple architecturally significant properties throughout his career. Now in his 60s, the leading man has amassed a multi-million dollar property portfolio filled with iconic homes, secluded estates and lucrative commercial properties. Here are some of the incredible properties that make up Pitt's real estate portfolio. The Steel House - $5.5 million According to the Robb Report, Pitt purchased the architecturally-designed Steel House in a secret off-market deal with oil heiress Aileen Getty. Pitt paid a reported $5.5 million (AUD $8.3 million) for the midcentury-modern Los Feliz home, days after he sold Getty his own Los Feliz home that he once lived in with ex-wife Angelina Jolie and their six kids for $33 million (AUD $50 million). Designed by architect Neil M. Johnson in 1960, the L-shaped home features floor-to-ceiling windows, cantilevered roofline and terrazzo floors. Straight from a Slim Aarons photograph, the distinctly Southern Californian home wraps around a central swimming pool and patio, framed by lush landscaping. Luxury amenities in the property include a redwood hot tub, sauna and a retro white open fireplace. The D.L. James House - $40 million In 2022, Pitt made another significant off-market purchase. This time it was the iconic D.L. James House in Carmel Highlands, which the star bought for a record-breaking $40 million (AUD $60.6 million). Perched on a rocky seaside bluff, the residence was built by Charles Sumner Greene around 1918. Commissioned by writer D.L. James, Carmel Magazine states the design of the home was based on "the ruins of Tintagel Castle in Cornwall, England". Locally known as 'Seaward', the home has an illustrious history with many famous former residents including Jesse James, Charlie Chaplin and Joan Didion. Built entirely with stone, the Mediterranean-style home appears to grow out of the rocky cliff-face and offers unobstructed ocean views. It features arched windows, an outdoor courtyard, tile roof and dedicated staff wing. Château Miraval - $60 million One of Pitt's largest real estate holdings is an 1,200-acre estate and winery in Correns, France known as Château Miraval. Originally Pitt rented the property with his ex-wife Jolie, before the couple purchased it in 2012 for $60 million (AUD $91 million). The 35-room château includes a recording studio, a Romanesque chapel where the couple were married, indoor and outdoor pools, a gym and spa, and a screening room. The grounds feature multiple cottages, olive groves, a private lake, dirt bike course, helipads and a vineyard that launched a rose in 2013. After their divorce, Jolie sold her 50 percent share to Russian oligarch Yuri Shefler's Stoli Group - a deal that is still being contested in court by Pitt. Goleta Beach House - $4 million Located outside Santa Barbara, is the secluded Goleta Beach House that Pitt was reported to have purchased in 2000 for $4 million (AUD $6 million). The star bought the oceanfront home not long after his marriage to star Jennifer Aniston and it was believed to have been a romantic hideaway for the pair. Set on an expansive 11.5-acre plot near Gaviota State Park, the home offers direct coastal access and ocean views. Frogtown Studios - $6.93 million Not satisfied with only residential investments, in 2021 Pitt secured three commercial properties in Los Angeles's Frogtown neighbourhood. The actor paid a reported $2.93 million (AUD $4.4 million) for a vintage manufacturing building on Clearwater Street. A year later, he purchased two plots directly across the street for around $4 million (AUD $6 million). Pitt acquired the properties in the former industrial area from his longtime friend British sculptor Thomas Houseago.
Los Angeles Times
2 days ago
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
Another right-wing White House aide from liberal Santa Monica?
When people analyze Stephen Miller's rise as a hard-right advisor to President Trump, they marvel that he could emerge from left-leaning Santa Monica. They see a political mutation. I see a throwback. That's because Miller is not the first polarizing advisor to a Republican president to emerge from the town at the western terminus of the 10 Freeway. It's the town that was once the political base of Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden and birthplace of one of California's most liberal rent control laws. But long before Miller (and that lefty tilt) came another Santa Monica High School graduate — John Ehrlichman, President Nixon's chief domestic policy advisor. Ehrlichman graduated with the Santa Monica High class of 1942, 61 years before Miller left the campus at 4th Street and Pico Boulevard. He, too, would come to be depicted as one of the villainous advisors to a controversial Republican president. But back in his day, Ehrlichman was less of an outlier. Republican-leaning homeowners and the town's right-of-center Evening Outlook newspaper dominated Santa Monica politics in the 1940s and '50s. The onetime Eagle Scout went from 'Samohi' (also my alma mater) to UCLA and Stanford Law School. During his time at UCLA, Ehrlichman befriended H.R. 'Bob' Haldeman, and the duo soon hitched their futures to another Southern Californian, Nixon. The former congressman and vice president lost in the 1960 presidential campaign and the 1962 California governor's race. When he finally took the White House in 1968, Haldeman and Ehrlichman followed, the former as chief of staff and the latter as another key member of Nixon's inner circle. Ehrlichman also helped Nixon cover up Watergate, the scandal that began to unravel when police caught burglars bugging Democratic Party campaign offices at the Watergate hotel, office and apartment complex in Washington. Ehrlichman's role in the scandal got him bounced out of the Samohi Hall of Fame, though sentiment about giving him the boot was not universal. Most students and residents said Ehrlichman had disgraced the school and deserved to go, according to a New York Times story in 1973. But some others said he should not lose his spot of honor in the Hall of Fame until he had been put on trial. A jury soon convicted Ehrlichman of obstruction of justice, conspiracy and perjury. He went to federal prison for 18 months. 'Although he went on to write novels, work with Native Americans and become involved in environmental issues, his role in Watergate continued to define and haunt him,' said his L.A. Times obituary in 1999, when he died at 73. And he never got back in the Santa Monica High School Hall of Fame, an honor bestowed on dozens of others, including Dodgers star Rick Monday, writer and comedian Sandra Tsing Loh and Olympic shot put gold medalist Parry O'Brien. Miller was also nominated for the Hall of Fame, during Trump's first term in office. But the board of the school's alumni association decided it was premature to judge the Republican, said alumni association President Phil Brock. 'We accept nominations from any Samohi graduate for another Samohi graduate for the Hall of Fame,' said Brock, who is also a past mayor of Santa Monica. 'I think it was premature to consider [Miller] at the time and I would still say that. Let's see how his lifetime accomplishments play out.' The Times' Deborah Vankin explores the luxury world of dog wellness in her latest story. Now we want to know how you pamper your furry best friends. Email us at essentialcalifornia@ and your response might appear in the newsletter this week. Today's great photo is from Times photographer Genaro Molina at the Los Angeles Zoo during a visit from some L.A. Unified migrant summer school students. The Trump administration wants to slash federal funding for programs supporting migrant children — including programs that allow some of California's most vulnerable children to visit the L.A. Zoo twice a week. Jim Rainey, staff writerDiamy Wang, homepage internIzzy Nunes, audience internKevinisha Walker, multiplatform editorAndrew Campa, Sunday writerKarim Doumar, head of newsletters How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to essentialcalifornia@ Check our top stories, topics and the latest articles on
Fashion United
3 days ago
- Business
- Fashion United
Vuori accelerates global expansion in China and South Korea
US performance lifestyle brand Vuori is accelerating its international expansion with new brick-and-mortar stores across Asia alongside an expansion of its digital footprint with a rollout of its e-commerce platform across Europe and Japan. Vuori, launched in 2015 by Joe Kudla, founder and chief executive of the brand, has been growing its international community with its fabric-first approach to creating premium performance apparel and elevated everyday styles. Currently, Vuori is available in more than 18 countries worldwide, and will surpass its 100-store milestone globally by the close of 2025, including locations in the US and the UK. By 2026, the brand will have a total of 15 stores outside the US as it continues to push forward with an international mindset. This will include its first locations in Seoul, South Korea, in September through a franchise partner, followed by another debut location in Beijing, China, this October, as it continues to focus on adding retail stores in 'top-tier cities' in a data-driven, phased market-entry strategy. Andy Lawrence, senior vice president of international at Vuori, who joined the brand in 2021, said in a statement: 'Vuori's international growth has been patient, long-term focused, and designed to build brand equity across all key channels where our customer shops. 'We're not chasing quick wins, we're cultivating meaningful communities in high-potential markets. With our new stores in Beijing and Seoul, we're deepening our presence in key markets in Asia, while our digital expansion into key European and Asian countries allows us to test, learn, and scale in a way that's responsive and efficient.' Vuori spring/summer 2025 campaign starring the Gerber-Crawford family Credits: Vuori by Cass Bird Vuori to open new stores in Seoul and Beijing this autumn Alongside its physical retail growth, Vuori is also launching localised e-commerce platforms in 11 new countries, including Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Austria, Portugal, and Japan, as it looks to target a broader audience across Europe and Japan. This follows successful store launches in London and Shanghai, and a 'strong start' to wholesale in Japan and Europe, adds the brand. 'To date, we view international as something like a slingshot: pulled back to build strength before we accelerate and launch forward,' added Lawrence. 'The foundational work we're doing now is setting us up for quicker, sustainable acceleration in the years to come. Vuori spring/summer 2025 campaign starring the Gerber-Crawford family Credits: Vuori by Cass Bird Vuori's continued international expansion follows the Southern Californian performance lifestyle brand announcing a partnership with the Gerber-Crawford family in May 2025, which tapped supermodel Cindy Crawford and her husband Rande Gerber, alongside their model children Presley Gerber and Kaia Gerber as ambassadors, as well as contributing to shaping Vuori as creative, strategic and financial partners. The activewear brand also appointed Ashley Kechter its new global president earlier this month. Kechter joined the company from Fabletics, where she had served as global brand president for over two years.
Los Angeles Times
09-07-2025
- General
- Los Angeles Times
Let's Los Angelize L.A.
Almost since the first suburbs were built in Los Angeles, there have been worries that adding density would 'Manhattanize' L.A., rendering it so crowded with new vertical development as to be unrecognizable to longtime residents. In the 1980s, as battles over growth heated up, one local slow-growth group dubbed itself Not Yet New York. But Los Angeles has always been a city with a knack for reshaping itself by looking to its own architectural past. In particular, medium-density designs such as bungalow courts and dingbat apartments have welcomed waves of newcomers for more than a century while becoming architectural emblems of upward mobility and a particularly Southern Californian design sensibility — informal and optimistic. We have never needed a return to that kind of development more than now, in the wake of the Eaton and Palisades fires, even as public discussion has focused mostly on rebuilding exactly what was lost. With affordability pressures as intense as ever, now is the time not to Manhattanize but, once again, to Los Angelize L.A. As longtime advocates for design excellence and policies to boost housing production, we believe there is nothing more Angeleno than the reinvention of the so-called R1 neighborhood, the single-family zone that first emerged in L.A. with the Residential District Ordinance of 1908. R1 zoning shifted into overdrive in 1941 when tract houses emerged to replace the bean fields of Westchester, near what is now Los Angeles International Airport. It wasn't until 2016, with the appearance of a new state law allowing accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, that the R1 neighborhood evolved in any meaningful way. Even the most ardent champions of ADUs — aka granny flats or casitas — couldn't have foreseen how widely popular they'd become. Today, about one-fifth of new housing permits in California and a whopping one-third in the city of L.A. are ADUs. Still, the granny flat is no silver bullet. The housing affordability crisis in Los Angeles demands a more ambitious approach than adding new residential development one small unit at a time. State laws allowing as many as 10 apartments on a single-family lot have been on the books for several years now. But homeowners and developers have been slow to take advantage of them, and many California cities have dragged their feet in making them truly usable. The result has been a stalemate, with Los Angeles among the cities struggling to take the important step past the ADU to begin producing additional missing-middle housing in real volume, even as rents and home prices continue to climb. The city's Low-Rise LA design challenge was organized in 2020 to help break this logjam. Many of the winners incorporated design lessons clarified by the COVID-19 pandemic, when we learned that second, third and fourth units in R1 zones might offer not just rental income or an extra bedroom but the flexibility to quarantine or work from home while building stronger ties with extended family and neighbors. A new initiative — Small Lots, Big Impacts — organized by cityLAB-UCLA, the Los Angeles Housing Department and the office of Mayor Karen Bass builds on Low-Rise LA with a focus on developing small, often overlooked vacant lots, of which there are more than 25,000 across the city, according to cityLAB's research. The goal is straightforward: to demonstrate a range of ways that Los Angeles can grow not by aping the urbanism of other cities but by producing more of itself. Winners of this design competition, announced at the end of May, placed six or more housing units on a single site, sometimes dividing it into separate lots. One proposal created rowhouses, slightly cracked apart to identify individual homes and entrances as they cascade along an irregular site. A communal yard opens to the street in another project, with roof gardens between separated, two-story homes atop ADUs that can be rented or joined back to each of several main houses on the site. Other designs show that vertical architecture, in the form of handsome new residential towers from three to seven stories, can comfortably coexist with L.A.'s low-rise housing stock when the design is thoughtful enough. A key goal of the competition was to produce new models for homeownership. When land costs are subdivided and parcels built out with a collection of compact homes, including units that can produce rental income or be sold off as condos, a different approach to housing affordability comes into focus. Those who have been shut out of the housing market can begin to build wealth and contribute to neighborhood stability. The traditional R1 paradigm, in addition to limiting housing volume, suffers from a rigid, gate-keeping sort of logic: If you can't afford to buy or rent an entire single-family home in an R-1 L.A. neighborhood, that part of town is inaccessible to you. Many of the winning designs, by contrast, create compounds flexible enough to accommodate a range of phases in a resident's life. In one development, there may be units perfect for single occupants (a junior ADU), young families (a ground-level unit with a private yard), and empty-nesters (a home with a rooftop garden). As with the granny flat model, construction can proceed in phases, with units added over time as circumstances dictate. Having served on the Small Lots, Big Impacts jury, we see signs of hope in its rendering of L.A.'s future. The real proof lies in the initiative's second phase, set for later this year, when the city's Housing Department will issue an open call, based on the design competition, to developer-architect teams who will build housing on a dozen small, city-owned vacant parcels, with tens of thousands of privately owned infill lots ready to follow suit. If the winning schemes are built, Los Angeles will once again demonstrate the appeal and resiliency of its architectural DNA. Manhattan: Eat your heart out. Dana Cuff is a professor of architecture, director of cityLAB-UCLA and co-author of the 2016 California law that launched ADU construction. Christopher Hawthorne, former architecture critic for The Times, is senior critic at the Yale School of Architecture. He served under Mayor Eric Garcetti as the first chief design officer for Los Angeles.
Eater
02-07-2025
- Business
- Eater
Rare Society Lands in Las Vegas With Fat-Washed Cocktails and Fire-Kissed Steaks
San Diego's retro-swanky steakhouse Rare Society makes its Nevada debut Wednesday, July 2, opening in southwest Las Vegas with Rat Pack-inspired swagger, in-house butchered steaks and wagyu tomahawks served exclusively at the new location. The Southern Californian steakhouse from chef Brad Wise and Trust Restaurant Group draws on Wise's live-fire approach to classic chophouse fare. It's earned a following for its Santa Maria ranchero-style grilling — meat seasoned simply with salt, pepper, and garlic, seared over American red oak, then finished low and slow. The technique shines across wagyu steaks, Pacific swordfish, and flame-kissed vegetables, all smoked and charred over woodfire. In San Diego, Rare Society is known for its dramatic steak boards — 53 ounces of dry-aged cuts arranged on custom-designed lazy Susans and served with bearnaise, horseradish, and buttery bone marrow. Other standout cuts include 40-day dry-aged bone-in New York strips and 'bullseye' rib-eyes, Wise's term for the ideal balance of weight and marbling in a rib-eye steak. Beyond beef, Rare Society leans into seafood: broiled oysters with yuzu arugula butter and crispy capers, creamy lobster mashed potatoes, and $275 seafood towers overflowing with crab, ahi tartare, and a whole Maine lobster. Dessert looks like bananas Foster cheesecake with an espresso martini. At its new home in the Uncommons shopping and dining area, Wise includes items unique to Las Vegas, like Alaskan king crab and a richly marbled Snake River Farms wagyu tomahawk. The cocktail menu is similarly carnivorous, featuring Old Fashioneds made with dry-aged, fat-washed bourbon, rosemary oleo, bitters, and a lardo garnish. Rare Society spans 5,000 square feet at 6880 Helen Toland Street, Suite 100, with seating for 160. The design channels classic Vegas steakhouse glam: dark woods, hand-stitched leather, and gleaming black stone details, warmed by layered lighting, mirrors, and polished metal accents. With award recognition for his San Diego restaurants Trust and Fort Oak, Wise brings serious culinary pedigree to Las Vegas. Rare Society joins a growing list of buzzy openings at UnCommons, alongside Amari Italian Kitchen, All'Antico Vinaio, and the upcoming Hawaiian food hall that will replace the closed Sundry food hall next year. Rare Society is located at 6880 Helen Toland Street, Suite 100; open from 5 p.m. to close Wednesday through Sunday. Reservations can be made on OpenTable . See More: Vegas Restaurant Openings
