On Entertainment Tonight last night, I talked about the dark side of the modeling. .

Curbed just found another new eight-figure listing at Fifteen Central Park West. The décor is underwhelming, but the space is, well, outrageous. Though I’m not sure I would want to bunk directly underneath Dan and Margaret Loeb, someone will surely want that position. Curbed asked me why several 15CPW units have come onto the market. Which is interesting, given that units are reportedly languishing at the nearby Blue Penis (One57), even as flipping there continues, no one is talking much about sales at 220 or 432 or Nordstrom or the Economist tower or 520 Park. I wouldn’t be at all … Continue reading →

The New York Observer reports that apartment 35D at Fifteen Central Park West has come on the market for $33 million, but calls the sellers “whoever they are.” Whoever they are is “Victor Vargas, a Venezuelan banker with six homes, a polo team, and a daughter who married Luis Alfonso de Borbón, a great-grandson of Francisco Franco and relative of the king of Spain,” they could have learned from House of Outrageous Fortune. “Vargas lives there with his girlfriend, Maria Beatriz Hernandez Rodriguez.” The NYO does correctly note that Vargas bought the place from Donald Opatrny, a former Goldman Sachs … Continue reading →

The designer Arnold Scaasi died on Monday. In 1985, I wrote an item for The Evening Hours column of the New York Times about his ubiquity in that era. It always made me smile. Click the image to read it.

I’m thrilled to share the news that I’ve joined Departures, the luxury lifestyle and travel magazine, as a Contributing Editor. Since 2012, I’ve written stories for the magazine on the Isle of Cavallo, the coming of the $100 Million Manhattan condo, the eastern Riviera, designer-class retailing in Miami, and the rebirth of Mexico City. Watch this space for more in months to come.