Maurice Marciano, the fashion designer best known for co-founding clothing brand Guess Inc. with his brothers in the 1980s, just shelled out $37.5 million for a newly remodeled mansion in Beverly Hills — one of the priciest deals the city has seen so far this year.
Records show he bought the home through his limited liability company, Beverly Financial Holdings. It’s less than a mile away from his old place, a Paul McClean-designed home in Trousdale Estates that he’s currently shopping around for $27.5 million.
The seller is real estate agent Fred Bernstein of Westside Estate Agency, who doubled as a developer and bought the property for $12.25 million in 2016 from Megan Ellison, the film producer who founded Annapurna Pictures. Listing photos show that Bernstein preserved the home’s original style while adding 3,000 square feet in the years since.
Finished this year, the single-story residence is a contemporary concoction of limestone, marble, oak, steel and glass. Five bedrooms and eight bathrooms are spread across 9,300 square feet. Highlights include a library, gym and media room.
A floating entry approaches the home, leading into a vast open floor plan topped by wood ceilings and angled skylights. Pocketing doors open out back, where patios and lawns surround a swimming pool and spa. The grounds cover just under an acre.
According to the Multiple Listing Service, the sale officially closed at $35.5 million with additional furnishings adding $2 million, bringing the price-per-square-foot to $4,032. That’s Beverly Hills’ highest price per square foot since last April, when Ellen DeGeneres unloaded her 10,376-square-foot mansion for $47 million — or $4,530 per square foot.
The mammoth sale is a shot in the arm for Beverly Hills, which has seen its usual slate of $20-million sales in 2022 but hasn’t quite reached the staggering sums of its neighbors such as Bel-Air or Beverly Park.
Bernstein and Ethan Peskowitz, both with Westside Estate Agency, held the listing. Kurt Rappaport, also with Westside, represented Marciano.
A regular in real estate headlines, Marciano last made waves in 2015 when he sold his Bel-Air mega-mansion to casino mogul Steve Wynn for $47.85 million. Wynn is currently aiming for $100 million for the prized property.