A unique opportunity to create a bluff-top compound overlooking the ocean on Malibu’s Point Dume is available to a deep-pocketed buyer with $28.5 million to spend.
The offering includes three parcels and two residences, one hidden behind foliage and gates and remodeled by acclaimed architects Marmol Radziner, and the other tucked out of sight down a long driveway and in need of a substantial restoration and update.
Tax records show the owner of both properties as Rea Laccone, co-founder of the luxury clothing brand Vince, whose dozens of cross-country boutiques are serene temples of high-end simplicity. For the unfamiliar, this is the sort of place a “coastal grandmother” might pop in to pick up a $600 camel-colored cable knit sweater or a $250 pair of oat-colored lounge pants. Initially launched as an upscale T-shirt line, Laccone founded the brand in the early 2000s with Christopher LaPolice and sold it to Kellwood Company in 2006 for $75 million. Laccone and LaPolice stayed on but retired from the company in early 2013, not too long before Vince raised $200 million in an IPO. Both Laccone and LaPolice returned a couple years later as creative consultants but left after about 1.5 years.
Laccone acquired the first property, per property records, in 2005 for a wisp over $2.8 million, which sounds like a total bargain nowadays. She scooped up the second property, along the bluff’s edge, just a few months ago for $10.4 million, an astonishing $1.4 million more than the asking price. Both built in the early 1960s, the homes occupy just over an acre of land and together measure about 6,200 square feet with a combined eight bedrooms and six bathrooms, plus a couple of powder rooms.
Described in marketing materials as “a Mid-Century Modern work of art,” the main residence was revamped by architects Marmol Radziner. There are four bedrooms, three and a half bathrooms, an open floor plan, vaulted ceilings, and walls of glass that provide gorgeous sunset and horizon views over the ocean. A wind-protected gated courtyard at the front of the house has a stacked stone fireplace and no surprise, interior spaces are as luxurious and expertly tailored, with an elegant mix of luxe materials, as the clothing at Vince.
The second home, also with four bedrooms and three and a half bathrooms, sits near the bluff’s edge above Westward Beach with with unobstructed ocean, horizon and sunset views. Marketing materials indicate plans are in underway to have Marmol Radziner to transform the glass-walled pavilion into a “stunning showplace.”
The possibilities here are several, according to marketing materials: press forward with the renovation and use the homes together as a compound; rent one while living in the other; sell them off individually.
Property records reveal that Laccone is no stranger to stylishly appointed multimillion-dollar architectural properties in both Los Angeles and Palm Springs. She sold a Buff and Hensman-designed midcentury home in Palm Springs in 2019 for $9 million, and the same year paid Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi $15.5 million for a Hollywood Regency-style residence the Trousdale Estates area of Beverly Hills. The following year, after she had it restored and updated by Marmol Radziner, she sold an International Style home high above Beverly Hills for almost $8 million.
