One of the biggest deals to close in the final days of 2020 involved this striking house in L.A.’s posh Brentwood neighborhood, which transferred for $22.1 million. Best described as a lavish hybrid of traditional and contemporary design, the compound was built over the last several years on speculation by an entity linked to the family of Tom Gores, the Platinum Equity billionaire and owner of the NBA’s Detroit Pistons, who acquired the .57-acre property in 2015 for $7.3 million. The Goreses subsequently razed the modest existing structure, replacing it with a mega-glam residential showpiece they initially marketed with a $33 million pricetag.
Records reveal the new owner is cosmetics maven and QVC veteran Cristina Carlino, a woman with a well-known penchant for lavish real estate. The Philosophy founder currently divides her time between Arizona, where she was born and raised, and New York, where she has homes on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, and she also long owned a palatial estate in the Hamptons. Acquiring a Los Angeles home seems a logical next step for the skincare savant — Carlino’s 18-year-old daughter, aspiring singer Grace Gaustad, currently resides in Tinseltown.
Inside and out, the Brentwood property rigidly adheres to its strict palette of soft whites and light greys, with the exception of some rich hues of dark graphite and ebony in the lounge. The 10,000-square-foot main mansion also offers an attractive blend of parquet wood floors, towering ceilings, and clerestory windows that flood the interior spaces with natural light. Thanks for those interiors goes to Windsor Smith, one of Westside L.A.’s most in-demand designers who has also conjured up homes for the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow and Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor.
Other amenities include a magazine-worthy kitchen, a vast living room with sets of French doors opening to the gardens, and a rooftop deck with full outdoor kitchen and westward sunset views. The upstairs master retreat packs in dual marble baths, plus a fireplace and private balcony.
The party continues into the backyard, where there’s a negative-edge swimming pool with inset spa adjoining a one-bedroom poolhouse. Surrounding the pool is a massive swath of grassy lawns. Hidden under the green carpet is a subterranean, glass-walled bunker with indoor entertaining spaces, a yoga studio, second kitchen, and another bedroom.
And for the status-conscious, the house is located on one of Brentwood’s most prestigious hillside streets, where some of the other similarly extravagant mansions are owned by the likes of Petra Ecclestone, LeBron James, and “Grand Theft Auto” creator Dan Houser.
Carlino, 59, founded Philosophy in 1996; she subsequently became an ubiqitous face on TV home-shopping network QVC before selling the business to private equity juggernaut Carlyle Group in 2007 for $475 million, though she retained a “significant equity holding” in the firm. Since then, Philosophy has been resold for $1 billion to cosmetics juggernaut Coty Inc., best-known for buying out 51% of Kylie Jenner’s brand in 2019. For her part, Carlino has since become an angel investor, doling out significant venture funding to startups like Paper Cosmetics.
Besides her new Brentwood estate, Carlino continues to own a mansion in Arizona’s prestigious Paradise Valley community. She also has two luxe apartments at the same pre-war building on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, per records, though her most impressive residence was undoubtedly her Hamptons home, a 7.4-acre estate with a main mansion, pool house, carriage house, and an elevator. Carlino sold that property last September for $23.5 million, just three months before she purchased the Brentwood home.
Santiago Arana & Anthony Buttino of The Agency held the listing; David Offer of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices repped Carlino.