Examples of opulent decadence you can't forget

AND, OP, to this day, she's probably not one bit embarrassed for doing that.

Something tells me if her late husband knew how she'd conducted herself since his death, especially with her kids, he would have put on her on a monthly stipend and she would have never been able to wild through that massive bank account. No matter what the story is behind the scenes or the things we don't know about, with you're that wealthy, and have been that gauche, there's no excuse to at least buy a house for your kid, and let it sit there empty even if your kid is too stupid to use it. No excuse. And had she done anything to try to help her kid and grandkids, anything truly meaningful, she would have made sure it was made public. So either way, she's a greedy, spend-thrift troll, or just a total moron for not having enough sense to message what she HAS in fact done for her kid. My impression is that she's a bit socially retarded, like, she has some screws loose or is on the spectrum or something. Even her son lives like a working class guy in some Ohio suburb. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but her kids do deserve to have been taken better care of considering their father's great wealth and the way in which they were raised.

Watch this bitch drop dead and leave every dime to some stupid shit like a museum or her Pomeranian.

So ostentatious!

The lede is somewhat buried here, since according to that People article, she had 3!!! gift-wrapping rooms.

[quote] The other two wrapping rooms include one in the attic, which has a shrink-wrap machine, and one in the basement devoted solely to wrapping Christmas and Easter gifts.

The "screening room" with almost all of the chairs facing away from the screen

That’s like my having three pairs of scissors, r3, each in the place where I am most likely to use it.

They screened Aaron's TV shows there, R4.

Yeah I am with R1. It takes a special kind of cunt to live as ostentatiously as Candy does while her children and grandchildren live like Average Joes.

I am not saying Tori and Randy should have gift wrapping room level wealth, but at least a nice house each in Hidden Hills, in the name of an irrevocable trust

She was understated, compared to that Brit chick who bought the estate. Her improvements were for the worse.

It's been on the market for years, yours for $155 million

[quote] The "screening room" with almost all of the chairs facing away from the screen

[quote] They screened Aaron's TV shows there

I was going to write that they must have screened Tori’s shows there and wanted to protect the sensibilities of the viewers.

We had a very funny thread about Candy's Malibu beach house, which was tacky beyond belief.

I believe this is the thread R11 references.

Yes r12 that's the thread. For all her money and access to the best interior designers, Candy's beach house looks like it was decorated by a Midwestern frau.

Right you are R13. It’s tragic, to say the least.

I worked in BIG ticket philanthropy in the 80s in NYC. The extravagance of the benefits and parties rocketed higher every year. There was a party in 1989 that was about 100 guests and the flowers, by Robert Isabell, THE FLOWERS!!!, were over 200K. But the venue was not over stuffed with flowers. Rather, the bouquets had the most exquisite flowers I had ever seen in my life. Every single flower was absolute perfection. The lighting was amazing. The combinations of colours and textures. It was surreal and devastatingly beautiful and perfect. I have been at many such events including royal events during the years I worked the mid-Eastern royals, with gazillions of flowers, perhaps costing a million or more, but I have never seen anything so artistic as those 200K of flowers in a rather intimate party setting.

Jay...

Barbra Streisand's basement mall.

OP: "Opulence"?

Try "Tacky garbage warehouse with skin flakes in the rugs."

And "gift-wrapping room"?

Apparently you missed this:

[quote]Spelling has three gift-wrapping rooms in the home, including the smallest for everyday gifts (pictured). "When Liam was still coming to see me," says Spelling of estranged daughter Tori's 2-year-old son, "we changed his diapers right here on this table, so it's good for all kinds of wrapping." The other two wrapping rooms include one in the attic, which has a shrink-wrap machine, and one in the basement devoted solely to wrapping Christmas and Easter gifts.

Repulsive parvenu.

r15 Did those events actually end up making much for the charities, or did it all go on the party itself?

I don't get it. Why do people need so much, even assuming they can afford it. Why do you need a 20,000 SF mega mansion for example if it's just you and your family maybe even 6-8 kids?Who needs all that space. IMO it's obscene. There should be laws against this. It is environmentally bad.

Who knows, R20. It seems ridiculous and depressing for one family, much less one person, to live in the kind of house Candy has.

I can just see Barbara pushing around that creepy baby carriage in R17’s preview. Going down to her “mall” every night around 1am, a Victorian bonnet cinched tightly around the head of the latest cloned Coton de Tulear as “mama” rolls it through the make-believe streets peering into every window, oohing and ahh’ing at the jewelry, dolls and tchotchkes, all displayed exquisitely and with precision unseen stage lighting; she decides to stop by the “Sweet Shoppe” to pick up a curiously available chocolate babka, and perhaps a Tootsie Roll or two, both magically pre-bagged in a white glossy handle bag, tasteful tag dangling from the handles of the bag emblazoned with a giant calligraphed gold “B” on either side. She and the dog, (I.e. “baby”), who’s nearly strangled dead by now, continue their stroll while humming along to the dulcet tones of a piped-in Muzak version of the Guilty album. Everything is going fine and beautifully until they round the corner, Barbara shrieks in horror, throwing the carriage against a faux brick wall. There, just to the side of “Fanny B.’s Dress Shoppe” leans a hand-worn, forgotten mop, along with a pail of mostly clear cold water, the aroma of Pine Sol & Simple Green still lingers in the air. The night is ruined. The mop is javelined through a plexiglass window, the pail is Godzilla-kicked down the lane, coming to rest somewhere near the Shekel Shack Savings & Loan. The sound of furious heels clomping back up the stairs can be heard as “baby” squirms to break free of the carriage. …….The following day, somewhere in east Los Angeles, an abolita blots her tears with a long-ago gifted linen hankie as the placement agency rep tells her the only available gig is for a restroom attendant at Pump.

R19 depends on the institution or entity hosting the benefit. For example The Met Museum can extract millions for the actual work of the museum, yes. Not sure if that is a "charity" but it is legally. However smallish entities that are supposed to funnels funds from the fundraiser to "a charitable cause" - might in fact not have the expenses correctly underwritten. And might also have very high overhead. So the "cancer research" (the named cause) finally gets little because everyone involved is getting paid. It's unethical.

At the richest biggest institutional level, any individual fundraiser actually operates in the context of much larger capital campaigns. There is cultivation involved - wooing and stroking people for big individual asks that will come later. Or ego stroking of people who have already been generous. Or supplying socially ambitious people with the social clout they want personally, but who can have their corporations be the ones actually giving huge corporate donations.

That Crown Rack of Frankfurters in some other thread seems pretty opulently decadent to me.

[quote] the only available gig is for a restroom attendant at Pump

Man, that poor woman is in for another dose of bad news

I know that house is fucking ridiculous but I've always loved it for some reason - mostly the exterior. It's just so... stately.

HGTV had a 3 part special about her 'sky' palace at The Century about 10 years ago. She and her palace were disgusting - why does someone need to have custom made (in Italy) drawer pulls on her one-of-a-kind cabinets. Who would care except her cadaver friends that butter up to Candy for favors. Her gait was extremely stiff which was probably due to the telephone pole she had rammed up her back door! The show may be available to stream somewhere. Watch it if you dare. And to think with all her money, her darling Tori is residing in a FEMA type trailer with her gaggle of kids. People like them make me glad I'm me!

I've never understood lavish "gift wrapping" rooms.

Rich people don't wrap their own gifts.

Unless it's some sort of hobby, but how many gifts does one wrap such that you could make it into a hobby.

The Queen of Versailles, Jackie Siegel, has built a private jet passenger cabin in her living room.

Rosie O'Donnell has a craft room. I'm guessing her crafts are low-brow, involving glue guns, etc.

R1, r7, r27: She did buy Tori a house which Tori promptly sold, and wasted the cash.

Candy paid for rent, kids' school fees (Tori cut her off for years for paying the schools directly instead of handing Tori the cash), utilities, food, kids' clothes...she also had to pay for the bills when Tori would leave rental after rental in a disgusting state: Animal waste inside, fixtures and furnishings damaged.

Tori used everything she brought in on instagram to waste on hair, "beauty" treatments, make-up artists, designer clothes and whatever else she can fit in her entire WAREHOUSE full of hoarded shit.

Randy has sorted himself out. He never had a chance of having a good acting career.

Candy is a piece of work, but she'd be a fool to do anymore for Tori than she already has. Tori is clearly very unwell and should have looked in the mirror years ago and accepted she'd never get another gig like 90210. Among other defects, Tori has a type of vanity and narcissism hindering her personal growth badly.

Plus she's a total cunt for exploiting her home life in all those reality shows, setting up her kids for bullies, then making the bullying public. If you were one of her kids, would you want all your business made public?

Fuck Tori. I hope Candy just pays Tori's bills and never hands her cash. All the lawsuits over not paying loans and credit card bills when Candy had been subsidising Tori and Dean prove they're both useless and shameless.

I was at the UPS store today, and a young woman in her mid 20's didn't even know who Barbra Streisand is! I was shocked.

Hi Candy/r31!!

Years ago, I went to the palace of Versailles, the real one outside of Paris France. Acres and acres of interior marble, gilding, Old Masters, frescoes, and crystal, it was designed to intimidate! Even now, without the power of the absolute monarch behind the intimidation, it's oppressive and unwelcoming, and it was a huge relief to get out into the vast gardens.

And back when the Sun King was running everything with a whim of iron, it reeked of shit and well-aged piss, because none of the designers had thought to make any santitary arrangements for the legions of servants. So they pissed wherever they could, and shit in the corridors, and Louis stayed their year-round, so he wasn't doing what the monarchs of earlier centuries did - regularly vacating their reeking castles so they could be cleaned and aired. No, Louis established the tradition of just living in the court's filth, and it's no wonder that Marie Antoinette was so desperate to get out in the fresh air that she built her own fake village.

R34, it just wasn’t the servants but also the nobility at court and the royal family.

OP, "Spelling has three gift-wrapping rooms in the home, including the smallest for everyday gifts (pictured)" - just FYI.

Candy Spelling answers your gift wrapping questions.

R36, see R3.

Yes, Candy wraps her own gifts.

r19 r23 I know of one event where the co-hostesses made the food themselves, and the general dogsbodies doing the miscellaneous help included Harrison Ford, billionaire X, and billionaire Y (my cousin). They raised all the money they needed in that one event for the entity they were raising money for, enough reserve operating capital, and to finance the building it was to be in.

Sharon Stone said, in an interview, that she uses La Mer cream on her legs. It's $380 for a 2-oz. container, now.

When I was a child my family and I toured Mark Twain’s house in Connecticut. There was a lot of imported Italian marble, a lot of woodwork, expensive accoutrements leaning against the fireplace, et cetera . The tour guide mentioned his unable to pay for it all eventually. Even as a child I thought this display of wealth and taste was over the top.

To play polo one needs at least two horses, but most players average about five. At the lower end a good polo pony costs around $50k, not including insurance payments, veterinary bills, stabling, grooms and transport to matches, etc. “Sport of kings” indeed.

I've never forgotten the walk-in refrigerator at Baltimore House in NC.

Biltmore!

Actually, if you've got a lot of servants, family members, and hangers-on in your mansion, a walk-in refrigerator probably makes sense.

damn spell check

Mother sent me a bowel movement!

A Bar Mitzvah at Madison Square Garden. The theme was the Knicks and the party was held on the game floor. One entered underneath giant legs in Knicks uniforms. Knicks City dancers entertained. There was more but you get the idea.

How many Knicks were invited as guests, r49?

She gave me a sense of purpose! Like I belonged. She’s a great role model for women of color.

"Madame, you are now sitting on the largest penis in the world."

Ari Onassis as he seated a female guest in the bar of his yacht, "Christina."

The bar stools were upholstered with whale foreskins.

Thread closed.

r53 Whatever that purple thing is looks cheap and tacky

He IS the Burger King, with his Wendy’s…

Dum an dumerer

Hi predictable at r33!

Trump's golden toilet.

Traveling by private varnish.

Certainly opulent charges to move it around, R59. And a decadent sum of money just to park it overnight.

I remember reading about Jackie O's heated toilet seats on Martha's Vineyard. It sounded so posh at the time, but it's probably more common now.

Candy Spelling is a classless old slag. Someone ought to tell her that she is not royalty, but a failed fifth rate actress who managed to catch the ugliest (and one of the richest) producer in Hollywood. The levels of pretentiousness, arrogance and ostentation are beyond insanity, and the biggest crime is that it doesn't even look pretty, harmonious or luxurious. It's just trashy and R18 is right, she is a milkmaid who has come into money and shows it off in the most vulgar way imaginable.

However, the Spellings are not alone in their grimy, parvenu pretentiousness. Many Hollywood celebrities live in oversized McMansions that are just tasteless, and reflect their ignorance, lack of breeding and mindless narcissism.

A quarter of a billion dollar NYC penthouse, with its own ballroom. Just why?

^^57th. St.? No thank you.

Good lord, private railway cars still exist? I thought they ceased to exist when air travel became safe and widely available, some time in the 1940s or 1950s!

Maybe there are still wealthy train nerds out there. Train nerds definitely still exist.

R63, I think it's safe to say that's "aspirational" pricing. It'd literally be the most expensive home ever sold in the US, topping the record of the "other" penthouse on CPS where Ken Griffin bought the top five or six floors.

Some examples of opulent decadence I've seen in *person*:

1. About a decade ago I ended up hitching a ride of sorts with the head of a major Hollywood studio. At the time he traveled nearly everywhere within North America on the same private jet, technically owned by the studio but used exclusively by the exec. Obviously celebs flying private isn't at all novel, but this particular studio head flew on a private Boeing 737! Even when traveling solo! (Yes, it's equipped with a regular-sized bedroom with queen bed.) He's retired now, but is still a billionaire and one of the most successful studio execs in modern history – but his "baller" lifestyle was absurd.

2. A friend from college had some family money, and our hallmates during our first year (he lived two doors down from my dorm room, and living in dorms was mandatory your first year) joked that his family owned "most of northern New Mexico." It wasn't until over a decade later that I found out they were serious! His family owns a total of nearly 300,000 acres, on a total of about 20 parcels mostly in northern New Mexico (but also some in Colorado and Utah).

3. I won't mention his name only because I'm not sure this is all public knowledge, but this celeb is someone all of you likely know, and is a longtime and very successful comedic actor. He's also enjoying a later-on-life career revival thanks to a surprise streaming hit. I went to a party at his UWS apartment nearly 20 years ago now – he's straight btw, but we had a couple of mutual friends – and pretty much lost my shit when I started checking out his entire VERY large art collection (most of which isn't even on display). I collect art myself and am particularly knowledgeable about contemporary art, and the pieces the actor had solely on *display* would easily sell for over $100 million. He began collecting early in his career, and started acquiring Warhols and Basquiats in the '80s for as little as $10K. I don't think many people know it, but his art collection is worth north of $2 BILLION.

4. For those of you who watched "The Diplomat" this season – about an "unexpected" choice for the American ambassador to the UK – they mentioned the real-life fact that the US ambassador lives at Winfield House, and it is quite literally the largest parcel of residential land in Central London behind Buckingham Palace (it's on 12 acres, and was donated to the UK by Barbara Hutton). They had to use a fictional house for filming purposes, but as it so happens I was invited to a reception at Winfield House during the mid-2000s while living in London. To this day it's the most formal private event I've attended: all the men wore morning coats, and the women dressed in a style familiar to anyone who's seen all the fascinators at Royal Ascot.

5. Finally, I was in Vegas 5-6 years ago, and heard a ruckus in the casino area at the Bellagio. As it turns out, an iconic athlete – considered the GOAT in his field, but also known for potential excessive gambling problems – was having a hell of a roll at the craps table. I made it over just in time to see him walk away with $2 MILLION in chips. (Well, not literally: casinos give you an IOU of sorts to cash in at the cashier's desk if you win enough, mainly for security purposes.)

"...this celeb is someone all of you likely know, and is a longtime and very successful comedic actor. He's also enjoying a later-on-life career revival thanks to a surprise streaming hit."

Stever Martin and "Only Murders in the Building"?

A friend of my mother's cousin's wife ate almost an entire hamburger, right in front of me.

Gotta be Steve Martin, R68.

Nobody in the 80s ever thought Basquiat and Mapplethorpe's works would be worth the astronomical prices they eventually cost. The people back then who had the foresight to buy their works really made out in the long run.

R67, why can't you just say who # 5 is, since it happened out in the open. You weren't the only person who witnessed this.

There are enough blind items on DL.

#5 is Michael Jordan

The collector is Martin Short!

The Queen of Versailles reality series, didn't they go bankrupt or go to jail, now they have a sequel where they are doing it again

^^ Ironically Hurricane destroyed the house they were rebuilding

Reading biographies of the wealthy/semi-wealthy from the early to mid 20th Century, I'm always amazed at the sheer number of homes owned by these people. A castle in Ireland, two apartments in Paris, a home twenty miles outside Paris, ditto for London and New York, and throw in something in the Mediterranean or Caribbean for good measure, too. Seems beyond extravagant and extreme, no matter how much money you have, how spread out your relations may be, or how much you love to travel.

R77 What I discovered working for the middle eastern royals is that they replicated this moveable splendor of the Gilded Age, between the 1980s and now. London, Paris, mansions in the French and English countrysides, Geneva, ski resorts, Cannes-Nice-Monte Carlo, Marbella, Beirut, Cairo, and several cities in the Middle East. Plus each family has a few places off the beaten tract. Up to Prince MBS put a stop to it, each Saudi King had Crown Prince and a team of important princes and they are all billionaires and they all had mini courts, and then these courts followed around the Crown Prince, as his court, or the King, in their déplacements. If 1/3 the important royals were in Geneva because the King was at his palace there, and his Crown Prince decide to go south to his super-yacht or his palace in Marbella, all the families would pack up and take up residence in their palaces and yachts on the Côte d'Azur, within a day or two. Rinse repeat.

R78, I'm not sure if you're familiar with modern-day London, but between roughly April & October, it's the second home for literal thousands of extended family members of the various Middle Eastern petrostates, in large part because the UK is oddly hospitable to being an illicit tax haven. The only thing that changes are the vehicles they fly in: formerly all Ferrari and Lambo sports cars, but nowadays more SUV-focused now that Lambo, Rolls, Bentley & Aston Martin all offer them. (Driving a low-nose supercar on city streets is admittedly a pain in the ass.)

Yes, obviously they 'summer' in plenty of other places, e.g. the Mediterranean – and, just as obviously, they still have an unending dick-measuring contest to see who can build the most absurdly huge superyacht – but during the hot-weather months in the desert, they relocate to Central London (and, for the most part, Belgravia, Mayfair and Knightsbridge) as their 'main' residence. (They're also the ones who've spent £20 million or more excavating massive swimming pools and 'mancaves' in the basements of listed houses that can't legally be altered on the exterior.)

And yes, quite a few Russian oil magnates continue to live in the UK, though how they've escaped all the sanctions against Putin's personal bitches is beyond me.

R79 Yes I know the milieu and spent 3 summers in a Mayfair townhouse mansion sitting on a massive excavation.

[quote]in large part because the UK is oddly hospitable to being an illicit tax haven

All those lawyers and accountants are extremely good at lobbying. Not that they need to be; the Tories are more than happy to turn a blind eye. Not that I have particularly high hopes that Labour will be much different.

[quote]though how they've escaped all the sanctions against Putin's personal bitches is beyond me

The Tory party again, it's awash with Russian money.

Hearst Castle.

R82. Don’t blame me—do you know about my client? I did a great job considering the circumstances.

This thread makes me want to become a communist.

Or better still, an art thief.

How quickly you bitches forget.

"Or better still, an art thief."

And thanks to this thread, I think we all know where to go first.

Who wants to form a gang???

Flash mob! Who needs Nordstrom when we can doc Steve Martin?

But who knows a good fence? You can't just hump a stolen Basquiat down to the local art gallery and expect them to give you a million in cash, no questions asked.

Nothing says beauty like fish eggs.

That picture of Melania eating platinum spaghetti with diamond meatballs or whatever.