Betsey Johnson Cartwheels Out of Malibu Mobile Home
By Mark David
LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Colorful fashion icon Betsey Johnson has her vivaciously hot pink mobile home in Malibu’s prestigious Paradise Cove Mobile Home Park up for sale at $1.95 million. (That’s right, kids. In , mobile homes cost well upwards of a million bucks and can easily make a rich person feel downright impoverished.) The famously flamboyant septuagenarian designer, whose signature move is to cartwheel down the runway at the end of her always energetic and kaleidoscopically colorful runway shows, is not seeking much profit on the quirky property she acquired a little more than three years ago for not quite $1.9 million.
Listed with Ren Smith of Compass , the two-bedroom and two-bathroom abode sits amid a lush, private and gated garden re-imagined by Johnson in her signature everything-AND-the-kitchen-sink aesthetic. Tropical plantings shade flagstone patios trimmed in faux grass and there are a variety of outdoor living and dining areas under latticed trellises along with an old-fashioned claw footed tub and outdoor shower under a delicate wave of clematis vine.
Interior spaces jam-packed with a flamboyantly eclectic array of art and furniture festooned with a riot of vivid floral fabrics include a skylight topped living room with angled fireplace, a turquoise guest bedroom and what’s called out in listing descriptions as “The Yellow Room,” a double-sized master bedroom lacquered in a particularly shocking and chatoyant shade of yellow. Under a vaulted ceiling, the unexpectedly spacious eat-in kitchen is fully updated with pricey, premium-grade appliances and both bathrooms have been luxuriously made over with marble accents.
The low-key but high-cost enclave, unquestionably the most coveted of the many eye-poppingly expensive mobile home parks in Malibu, offers its thong-shod residents a 24-hour guard-gated entry, a community clubhouse, tennis courts and access to one of Malibu’s most beautiful and exclusive beaches.
In late spring 2016, around the time she bought the mobile home in Malibu, Johnson listed a “ surprisingly understated ” one-bedroom apartment in a luxury high-rise just off New York City’s Fifth Avenue at $2.25 million. Johnson purchased the 10th floor condo in 2008 for $1.8 million and took a notable loss when tax records show it sold in early 2017 for $1.65 million.
