listing photos: Coldwell Banker Previews International
SELLER: Lisa and Donald J. Pliner
BUYER: Trudy and Paul Cejas
LOCATION: Miami Beach, FL
PRICE: $14,325,000
SIZE: 10,160 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 8.5 bathrooms.
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: We really can't say what their future real estate plans may be but it appears to Your Mama that shoe and accessories tycoon Donald J. Pliner and his co-executive creative director wife Lisa in the mood to lighten their luxury property portfolio.
Last June (2011) they quickly unloaded a mid-floor condo in a full-service high-rise building on Los Angeles' Wilshire Boulevard—more on that later—and this month, after at least a year on the market, the casually- but expensively-dressed, high-gloss couple sold their Miami Beach, FL mansion for $14,325,000 to Cuban-born/Miami-based businessman Paul Cejas, a famously close crony of both Bill & Hill Clinton and the former ambassador to Belgium.
Property records show Mister and Missus Pliner paid $11,800,000 for their essentially Moroccan-style estate on Miami Beach's star-stocked Star Island in October 2004, the same year, it turns out, Mister P. was inducted into the Footwear News Hall of Fame.
When the good people at Luxist discussed Mister and Missus Pliner's casually opulent mansion in March 2011, Villa Stella, as the property is dubbed, was listed with what we now know in hind-sight to be a rather rose-colored price tag of $24,000,000. We're not sure what the last asking price put on Villa Stella was but a few quick clicks of the well-worn beads on Your Mama's bejeweled abacus reveals, in the end, Mister and Missus Pliner opted to hack an eye-popping 40% off their original asking price in order to get the deal done with Mister and Missus Cejas.
Mister Pliner, back in his good-lookin' youth, owned a few high-end retail shops in Beverly Hills, CA before launching his an eponymous product line that now encompasses shoes, handbags, and accessories. A number of years ago Mister Pliner branched out into accoutrement for pooches called BabyDoll Pliner, after the Pliner family's fluffy white Maltese named—you got it—BabyDoll Pliner. Supermodel slender wife Lisa Pliner works side-by-side with Mister P. and, according to the company's website, inserts her "artist's vision into the designs, colors and textures" of each new collection. We're not sure which of these two first thought this was a good idea.
Anyhoo, the undeniably successful shoe sellers purchased Villa Stella—a sort of Moroccan-Italianate mish-mash built in 2000 and painted a daring, chalky azure—from a couple sur-named Ifergane. In 2005, after the property was damaged by Hurricanes Katrina and Wilma, Mister and Missus Pliner saw fit to file a lawsuit against the Iferganes that asserted they were victims of fraud because, the Pliners claimed, the Iferganes sold them Villa Stella without, as is legally required, disclosing that some of the windows (allegedly) leaked. Natch, the Iferganes lawyered up and got busy with their brass legal tacks. At least one article on the lawsuit reveals the Iferganes had previously leased the property to both Gordon Sumner—a.k.a. Sting—and Denzel Washington, neither of whom reported any leaky windows; Neither did a local real estate agent who showed the house 50 times, including during rain storms. Long story short the Pliner's lawsuit was tossed out—or whatever the legal term is—in spring 2008 as a "sham."
