Pierre Berge, the longtime partner and former lover of Yves Saint-Laurent, has sold his Fifth Avenue pied-a-terre to Valentino’s lifetime partner, Giancarlo Giametti, for a fashionable $7.5 million.
Berge’s two-bedroom, two-bath, 39th-floor co-op in the Pierre hotel was designed by Jacques Grange, Peter Marino and Jed Johnson and had an asking price of $7.75 million. Martha Kramer of Fox Residential Group was the exclusive broker.
Berge, a Paris-based luxury-goods mogul who founded the auction house Pierre Berge & Associates in 2003, was the reported brains behind the Yves Saint Laurent company. He made a fortune when his stake in the label was acquired in 1993.
Giametti – who’s helped run Valentino’s business for much of its 45 years – now owns the turn-key prewar apartment, which features a gallery leading to a living room and adjoining dining area with park and city views. The bedrooms have custom leather-lined mahogany dressing areas and custom mahogany and marble en-suite baths.
Mills house
The house that Heather Mills rented in the swanky Georgica Pond area of East Hampton was by far a fancier affair than the home soon-to-be-ex Paul McCartney owns in nearby Amagansett.
Mills paid nearly $200,000 to Nora Ephron and Nick Pileggi for the use of their luxurious six-bedroom home for Aug. 1 through Labor Day. The secluded property, across the street from Steven Spielberg’s compound and Ben Bradlee and Sally Quinn’s famed “Grey Gardens,” includes high hedges and a heated pool.
“Heather did quite a bit of entertaining,” says a source in the area. “There were a few times when the tiki lights in the back yard would burn all night.”
Rough life
Greg Norman’s estranged wife, Laura, has just scored a new Hamptons house. According to sources, she’s just closed on a recently built two-story home on Moses Lane in Southampton with a $4.35 million asking price.
The five-bedroom, 41/2-bath traditional-style residence includes a kitchen with one of the house’s six fireplaces, verandas, a pool with a waterfall and a pool pavilion with a kitchen.
Listing broker Laura Nigro of Prudential Douglas Elliman could not be reached for comment.
Laura Norman, a former flight attendant, and her husband, golf’s legendary “Shark,” are involved in a bitter divorce after more than two decades of marriage. The two-time British Open champion has been dating tennis great Chris Evert.
Laura, 57, claims that her ex has cut off her credit cards, changed the locks on their $21 million home in Jupiter, Fla., and fired her housekeeper.
The 52-year-old Shark counters that he has forked over $725,000 in legal fees, $4 million for a Palm Beach home and $400,000 for a down payment on Laura’s Hamptons home.
Rinky digs
Mark Messier, who had his Rangers number retired at Madison Square Garden and sold his Upper West Side apartment for just more than $3 million last year, has just unloaded another, smaller Manhattan property.
Public records show that Messier has just sold a one-bedroom apartment at the venerable Osborne building at 205 W. 57th St. for $580,000. Messier, who now lives in Hilton Head, S.C., sold his 3,300-square-foot apartment in a West 85th Street brownstone for $3.047 million in 2006. The place included a separate guest studio and a billiards room.