Inside Tom Ford’s Impressive Portfolio of Historic Properties

In the current economic period, there hasn’t been much real estate news to gawk over, yet Tom Ford keeps turning heads. First it was with his record-breaking $100 million Palm Beach house swap late last year, and then with his $52 million purchase of the East Hampton estate that belonged to the grandfather of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

This is no surprise, since the American fashion designer is a veteran in the real estate game who has been buying and selling houses in the US and Europe for decades. Lauded for his glamorous and provocative style, the Texas-born tastemaker has been described by Vogue as “precise, methodical” and “among the shrewdest businessmen in the history of fashion,” and he has certainly proven these words true when it comes to real estate. An architecture major in college, Ford’s insider knowledge of design history shows up in his real-estate-buying patterns, as his homes tend to have some measure of historic or architectural significance. And despite only giving us small, occasional peeks into his homes over the decades, we’ve seen enough to know that the chic, sexy sophistication resonant in his clothing also informs his decorating sensibilities. “My houses are for me and for Richard [his late husband] and Angus [his fox terrier],” Ford told W magazine in 2004 (before their son came along). “All my houses look the same. I have a very specific set of tastes.”

“I’ll probably build and buy and sell houses for the rest of my life,” Ford also said, so don’t expect him to quit playing with pedigreed architecture anytime soon. A clandestine mover when it comes to real estate, many of Ford’s transactions go under the radar until someone does some deep digging into public records. Here’s a list of some of the properties we know he’s owned over the years.

1990s

In 1997, while Ford was at Gucci, the designer bought a white Victorian mansion in London’s Chelsea neighborhood. The four-story period home was located in the Boltons Conservation area, a quiet, posh section of the borough where celebs like Hugh Grant, David Bowie, and George Michael once had homes. The 3,602-square-foot mansion’s period façade was perfectly preserved, but the inside was as sleek and sexy as you’d think a Tom Ford interior would be. Several rooms were painted black; there was black furniture, a study paneled with Macassar ebony, and even a bedroom paneled in stainless steel. Ford’s design skills were so impressive that the subsequent owners chose to keep most of his decor intact, as evidenced by listing images from 2020. “He’s arguably the best designer in the world, and he brought that level of luxury to this house. No expense was spared...it’s a trophy property,” the home’s 2020 selling agent told Mansion Global. Ford first listed the house in 2009 but was unable to secure a buyer until 2012 when it was sold for an undisclosed sum.

Across the pond in Los Angeles around the same time, Ford bought the celebrated Richard Neutra–designed Brown-Sidney modernist gem for a little over $2 million. As Neutra was one of modernism’s most prominent architects, the 1955 build featured characteristics like clean lines, an open floor plan, and glass walls to facilitate indoor-outdoor living. The hilltop abode also boasted 180-degree views, a pool, and rugged landscaping, which were all a part of Neutra’s design ethos. When Ford bought the house, he enlisted architect John Bertram of the AD 100 firm Marmol Radziner & Associates (a partnership he’s since retained for several subsequent real estate projects) to complete the restoration. Not many images of the house exist publicly, but the few that are featured on Marmol Radziner’s website show dark colors and an aesthetic that stays true to midcentury (and Ford’s, quite frankly) design philosophy. Ford made a hefty sum when, in 2019, he sold the property for $20 million to a hedge fund trader, who later sold it to Ellen de Generes and Portia Di Rossi in 2022 for $29 million.

1998

Not much is known about Tom Ford’s Paris apartment outside of the information published in House & Garden in 1998 and in the 2001 hardcover publication House & Garden Book of Style. But the article and book showcase a chic abode with a sexy, masculine flair. Images display a classic Parisian apartment layout with 15-foot ceilings, large French doors and windows from which Ford viewed the Seine, and flooring tiled with dark wood in a herringbone pattern. Ford himself designed much of the apartment’s furniture, upholstering pieces with leftover leather and fabric from past Gucci collections. “I like to do things myself, if I have time,” Ford told the publication. It is unclear whether the fashion denizen still owns his Parisian quarters.

2001

One of Ford’s most spectacular properties was the Cerro Pelon Ranch in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the state where he spent most of his childhood. At 20,662 acres, this property was so vast it could fit all of Manhattan below Central Park, a large swath of Queens, and some of New Jersey’s coast. The sprawling lands were dotted with several structures, including the western movie set built in 1985 for Silverado, starring Kevin Costner and Danny Glover. The set has been used for many other films like Thor and Cowboys and Aliens starring Daniel Craig.

When Ford bought the property in 2001, he chose architectural genius Tadao Ando—who also designed the $200 million pad recently scooped up by Jay-Z and Beyoncé—to design the main house. “Ando is so much about light and mass, which is so perfect for New Mexico,” Ford explained to W magazine back in 2004. “Historically, Spanish architecture in New Mexico had been about mud walls—with a fortress-like quality to them—and about light. The light is so strong that I wanted someone who would understand the importance of it.” And indeed, the riding arena, along with its complementary barn, and the main house were extremely elegant structures with a surreal fortress-like quality to them, but they also allowed sunlight to dance between and on their surfaces.

Built almost as if floating on the edge of a reflecting pool, the main house was a single-story masterpiece made of concrete and a façade of glass walls. Ford decided to sell in 2016, offering the property for $75 million, but was not able to find a buyer until 2020 when the last known price was $48 million. Marmol Radziner designed many of the other structures on the estate, including the two guest houses and four staff residences.

2010s

Ford didn’t leave London after selling his Chelsea mansion. Sometime between 2012 and 2014, he purchased an historic John Nash mansion in tony Regent’s Park. It is unclear whether he still owns the townhouse.

2016

In June of 2016, just before the release of his feature film Nocturnal Animals, reports that consummate interior designer Kelly Wearstler and her husband were about to close on the sale of their legendary Hollywood home to Ford swirled about. The $53 million transaction was supposed to be the largest in LA County that year, but, for unknown reasons, the deal never went through.

By the year’s end, however, Ford was the owner of the late Betsy Bloomingdale’s 1920 Holmby Hills estate, which is now his primary residence.

2019

For almost three decades, it seems as if the storied Upper East Side Carlyle Hotel was Tom Ford’s hotel of choice whenever he visited New York City, preferring the same room upon each visit. That may have changed in 2019, however, when Ford bought an $18 million townhouse in the neighborhood, none other than the midcentury masterpiece once owned by another one of fashion’s most iconic names in design, Halston.

Designed by modernist master Paul Rudolph, the Upper East Side pad with its tinted glass and steel façade was the scene of many a debaucherous fête with Liza Minelli, Andy Warhol, and a host of other Studio 54 attendees in the 1970s. Halston was one of Ford’s fashion heroes and the designer had visited the house once when he was around 18 years old. “That house, it stunned me,” Ford told WWD. “It is and has always been one of the most inspirational houses that I was ever in, and one of the most inspirational interiors…. To me, it’s just one of the great American interiors.”

A minimalist’s dream, the four-story, 7,500-square-foot home is defined by stark white walls; a mix of carpeted, wood-paneled, and stone floors; and flights of floating staircases. Light floods most rooms thanks to the glass façade and a skylight above the soaring 32-foot ceiling. There are three living rooms, including the one located in the full guest suite on the fourth floor, which has a kitchen and of course a bar, and which leads to a 1,600-square-foot outdoor terrace. Ford said he made minimal cosmetic changes to the home, wanting it to look as close as possible to the place he remembered in the ’70s.

2022

In a move that seemed very out of step for someone with a penchant for storied homes, Tom Ford bought a contemporary-style Palm Beach mansion built in 2016 for $51 million in an off-market deal in December of 2022. The move took place a few short weeks after his company’s $2.8 billion buyout by the second largest cosmetics company in the world, Estée Lauder. (A gift to himself, perhaps?) The 10,200-square-foot mansion looks like a series of cubes fused together. Façades are mostly wrapped in casement doors, with some recessed walls and a central courtyard in the middle of the house. But this is Tom Ford we’re talking about. Do you think he was satisfied with a house built less than ten years ago?

2023

The very next year, the newly minted billionaire swapped his ultramodern pad for an even larger—this time historic—Palm Beach residence in another off-market deal. According to The Wall Street Journal, Ford acquired a landmark estate called Casa della Porta, a Florentine-Romanesque style mansion designed in the late 1920s for William McAneeny, president of the Hudson Motor Car Co. Located in the überexclusive Estate Section neighborhood, the 17,400-square-foot house sits on 1.66 acres of land and is “widely considered the grandest house that noted society architect Maurice Fatio designed in Palm Beach” according to The Palm Beach Daily News. The palatial home with a front made of quarry coral bricks certainly has an air of grandeur to it. The front entrance—from which the home gets its name—is an intricately ornamented compound stone archway that took artisans six long months to cut and carve. Extensive loggias wrap around the five-bedroom, 10-bathroom home that also has a central courtyard and a tennis court.

But Tom Ford wasn’t finished buying just yet. By August, he was the owner of Lasata, the grand East Hampton estate with a main house dating back to 1917. It’s the place where Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis spent her summers as a child, since her grandfather John Vernou Bouvier Jr., was the owner. Before Ford dropped $52 million dollars on the prized property, well-known fashion designer Reed Krakoff and his interior designer wife, Delphine Krakoff, purchased the property in 2007 and lovingly restored the structures on the estate, which were in dire need of care. The 8,500-square-foot Arts and Crafts–style main house features 10 bedrooms and 13 bathrooms. On the rest of the seven-acre spread are a caretaker’s cottage, a pool and pool house, along with a three-car garage. In 2018, the Krakoffs sold the house for $24 million to Hollywood producer David Zander, from whom Ford made his purchase.