PITY poor Daphne Guinness, the heiress and haute-couture socialite.
According to a profile last month in British Vogue, headlined “Couture Princess,” Ms. Guinness sold her 8,000-square-foot house in St. Johns Wood in North London “without thinking it through,” and had yet to find another place big enough to accommodate her three children from her former marriage to Spyros Niarchos, the son of a Greek shipping tycoon.
The Sunday Times reported the sale price to be around $35 million.
But take heart. Next week, Ms. Guinness is set to close on a half-floor apartment on the 11th floor of 995 Fifth Avenue, the former Stanhope Hotel, opposite the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a person briefed on the sale said.
The co-op apartment has four bedrooms in more than 4,100 square feet of space. A 28-foot-wide living room faces Central Park, while the bedrooms face north from East 81st Street. It was listed for $15.5 million.
The floor plan shows two walk-in closets in the master bedroom suite, including one that is 14 feet by 4 feet 9 inches, ample for most buyers, but perhaps a bit skimpy for a woman who has “made dressing exquisitely her life’s work,” according to British Vogue. An adjacent bedroom, however, can be easily converted to a large dressing room. Ms. Guinness is now developing her own clothing line.
She is a descendant of the Guinness brewery family and is the granddaughter of Diana Mitford, the renowned British beauty whose reputation suffered because of her association with Nazi leaders in Germany.
At 995 Fifth Avenue, Ms. Guinness will have neighbors with interests in both beauty and high finance.
The first buyer to close on an apartment there was Cristina Carlino, the founder of Philosophy Cosmetics, who paid $11.97 million for a fifth-floor apartment in January.
In February, Paul J. Solit, the managing member of Potomac Capital Management, paid $10.1 million for a fourth-floor apartment. And in March, Karim Samii, the founder of Pardus Capital Management, paid $12.56 million for a 10th-floor unit.
When 995 Fifth Avenue went on the market in the fall of 2005, sales were sluggish, despite its storied location at the heart of the Upper East Side.
Though the interior of the building had been gutted and rebuilt from the basement up, many Upper East Side residents remembered the old Stanhope, designed by Rosario Candela, as much for its low ceilings and small rooms as its classic look.
But last spring, sales took off after the Extell Development Company completed work on several stylish model apartments, with elaborate plaster moldings and finishes that echoed grand prewar apartments. Now, of the original 26 co-ops and nine guest suites or maids’ rooms (available only to owners), there are only two apartments left.
Buyers can choose from a full-floor penthouse with a wraparound terrace, which is listed for $47.7 million, and another full-floor apartment with six bedrooms and seven baths listed for $33 million.
