De-Gilding the White Elephant

This week, Sotheby's New York will auction off the gilded furnishings of Fleur de Lys, the Holmby Hills megamansion that has languished on the market since 2007, listed at $125 million (after a while off the MLS, it returned last July with not even a nick in the asking price). The 35,000 square foot house was finished in 2002 and belongs to philanthropist Suzanne Saperstein following her divorce from Texas entrepreneur David I. Saperstein. As the Wall Street Journal reports, "The collection is one of those glimpses into a folly that recurs every few decades and to which L.A. is particularly susceptible: the reinterpretation of 18th-century France, robber-baron-style." Read: lots of Louis XVI knick-knacks. [WSJ/Sotheby's]