Celebrity Rental: James Perse

In support of and in property gossip solidarity with the hardworking kids at Curbed and their annual "Renter's Week," Your Mama thought we'd have a brief look-see at a handful of homes in the sensationally scenic, punishingly pricey, and celeb-saturated seaside community of Malibu, CA, that are currently available for rent and owned by a high profile Tinseltowner...

Los Angeles fashion scion, fancy t-shirt guru, and lifestyle designer James Perse—he of the artisinally super-luxe, single origin cotton lounge wear whose father, Tommy Perse, owns the perennially haute and brutally expensive shopping emporium Maxfield in West Hollywood—has been much in the property gossip columns the last few months.

In September came word came down the real estate gossip grapevine that he and his Bev Hills-bred wife Brandi Briskman—that's  Brandi with an i, thank you very much—paid $6.69 million to acquire a recently redid Euro-country style estate in the Point Dume area of Malibu.* The next month, October, came the dish about how the photogenically laid back couple shelled out another $10.85 million for a 26-acre horse ranch in the Hidden Valley area near Thousand Oaks they bought from veteran house hoppers Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi DeGeneres.

Now, here we are in November, hurtling towards the winter holidays with alarming speed, and Your Mama digs up digital evidence that Mister Perse and Miz Briskman bathed their recently acquire Point Dume property in Mister Perse's beachy but chic and expensively minimalist signature style and hoisted it back on the market as a partially furnished rental at a rate of $25,000 per month.

Listing details show the gated estate includes an approximately 7,000 square foot residence with six bedrooms, six bathrooms, at least three fireplaces, and a series of interconnected living spaces with wood floors and metal-framed French doors that link to the outdoor living areas. We spied in listing photos a party-sized formal living room, a simple but generous dining room, a roomy game room (with an Old-School ping pong table), and a country-style center island eat-in kitchen with butler's pantry and adjoining den. Somewhere, as per marketing materials, there's a library/study and an art studio, and separate guest/staff quarters.

The back of the house spills out to a trellis-shaded terrace that gives way to a liberally watered, essentially flat, tree-ringed, and soccer pitch-sized lawn. A simple, rectangular swimming pool, spa and sunbathing terrace sits far enough from the house that the lazy will more likely tuck around a nearby tree to relinquish their liquids rather than hump across the vast lawn to make use of the facilities back to the house. Listing details suggest the lucky, deep-pocketed renters will be able to make use of the property's deeded beach rights and keys to the gorgeous and private Little Dume Beach.

*The seller of the Point Dume spread was Dave Matthews Band bass player Stefan Lessard and the obviously very rich Mister Perse and his wife already own a glassy contemporary a couple thousand feet away as the crow flies that they surreptitiously purchased in late 2010 for $16 million and is all but next door to Barbra Streisand's cliff-top compound.

listing photos: Coldwell Banker