Fashion designer Dame Trelise Cooper is still looking for a buyer for her stylish Auckland apartment after the property passed in at auction today.
Dame Trelise and her husband Jack had bought the three-bedroom apartment on the third floor of St Heliers’ Sonata development off-the-plan in late 2022 for $10.5 million.
They had only moved in earlier this year but decided to sell as they wanted to spend more time overseas with their family.
There were no bids made at the Barfoot & Thompson auction this morning, with the auctioneer declaring the Devore Street property as having passed in less than a minute of opening the auction for bids.
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Barfoot & Thompson agent Aaron Foss had marketed the property as having “realistic vendors who will meet the market”. OneRoof reached out to Foss for comment but had yet to hear back from him.
In February, the garden floor apartment in the same building fetched $8.2m and the apartment below Dame Trelise’s is now asking $8.95m. The penthouse and sub-penthouse had sold in private deals for $5.4m and $7.1m.
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Earlier Dame Trelise told OneRoof that a lot had changed in the last 18 months since the couple bought the apartment so it was now surplus to their needs. The Coopers have a beach house north of Auckland but spend five months a year in their house in France and now plan to buy a place in San Diego, in the United States, to be close to family.
“We’ve come to this new chapter, where we have decided family is very important to us,” Dame Trelise said earlier.
“My husband is 78, and you get to a point where we’ve only got a certain [amount of] runway [left]. We want to be in San Diego with our family, and we’re travelling more and more.”
Dame Trelise Cooper, shown here in 2019 at her bi-annual fashion show at Soul Bar on Auckland’s waterfront, plans to spend more time overseas. Photo / Norrie Montgomery
The third-floor apartment at 20 Devore Street, St Heliers, has breathtaking views of the harbour and Rangitoto. Photo / Supplied
The shift to more travelling is certainly not a sign that Dame Trelise is retiring. The designer, who has dressed international celebrities such as Julia Roberts, Catherine Zeta Jones, Liv Tyler and Miley Cyrus since she opened her first boutique in 1985, said: “I work every day. I still do the design; I go in every day and tweak and look at things; I travel from France for the fabric fair in Shanghai.
“We just want to redistribute how we live.”
Her plans may have changed but Dame Trelise was enthusiastic about life in the Sonata. She said the apartment was “amazing”, saying it had a more minimal aesthetic than some of the more opulent homes she has lived in.
“We live a different kind of life now and I like it. We’ve edited a lot from our life, and we live much more minimally. I think when you travel and you’re not around you just want to edit things out,” she said.
“It’s an iconic building, I really do love the fluid lines and the way it kind of echoes the waterfront,” she said.
The living room opens to the covered terrace and views across St Heliers to the water. Photo / Supplied
The kitchen, which also has a second butler’s pantry, is by Italian brand Poliform. Photo / Supplied
“That’s what really attracted us, that it was unique and had had a lot of thought put into it.”
The five-apartment Sonata, which was completed last year by Reside Projects, was designed by Architect Buchan, one of the consortium of architects behind the sculptured design for the proposed Te Tōangaroa stadium precinct, in downtown Auckland.
Foss noted that the 275sqm apartment, which has a CV of $10.5m, was the size of a large family home and the biggest in the Sonata.
“The views that captivate you when you walk into the apartment and the sheer volume and the high stud – it’s iconic. The quiet luxury of this apartment will appeal to people who put a premium on privacy,” he earlier said.
- 301/20 Devore Street, St Heliers, is available for sale
