Star Bright

Dresses with a $75,000 price tag, $40,000 a month for child support and multi-million-dollar houses: just a slice of celebrities’ top-shelf lifestyles.

text Jeremy Helligar
illustrations GABINO

Jennifer Lopez & Marc Anthony:  Baby Bling

How do stars show baby love? Marc Anthony reportedly gave his wife, Jennifer Lopez, an eight-carat canary diamond ring after she gave birth to their fraternal twins, Max and Emme, in February. Price tag: $300,000. That’s twice as much as the $150,000 that the couple is said to have paid L.A. baby boutique Petit Tresor to design nurseries in their mansions on New York’s Long Island, Miami’s Fisher Island, Puerto Rico and a $6.4 million, five-bedroom, 2,225-square-foot Tuscan-style villa in Los Angeles’s ritzy Bel-Air district. They decked out the baby quarters with Bratt Decor Casablanca Premiere iron cribs ($847 each), Glam Glider relaxing chairs for Mom and Dad ($1,420 each), a Clara changing table ($1,780) and 18-carat gilded trim and chandeliers. Don’t worry about Anthony's bank balance: In March, People magazine gave the family $6 million to run exclusive photos of the newborns.

Enrique Iglesias: Locations! Locations! Locations!

The shopping habits of Enrique Iglesias may be down-to-earth in comparison, but being rich and famous means never having to go on a budget vacation. The Spanish singer – usually accompanied by his tennis-player girlfriend of six years, Anna Kournikova – has recently spent quality down-time in Las Vegas, Jerusalem, Marbella, Paris, Cabo San Lucas, Panama City – where he bought a luxury apartment (spending between $200,000 and $400,000) – and the Caribbean island of St. Barts, where he and Kournikova rented a private yacht.
Although he hits the holiday road in celebrity style, Iglesias claims to be relatively frugal when buying clothes. “The most I’ve spent on an item of clothing is $6,000 on an Yves St. Laurent suit,” he once recalled. Bargain-basement taste in clothing aside, Iglesias still employs a personal stylist, which in Hollywood can cost over $6,000 a day. At least he gets those red-carpet designer duds for free. 

Eva Longoria & Tony Parker: Marriage, Celebrity Style

When Eva Longoria married basketball star Tony Parker on July 7, 2007, the Mexican-American actress totally outclassed her Desperate Housewives character, Gabrielle Solis Lang. The bride walked down the aisle of Paris’s Saint Germain l’Auxerrois church in $1 million worth of jewels and a $75,000 silk wool gown designed by Angel Sánchez. Not only did the couple fly in all of their 250 guests and cover their hotel bills, the female invitees also snagged 18-carat gold Van Cleef & Arpels bracelets, while Longoria’s bridesmaids scored $395 Rafe Swarovski snakeskin clutches. During the ceremony, Longoria and Parker exchanged 18-carat white gold bands – hers with two rows of 80 brilliant-cut diamonds separated by a row of 27 square-cut diamonds. At the reception in the Chateau Vaux-le-Vicomte (a 17th-century castle 34 miles southeast of Paris), fireworks lit up the sky outside while inside husband and wife cut a $15,000 wedding cake that was reportedly flown in first-class from L.A. That’s one expensive sugar rush!

Britney Spears: Divorce & Tell

In the middle of the Britney Spears-Kevin Federline divorce, the court released documents detailing Spears’ monthly spending habits: $102,000 on entertainment, $16,000 on clothes, $50,000 on a mortgage, $10,000 on utilities, $6,000 on child care, $5,000 on eating out and $2,500 on phone bills. The court also imposed some limits: the monthly entertainment budget reportedly will be slashed to $10,000, while clothing will be cut at least in half. Can a pop diva survive on a mere $600 daily spending money?

Miami: Playground of the Rich & Famous

The constellations on the ground in south Florida rival the ones in the sky. In 2002, Enrique Iglesias reportedly built a $4.3-million pad on Sunset Island in Miami Beach to be close to Anna Kournikova’s $5-million home. Shakira’s $3.4-million mansion is also in the area.

Meanwhile, Gloria Estefan lives on Star Island, a strip of man-made land between downtown Miami and South Beach that is also the location of hip-hop mogul Sean “P. Diddy” Combs’ $14.5-million, nine-bedroom, 12-bathroom, 5,950-square-foot mansion (three months after buying his Miami digs in 2003, Diddy splurged on a $5-million, three-story New Jersey mansion).

Rocker Lenny Kravitz calls Key Biscayne Point home – or rather, one of several homes – after selling his nearly $9-million, nine-bedroom, over-49,000-square-foot Star Island house for $14.5 million in 2006. Maybe his real-estate agent should get a special Grammy Award for scoring that $5.5 million profit.