There was always something otherworldly about Ziggy Stardust. The same can be said about his seven-bedroom, Balinese-style estate, an eccentric but alluring retreat on a hilltop overlooking Mustique’s Brittania Bay.
Here, a tangle of outdoor pavilions, bedrooms, ponds, studios, and salons feel individually cherry-picked from the most colorful corners of Bowie’s imagination. There’s the parlor whose walls have the patina of an ancient Roman fortress and whose ceiling is done up in palm frond prints. There’s the game room with a stunning, inlaid-wood checkers table and abstract, textured “wallpaper” made from hand-picked seashells. There are Balinese carvings from Indonesian temples and dragon-like “protector gods,” wooden serpents for stair railings, and an 18th century Murano crystal chandelier so old, it’s meant to be lit with oil.
And yet, the home—which is now available to rent through Mustique Company and Red Savannah—is far from a space oddity. Koi ponds and stunning landscaping, along with incredible oceanfront views and a wealth of antique Balinese furniture give the villa a cohesively tropical vibe that’s both transporting and singular.
None of that was any accident. Bowie reportedly instructed one of the island’s most unconventional architects, Arne Hasselqvist, to build a home that would be decidedly “un-Caribbean” and “a folly of follies.” Hasselqvist nailed it. “I love a good cliché,” Bowie told Architectural Digest in 1992, “and this house for me is just the most delightful cliché.”
According to Red Savannah villa specialist Nick Westwood, Bowie found the place so peaceful, “he found it hard to get any work done there.” (He probably wouldn’t object, then, to the fact that his on-site recording studio has been repurposed into the home’s sixth bedroom.)
So how did Bowie’s old landing pad become an option for Caribbean beachgoers? The story is a bit of a mystery. Twelve years before Bowie’s passing, in 1994, the artist sold the home to the English poet Felix Dennis, who respected the home’s integrity and left it vastly intact. He added a writer’s cottage, which later became the house’s seventh bedroom, and rechristened the home, changing its name from the accurate-if-bland “Britannia Bay House” to the exotic, if geographically confused, “Mandalay.”
Then, in 2014, Dennis passed away, and the home was listed for $20 million and sold to undisclosed owners earlier this year. “Everyone is super-discrete on Mustique and generally unwilling to talk about individual villa owners,” explained Westwood. (It’s this privacy that draws sometime residents such as Mick Jagger and the British royals to the island.)
Mandalay quietly landed on the rental market during the low summer season this year, commanding a $40,000 per week price tag for 14 guests and a household staff of eight; come high season, which lasts from Dec. 15 through April 30, the villa will run $60,000 per week. Westwood recommends budgeting an additional 20 percent for island tax, bringing the total up to $72,000, before gratuity.
Turn and face the strain, indeed.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.
Photos courtesy of www.mustique-island.com.
