After four years on the market, a luxurious ranch belonging to fashion designer Tom Ford sold for $48 million and entered records as a major sale in New Mexico.
The uber-stylish estate is very far from what most people associate with a desert ranch. Designed by famed architect Tadao Ando, Cerro Pelon Ranch is located in the Galisteo Basin just outside of Santa Fe and boasts a main concrete house with floor-to-ceiling glass windows as well as a reflective pool, a tennis court and extensive horse stables and equestrian grounds.
It spans 20,662 acres in total and was used to film movies such as “Silverado,” “All The Pretty Horses” and “Thor.” Ando, who worked on the Armani Teatro in Milan and the Ground Zero Project in Lower Manhattan, designed the ranch to blend into its natural surroundings — the main structure reflects natural light and the water from the pool while also blending into the sandy, muted colors of the Santa Fe desert.
[Inman Slideshow]
During the years he owned the property, Ford frequently described it as his escape and inspiration. A walkway cuts across the pool and the main house while the sprawling grounds offer both isolated grounds to roam as well as a Western movie set and numerous guest houses.
“We live in an artificial world,” Tom Ford told the Wall Street Journal of the ranch in 2009. “In the fashion business, you live in the future for the next collection. But when I spend time on my ranch in New Mexico—with the sun above me and the rattlesnakes growing under the bush — I appreciate the present.”
Because residential sales in New Mexico do not enter public record, news of Cerro Pelon Ranch’s sale broke when New York Compass real estate agent Clayton Orrigo posted about it on Instagram. He and local agent Neil Lyon represented the buyer, who chose to remain anonymous. Kevin Bobolsky of Santa Fe’s Kevin Bobolsky’s Group worked with Ford.
“It has been an honor to work on this for the past 4 months, and I’m thrilled for the new owners who have showed me firsthand what it’ like to dream bigger,” Orrigo wrote on Instagram.
Ford had initially listed the property for $75 million in 2016 but cut the price after it sat on the market without a buyer. Ford, who worked as creative director of Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent before branching out with his own menswear label, shot to fame as one of the country’s most accomplished designers in the 21st century before trying his hand as a filmmaker more recently. Michelle Obama, Jennifer Lopez, Tom Hanks and Scarlett Johansson have all worn Ford’s pieces to A-list events.
Other properties in Ford’s real estate portfolio include a Beverly Hills mansion, a Los Angeles Holmby Hills estate and an Upper East Side penthouse.
