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Here's a convenient truth: Dr. Roger Revelle's La Jolla oceanfront home is listed for sale for the first time in 80 years. Revelle, who warned us about global warming way back in 1957, was the mentor to and inspiration for former Vice President Al Gore's long-time campaign to cut down on CO2 emissions.

The 4,165-square-foot home, listed at $14 million, was originally built in 1922 by Rex Clark and Grace Scripps Clark as their summer house. Grace was the daughter of James Edmund Scripps, founder of the Detroit Evening News and one of the key newspapers in the Scripps newspaper chain. In 1947, the home passed to the Clarks' daughter and her husband, the renowned scientist and scholar, Roger Revelle. Because of Revelle's prominence, the home was the venue for frequent entertaining of guests including Eleanor Roosevelt, Jonas Salk and many Nobel laureates from around the world. Revelle was also credited with bringing world-class scientists to UCSD and, as a result of that, making San Diego the home to so many science and research laboratories.

The 5-bedroom estate, which sits on an 18,900-square-foot walled lot, has stunning views of the Pacific Ocean and the Whispering Sands Beach. There is a lush garden, fishpond and pool. The property has a 350-square-foot lanai, a detached one-bedroom guesthouse and a large living room with a fireplace, a formal dining room, breakfast room and sun room/office. The main house and guest house border 115 feet of sandy beach.

Dr. Revelle won numerous awards for his scientific research, including a presidential appointment by President John F. Kennedy Jr. and the National Medal of Science from President George W. Bush. Gore became enamored of his work in the 1960s and took on the challenge of climate change as his personal mission. Revelle died in 1991.

Coldwell Banker Previews International agent Linda Marrone, based in La Jolla, has the listing.

Toss your roomy totes, slim clutches and bohemian bags with hardware and fringe to the back of the closet.

The It bags for fall are small and basic; ladylike, almost to the point of prim; and minimalist. Square-shaped or rectangular, the handbags often have long shoulder straps and feature a very simple fold-over envelope style flap with a simple clasp. Color schemes are fairly basic, too, with most in solid brown and tan leather and black.

These bags resemble the "pocket books" you once plucked from your mother's or grandmother's closet to play dress-up. They are ultra understated and have a conservative '80s power suit feel. With long shoulder straps the bags rest at the hip.

Hermès has resurrected the Constance, a model with an H clasp that can be worn over the shoulder or messenger style.

Phoebe Philo introduced Celine's Classic Box, a small bag with compartments, closed by a square gold clasp. The fashion flock has been seen with the bag in black, brown and red leather.

Ralph Lauren has one in shiny brown croc with a gleaming round gold clasp. Fendi has also brought back a classic: the Logo Square bag emblazoned with Fs.

Last year when we talked to David Yurman (David Yurman at Bloomingdales - Exclusive Interview), he spoke about working as a husband-and-wife team and alluded to the increasing involvement of his son in the family business. Evan Yurman has helped with the men's collections, and now, has even designed his own collection of women's eyewear (known to non-industry folks as "sunglasses") for David Yurman.

We talked to Evan Yurman, the next in line for the David Yurman empire, about more than just fancy shades -- read the interview below for a peek inside this fiery fashion heir; a talented designer in his own right. Just scroll down to see the amethyst-studded beauties which grace his sparkling collection ($695).

Luxist: Have you always been involved in the family business?

Evan Yurman: I officially joined the company in 2004. Before then, I spent time cutting and carving with my knife collection; it was part of my eventual growth into design. Creativity has always been part of my life, so it is great to have an outlet to explore my ideas.

L: What do you foresee in the future of the Yurman collections?

EY: We will continue to incorporate unique, artisanal elements into our collections while staying true to our brand DNA of innovation in the modern tradition. I like integrating different textures and motifs -- rhino, sea urchin, waves, chevron are some of my favorites.

In my recent Luxist articles,The Dawn Of A New Economy, and Is The Recession Over?, I have discussed a multiplicity of luxury trends, derived from the Luxury Summit discussions and research, and from the American Affluence Center Research, Spring 2010. These new trends suggest changes in high end spending and saving, redefining what is newly important to consumers. Such changes have been enhanced by the recession that has at best lightly touched and at worst deeply affected both the aspirational and inspirational high net worth populations. Much of this research suggests changes in purchasing attitudes that range from a more conspicuous to a more conscious consumption, allowing for less artifice and more authenticity, less presumption and more purpose, less spending and more investing – all in material and experience that mean more than just acquiring more stuff.

Within the past year also, a greater interest has emerged in high end, authentic adventure travel, multi -generational family travel, and all with a greater eco-sensitive outlook. These luxury travel trends correspond, and indeed harmonize with high end travel offerings found in New Zealand, the youngest, least populated (still more sheep than people, 16 million sheep, 4 million people), and arguably one of the most unspoiled, green, eco-sensitive and adventurous and adventuresome country left in the world.

Last week The Classicist told you about a historic Hudson River estate being restored to its former glory. That posh property is being thoroughly enjoyed by its new owners, but there's another architectural gem of equally impressive provenance now available with the added bonus of oceanfront acreage – The Timbers in Watch Hill, Rhode Island. Set high above the ocean on a picturesque stretch of beach, the majestic eight-acre compound comprises one of the grandest historic oceanfront estates in New England that's still in private hands. The mansion was built in 1917 and designed by celebrated architect John Russell Pope, who created the Jefferson Memorial and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The estate recently underwent a meticulous and historically accurate $10 million restoration, reflecting Pope's original vision. It's now been listed for sale by Christie's Great Estates affiliate Seaboard Properties for $19.5 million.

The opulent 10,500-sq.-ft. main residence was styled after a grand English Tudor manor and features baronial touches such as 15 elegant fireplaces, a magnificent grand staircase and a bell tower. In addition to panoramic ocean views it boasts wide-plank oak floors, wrought-iron chandeliers, archways, and light-filled, generously scaled rooms. The spectacular living room features 35-foot-high cathedral ceilings, exposed English oak beams, and a beautifully crafted wraparound balcony with a carved wooden balustrade. Large French doors on the east side of the living room open to a large covered veranda which features glorious views of the beach and the sounds of the surf as it rolls ashore. At the far end of the veranda, an octagonal dining area features an outdoor woodburning fireplace, wrought-iron chandelier, vaulted ceilings, and archways overlooking the ocean.

Is this the time to indulge your hankering' and buy yourself a not-so-modest spread in Wyoming, Montana, or Colorado? After all, just three months ago, Texas billionaire Kelcy Warren picked up the Boot Jack Ranch in southwest Colorado for a mere $46.5 million; the ranch was originally listed two years before at $88 million. At the time, it was the highest price residential sale in the country for 2010 -- a short-lived record surpassed by a Bel-Air home a few weeks later.

But if a guy like Warren can get half off the price of a ranch with of 3,000 pristine wilderness acres, 6 lakes and 7 miles of world-class fly fishing on the West Fork of the San Juan River -- not to mention the 14,000-square-foot home -- might now not be the time for the rest of us to get in touch with our inner cowboy?

Lest you think Warren got the only real deal out there: A Bozeman-area ranch, once listed at $39 million, just closed escrow at $11.5 million. Another ranch in southwest Montana, which at its peak listed for $60 million, just sold for below $30 million. In southern Colorado, a ranch that once sported a price tag of $100 million, has a new owner who paid about $46 million for it.

But before you jump in the saddle, you might want to hold your horses, literally. There's more than meets the eye about what constitutes value in ranch land and it's not just acreage alone.

(First, let's eliminate those ranches that Luxist readers likely wouldn't consider: The ones that are in the middle of nowhere, have no pretty views, and their value is based on things like the dependability of the precipitation, the strength of the grass and the quality of livestock water. i think we can safely eliminate most of Western Nebraska and Eastern Montana, maybe even Eastern Colorado.)

What features drive up the price of a luxury ranch? Oddly enough, it's privacy.

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Menswear changes at a snail's pace. New cuts are generally so imperceptible year in and year out that they usually sneak up on the average American male. One day a gentleman dons his everyday business suit shocked to discover that the sleeves are too long, shoulders too wide and the whole kit and caboodle is woefully out of date.

So it's news that the Spring '11 menswear shows, that ended in Milan on Tuesday, are really shaking things up, particularly when it comes to color. That's a gutsy move in a challenging global economy where sales are down and designers want play it safe (tie sales have been pitiful recently). But the wealthy are still wealthy and they don't need anything, so newness is what they're after, according to menswear analysts.

Giorgio Armani (pictured above) delivered splashed citrus yellow and sky blue everywhere-on belts, ties, scarves and shirts. Marc Jacobs presented subtle silhouette changes which he zipped up by hints of electric blue and fuchsia. Gucci designer Frida Giannini dreamed of young guys jetting between Rome and Marrakesh. What would these bourgeois gentilhommes wear? Why, suede shorts, Berber jewelry and velvet horse bit loafers, of course.

On Tuesday we brought you Part I of posh publisher Prosper Assouline's ten essential luxuries. Luxist readers will be familiar with the beautiful and stylish books published by his luxe imprint Assouline; perhaps less so with the man who founded and runs the company. A master of savoir faire, Prosper Assouline is known for merging the modern and the classical in publishing and creative design. Picking up where we left off the other day regarding the evolution of Assouline into luxury brand whose medium is culture, the company established retail positions first in Bergdorf Goodman, and then at ten Saks Fifth Avenue stores, as well as Celux (Tokyo), A Editores (Mexico City), Lane Crawford (Hong Kong), Harvey Nichols (Dubai), Holt Renfrew (Toronto), Librissime (Montreal), Sotheby's (New York), Teatro Verde (Toronto), and Zai (Qatar). The desire to showcase the concept of 'books as gifts' has led to the creation of a full retail program of strategic partnerships to open Assouline branded corners around the world.

As part of Assouline's positioning as a luxury brand, the first standalone Assouline boutique opened in Paris on Place Saint Germain des Prés in 2005. Conceived as a contemporary library, the boutique features the complete collection of books and luxury products. Assouline created the other items around the books, such as Book scented candles, a leather Coach designed library, and a variety of slipcased products and limited edition volumes. Also featured is the Goyard trunk, designed by Prosper Assouline with Goyard as a means to capture the nostalgia of traveling with books. Another one of Prosper's designs is the Assouline Library, a handcrafted bookcase featuring 150 books on style released in 2004 that has was an immediate sensation. Click through to the gallery to see Part II of Prosper's 10 essential luxuries, from hats and yachts to bars and cars, and find out what makes them a must.

EARLIER: Posh Publisher Prosper Assouline's Ten Essential Luxuries, Part I

There worse places to wait out the end of the world ...

Over the 2007/8 Christmas holiday season, artist Richard Prince developed and expected a vision of post-apocalyptic society. The world as we know it met its untimely demise as the protagonist, his family and crew sailed to St. Barthelemy, discovering the changed state of affairs only when landing on the island. Far from the decadent setting one would expect to find, the resort haven became the setting for a struggle for survival.

I came to St. Barths under far different circumstances, of course. A small plane, with room for only six passengers, deposited me on the tarmac at a tiny airport, offering stunning and alarming views of the sea during our approach. The runway, sans fence or other barrier at the end, stretches right to the beach, with only a splash of sand separating it from the lapping waves of the Caribbean Sea. The customs agent inside the small, Spartan terminal served little purpose aside from a friendly greeting and a stamp and wave with a flick of the wrist.

Luxist readers will be familiar with the beautiful and stylish books published by French imprint Assouline; perhaps less so with the man who founded and runs the company. A master of savoir faire, Prosper Assouline is known for merging the modern and the classical in publishing and creative design. The former artistic director of several French fashion magazines, Prosper's resumé includes creating and launching his own magazine, and the founding of a creative agency specializing in branding and advertising in the late 1980s. With a vision of true luxury in print, he founded Assouline Publishing with his wife, Martine Assouline, in Paris in 1995, creating a world of exclusivity in books and brand identity. Under the direction of Prosper, Assouline has invented a visual language that is internationally recognized for its excellence.

After establishing the imprint as the world's most renowned publisher of high-quality illustrated volumes on fashion and style, Prosper opened an office in New York in 2001, which became the brand's international headquarters. In the past 15 years, Assou has published over 750 titles across international markets ranging on subjects including art, architecture, design, fashion, gastronomy, photography, travel and viticulture. The first collection of monographs on the history of fashion, art, and design, Assouline's Memoire series, includes over 250 titles on such legendary names as Azzedine Aläia, Chanel, Charles James, Dolce & Gabbana, and Marc Jacobs. Assouline creates products that stand alone as objets d'art; they have a beauty and a point of view that make them desirable to own and incorporate into the most discerning collections. Click through to the gallery to see Part 1 of Prosper's 10 essential luxuries, from hats and yachts to bars and cars, and find out what makes them a must.

Marienruh, a historic fieldstone colonial revival country estate built for heiress Alice Astor, the daughter of John Jacob Astor IV and sister of Vincent Astor, and her Russian aristocrat husband Prince Serge Obolensky in 1926 is being restored to its former glory by its new owners. The gracious mansion, situated on 100 scenic acres given to Alice by her brother overlooking the Hudson River in Rhinebeck, New York, was constructed for the glamorous couple by renowned architect Mott B. Schmidt. It had been on the market for $8.5 million up until last summer when unnamed buyers purchased the property, which had been in institutional use for some time, and set about renovating it – a pleasing reversal in an age where many fine old mansions are being put to less dignified uses, often destroying their souls in the process.

After Alice Astor's death the mansion was used over the years as a Christian youth camp, a home for unwed mothers, a drug rehab center and an events space. Over the decades the house was stripped of nearly all its original details, including fireplace mantels, lighting fixtures, hardware and even the copper gutters. The restoration work is being done extremely carefully, overseen by New York architect-designer Robert Couturier. A few upgrades are of course necessary, and new greenhouses are being installed. One of the wings will now house an elegant two-story tall library. As architectural historian Mark Alan Hewitt notes in The Architecture of Mott B. Schmidt (Rizzoli, 1991), Marienruh's block-with-dependencies design was inspired by two influential 18th century American mansions: Montpelier (1751) in Laurel, Maryland, and the the Hammond-Harwood House (1773-4) in Annapolis, MD.

Marienruh is next to photographer Annie Leibovitz's 220-acre spread which had been listed for sale at $11 million as part of her debt restructuring imbroglio. David Bowie and his wife Iman have reportedly considered buying it; other celebrities with property in the area include Liam Neeson, Gwyneth Paltrow, financier George Soros, hotelier Andre Balazs, and Rolling Stone magazine founder Jann Wenner. Leibovitz's property including some stone barns was once part of Alice's father John Jacob Astor IV's 3,500-acre estate Ferncliff; another remnant of that once glorious demesne is the beautiful Astor Courts, designed by Stanford White as a playhouse for Ferncliff with an indoor pool and tennis court, which was was an Estate of the Day last fall with an asking price of $12 million.

BMW hasn't really done well with the big money, mass-market coupe lately. The Z8 did fine, thank you very much, but that was a limited edition. The 8 Series on the other hand, one of our favorite cars to this day, didn't do anywhere close to fine. And the car that could have been said to replace it, the 6 Series, certainly hasn't had a bad life but it hasn't done any blitzkrieging of market share either. The current 6, which first pointed its rotund snout our way in 2003, is about to be replaced by a model that will complete BMWs return to more conventional design. We drove the 650i and had a long, top-down talk about why it was going away and what we might want from its successor.

Extreme, statement-making shoes make the woman.

If you routinely go the safe route on your footwear choices (and, by safe, I mean simple plain black pumps or modest, solid-colored flats), you're just not living. Or at least not setting yourself apart.

The fashion world is obsessed with over-the-top shoes. The crazier, the scarier, the stranger, the better. And, because fashion is a business, it means women's appetite for extreme footwear is increasing by leaps and bounds.

Sky scraping platforms. Metallic belt-buckle over-the-knee boots. Shoes that resemble the Walt Disney Concert Hall. Shoes that look like bloated armadillos. Cowboy boots that threaten to topple you over backwards. Torturous spikes. Spinal stilettos. Garter belt lace-ups. Stilettos festooned with feathers.

For fall, 2010, ski bindings and interior design materials like plywood and Formica marry to create Baleniaga's high-heeled, color-blocked loafers. They are absolutely nuts! And you'll no doubt see them on some Hollywood It creature come red carpet events later this year.

Riccardo Tisci's Givenchy fall lineup includes an impossibly complicated pair of red lace-up booties that have tiny bumps not unlike some deep sea monster.

"Can I watch a movie on your little TV?" My daughter asked one night at mealtime. Hey, if it gets her to eat her vegetables, I'm down. She was referring to the Sony Dash that the company generously lent Luxist to try out, and it's much more than a mere video playback device. Small LCD screens are non-news at this point, so what does the Dash do that warrants attention? Well, how's this? I fulfilled my little cherub's request by deftly tapping at the interactive touchscreen for less than a minute. Up popped the requested princess movie via YouTube, and the plate was cleaned. Later, while burning the midnight oil, the Dash set the mood by streaming music from a Pandora station I created.

All of the functions I've described so far are things you can pull off with a laptop, for sure. The difference with the Dash is that it's an affordable $199, and isn't a universal tool like a laptop. Freed from having to cover every possible base, the Dash is optimized for its media delivery role, and consumes a much smaller footprint. With Father's Day coming, you might like to know if it's the right item for your gadget-fan Dad. How does it do? Read on.

I'm about to celebrate my first Father's Day, so when I heard that the Beverly Hills Cigar Club had a few cigar suggestions for the occasion, I opened the e-mail immediately. In past years, I would have written the blog post for everyone else ... this year, I have something at stake!

Vin Lee, CEO of the Beverly Hills Cigar Club, has put together an interesting menu of cigars for Father's Day this year. From this list, I'd go with the Oliva Serie V, though my personal favorite these days is the 601 Trabuco (hint, hint).

Let's take a look at the five cigars Lee offers up as Father's Day suggestions:

1. CAO America Monument Pinstripe Torpedo
The wrapper on this cigar consists of two leaves arranged to deliver a pinstriping effect. One is a golden brown Connecticut Shade, and the other is a chocolate brown Connecticut Broadleaf. The filler comes from Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic and the United States. Notes Lee, "Warm summer nights this Father's Day, heat up the Kalamazoo 900 Grill and let Dad light up America while he slow grills his special burgers. No, he still won't tell you what's in the sauce though."