Oh, to be in Montecito, now that spring is here. The bougainvillea is in lush bloom along the sun-dappled lanes of this jewel box of a town, the sunlight glints on the blue waves down at Butterfly Beach and word has spread that the strawberry gazpacho is back on the menu at the San Ysidro Ranch, praise be to the bountiful gods of organic produce and zero-calorie soups.
Meanwhile, fashion shop The Other has just taken a fresh delivery of its unique, hand-stamped Birkenstocks (£260 for a pair of Boston clogs painted with flowers, so darling) and the Juice Ranch on Coast Village Road has stocked up on its popular Mermaid ‘mylk’ shots, power-packed with chlorella, spirulina and a promise to ‘flush mucus out of the body’. I don’t doubt it for a second.
The air here is clean and fresh, the vibe is stealth wealth meets ultra-exclusive – and the Alpha Women of Montecito wouldn’t have it any other way.
What is remarkable about this glittering billionaire’s bolthole on the Californian coast is not just that it boasts one of the highest concentrations of wealth in the whole of America, it is that it has become home to such a fantabulous conflux of rich, powerful and invariably famous women, all living in the same postal district and all of whose lives are becoming increasingly enmeshed as they bounce higher and higher together on this golden trampoline of cachet and privilege.
Within a few miles of each other, you’ve got Oprah, Gwyneth, Meghan and Jen. As in Winfrey, Paltrow, Sussex-not-Markle and Aniston. Then you’ve got Cameron, Katy, Zoe, Ariana and Ellen. As in Diaz, Perry, Saldana, Grande and DeGeneres.
The latter has temporarily moved out, taking refuge in the English countryside with her wife Portia de Rossi to escape what she sees as the ‘dangerous’ Trump regime. Yet with Ellen’s deep roots in the area, along with her multiple properties and business interests, you can bet that she will be back. For who could resist the power and the glory that comes with being part of the new Montecito fem-mafia?
The neighbourhood is heaving with the kind of girlboss women who either do not need a man or have husbands and partners who are happy to stay out of the limelight. Don’t be fooled by the tradwife pantomimes of Gwyneth on Instagram making ‘boyfriend breakfasts’ or Meghan on Netflix making jam, the Alpha Women of Montecito (AWOM) are the ones who wear the trousers. Usually the Fran Jeans (£172) or the Saturday Sweatpants (£132) from the local cedar-scented Jenni Kayne shop – the California lifestyle brand that is a must-buy for every AWOM worth her pink Himalayan salt.
She calls her main £75 million Montecito estate The Promised Land. Situated on 40 sprawling acres above the town, it features a neo-Georgian mansion with 23,000 square feet of living space, six bedrooms, 14 bathrooms and grounds with a pool, stables and pond. Oprah runs her life and her business from here.
Gwyneth Paltrow lives in a custom-built Montecito mansion overlooking the ocean where she makes paleo snacks and sweet potato smoothies for husband Brad Falchuk in her dreamy kitchen. Yet as is the AWOM way, the Goop boss keeps him in the background, like a hunky pet.
A recent Instagram post to her 8.7 million followers caught the mood. ‘Hi guys, this is my husband Brad,’ said Gwyneth, as the multi-award-winning television writer, producer and director meekly shuffled into shot behind her.
‘Hi,’ said Brad, waving a timid hand. ‘I was doing a special podcast on step-parenting,’ continued Gwyneth, ‘and I asked Brad to join me.’
‘So I did,’ he said, obligingly.
Just up the road on the Riven Rock gated estate, where the Duke and Duchess have lived in rosy splendour since 2020, Harry is a furtive presence in Meghan’s busy, busy life. He turned up clutching a glass at the party in the final episode of her With Love, Meghan Netflix series. He was once seen juggling balls though a window as she was making a broadcast from their home – a more apt metaphor for his post-royal life would be hard to find. Just like a sprinkle of edible flowers on an iced doughnut, Harry – like so many Montecito husbands – appears to be surplus to needs. Note that it is Meghan, not Harry, who was invited to speak at the influential Time 100 Summit in New York yesterday. ‘I am so proud of everything she does,’ he said recently. He better be. He doesn’t have much choice.
Duchess of Sussex
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex purchased their home – the Chateau of Riven Rock – for £11 million in 2020. Featuring a main house, a guest cottage and a swimming pool. Due to the property boom in the area, it is now estimated to be worth more than £21 million.
Alongside the glossy celebrities in this Montecito-based vector of uber vixens there is a sub-stratum of lesser-known but perhaps even richer and more formidable she-financiers, entrepreneurs, businesswomen and socialites. Women such as Victoria Jackson, a cosmetics specialist whose No Makeup Makeup company is one of the reasons she is worth £380 million. ‘I’m an entrepreneur, cosmetics pioneer, medical research catalyst, author and philanthropist,’ says Victoria. ‘But above all, I’m a woman whose journey is proof that everything we experience, even in the mix of pain and debilitating fear, can be repurposed and harnessed to achieve our most impossible goals.’
A very Montecito sentiment – even if her cosmetic range issues a more modest promise to make you ‘feel good from the inside out’ and charges £42 for a small compact.
Then there is Whitney Wolfe Herd, the 35-year-old founder of dating app Bumble and co-founder of Tinder. Whitney is the youngest female self-made dollar billionaire in the US and will be played by Lily James in an upcoming biopic. She was the very first guest on the Duchess of Sussex’s new podcast, Confessions of a Female Founder, where the Bumble boss opined that businesswomen should ‘cut through the noise and be vulnerable’ and to ‘bottle your essence’ – whatever that might mean.
Near neighbours in Montecito, Meghan and Whitney call each other ‘beauty’ and told of how they bonded very quickly, even though they only met a few years ago. ‘She is one of my closest friends,’ said Meghan. I bet she is!
Should we be surprised at the speed with which the Duchess has established herself within this elite citadel of sisterhood, strategically gifting her jars of jam to the great and the good? Perhaps not. As Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos has pointed out; ‘Meghan is underestimated in terms of her influence on culture.’ He has also publicly noted that consumer goods associated with the duchess ‘sell out all over the world’.
Sarandos, who also has a weekend home in Montecito with his wife Nicole Avant, is well placed to understand that underneath the local glitz, everything is transactional.
It is little wonder that Meghan is also tight with Victoria Jackson, who loaned the Duchess her opulent house for a magazine interview photoshoot in 2022 and also provided her home as the venue for Meghan’s 41st birthday. In return, the grateful Duchess invites Victoria around for her girls’ night games of mahjong – and recently listed her No Makeup Makeup foundation among her beauty recommendations on her ShopMy page. It’s quid pro quo in this world – with the emphasis on the quid.
And the girl bonding does not stop there.
Victoria is also one of the founders of the Godmothers bookshop in nearby Summerland – three miles along the coast from Montecito. Prince Harry helped name the shop when he was promoting his embittered memoir Spare in 2023. He thanked Oprah, Victoria and literary agent Jennifer Rudolph Walsh (Oprah’s agent and another member of Meghan’s mahjong gang) for their support, calling them his trio of ‘fairy godmothers’. Oprah remembered the tribute and said there could only be one name for the book shop.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex even attended the store launch last summer, along with Glee actress Jane Lynch, who moved to Montecito following the pandemic. ‘This is the most community I’ve ever had in my life, Lynch told Town & Country magazine. ‘We all know each other. We know each other’s dogs!’
And if that closeness is boosted by the kind of mutual benefits that only wealth and celebrity can bring, who is complaining? Just look at these girls go. They are on each other’s podcasts, they are in each other’s kitchens, they loan out their private jets to their pals like bicycles or cardigans. They are recommending each other’s products, they are on each other’s shows, name-checking pet causes alongside major projects with equal enthusiasm.
Of course, the reigning queen of the Montecito scene remains St Oprah of Winfrey. Oprah’s got the biggest house.
She’s got the most money. She exudes the most power and her tentacles spread over the area like a great, munificent octopus. It is no secret that she helped Meghan and Harry relaunch themselves in America. Nor that her best friend Gayle King was recently on the Blue Origin space flight with her near Montecito neighbour Katy Perry, who lives in the area with husband Orlando Bloom and daughter Daisy.
Oprah also just sold a Montecito property to Jennifer Aniston, who is busy renovating her new home and installing a swimming pool.
Jen is just another famous face among the jet set flotsam that washes in and out of this glittering enclave. The actress Natalie Portman has just moved out of Montecito, relocating to Paris. Seinfeld and Veep actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus recently sold the £21 million beach house – complete with thermal chimney and retractable roof – where she spent holidays for over 20 years.
After her two children left home for university, Gwyneth sold her Los Angeles home for £17 million, then she had husband Brad moved full-time into her ‘forever’ house in Montecito. The original house was purchased in 2016 for £3.7 million. Construction and landscaping took seven years to create a hidden paradise complete with nine bedrooms, 16 bathrooms and a basement with full spa facilities including steam room, massage room, sauna, Jacuzzi, plunge pool, full bar, arcade and wine cellars.
And fresh from her triumph at the Oscars this year – where she won Best Supporting Actress for her role in the film Emilia Perez – Zoe Saldana only recently moved into the Spanish Colonial-style Montecito mansion she bought for £13 million in 2023. She can expect a mahjong invite in the post any day now. Jam incoming.
In 2020, Ariana Grande bought a house from arch local property flipper Ellen DeGeneres (Ellen has bought and sold over 20 properties in the area over the years), got married there, sold it in 2022, but apparently is moving back into Montecito. Fashion designer Tracy Robbins, who invited Harry and Meghan to Jamaica last year for the premiere of the Bob Marley biopic One Love – made by her CEO husband’s company Paramount Pictures – is also part of the Montecito matrix, this powerful group of fem-allies who have bonded together so beautifully – and lucratively.
Remarkable to think it all happens in a small town of only 8,400 inhabitants nestled between the ocean and the hills amid beautiful scenery. Situated only 70 miles north of the city, Montecito is to Los Angeles what the Cotswolds are to London; a zoom town currently enjoying a real estate boom but with the kind of property prices only the famous and the very, very rich can afford. And that is just how the Alpha Women of Montecito want it to stay.
Additional reporting Barbara McMahon
