Posh Beverly Hills Retreat Puts a New Face on Privacy
What’s a Beverly Hills matron supposed to do after she’s had her face lifted, her tummy tucked or her thighs liposuctioned?
Rush back to her husband, bruised and swollen, when he expects instant beauty in exchange for big bucks? Recuperate at home and risk the housekeeper or personal trainer blabbing to the neighbors? Hide out in a hotel where the toast is too crispy to chew and the lobby is full of looky-loos?
There’s a better way, says Nola Rocco, owner of a nine-room bed and breakfast on South Elm Drive that offers privacy and luxury for the newly nipped and tucked: the starlets, socialites and secretaries who use cosmetic surgery to rebound from a divorce or celebrate a 50th birthday, and the growing number of businessmen fighting corporate downsizing with a fresh face.
The guests at the Hidden Garden, attended by round-the-clock nurses, pay between $300 and $700 a day to sleep on antique brass beds with goose-down comforters, eat pureed veggies and tropical fruit smoothies from Mrs. Gooch’s and be chauffeured from the doctor in an oxygen-equipped Mercedes 500 SEL with tinted windows.
If that sounds pricey, the petite 56-year-old Rocco suggests pondering the alternatives: A nurse at home for the first 24 hours after outpatient surgery costs $500. A hotel room at the nearby Four Seasons or Beverly Wilshire runs $300 a night, not counting triple digit room service. A hospital room, with inedible food and absolutely no privacy, goes for $600.
Plus, what’s a grand or two more when you’ve already spent $10,000 on a face lift, which Rocco is quick to point out makes you look 10 years younger and lasts just as long. That averages out to $83.33 a month.
“Cheaper than therapy,” she says.
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Rocco is a former schoolteacher with a penchant for gourmet cooking and interior design who dreamed up a second career after a divorce a decade ago, just as cosmetic surgery was booming.
There are now nearly 400,000 face lifts, nose jobs, tummy tucks, breast augmentations, chemical peels and the like done in the United States each year. More than 20% take place in California, whose 700 plastic surgeons are double the number in any other state.
The Hidden Garden received a jolt of unwelcomed publicity this month when Adrienne Brown, wife of soul singer James Brown, collapsed there and died shortly after of causes unrelated to her surgery: a chin augmentation, a mini-tummy tuck and liposuction of her arms and thighs, with three surgeons (one for each procedure). A coroner’s report is expected soon; preliminary autopsy findings showed that Brown had early signs of heart disease.
The Hidden Garden is one of a handful of similar Westside places, a few within large hotels and a few in the homes of retired nurses. But Rocco’s hideaway, with its trellised courtyard, Ralph Lauren bed linens and proximity to Versace and Van Cleef & Arpel, is the one that recently won four stars from Los Angeles magazine.
The clients range from rock stars and foreign royalty, who rent the whole place and bring an entourage of relatives, servants, bodyguards and personal shoppers, to grocery clerks at Ralphs who squander their life savings on the face or body of their dreams. Rocco also accepts occasional pro bono cases from UCLA: burn victims, birth defects, drive-by shootings.
The clients--7,000 in all, ranging in age from 23 to 82--have changed over the years. There are more men, 25% these days, forcing Rocco to redecorate two of the frilly bedrooms with plaids and dark stripes. The female face lifts are younger, women in their late 40s, often on the eve of a 50th birthday.
There are also husband-wife teams, like the one in residence this week. He is recuperating from a nose job, eye lift, hair transplant and face lift; she had a simple face lift. And there are repeaters, who come back year after year for a bit of this and a dash of that.
Explains Rocco: “If you start early and do little things every time, no one ever suspects.”
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With heads swaddled in bandages, everybody is anonymous when they arrive at Hidden Garden. Guests are known by first name only. Nurses are sworn to secrecy. Each room has a private phone so calls don’t go through a telltale switchboard.
The Mercedes whisks newcomers up an alley, through an electronic garage door and into the house without even a second out in the street. The building is surrounded by a six-foot wall and shrouded in foliage. For those keeping a secret from a spouse or a business associate, Rocco will fill out a receipt for the Hidden Garden Spa.
Some people linger just for a night or two until they can eat solid food and wash their hair by themselves. Others make a holiday of it. By Day 5 after a face lift, guests feel and look well enough, beneath lightweight sunglasses and a broad-brimmed hat, to shop Rodeo Drive. “You’re not supposed to pull stuff over your head or bend down,” Rocco said. “But they do it anyway. Nothing stops some people.”
Rocco is a fount of advice about how to prevent, or forestall, the need for a face lift--not merely what to do after one. Sleep on your back, she urges. Avoid broad facial expressions or gnawing on food. Keep orchids in your bedroom because they exude skin-softening oxygen during the night. Exercise. Eat right. Stay out of the sun.
She practices what she preaches, weighing in at a pert 104 pounds and shielding her face with a baseball cap. She had a little nip and tuck around her eyes about the time of her divorce, but these days rather likes the few crow’s feet and laugh lines on her otherwise smooth face.
But the surgeon’s siren song is eternally tempting in this ZIP code. Not too long ago, Rocco escorted a guest to the doctor, who admired how she looked in white linen walking shorts. “You have good legs,” he told her. “But you could have terrific legs.”
For a month, Rocco said, she studied her legs in the mirror. They had never bothered her before, but now she found herself obsessed by some thickening at the knee. A touch of liposuction later, the curvature was perfect. The surgery was performed at lunchtime. Rocco was back at the Hidden Garden in time to serve tea.
