Indice dei contenuti per September 2019 in Robb Report

Alex Badia Alex Badia is the men’s and women’s fashion director at WWD and a contributor to Rolling Stone, Variety and Muse, as well as Robb Report. Constantly on the hunt for fashion’s latest trends and talent, he headed to the Grand Hotel Tremezzo’s idyllic Villa Passalacqua this month for our fall fashion photo shoot, “The Cultured Man” (p. 116). Originally from Barcelona, Badia lived in several European capitals before moving to New York more than 20 years ago—a place he now considers his home away from home. Roberto Patella Roberto Patella has photographed celebrities, models and artists of all stripes—from Armie Hammer to Chuck Close—for publications such as Vanity Fair and Esquire. For Robb Report’s fall fashion shoot, Patella went to Lake Como to capture the cashmeres and flannels…

Archrivals François Pinault and Bernard Arnault have competed for dominance on the global luxury-goods stage for decades. After numerous battles, the LVMH and Kering head honchos continue to fight for market share and status. Still, for all their quarreling, France’s richest men have more in common than perhaps they’d like to admit. Then again, that might be part of the problem. Bernard Arnault VS. François Pinault STARTED FROM... The middle. After graduating from a prestigious university, Arnault took the helm of his father’s construction company. The bottom. Born into a peasant family, Pinault dropped out of high school. AGE 70 83 NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES 156,000 30,595 LOFTY SUSTAINABILITY GOALS Reduce LVMH’s CO emissions by 25 percent by 2020. 2 Reduce Kering’s CO2 emissions by 50 percent by 2025. SUPERPOWER BRAND LOUIS…

The Coral Geographer, a 120-passenger ship from Australia-based Coral Expeditions, takes its first trip—from Singapore across the Indian Ocean to the Seychelles—in January 2021. A special overnight excursion to Sri Lanka includes a dusk safari at Yala National Park. By 2020, the very luxe Ponant Explorers fleet will have added six ships that carry a max of 184 passengers each in 92 cabins. One standout feature, in addition to Hermès toiletries and a 24-hour butler: a lounge with a small bar with windows below the waterline, so you can scuba while staying bone-dry. The ships, all named for French explorers, will travel to the Bissagos Islands, the Maldives, Papua New Guinea and other locales polar and tropical alike. Up to 12 guests can take Offshore Outpost’s Pacific Provider to the…

Davis Estates 2015 Phase V Petite Sirah, Napa Valley This wine is rich, meaty and inky dark with a tight structure. It has lots of years to go on it but is still good now with lamb, venison, pork or a good porterhouse. You’ll find charred lamb and roasted nuts on the nose, with stewed fruits, panettone, dusty mint and black cherry in the mouth. Phase V is Davis Estates’ most premium expression, made with the very best grapes from the very best parcels. Celebrated winemaker Philippe Melka has had his hands in the making of this very limited-production wine (just 141 cases). Buy three bottles; it has a candied, can’tstop-drinking-it quality that will have you uncorking a second bottle with dinner faster than you’d expect, and you’re going to…

Check Mate Soft neutrals are your friends this fall, and a turtleneck beneath a tonal jacket, with a pair of flannels, shows you can be sharp enough for work and for whatever the evening holds. Eleventy cashmere-blend sport coat ($1,995, eleventy.it); Officine Générale Scottish wool sweater ($420, officinegenerale.com);Ermenegildo Zegna cotton trousers ($495, zegna.us);T. Anthony leather brief ($795, tanthony.com);Di Bianco calfskin bluchers ($1,095, scarpedibianco.com). Made to Move An unstructured jacket in a thin wool is the easiest way to add some smarts to a casual outfit. Now you’re ready for your weekend getaway—and maybe a spot of lunch on the way. Boglioli wool travel jacket ($1,595, bogliolimilano.com); Brunello Cucinelli cashmere cardigan ($3,195, brunellocucinelli.com); Sunspel cotton T-shirt ($90, sunspel.com);the Armoury by Frank Clegg Sunbrella zip tote ($880, thearmoury.com); Hermès indigo-washed denim jeans…

THIS SEPTEMBER, AS galleries and museums hope to kick off the fall art season with a bang, African-American artists are leading the most highly anticipated openings. Betye Saar has a show at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, followed by one next month at the Museum of Modern Art. Pope.L will be triply honored in New York, with exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art and, in October, MoMA; he’ll also present one of his grueling performances, organized by the Public Art Fund. Kehinde Wiley will unveil a monumental public sculpture, Wangechi Mutu’s bronzes will be the first-ever commission for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s main facade, and painters Amy Sherald, Ed Clark and Charles Gaines will make their Hauser & Wirth solo debuts with simultaneous shows. Their…

Superyacht Seven Sins was the first hull in Sanlorenzo’s now flagship 52Steel range when it launched in 2017. Designer Mauro Micheli, who started Officina Italiana Design (italianadesign.it) with Sergio Beretta, explains why the 170-foot yacht has triggered the start of a new era for both the studio and the yard. What was the design brief for Seven Sins? To create a long-lasting yacht from an aesthetic point of view. We gave volume and space to areas that will get used the most. We created a swimming pool on the main deck (the largest found on a yacht of this dimension) with a glass bottom to create more light in the beach club, which floods to convert to a tender bay when required. The beach club is the biggest area where…

NEW YORK The Dry Cleaner Who Can Work Magic While most Manhattan dry cleaners are probably capable of such quotidian chores as pressing a shirt or freshening up a winter coat, if you need someone to tend to silk brocade walls, upholstered Louis XVI chairs, couture gowns or wine spills on your jet’s interior, call Madame Paulette (madamepaulette.com ), favored by everyone from Beyoncé to Anna Wintour. For textile disasters, staff will come to your house (or, as the case may be, your personal hangar); they can also deconstruct, clean and reconstruct a favorite designer ensemble. “We do the mundane,” says general manager Johnny Xirouchakis. “But when people’s prized collections are damaged, it’s not about the insurance company replacing them. No amount of money can replace them. People just want…

Bovet “It’s an extended family of 102 children,” Pascal Raffy says proudly when talking about Bovet, the watchmaking company he purchased in 2001. The former pharmaceutical executive was already a passionate watch collector when he decided to make his hobby his business. Founded in England by Swiss watchmaker Edouard Bovet in 1822 and known for supplying fine, handcrafted, Swiss-made pocket watches to Asia, the brand had mostly fallen off the map. When Raffy bought Bovet, it was producing just 140 watches a year. While the company still makes a limited number of watches (3,000 annually), Raffy has single-handedly revived Bovet as one of Switzerland’s most respected watchmakers—its Récital 22 Grand Récital timepiece won watchmaking’s top honor at last year’s Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève. “When I became the sole owner…

I was talking to a menswear designer recently about how he would describe his customer. His response was revealing: There was no mention of age, profession or location, which is often how these conversations go. His response was simply, “A guy who appreciates well-designed things, whether that’s a hotel, car, restaurant menu or what’s in his wardrobe.” I was reminded of that while we were putting the finishing touches to this, our fall/winter style issue, since it resonated with much of the contents of the magazine. It’s central to what we consider style for the Robb Report man—not just clothing, though that’s obviously its primary tenant, but beautifully made things of every shape and scale, too. And this issue is packed full of all of the above. As far as…

FOR THOSE WHO struggle with whether to stay at a hotel or rent a home when traveling—will it be five-star service and amenities, or privacy and the feeling you actually live in a place, temporarily?—the best of both worlds is here. Enter the home-tel: Around the world, posh properties are offering travelers a home-away-from-home feeling plus the deluxe services of a hotel. Chains like Domio, Stay Alfred and Locale are getting in on the idea in multiple cities. The well-designed, cozy spaces are combined with quality service to remind guests that they’re still on vacation—and don’t have to make the bed. Home-tels are usually made up of multiple units inside a large villa or mansion and have homey amenities like kitchens, laundry units and ample common spaces. But there are…

Quietly, it seems, the ban on black suits has gone out the window. IN CERTAIN FASHION circles, mention of the slim black suits of Hedi Slimane and Yves Saint Laurent are held up as the height of style. In tailoring circles, however, the black suit has long been considered a dirty concept. “The first tuxedo was cut in ‘celestial blue’ barathea—not black,” says Simon Cundey, managing director of Savile Row bespoke tailor (and dinner-suit inventor) Henry Poole & Co. “Midnight blue is more elegant and more flattering to most skin tones—it even looks blacker than black in low lighting.” This downer on black tailoring is echoed by menswear gurus ranging from Brunello Cucinelli to Jeremy Hackett and Edward Sexton, who makes them bespoke. It doesn’t help that “black suit/white shirt”…

New York has its share of jewelry and watch stores, but the Vault—a new department at Saks Fifth Avenue—is something else: delivering brands and designs not found elsewhere in the city and, in some cases, anywhere. The shop-in-shop from Boucheron, the historic Parisian jeweler’s first in the US, is worth the visit: You can view the brand’s new pieces, which combine precious stones with edgier rock crystal and quartz in designs. Opened on September nearly 11,000-square-foot jewelry and watch space is also home to collections from Lorraine Schwartz, whose statement pieces are red-carpet mainstays, and artisan jeweler Adam Foster, who is creating colorful hand-forged designs from his St. Louis workshop, plus shop-in-shops for Graff, Chanel and Chopard. There are several viewing rooms where you try on limited-edition timepieces from IWC…

Five years ago, when Pace Gallery’s Chelsea landlord, Weinberg Properties, broke the news that it planned to knock down the gallery to build as high as New York’s zoning laws allowed, Pace CEO Marc Glimcher started a fruitless search for fresh real estate in the contemporary art mecca. Weinberg had offered to lease Pace space in the new structure, and now Glimcher countered: He’d take the whole building. “We still do not have enough space,” he says with an impish smile. Welcome to the era of museum-size art galleries. The venerable Pace, founded by Glimcher’s father, Arne, 59 years ago, is the first of what will be a string of mega galleries opening in New York; Hauser & Wirth will follow next winter and David Zwirner in 2021. Pace’s eight-story,…

It’s not really a surprise that Bentley (bentleymotors.com) has reached the century mark. What is surprising, however, is how it chose to honor the occasion: with the debut of the all-electric EXP 100 GT concept, an eco-conscious car for the future. As head of the storied automaker, Adrian Hallmark explains his vision and why he’s charged up about it. V.M. How do you balance being the steward of a legacy with the risks of innovation? There’s no risk in innovating, the risk is relying on the legacy. The most important thing is to ensure that whatever is done in the future accomplishes two things in parallel: It maintains the appeal of your existing customer base and remains contemporary. We’ve got to make the equivalent of chrome, metal and wood cars,…

LONG AGO, the lawn mower was a gateway to entrepreneurship for many ambitious young Americans, teaching lessons about the material benefits that accrue from hard work and industriousness. For a few adults, the meditative pleasures of taming an acre of unruly St. Augustine while atop a plush riding mower are unequalled by any other behind-the-wheel experience. For most of us, though, cutting grass is an onerous task, one that’s often outsourced but can now be assigned to a device with a mind of its own. Husqvarna’s (husqvarna.com) new Automower 450XH is an app-controlled lawn tyrant that can negotiate 24-degree slopes and mow 1.25-acre lawns with quiet precision, rain or shine. As agile around obstacles as a nervous ground squirrel, the 450XH is guided in random patterns via a GPS system…

Luxury Watch Repairs (luxurywatchrepairs.com) will, unsurprisingly, repair your luxury watch. What makes the London atelier exceptional, however, is the accredited hands behind said services. The team consists of specialists in Rolex, Tag Heuer, Breitling and Chopard, and they are certified by Omega and Cartier, which saves the trouble of shipping yours back to Switzerland for a fine-tune. The shop will even provide a time-lapse video ($65) of the repair, in case you’ve ever wondered what really makes your prized timepiece tick (and to prove they’ve done it). Prices start at $62.…

WHEN A PAIR of art and design aficionados outgrew their penthouse and went shopping for a new Manhattan home, they took along a secret weapon: Deborah Berke, dean of the Yale School of Architecture. Or rather, as the elegant owner puts it, “We dragged Deb—” “Dozens, dozens, of places,” Berke interjects. The couple, who prefer to remain anonymous, have been friends of Berke’s for decades, and the architect designed their penthouse in the East 70s, which had outdoor space. Though committed urbanites—the husband insisted their new home be steps not only from a garage but also from a subway station—the two are nature-oriented as well. New York being New York, they were having trouble finding an apartment of suitable size for themselves and their daughter that also had a sense…

As the leader of one of Italy’s oldest jewelry companies, one that touts 135 years of history, Jean-Christophe Babin is tasked with enhancing Bulgari’s reputation as a leader in jewelry, watches and hotels. The French-born executive is no stranger to luxury’s big brands: Before joining Bulgari more than six years ago, he spent nearly 13 years as the president and CEO of TAG Heuer. Now Babin has to move seamlessly among the firm’s areas of expertise, a role that requires decisiveness, creativity and a deep well of energy. What keeps you motivated? I’m driven by curiosity, and I get naturally excited about the day ahead and what I’m going to learn and discover. It’s not about spending hours at the gym or something. It’s really more of an attitude. What…

SNATCH A GLIMPSE of Stones Wines owner Lawrence Fairchild’s ankles and you’ll see he’s wearing Basquiat socks with his designer sneakers. His leather jacket is worn in just so. Silver Yurman rings mark his hands, and his messenger bag is a Louis Vuitton. Fairchild is a man of taste, with a dash of playful attention to his passion: art. While his highly rated wines are always masterpieces on their own, the 2015 vintage was superior enough to warrant, scratch that, demand an extra layer of care: a whole new expression he’s crafted with star winemaker Philippe Melka. Perrarus (Latin for rare or exceptional) represents a blend of the best of Fairchild’s three single-vineyard children from the 2015 vintage: Stones 1, 2 and 3. Together Fairchild and Melka made only 300…

SURE, BETTER AQUACULTURE has made obsolete the old adage that you should eat oysters only during months that contain the letter “r.” But September, the traditional start of oyster season, remains an ideal time to crack open some outstanding bivalves. At Henrietta Red in Nashville, chef Julia Sullivan—an alum of Per Se and Blue Hill at Stone Barns—curates one of the best oyster selections in the country. With up to 16 varietals on her menu at a time, she shows how much the flavor can change among regions and species. As shucking season begins anew, Sullivan gave us her favorite oysters from around America, along with her uniquely evocative triptych of descriptors for each varietal, to help guide you to the one you’ll want most.…

PARMIGIANI IS NO stranger to watchmaking feats: Michel Parmigiani is considered to be among the greatest living watchmakers. So it was no surprise when the brand wowed with its first integrated chronograph, to mark its 20th anniversary in 2016. The Tonda Chronor Anniversaire earned a top honor at the 2017 Grand Prix d’Horlogerie, Switzerland’s most esteemed awards ceremony for watchmaking. The new version of the Tonda Chronor is made of striking 18-karat rose gold, with an opaline-finished slate dial, delta-shaped skeleton hands and a bezel that has a polished finish on its interior. An integrated chronograph is a crowning achievement for all watch manufacturers, and since so few are able to produce one, it is also considered a holy grail for collectors. Parmigiani took six years to create the movement,…

ORIGAMI’S EARLY ADOPTERS didn’t have furniture on their minds—they were likely more concerned with crafting 1,000 paper cranes to curry favor with the gods. Yet the Japanese art has left quite the paper trail. Want in on its current resurgence? If transforming stationery into sculpture doesn’t fit your daily routine, consider plopping down on a piece of furniture ripped straight from the pages of an origami how-to. With sharp edges and points mimicking folded paper, these chairs, tables and light fixtures add a welcome structural edge to the many curvaceous lines found in modern furniture. Bonus: no paper cuts.…

Last September, Dubai-based private-aviation company VistaJet launched its new overarching enterprise, Vista Global (vistaglobal.com), to consolidate the company’s various aspects of private travel, from exclusive flights to aircraft leasing and finance to a centralized online booking platform. Here, founder Thomas Flohr gives an industry update. What’s trending in private aviation right now? With companies making private-jet travel more accessible, the industry is embracing digitalization. We also see a new market of members moving up from commercial first and business classes. Explain your new XO app. The XO app is the first of its kind, using pricing algorithms paired with machine learning to provide booking capabilities for private charters, as well as predictive demand for shared flights to allow customers to charter shared flights at a discount. XO customers can now…

While the Husqvarna mower may elbow itself to the front of the lawn-maintenance line, it is not alone as a robotic device with an important job to do. Samsung (samsung.com ) is taking robotics seriously, with Bot Care, a health-care robot that’s the size of a king penguin and designed to assist elderly users with medication reminders, health briefings and checking vital signs with a finger scan. The friendly robot also gives yoga lessons and dials 911 if a person falls. CLOi from LG (lg.com) is a group of robots that engage with people to perform any number of domestic and business tasks. The CLOi PorterBot carries bags and checks in travelers, while CLOi ServeBot provides room service, takes orders and makes deliveries.…

Every angler dreams of a place that takes ahold of the imagination and won’t let go. For me that’s always been Patagonia. Its beauty and vastness are part of its allure, but so is its distance. It’s a committed angler who travels to another hemisphere to search for trout. I wanted to prove how committed I was. That meant 28 hours, two flights and a long drive to the Collón Curá Lodge, on the famed river in the Patagonian desert. A dream destination is about more than the fishing: It’s about hospitality, guides, food and all the traditions that make a place unique. Argentina specializes in an easygoing warmth, and when I arrived at the lodge, the manager was standing outside with a glass of Malbec and a still-hot empanada.…

With its dark-wood interiors, marble floors and Art Deco design, the barber shop inside Mandarin Oriental (mandarinoriental .com/hong-kong ) is reminiscent of a high-end private gentlemen’s club from another era (the 1930s, to be exact). For that reason, it attracts a clientele who prefer their more mundane tasks (i.e., haircuts, though the menu also includes manicures, pedicures, massage treatments and reflexology) to take place in undeniably luxurious environs. There’s a VIP room if you like privacy, and televisions are built into the mirrors so you can watch sports or the stock market reports. “I believe that staying on top of the latest hair trends is very important, but so is staying true to each individual’s unique hair characteristics,” says master barber Larry Mui. Haircuts start at $60 ($65 for a…

TRUE CONNOISSEURS OF AUTOMOBILES take years or even decades to acquire their level of discernment, appreciate proper historical content and context, and use these factors as guides for what to purchase. Then they often keep their cars for a good portion of their lives. Their knowledge of a particular marque’s story, its place in the big picture of automotive history, the pecking order of greatness in a manufacturer’s or coachbuilder’s models, and what really makes for exquisite design or engineering goes far beyond performance stats. It’s nuanced and complex, like a sophisticated palate, not merely an “I only drink first-growth Bordeaux” mind-set. Which is all to say, the ATS GT is a true connoisseur’s car. Its beauty and subtlety are obviously appealing, as is the nameplate’s intriguing backstory. Automobili Turismo…

JEWELER KRISHNA CHOUDHARY PULLS out a box from his safe and then slowly opens the velvet case to reveal a mesmerizing 150-carat sky-blue star sapphire. The stone fits snuggly in the palm of my hand, and looking at it is akin to gazing into a pool of water. But, alas, it isn’t for sale. “Sometimes, it’s in our destiny just to see something beautiful and not own it,” says the soft-spoken Choudhary, whose private jewelry salon is tucked away in London’s Mayfair neighborhood. According to Hindu beliefs, simply holding a sapphire (which represents the most powerful planet in the galaxy, Saturn) can bring good karma to some, while it can have the reverse effect on those unlucky enough to have the wrong astrological sign. Imbuing gemstones with energy and healing…