Robb Reportの October 2020 の目次

“We want to look at all these gaps we’re seeing in the bar world and see how a chef’s perspective can create something really different.” BOXER, opened in July in Auckland, New Zealand, by chef Ed Verner next to his acclaimed restaurant, Pasture, is a tiny, 11-seat bar with ungarnished drinks. But don’t let the size and simplicity fool you: Those 11 spots promise a front-row seat to a singular drinking experience with world-beating ambitions. Every liquid poured here is exclusive to Boxer. Verner and creative partner Hillary Eaton, a food and travel writer previously based in Los Angeles, collaborated with New Zealand spirits producers on various small-batch creations, like the barrel of Thomson white whisky currently aging at the bar or the Boxer-specific plum sake made by Zenkuro, New…

Brett Johnson’s sybaritic streak emerged early on in life. When the fashion designer was just seven years old, he cut his teeth customizing his impressive collection of Nike sneakers. These were no standard add-ons; he’d comb New York’s Garment District with his dad, sourcing top-notch leathers and liaising with cobblers to realize his vision. Since 2014, he has taken that practice to the big leagues, criss-crossing Italy to cherry-pick tanneries, mills and workshops to produce his eponymous collection. He now divides his time between New York and his Milan HQ. Johnson has a reverence for the nuts and bolts of luxury—the process as much as the product. He put in time at a Ferrari dealership to get an inside look at the methods behind some of the world’s finest supercars,…

BARRELING ACROSS the English countryside from behind the wheel of arguably the most famous car in the world, I flip open the gearstick knob and hover my thumb over a familiar red button—just like the one used by actor Sean Connery, as James Bond, in the 1964 movie Goldfinger. But instead of testing the ejector seat, I finger the trigger that will deploy the replica Browning machine guns from behind the front directionals. This spy fantasy come to life is taking place at Stoke Park, in Buckinghamshire, England, the hotel grounds where Bond plays high-stakes golf with the movie’s namesake evil mastermind. I’m in Aston Martin’s DB5 Goldfinger Continuation model, perched on the Connolly-leather driver’s seat and admiring the dashboard’s arrangement of elegant Smiths gauges when a suspicious van pulls…

The outlaw-biker persona has shadowed respectable motorcyclists ever since Brando kick-started his Triumph in 1953’s The Wild One, portraying an unruly rider—with an uncouth machine—as nothing but trouble on two wheels. And more than 50 years after Easy Rider, the film’s Captain America, a Harley-Davidson “Panhead” with extended forks and ape-hanger handlebars, remains the quintessential bad-boy chopper. Otherwise, things in the custom-motorcycle world have changed dramatically since 1969. Today, many builders have achieved international renown for ingenuity and artisanal skills unimagined back when Woodstock was just some town in the Catskills. Custom motorcycles are more popular than ever—and represent big business. Some bikes are the products of companies employing teams of specialists; others are the work of lone actors wrenching away in spaces the size of a small garage. Some…

The cozy workroom in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn looks like a cross between a grad student’s bohemian pad—there’s a well-worn couch and an assortment of curiosities on one wall—and a well-stocked craft store, with shelves stowing hundreds of balls of thread in brilliant pinks, reds, yellows and greens. Here, Jordan Nassar painstakingly embroiders the intricately patterned, subtly political “paintings” that have quickly won him an excited following. On a sticky summer morning, he’s sitting at his desk, playing with a ball of black thread as he talks about his growing practice, which borrows traditional Palestinian craft techniques and motifs. The 35-year-old didn’t become an artist until well into his 20s. After growing up on New York’s Upper West Side and studying languages at Middlebury College, he moved to Berlin…

At a time when you can have everything from hatching eggs to a new Mercedes delivered to your front door, why not exquisitely rich and buttery salmon, perfect for a pan sear or curing your own lox? In which case, allow us to introduce Kvarøy Arctic. When the third-generation Norwegian business began exporting to America this year, it looked to assure customers of the provenance of its fish, raised in the pristine waters along the Arctic Circle. To do so, the company uses blockchain technology to create an unchangeable digital record of the salmon’s journey from the company’s aquaculture farm all the way to market. With a recent Oceana study on fraud finding that one in five fish sold in the US is mislabeled, it provides peace of mind you’re…

Known for designing the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, and the blocky, knobby exterior of MIT’s Stata Center in Cambridge, Mass., as well as hundreds of significant projects around the world, the acclaimed Los Angeles architect has now lent his signature style to some of the world’s most famous fortified wine. He’s not much of a drinker, though. Go figure. Here he reveals his passion for helping ease the world’s intractable issues through beautiful design. JANICE O’LEARY You’ve gone from buildings to bottles. What about bottle design appeals to you? The Hennessy X.O Cognac commemorates their 150th anniversary. The limited edition is coated in bronze. I’m usually working with surfaces on a much larger scale. It’s so much easier to work on a small scale and cast that. If drinking…

IN AN ERA when most of the world types or texts hundreds of times a day, beautiful pens seem more like an indulgence than ever. Montblanc, one of the most recognizable names among pen-makers, keeps up its artistic heritage despite our digital fever and infuses every special edition with its own story, to perhaps better write our own. Handcraftsmanship is found at every step—from carving and setting precious stones to stamping patterns in gold fountain nibs (never steel)—but increasingly sophisticated digital tools are just as essential. The company aims to push the boundaries with every new offering, bringing in experts in resin or leather to create something that has never been done before on a pen. For Montblanc’s base model, the Meisterstück, designers wanted to make a version with leather…

FOR EIGHT decades, Ferrari has battled the competition with a combination of performance and raw power, from its early, walloping V-12s taking on all comers in the motorsport ring to its more recent focus on precision and balance in the form of turbocharged eight-cylinder road cars. To that end, the Ferrari F8 Spider, which begins Stateside deliveries this month, is a perfectly controlled punch that, for better or worse, won’t leave your ears ringing. “Put it in Sport mode so we can really hear the engine,” says my driving companion during a traverse of Malibu’s famously challenging canyons. A fair request, but one problem: The car has been in Sport, the standard setting, the whole time. Compared to the 12-cylinder bombardment of Ferrari’s 812 Superfast, the F8 Spider produces few…

The most common cause of a lowside crash—that’s when you go down on the inside of the motorcycle rather than up and over, a.k.a. a highsideis too much lean combined with too much front brake pressure, which overwhelms the front tire’s grip. It can happen in an instant and it’s not pretty, but there are ways you can save it. The first step toward regaining equilibrium is releasing the front brake, which allows the front tire to regain traction and begin turning again. Second, keep your weight centered; even with the front tire now rotating, it’s much harder to regain control with too much bulk overloading the handlebars. Finally, apply throttle; it may seem counterintuitive, but accelerating transfers the bike’s weight rearward, allowing the front tire to gain yet more…

Two months before I moved from Japan to New York, I came to sample the city. My notes, jabbed into my phone between jet-lagged apartment tours, read: “Sirens police trucks yelling helicopters onions. Pavements buckling, construction, taxis screeching. Like dystopian city in developing country.” Moments of kindness pierced the sensory assault—such as the policeman who personally steered me and my suitcase through the Columbus Day parade when I was fresh off the plane—and are what endeared New York to me. Compared to my two previous homes, London and Tokyo, it was filthy, noisy and dilapidated. But it was also gregarious, free-spirited and bursting with tales of personal struggle and redemption. I adapted, but there has been one puzzle I haven’t been able to resolve. New Yorkers I met seemed immune…

The romance of train travel, with its liveried waiters, rolling landscapes and gently rocking, unhurried intimacy, still has no equal in the modern world. And with travelers yearning for the glory days of slow and mindful voyaging (and bearing an aversion to the close quarters of commercial air travel) luxury locomotives are again on the rise, with extravagant options to rent an entire cabin, or even your own train. The Venice Simplon-Orient-Express is already considered the most opulent train voyage in the world, but there’s more to come in 2021, with three new grand suites—Budapest, Prague and Vienna—planned. Each room comes furnished with a marble-paneled bathroom, double bed, living area and 24-hour steward. A seven-night trip, starting in London and weaving its way through France and Italy before continuing to…

ANY IDEA how you’d make a recipe for glass? Sculptor Omer Arbel brought in chemists to reformulate the substance and master glassblowers to shape it. Then he could get to the showstopping part: quickly pouring a molten copper alloy into the newly formed vessel, causing the metal to wash around in its still-hot container. When both harden, the glass cracks, and its altered chemical makeup causes it to fall off the alloy, leaving behind a frozen metal wave, caught mid-spatter within a bottle that no longer exists. “I wanted these pieces to, as much as possible, be a pure reflection of a chemical reaction,” Arbel says. “Materials are the artist here.” The designer has long used substances in unexpected ways: concrete that resembles a slice of a tree stump, aluminum…

UTAH’S PARK CITY has long been a haven for powder hounds, but it’s seeing a boom in development that’s taking it from intermediate to expert levels of luxury. Both Montage Deer Valley and the Stein Eriksen Lodge are well known to frequent skiers, hikers and mountain bikers in the Wasatch Mountain range and synonymous with the highest end of outdoorsy hospitality in Park City. Over the last decade, more luxury hotels moved in—St. Regis, Waldorf Astoria—but luxury residential pickings have still been slim, until this year. A handful of new offerings finally provide step-out-the-door access and all the best extras. Pendry Park City Whoever coined the phrase “ski beach,” Pendry Hotels & Resorts is making it its own for the brand’s first fully residential condo tower. The trail-side project will…

A RECORD BREAKER for Royal Huisman as its largest launch, Sea Eagle II is also the world’s largest aluminum sailing yacht. The Dutch yard has built hundreds of vessels during its 136-year history, but this 266-footer, with 200-foot-high carbon masts and a sweeping, 37,000-square-foot sail plan, is its most sophisticated—and magnificent—to date. Her 200-ft masts, 37,000-sq-ft sail plan and flush, windowed superstructure give Sea Eagle II a stately presence. Royal Huisman built the first Sea Eagle for the same owner, a Taiwanese businessman and veteran sailor, who took delivery in 2015. Eclipsing the original Sea Eagle by 120 feet, Sea Eagle II is a Panamax schooner designed for transiting the Panama Canal, her masts clearing the tall Bridge of the Americas on the Pacific side by only a few feet.…

With a midsize cabin and light-jet operating costs, the 75 Liberty is designed to disrupt. In the early 1960s, the Learjet 23 created a revolution in business aviation. As the world’s first light regional jet, the 23 had a svelte military fuselage, wing-tip fuel tanks and a top speed of 561 mph, giving it instant cult status. “If there’s one name associated with business jets, it’s Learjet,” says Rolland Vincent, president of aviation consulting firm Rolland Vincent Associates. “The brand equity is so strong I know many owners who call their aircraft a Learjet, even if it’s built by another manufacturer.” Yet in the last decade Learjet has experienced unexpected turbulence. Parent company Bombardier invested $1.4 billion to develop the Learjet 85 with the goal of positioning it as the…

Learjet 23 FIRST FLIGHT: October 7, 1963 IMPACT: Invented the light-jet segment for corporate travel. VERDICT: “With a 561 mph speed, six-passenger cabin and modern styling, the 23 reimagined regional travel while delivering a sexy, James Bond ramp appeal.” Cessna Citation X FIRST FLIGHT: December 21, 1993 IMPACT: Clean-sheet design that shattered Cessna’s image as a maker of slow jets. VERDICT: “The X was Cessna’s counterpunch to Learjet, making it an instant super-midsize category leader with its 607 mph top speed.” Citation Latitude FIRST FLIGHT: February 18, 2014 IMPACT: Reinvigorated the midsize-jet category with a clean-sheet fuselage. VERDICT: “The enhancements included a lower cabin air pressure, flat floor and Garmin’s G5000 avionics that made the Latitude a favorite among pilots.” Gulfstream II FIRST FLIGHT: October 2, 1966 IMPACT: First large…

When considering the lingering, long-term global effects of Covid-19, think of how it might change the home, as the pandemic’s aftershocks reshape the feel, form and function of how we live. The influence is likely to be radical, thanks to the renewed emphasis on domestic life for much of this year. Many of us have been forced, possibly for the first time, to spend extended periods in something close to house arrest (accepting that such things are relative). We’ve engaged with our properties in new ways, learning much more about their strengths and shortcomings. Now we’re determined to future-proof against another pandemic—or at least against going mad in one. So Robb Report asked 19 of the world’s foremost design talents how the home may change as a result of Covid-19.…