Robb Reportの May 2025 の目次

As soon as wildfires began ravaging Los Angeles this past January, art adviser and collection manager Karyn Lovegrove and her team sprang into action. After consulting their collection-management database to determine which clients had art near the rapidly spreading evacuation zones, “we made the decision to empty out some of the houses that we work in as a way to be proactive,” she says. They swiftly de-installed two major private collections in Los Feliz and the Hollywood Hills, packing each piece in a purpose-built crate, moving the work into storage, and updating insurance companies once everything was out of harm’s way. “We were emptying houses in three hours,” Lovegrove explains. “We are very aware being in California that we have earthquakes, we have water damage, we have fires. So we…

It was late in life, perhaps 1977, when I discovered this avatar, this shocking touchstone of enormous vision, endless taste, and shattering style: the Baroness Pauline de Rothschild. This experience changed my life and my entire approach to creativity as a designer and an artist. Pauline de Rothschild, Elsa Peretti, and Diana Vreeland are the three women who shaped my work for the rest of my life. My study of Pauline began with American Vogue magazine, December 1963. The holiday issue was always an explosion of editor in chief Vreeland’s vision, as she was the Enchantress of Fashion Journalism. For this particular edition, she sent the photographer Horst P. Horst and his partner, Valentine Lawford, to the Château Mouton Rothschild to capture how Pauline and Baron Philippe lived in their…

SINCE OUR DISTANT FOREBEARS FIRST LEAPED FROM HIGH ROCKS INTO WATER, TAMED HORSES, OR STRAPPED STRIPS OF WOOD TO THEIR FEET TO SLIDE DOWN SNOWY MOUNTAINSIDES, HUMANKIND HAS FOUND SPEED THRILLING—AND SOUGHT TO GO FASTER. BUT THERE’S A LOW LIMIT to what we can achieve organically. It’s probably around 120 mph, the rate the average human body reaches in free fall after 12 seconds or so, but to do that without an aircraft, you’d need a very tall cliff to jump off and supplementary assistance in the form of a parachute if you want to do it twice. To go much more rapidly, we require technology, mainly in the form of mechanical propulsion. We had steam trains for the entirety of the 19th century and the motor car for its…

BETSY DINGMAN HAS always been a rebel. She left her San Diego home in her mid-teens and was emancipated from her father, a judge, at age 16. “Because I was such a smart ass,” she admits, looking back. She soon found herself a working single mother, earning a living doing several jobs, from owning a laundromat to flipping houses to rehabbing a 31-room hotel. That sense of fearlessness and adventure was immediate on the first, blind date she had with a Wall Street deal-making guru: Michael Dingman, who was 25 years her senior. Michael, who prided himself on doing things his way, immediately sensed that they were kindred spirits. “That was kind of the bond between us,” she says. They fell madly in love, which led to a decadeslong marriage…

Back in the 1970s, my aunt and uncle had tired of the era’s standard foreign-vacation fare— Western Europe, the Caribbean— and decided to venture somewhat farther afield. They ended up in Afghanistan, before the Soviets blundered in and, therefore, before most Americans had probably even heard of the place. Enraptured with the terrain and the culture, they made repeated trips to the region, later regaling the family with such tales as flying over the treacherous Khyber Pass in a shoebox of a plane. In this era of been there, done that, it’s becoming increasingly hard for intrepid travelers to get the jolt of adrenaline and authentic newness they crave. But it’s still out there, as we discovered with this, our adventure issue. Contributor Mary Holland and staff writer Tori Latham…

Though he says he won’t jump out of a plane anytime soon, Ryan Chetiyawardana— the award-winning bartender and businessman behind the Mr Lyan hospitality empire—does like taking professional risks. “I think there’s something wonderful about being scared about things,” the 40-year-old says. “Being able to venture into the unknown is definitely part of my character.” It might be genetic. His parents immigrated to Manchester, then Birmingham, from Sri Lanka and raised their three children to pursue their own interests. (Friends and family called Ryan, the youngest of the trio, Lyan because it rhymes with his first name.) He initially trained as a chef but found the kitchen too restrictive. When a friend suggested he try bartending, something clicked. In 2013, he opened his first space, called White Lyan, in London.…

TABLESCAPING IN MILAN is serious business. In this design-oriented city, every well-coiffed sciura worth her salt relies on an arsenal of the finest flatware, crystal, linens, and more. And in certain spheres, you’d be hard-pressed to find any easily identifiable china pattern, for this is a milieu where, refreshingly, individuality is still prized. Among the most coveted makers? Laboratorio Paravicini. Launched in the early 1990s by Costanza Paravicini in a historic 18th-century compound where she and her family still reside, the enterprise initially was a hobby for the skilled artist, who couldn’t find any plates on the market that truly spoke to her. Word of her wares quickly spread around Milan, and a business was born that now includes Paravicini’s two daughters—Benedetta and Margherita Medici. What really distinguishes Laboratorio Paravicini,…

The term “bush pilot” conjures up images of rugged individualists flying de Havilland Beaver floatplanes into Alaska’s most remote and difficult terrain. Such intrepid 20th-century aviators as Don Sheldon and Carl Ben Eielson were cut from that cloth—their ample skill at dead reckoning a compensation for the lack of charts. “There’s a mystique to the bush pilot,” says Brant Smith, who has been flying into the Alaskan bush (generally defined as a region with no road access) since 2012. Smith, though, applies the moniker more readily to his predecessors who ventured heroically into the relative unknown. “Now, it’s an overused term. I don’t call myself a bush pilot, just someone who loves the experience.” Yet under practically anyone else’s definition, Smith has indeed worked as one in southeast Alaska, first…

There was a time when trekking to the South Pole or surfing the world’s largest wave was a newsmaking challenge. These days, even rowing across the Atlantic has become passé. But intrepid travelers have not relented: The hunger to be first remains a powerful driver. “We are constantly getting feedback: What is extraordinary? What is different?” says Jimmy Carroll, cofounder of Pelorus, which specializes in extreme and experiential travel. “How do you do something that no one else has done?” Carroll and others in this adrenalinefueled segment of the industry have seen a rise in clients seeking to embark on boundarybusting adventures that could earn them a place in history. “The main reason is bragging rights,” says Larry Olmsted, author of Getting Into Guinness: One Man’s Longest, Fastest, Highest Journey…

Asif Khan, the award-winning architect who designed Cartier’s new exhibition at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum, had an emotional response when trying on La Patiala—one of the necklaces on display. Made for an Indian ruler in 1928, it’s lavishly set with over 960 carats of diamonds. But Khan wasn’t thinking about its worth. “I was thinking, who would have been alive at the time from my family [when it was made]?” he says. “That their great-grandson would be wearing the jewels of a maharaja—I don’t think anyone would have imagined it.” Forging such a connection between visitors to the show, which opened on April 12, and the over 350 items in it wasn’t easy. Khan partnered with experts Helen Molesworth, the V&A’s senior curator of jewelry, and Rachel Garrahan to…

Professional partnerships in the wine industry are far less frequent than fashion or watch collaborations. But even if they were a dime a dozen, the oenological world would likely still be fervently excited about the just-released joint effort by Penfolds Grange and La Chapelle, which blends two of the world’s finest Syrahs—one grown in Australia, where the grape is called Shiraz, and the other in France—into a single bottle. It helps that Penfolds chief winemaker Peter Gago and La Chapelle owner and winemaker Caroline Frey are longtime friends. They came up with the idea to blend their products over—what else?—a glass of wine after meeting at the Vinexpo trade fair in Bordeaux many years ago. And though both prestigious businesses produce coveted vintages, the resulting bottling is somehow far greater…

There’s always something a little magical about a single-owner sale in the auction world, from the dissemination of the Duchess of Windsor’s history-laced jewelry in 1987 to the court-ordered breakup of warring exes Harry and Linda Macklowe’s nearly billion-dollar art collection in 2021 and 2022. This month, both Christie’s and Sotheby’s are hawking storied troves, one an enviable assemblage of modern art by some of the past century’s preeminent names, the other a cache by old masters such as Peter Paul Rubens and Frans Hals. For collectors, having the imprimatur of a Leonard and Louise Riggio or a Jordan and Thomas A. Saunders III adds an extra layer of history, one that’s simultaneously akin to a luxury brand name. “I think [it] can be aspirational for people looking to take…

While it’s commonly held that the collector-car microcosm revolves around Northern California’s Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, another exhibition has comparable gravitational pull when it comes to attracting the finest automobiles in the world: the Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este. The latter, founded in 1929 at its namesake hotel flanking Italy’s Lake Como, differs from its stateside counterpart in that it displays no more than 50 rarefied examples of the most prestigious classic models—and to a limited number of cognoscenti. This year, the four-wheel fete (running May 23 through 25) has brought Broad Arrow Auctions into its orbit for a two-day sale. “Villa d’Este is the grandest of Concours d’Elegance and the oldest,” says Simon Kidston, renowned Geneva-based collector, market analyst, and purveyor of classic cars (see The Download, pg. 112). “Broad…

At age 14, Tom Schröder had no idea that his passion for sailing would lead him to an ocean odyssey spanning the globe. Yet three decades later, Schröder, his wife, Jeannine, and their four sons are at the beginning of a seven-year voyage aboard their 146-foot explorer Maverick. “I’d sold my business in 2019 and then Covid hit,” says Schröder, a venture capitalist based near Cologne. Homebound for a year, the tight quarters brought the family closer. “It worked out so well, we had the idea for this world cruise,” he says. The ambitious itinerary includes Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas, with voyages into some of the world’s loneliest waters through the Arctic Circle, Antarctica, Cape Horn, and the Northwest Passage. The first nine weeks in the Red…