Maxim January/February 2021

You’ve got a $3 million Bugatti Chiron in the garage. The pinnacle of hyper sports cars, it’s the fastest, most powerful, and exclusive production vehicle in Bugatti’s 110-year history—“a unique masterpiece of art, form and technique, that pushes boundaries beyond imagination,” as the marque puts it. So what do you wear on your wrist? Even a Patek Philippe doesn’t quite cut it. So in 2019 Bugatti signed a partnership with Jacob & Co., the diamond-studded watch brand created by jeweler-to-the-stars Jacob Arabo, who counts the likes of Jay-Z, Drake and Cristiano Ronaldo as clients. Though Jacob & Co. is quickly becoming an icon of avant-garde ultra-luxury watchmaking, with its latest creation for Bugatti Arabo has shown that he’s also equal to the task of interpreting Bugatti’s impressive history, much as Bugatti’s…

A couple of years ago we visited the hallowed ground of the Château St. Jean in Molsheim, France. This plot of grassy earth is home not only to one of the most elegant mansions we’ve ever set foot in, it is also the holy land for automotive truth-seekers—the house which Italian furniture and jewelry designer Carlo Bugatti built in 1856 for his family, in what was then part of Germany. Ground zero for Bugatti lore, the place where Carlo’s son Ettore, one of the greatest minds in automotive history, would go on to design, engineer and build the fastest cars the planet had ever seen from 1909 to 1939. That visit was to witness the first example of Bugatti’s latest streetlegal production car, the Chiron, be built and personalized. Now the…

Born and raised on the shores of Lake Oconee, Georgia, Amanda Black has been modeling since the age of 17. Currently working for one of the world’s largest airlines, Amanda is also a partner in a new athleisure clothing and lifestyle brand, Savvi, set to fully launch in early 2021. Years of experience as a fitness instructor and personal trainer combined with a love for fashion have prepared Amanda well for her new venture into the athleisure world—a $60 billion industry expected to skyrocket to nearly $270 billion by 2026. Always a self-starter, Amanda partnered with Savvi because they provide unique opportunities for women: “This brand empowers women from all walks of life to not only look and feel amazing, but also allows them to build their own retail business…

Storming out of the mist comes a hand-formed aluminum missile. Created by a mind bent upon rediscovering the analog beauty of post-WWII streamlined racers, and hand made with an attention to detail only a man possessed of a passion to learn can muster. Christopher Rünge was once a professional snowboarder. But at 26 he found himself standing looking at a 1967 Porsche 912 in a barn in North Dakota. And eyeing with surprise the myriad parts and tools used for machining metal that surrounded it. He had found his new calling in life; and it wasn’t the 912. He had decided instead to take the tools and build his own cars. Rünge is the definition of an autodidact. Everything he knows about building cars, and the tools and machines he has amassed…

The Future promised us jetpacks, prime rib in pill form, submissive fembots, and self-driving flying cars. Instead we got Tik-Tok, murder hornets and N95 rash. Life is unfair. But if you know where to look there are furtive slices of the Future creeping up on us—rare blips of surreal futurism manifesting in the matrix. On that note, I propose that we actually do indeed have jetpacks—or rather, an analogue that comes so close we can chalk one up for the promised Future actually coming through. And that machine is the Zero SR/S electric motorcycle: a breathtakingly quick, brilliantly well-balanced electron missile wrapped up in sleek fairings. A totem of earthly lust. The Santa Cruz, California-based visionaries have been around some 15 years, releasing their first street-legal, zero-emission bike to the wild in…

At 33, Saskia de Rothschild is the youngest person currently leading a Premier Grand Cru Bordeaux estate, the legendary Château Lafite Rothschild, which has been in her family since 1868. She’s also the first-ever female chairwoman of Domaines Barons de Rothschild (Lafite), the Rothschilds’ wine empire with its portfolio of eight prestigious wineries on three continents. The world’s most expensive and sought-after Bordeaux, current Château Lafite Rothschild vintages cost around $700 a bottle, while highly-coveted bottles such as the 1982 sell for around $4,000 (according to Bloomberg). A former investigative reporter, Saskia, Lafite’s sixth generation winemaker, has a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia and worked for the New York Times in Paris—skills that came in handy for her latest project, Château Lafite: The Almanac, a beautiful new book published by…