Maxim May/June 2024

“Be first, be unique, be different.” Hublot’s mantra doubles as a guiding set of principles that were set forth and exemplified in 1980 by the Swiss watchmaker’s debut model—the Classic Original—the first true luxury watch to combine a precious metal (gold) with a modern material (rubber). A quarter-century later, adherence to those same principles birthed Hublot’s best-selling Big Bang range, which also utilized revolutionary medleys of materials including ceramic, titanium and gold. The flagship Big Bang collection’s veneration came immediately; a white ceramic and titanium example won that year’s coveted Design Prize at the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève. But the Hublot timepieces that take the “be first, be unique, be different” philosophy to its extreme are the Manufacture Pieces. “I GAVE OUR DESIGNERS AND WATCHMAKERS CARTE BLANCHE, AND THIS…

The story of Royal Enfield is a wild and circuitous one. In the 1950s and, 60s the British manufacturer was the preferred choice of café racers and gentlemen rogues who made that era in motorcycling one of the most influential ever. But like most British marques from the 20th century, Royal Enfield struggled to compete with cheaper—and regrettably more reliable—Japanese bikes that poured into Europe and America in the, 60s and, 70s, eventually leading to the company’s shuttering in 1971. Except it didn’t, really. Across the globe in one of the British Empire’s former colonies, Royal Enfield had planted a seed that survives to this day. You see, in 1954 the government of India commissioned a huge order for Royal Enfield’s Bullet model to supply its troops along the Himalayan…

Keyan Safyari is an enlightening example of how far a dogged work ethic can take a talented individual, even in a ruthlessly competitive environment like Hollywood. As a seasoned director of photography and founder of elite production-services company Moving Images Entertainment, his dizzying list of outstanding professional credits spans all forms of filmed media, including concert specials for Elton John (for which he won an Emmy), Billie Eilish, Taylor Swift and Lionel Richie; feature films, prime-time TV shows, news network documentaries and even the Emmy Awards themselves. Read our interview with Safyari below to learn more about this extraordinary man’s humble beginnings, favorite projects and Tinseltown ascension. Tell us about the founding of Moving Images Entertainment in 2004. While still in college, I was working as a 3D modeler and…

The best ideas are sometimes born out of an unexpected crossover in a Venn diagram, so to speak. Take the pocket knife, a humble and downright useful piece with real-world origins in the field. Trusty versions packed with multi-tools crowd the market, but William Henry’s USA-made pocket knives, and a full array of daily-carry essentials, blur the line between useful, stylish and downright luxurious in a way few brands can achieve. The Pacific Northwest brand boasts nearly 30 years of knife-making heritage, having been founded in 1997 by custom knifemaker and musician Matt Conable in northern California (the company moved to McMinnville, Oregon, in the early 2000s). Conable recognized the difference between custom one-off knives and pieces produced in larger quantities, and decided to take advantage of both old-world knifemaking…

The local tobacco shop’s humidor can be a nebulous shopping experience. “Family blend” and “reserva” are as ubiquitous in those cedar-lined rooms these days as the gold and silver foil embossing every label and box. If you can’t find your go-to brands or blends or just want to try something new, it’s usually best to look at the numbers. This isn’t a sermon on price-comparison shopping, and trying to get you more smoke for your stacks. This is about anniversario cigars—cigars blended and released to celebrate a company’s milestone. Cigarmakers often see business through the lens of survival. Between government crackdowns on their products and a generationsago exodus from Cuba that saw many of today’s great names starting over—with a handful of seeds in unfamiliar lands—every year of making great…

The Maceo Plex soundtrack thrums throughout our handsomely appointed cabin as we squiggle over the mountains of Andalusia, slaloming across sun-drenched foothills in a 2024 Mercedes-AMG GT 63. The synthesis between the techno surging from the Burmester sound system and the GT 63’s surgically delivered force utterly transforms the test drive into a Nicolas Refn flick: tense and thrilling, taut with trial. We’re behind the wheel of the second generation of the Tristar’s apex predator, the AMG GT, to gauge its evolution from the sui generis model that ceased production in September 2022. The years for this successor gestating in AMG’s womb in Affalterbach, Germany, are proving themselves worthwhile as we rip across Spain’s southern province, blurring orchards of gnarled olive trees basking in the hot Mediterranean sun. The most…