Indholdsfortegnelse for November 2024 i Robb Report

Céline Levain Throughout her work, which combines portraiture with stunning landscapes, Levain employs her artist's eye to explore the connection between people and nature. While shooting winemaker Loïc Pasquet, the owner and vigneron of Liber Pater (p. 200) for this year's Host's Guide, Levain recalls how the rural scenery of southwestern France provided the ultimate inspiration. “I remember seeing this huge and beautiful horse that Loïc worked with in the field,” she says. “The picture was already there.” Jason O'Bryan Robb Report’s resident cocktail specialist can sling a mean drink, which O'Bryan does as lead mixologist for Michelin three-star restaurant Addison, in San Diego. For our Host's Guide, he did a deep dive into the bars rejiggering the global-mixology scene in “It's Five O'Clock Somewhere” (p. 186). “Singapore's rise as…

Architect Özge Öztürk still remembers the first pictures her clients Maxime and Sophie sent of the property they wanted to renovate in Colmar, France. Situated on an upper floor of a 112-year-old building designed by late local architect Josué-George Bloch, the unit had been renovated into a low-cost office space replete with carpet tiles, PVC ceiling panels, and cheap partitions that created a choppy, confusing layout. “It was very shocking,” says Öztürk, who runs London-based Oza Design with Alexandre Simeray. “I was like, ‘There's no way we can do something like that.’ It was the ugliest office you'd seen in your life.” Yet the challenge intrigued the architects, and Simeray went to look at the space in person. “When Alex got there and saw it, he called me and said,…

FIELD NOTES At a recent dinner at Gem Wine on Manhattan's Lower East Side, my table was filled with raw scallops on crisp cabbage leaves, a griddled lobster-chanterelle sandwich, mackerel slivers on warm toasts, and smashed and fried lion's-mane schnitzel. The small plates added up to a decent meal—and the kind of hefty bill that I've come to expect at a certain kind of beverage-focused not-quite restaurant: Including a dainty quenelle of corn ice cream and a bottle of Savagnin, I dropped close to $400. But a 20-something in a Waffle House hoodie can just as easily leave the restaurant with a $28 tab. According to chef and owner Flynn McGarry, Gem Wine is an “in-between restaurant,” an acquiescence to the current mood for choose-your-own-adventure dining. “Guests have the option…

BOUCHERON Claire Choisne A TALL, SOFT-SPOKEN, and ethereal figure in a black column gown, Claire Choisne personally greeted guests as they entered a softly lit space within Boucheron's Place Vendôme headquarters in June. They were there to take in the Parisian house's latest head-spinning array of futuristic jewelry for its Carte Blanche collection as Choisne, the creative director behind the avant-garde pieces, detailed how they were made, gently explaining their extreme technicality. Her designs are so complex, she started a team dedicated solely to innovation research in 2018. “At the beginning, I was scared that people wouldn't understand,” says Choisne. “And year after year, I understood: A woman who buys a nice couture dress with something creative doesn't want something boring. She can be open to something more interesting.” “Interesting”…

IN MANY RESTAURANTS, dining has become more than just eating an enjoyable meal. It's now akin to a live stage show. As they famously did in the mid-20th century, chefs are leaving the kitchen to carve prime rib and light fluffy meringue on fire tableside, engaging all your senses in the preparation and plating of your food. This holiday season, invite your private chef or caterer to do the same, finishing off showstopping dishes in full view of guests and bringing the excitement and extravagance of a white-tablecloth experience to your dining room. “People don't want to just be served,” says Angus McIntosh, a private chef in New York City who works with DM Estate Staffing. “They want to be involved in the entirety of the meal—they want to know…

AMERICANS DRINK 650 MILLION CUPS OF coffee each day. And while some sleep-deprived folks are just looking for a jolt of anything caffeinated, many of us prefer to savor the good stuff. Ivica Cvetanovski, the founder of Coffea Circulor, one of the world's finest coffee producers, roasters, and labs, notes a significant “increase in consumer demand for ultra-luxury coffees, some of them produced in very small quantities.” Coffea Circulor's small-batch productions of competition-grade Panama Geisha coffee, for example, can cost as much as $1,000 per kilo—and are so sought-after, they were sold out at the time of writing. With this caliber of beans, espresso isn't something you toss back on your way out the door in the morning. Cvetanovski recommends leaning into the ritual. “Take your time to prepare them…

One of my favorite things about working on this, our annual Watches & Jewelry issue, is all the ways in which it invites us to think about time. Time is something we can measure but never fully comprehend—like its twin, space, it stretches out endlessly, forever, with the relentless indifference of a runaway boulder: We can watch it roll by, but we can never budge it from its course. It's human endeavor that gives depth and contour to time, a point recently driven home when I joined Omega to watch the Louis Vuitton Cup races from a yacht off the coast of Spain. America's Cup sailing is a fast, gutsy, brutally expensive sport, seemingly designed to not only prove the adage that time is money but also push the limits…

When Chanel debuted its Sport collection of high-wattage jewels in Monaco earlier this year, the house wasn't specific about what inspired the pieces. But cars, perhaps for obvious reasons, were on the minds of many observers. There were lavish necklaces in settings that resembled tire tracks, rings with bands and mounts that evoked knobby treads, and bold stripes that wouldn't be out of place on a race-car livery. But the pièce de résistance of the collection (which was so captivating that we're inclined to believe the rumor that a single collector bought the piece after seeing it on a Zoom call) is a transformable diamond bracelet made of automotive-friendly carbon fiber. And where better than Monaco, the sovereign city-state home to F1's most iconic Grand Prix, to unveil such pieces?…

For this award-winning French tenor, the secret to happiness lies in finding balance in what he calls his extraordinary life. And so, when his recording and stage schedule allows, the 39-year-old makes time for serenity—and for indulging his love of romantic French opera, as a listener rather than a singer. Bernheim's accolades include Opera Singer of the Year from Les Victoires de la Musique in France in 2020, and his recently released album, Douce France, is his third following an eponymous debut in 2019 and 2022's Boulevard des Italiens. A regular at Europe's leading opera houses—from the Opéra national de Paris and Wiener Staatsoper to London's Royal Opera House and Staatsoper Berlin—he spends about 70 percent of his time traveling. Prone to becoming restless if he remains in one place…

DESCRIBING SOME of the over-the-top creations executed for Tiffany & Co.'s latest Blue Book collection, Victoria Reynolds, the company's chief gemologist, tells Robb Report that over the span of her 37-year career at the house, she has never seen pieces created with such a high level of ingenuity and technical prowess. “The caliber of craftsmanship in this collection is better than anybody out there—anybody,” she says. “And I'm not the type of person that throws that stuff around lightly. But this is the finest collection of high jewelry that exists right now.” It's a bold bit of bragging in a largely well-mannered industry, but the workmanship and showstopping glamour of the Jean Schlumberger tribute pieces—a major focus of the recent collection—make the statement hard to refute. The celebrated designer, who…

LONG A BELLWETHER for trends in the collector-car market, the auctions surrounding Northern California's annual Monterey Car Week delivered seismic results in August, with a number of big-ticket 1950s- and ‘60s-era Ferraris unsold. But in retrospect, many are of the opinion that the tremor wasn't as significant as it felt at the time, blaming ambitious reserves, a glut of top-tier inventory, and a continued cooling-off from the scorching run stoked by pandemic-era demand. So, while one 250 GT SWB California Spyder fetched more than $17 million—the top lot of the week—another bid to $13.5 million failed to sell, suggesting it was just one among many other superb Prancing Horses for which there were simply not enough buyers. What's clear is that, while the market may not be undergoing a complete…

WATER Since the Royal Cork Yacht Club was formed in 1720, sailing's members-only enclaves have enjoyed a reputation for stuffy insularity, with inscrutable traditions and prominent connections held close to the blazer crest. Today, though, even the most exclusive of these maritime cliques embrace their surrounding communities, whether through wildly popular race weeks, youth sailing programs, or taking the helm on sustainability issues. Here, six esteemed yacht clubs that are adeptly navigating the winds of change. Julia Zaltzman Yacht Club de Monaco YEARS IN OPERATION: 71 ROSTER SIZE: 2,500 NOTABLE MEMBER: Prince Albert II “The future of Monaco lies with the sea,” said Prince Rainier III when he established Yacht Club de Monaco in 1953. Since being crowned club president in 1984, his son, Prince Albert II, has made good…

Perched on a couch last April in a private room inside Chanel's sprawling space at Watches & Wonders, Frédéric Grangié and Arnaud Chastaingt appear positively serene. Outside, the world's largest watch fair buzzes with energy as press, retailers, and VIP clients gather for a firsthand glimpse of the latest from a wide swath of brands, including the industry's biggest hitters. Unlike at Paris Fashion Week, where Chanel is perpetually one of the hottest invites in town, here in Switzerland the maison‘s iconic logo might actually be a disadvantage. The fashion house must vie for attention with horological heavyweights such as Patek Philippe and Rolex, which dominate the landscape and have catalogs of coveted models dating back hundreds of years. But Grangié, Chanel's president of watches and fine jewelry, and Chastaingt,…

THE GOODS THIS MONTH'S WHO, WHAT, AND WEAR “Build me a villa that thinks it's a yacht,” the owner said to his architect—and as one wanders around the resulting seven-bedroom, 10,700-squarefoot property Noam Bora Bora, it's clear he got what he wanted. It feels like the ocean is everywhere. The property, designed and decorated by Ora Architecte and Patrick Raffeneau Design, sits on a lagoon, as if moored, with a stepped infinity pool reaching out to the island's lagoon. A private swimming hole allows for snorkeling (skinny-dipping optional). But the most jaw-dropping feature is half-hidden. When you arrive, it seems there are two square ponds, teeming with fish, one on either side of the entrance. It's only after descending to the basement that you realize the “ponds” are actually glimpses…

CIGARS In 1962, José Orlando Padrón, a third-generation Cuban tobacco grower, ended up in Miami after the Castro regime confiscated his family's farms. It took only two years for him to set up shop making cigars employing just one roller. Padrón eventually relocated his factory to Nicaragua, where the mineral-rich volcanic soil, which imparts the leaves with distinctive earthy characteristics, was similar to Cuba's Pinar del Río. As a result, Padrón Cigars has become renowned for its puros, the wrappers, binders, and fillers of which are made exclusively from Nicaraguan tobaccos. This year marks the 60th anniversary of Padrón Cigars, and in the decades since it was founded, it has grown to produce some of the world's most coveted smokes, ironically rivaling many of the best Havanas today. Padrón now…

DREAM MACHINES A DEVOTION TO MOTION Ferrari has replaced its 812 Superfast with the new 819 hp 12Cilindri, whose very name (DOH-dee-chee chee-LIN-dree) declares the focal point of the design brief, which was to develop a conventional power plant that makes this Prancing Horse among the fastest and most muscular front-engined sports cars in history. To create this next-gen GT, the marque took styling cues from the early space age and 1970s retro-futurism, then dropped in the internal-combustion engine that built Ferrari's legacy: a naturally aspirated V-12. It's one of several throwback supercars—including the rival Aston Martin Vanquish and the (considerably more expensive) V-16-equipped Bugatti Tourbillon—that revel in cylinder excess, keeping the internal-combustion party going until emissions rules issue a last call to the guzzlers. The V-12 became Ferrari's lodestar…

Model: ARTHUR SALES Grooming: MANDA WILSON Senior market editor and casting: LUIS CAMPUZANO Photo director: IRENE OPEZZO Photo assistant: ALEJANDRO SUAREZ Prop stylist: ELIZABETH DERWIN…

YOU CAN'T GET A NEGRONI AT NATIVE. To be clear, Native is a cocktail bar. It is, in fact, one of the best cocktail bars in Singapore and has enjoyed vast popular and critical acclaim since it opened seven years ago. But still, you can't get a negroni, because Native doesn't carry Campari. For a cocktail bar in New York or London, this omission would be unheard-of—the negroni is one of the foundational drinks of what we think of as the Western cocktail canon—but Native is very much not a Western-style cocktail bar. It's a Singapore bar, through and through: It was founded by a Singaporean and is firmly dedicated to locality—not just ingredients but locally crafted plates, cups, and tables, and more than anything, a local ethos. The team…

IN a steady winter drizzle 30 minutes outside Bordeaux, the tiny hamlet of Pichou appears abandoned save for a rugged-looking fellow in overalls and wellies, with the long, flowing hair of a romance-novel cover model, plowing a field of twigs behind a strapping white horse. Vineyards generally don't look like much in late winter, but the barrenness here is extreme. Where are the trellises, the wires, the thick vine stumps? Can this muddy field really belong to the controversial vintner who makes the world's most expensive wine? Loïc Pasquet pulls up in a dirt-splattered gray utility van and jumps out to greet us. He points to the sodden ground covered with sticks, stones, grass, and clumps of weeds and tells us about the grape varieties grown here and about how…