Innehållsförteckning för June/July 2022 från Robb Report

Williams + Hirakawa The husband-and-wife team of Mark Williams and Sara Hirakawa have photographed acclaimed individuals for numerous publications, including Viola Davis for Variety, James Hinchcliffe for ESPN and Naomi Osaka for Time. For this issue’s style section (p. 93), they captured our model sporting this year’s selection of award-winning menswear. “Our favorite shot is probably the striped shirt on the pink wall. We tend to like simple attire with a great cut, and this look fits the bill,” Hirakawa says. “He feels like an artist in this space, and we love the geometric graphic quality of the light combined with the tactile texture of the stucco wall.” Andrew Sessa This issue’s travel section (p. 153) includes great escapes from Budapest, Hungary, to Santa Fe, New Mexico—to say nothing of…

THE BIG IDEA Shifting to Neutral After decades of fits and starts, electric vehicles are now squarely in the automotive firmament, with even the combustion-loving likes of Rolls-Royce, Bentley and Lamborghini embracing a battery-powered future. So what’s next? Enter the climate-neutral car. Most EVs are not as clean as the brochures would have you believe, considering the immense carbon footprint of battery manufacturing, plus the fact that much of the energy grid is still plugged into coal-fueled power plants. In theory, a climate-neutral car would not just forego tailpipe emissions, as with a standard EV, but would also be net-zero when it comes to all harmful greenhouse emissions, from production as well as operation. Yet according to Brett Smith, director of technology at the Center for Automotive Research in Ann…

THE BIG IDEA Time Out Last year, Swiss watch exports reached an all-time high of over $22 billion, according to a report by the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry. Exports to the US were up 55 percent, and January 2022 witnessed a year-on-year increase of 37.5 percent. The industry is clearly in robust health. Despite this, many collectors can’t get their hands on the watches they want. Walk into any Rolex boutique and you will find almost zero inventory. To hear retailers tell it, pent-up demand due to the pandemic, a general increase in interest in watches and supply-chain issues are all to blame. Watches from the big three—Rolex, Patek Philippe and Audemars Piguet—are always difficult to come by, but this year all of the makers’ models are experiencing…

THE BIG IDEA Wine Wakes Up We’re raising a glass to the shift to diversify wine culture that has begun in earnest over this past year. In the UK, the Gérard Basset Foundation is generating funds through its Golden Vines auctions to support BIPOC candidates interested in an enology career. “Inclusivity and diversity are big problems to solve in the wine world,” says Lewis Chester, CEO of Liquid Icons, which helps provide the financing for the Gérard Basset Foundation. “We need to create role models.” Big names, such as Dom Pérignon and Taylor Fladgate, have signed on to further advance these efforts, creating opportunities on-site for internships in the lab and cellar and sponsoring grants to help students pursue the rigorous and expensive master of wine certification. From both a…

THE BIG IDEA Art’s Lab Test If year one of the pandemic was a scramble for the art world, with galleries, fairs and auction houses jumping online to stay afloat, year two was an experiment. Sensing the field was at a pivotal moment, many players offered up a dizzying number of new ventures and initiatives, including spin-off enterprises and creative ways to both expand and combine forces. In the early days of the shutdown in 2020, David Zwirner, who already had a digital plan in place for his own mega-gallery, created Platform, a then-altruistic website showing works from small galleries in the US and Europe that lacked the financial means to do so digitally in a meaningful way themselves. He graciously waived pocketing a cut of sales. In 2021, Zwirner…

THE BIG IDEA Legacies Lead the Way In prosperous eras of the past, sprawling estates embellished with long, winding driveways, guest cottages and amenities were built and handed down through the generations. Some, like a 1920s “castle” in San Diego or Linden Hill, a property nearly the size of a French village along Philadelphia’s Main Line, were designed by celebrated architects of their time. Rarely have these legacy homes come on the market—until now. While the residences’ vast acreage and square footage were initially considered assets, in recent decades many homeowners with smaller families didn’t necessarily need the space or want to maintain such grand holdings. But Covid-19 changed some clients’ cravings, says Sean Matthews of Compass Real Estate in Santa Barbara. “That level of buyer is now looking strategically…

Formula 1 racing, trading natural gas and the emerging eVTOL segment don’t seem like logical bedfellows. But entrepreneur Stephen Fitzpatrick made the link between all three during a 2015 F1 event in Brazil. Then owner of the Manor Racing Formula 1 team, he had flown 15 hours only to spend another four in gridlocked traffic outside São Paulo. He also owned UK energy distributor Ovo and decided to jump into the fledgling electric-air-taxi segment which, in 2016, seemed like a sci-fi concept. “There were no visible competitors,” says Fitzpatrick, 44, described by colleagues as a “force of nature.” He had no background in aviation. He’d also had zero experience in energy retailing when he launched Ovo in 2009 but grew it into the UK’s third-largest energy distributor. “We started looking…

Usually, the rarefied few who hold sway over their professions are either hailed as rising stars or honored for their lifetime of achievement. Mate Rimac, the 34-year-old automotive disrupter, is already worthy of both. In 2009, roughly five years after gaining widespread recognition for his haptic “iGlove” tech project in high school, the Croatian wunderkind founded his own electric-car company. Soon, Rimac Automobili was supplying high-performance automakers—including Porsche, Aston Martin and Koenigsegg—with alternative power-train support. Now delivery of the brand’s 1,914 hp Nevera, our choice for the year’s top hypercar (left), is imminent. As impressive as Rimac’s meteoric trajectory has been, equally remarkable is his backstory. “I was born in Bosnia, the poorest country in Europe, and I’m from the poorest part—there were no cars, really, or roads,” Rimac told…

THE BIG IDEA Making Sustainability Sexy Sustainability and the luxury world are not always easy bedfellows. And the disconnect between the two is particularly obvious within the marine realm, where many owners preach eco-everything until it comes to the rare woods and exotic stones that differentiate their vessels. “Everyone talks about the greater good,” says veteran yacht designer Greg Marshall. “But the difference is these people have money to buy whatever they want—and their yacht is a statement of the pinnacle of their lives.” Probably the most striking example these days is teak, which is limited due to sanctions on Myanmar, where the best trees are found. “Burmese teak is more beautiful on decks than any other wood—plus it stays cool in the sun and feels good on the feet,”…

THE BIG IDEA Mining the Past The practice of reworking old themes is a familiar concept at the world’s best jewelry houses, but this year designers revised the legacies and dynasties of kingdoms past for today’s increasingly relaxed but no less lavish aesthetic. Jewelers took hefty proportions and antique settings and modernized them, incorporating colorful gems for a fresh perspective and, in one case, using materials, borrowed from the ancient world, never before seen in high jewelry. Both Boucheron and Santi by Krishna Choudhary delivered spectacular pieces inspired by the ornate jewelry of the maharajahs. Claire Choisne, Boucheron’s creative director, reimagined archival designs from the maison’s largest special order in its 164-year history, which was placed by the Maharajah of Patiala in 1928. Choisne contrived the appearance of lightness by…

THE BIG IDEA Green Juice It would be accurate to say that Peter Bignell runs a “green” distillery, but somehow that doesn’t quite capture it. For more than a decade, Bignell’s company—Belgrove Distillery in Tasmania, Australia—has produced whiskey from rye he grows himself. This is unusual: Most operations have their grains shipped to them at a considerable carbon cost. What’s more, he powers his stills and tractors with a biofuel he makes out of used cooking oil from a fish-and-chips place next to his farm. All his water is from rain traps. He built his own still from scratch. He dug his peat bog out behind his brother’s house. For special releases, he sometimes burns dried sheep dung to smoke the whiskey, and he feeds the same sheep the mash…

Few have done as much to shape the cloud-scraping skyline of New York City over the past two decades—and bring Gotham back from the depths of the pandemic—than powerhouse visionary Stephen Kliegerman. Since 2000, when he joined the senior executive team at Terra Holdings, parent of Brown Harris Stevens, he has overseen more than $15 billion in property sales in the New York metro area, totaling 10,000-plus properties. One of his latest projects, the soaring 52-story Elkus Manfredi–designed 200 Amsterdam, is the Upper West Side’s most-anticipated new luxury condo development. Working closely with high-profile developers, Kliegerman masterminds the management of landmark new properties, taking them from early planning to final closings. Sustainability and wellness have driven many of his newest endeavors, from the Foster + Partners–designed Selene on East 53rd…

THE BIG IDEA Fast Times Our culture puts a great deal of focus on wealth-building, whether in tech, pro sports or celebritydom. But billionaire MacKenzie Scott can’t seem to give away her money fast enough. Her extraordinary largesse and whiplash-inducing pace this past year appear to have given some of her peers a gentle kick in the pants. In March, Scott, the ex-wife of Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, announced she had bestowed $3.9 billion upon 465 nonprofits in the previous nine months, bringing her tally of donations to at least $12 billion in just the past two years. Her modus operandi also involves relying on experts to identify organizations that can actually make an impact and then letting those nonprofits run with the money. No strings attached nor provisions for how…

THE BIG IDEA Virtual Insanity The digital basketball sneaker is an avatar for our age, in no small part because it is, literally, an avatar. There is no consumer good so perfectly Veblenian as name-brand virtual athletic apparel: Digitally rendered ankles don’t need digitally rendered support any more than virtual pets require virtual food. And yet in April, Nike, in collaboration with RTFKT, the NFT collectibles brand acquired by the sportswear giant four months prior, released a digital iteration of its famous Dunk sneaker; within hours, examples of the virtual footwear were being listed on the OpenSea marketplace for an average price of 3 Ethereum, or about $9,000. For those who didn’t grow up gaming—a demographic that’s shrinking by the day—it’s easy to miss just how profoundly that industry has…

THE BIG IDEA A Tale of Two Wardrobes Whether it’s the best of times or the worst of times is debatable; what’s certain is things are confusing on many levels right now. The past year was set to the tempo of the pandemic’s fits and starts: celebratory re-emergences followed by cautious retreats, promising news tempered with sobering reality checks. For many of us, this two-step extended to how we dressed, with our wardrobes toggling between WFH casual and back-at-it polish—often several times in the span of one week. In fashion, the topsy-turvy-ness of it all has largely manifested in two contrasting schools—essentially, dual visions of what post-Covid life has in store. Will we come back swinging, ready to inaugurate the roaring 2020s a few years late? Or is it time…

THE BIG IDEA The Great Escape RIP, VIP bucket lists. Since luxury travel began to resurge as the pandemic subsided, it’s been carpe passport, leaving the industry to balance a burst dam’s worth of pent-up demand with a host of ongoing obstacles. One upshot has been travelers’ willingness to spend more for the right experience. “When the world was put on time-out, the wealthiest had time to dream big,” says travel specialist Keith Waldon of Departure Lounge, noting that most of his clients’ budgets have doubled year over year. “Whatever they were doing before, people want to do at a higher level.” Cari Gray of Gray & Co. has observed a similar tendency. “Now it’s not just about a driver but a driver on standby,” she says, “and not just…

THE BIG IDEA The New Era of Indulgence Like the prestige TV dramas of yore, restaurants that wanted to be taken seriously have for decades made themselves deathly serious. Prizes were bestowed upon the establishments that embraced precision in culinary technique and service. But fun? Laughs? No. Merriment was for frivolous venues where the food was secondary to the scene. Even before the pandemic, those lines had begun to blur as highly regarded chefs opened casual concepts that still produced well-crafted cuisine. But as Robb Report traveled across America this past winter and spring, visiting restaurants in the wake of the industry being battered by Covid-19 for two years, we sensed a new mood emerging. Offering exceptional cooking was no longer enough. If a restaurant’s business recipe didn’t include some…

Things have certainly gotten a lot more interesting at Cascade Hollow Distilling Co. since Nicole Austin was hired as GM and distiller in 2018. The distillery, located in sleepy Tullahoma, Tenn., is the home of George Dickel, a Diageoowned brand that serious whiskey fans overlooked for many years. But Austin’s background in craft and Irish whiskeys, along with a degree in chemical engineering, has helped lead Cascade Hollow to new levels of quality and innovation. In the past year alone, she’s been the driving force behind notable whiskeys such as Dickel Bourbon, a new Bottled in Bond vintage and a rye whiskey produced in collaboration with Colorado craft distillery Leopold Bros. These excellent releases are beacons in a sea of so many overpriced and underwhelming bottles, and we can’t wait…

THE BIG IDEA The Omniscient App One of the glaring shortcomings of private aviation is the lack of an industry-wide app that offers guaranteed pricing and real-time information. A half dozen of the larger firms have invested tens of millions in developing apps for their own fleets. But most aviation firms use a private-label version of generic software from Avinode or FlyEasy, which provides the same data to all subscribers and lists estimated costs rather than final prices, often with a time lag. A perfect storm of unprecedented demand, shortage of aircraft and a highly fractured mom-and-pop operator base has kept most firms from developing their own apps. The majority of providers have fewer than 10 aircraft, according to data service Jetnet, while only 10 have more than 50 jets…

THE BIG IDEA The Meta-Design World Is Here When architect Luis Fernandez was working on his first environment for the metaverse, a soaring, interactive gallery conceived to display NFT artworks, he kept running into a problem: None of the established platforms or available technology could make the room’s virtual gleaming marble, ivy-covered walls or central water feature look as photorealistic as he’d hoped. Fernandez, who has also designed interiors and menswear, ultimately teamed up with two sophisticated platforms called Mona and MetaMundo, which helped him and his design team achieve the elevated, high-fidelity look he was after. The resulting space uses high-end materials and proportions that feel familiar but isn’t restricted by tedious things like gravity. “You can play God a little bit,” Fernandez says. “Obviously there’s no physics. There’s…

THE BIG IDEA Smoke ’Em (if You Can Get ’Em) The cigar industry, like so many other businesses, has been completely transformed over the past two years—it’s also facing nearly unprecedented demand. At the beginning of 2020, tobacco stores and cigar lounges were forced to shutter nationwide, yet for many cigar enthusiasts that actually meant more opportunities to enjoy a smoke than ever before. Today, surging online sales, along with the reopening of established brick-and-mortar locations as pandemic restrictions loosen, have resulted in the greatest uptick in cigar purchases since the boom of the 1990s. “When it comes to premium cigars, we saw a 25 percent increase in 2021 sales,” says David M. Ozgo, president of the Cigar Association of America, Inc. In that year, he says, “we imported 400…