Ferrari 458 Spider

Perhaps the most celebrated of America’s celebrity chefs, Mario Batali presides over an epicurean empire that includes everything from television shows and restaurants (20 and counting) to brick ovens and pepper mills. The 51-year-old entrepreneur recently added a new show on ABC (The Chew) and a new cookbook to his burgeoning portfolio, but food is […]

Although the private club remains alive and well (see “Nightlife Ascending,” page 113), at no point in history did it play so significant a part in determining one’s social destiny as in 19th-century New York. For the ambitious man, admittance to the Knickerbocker, Union, or Metropolitan placed him in profitable proximity to such exponents of […]

When word spread that hotelier Ian Schrager had taken control of Chicago’s aging Ambassador East Hotel and its ground-floor restaurant, the Pump Room, the city collectively gasped. In the minds of Chicagoans, the Pump Room was untouchable, the legendary hangout of Elizabeth Taylor and Frank Sinatra. Then Schrager announced plans to close, gut, and remake […]

Private clubs used to mean old: old money, old members, old bastions of formality and hierarchy. But over the past 10 years, something has changed on the private-club scene: A younger, hipper breed of club is plugging directly into the life of a city. To be well connected in Hollywood requires a membership at Soho […]

Building a better sports sedan is seldom if ever a simple task. It involves striking a delicate and often elusive balance between real-world requirements (passenger comfort, cruising range, cargo capacity) and gut-punching performance. But even when on paper the matrix appears to be synchronized, sometimes the formula does not translate to the road quite right. […]

More than a few eyebrows were raised among the collectors who gathered recently in Dubai at the world’s largest suspended aquarium for the unveiling of Blancpain’s latest timepiece: The revelation took place at the bottom of the 10-million-liter tank. It was not, however, the unusual circumstances of the introduction that elicited these surprised reactions; instead, […]

Peter Thum’s signet ring is a striking object: a textured piece of steel and gold, hand-forged by jeweler Philip Crangi and concealing a secret inside the band—the serial number of the AK-47 from which it was made. Thum, a New York entrepreneur and humanitarian, started Ethos Water and sold it to Starbucks, then founded the […]

Compared with the biggest names in the high-performance-headphone business (Sennheiser, Grado, Beyerdynamic, Stax), Audez’e is in its infancy. But the Southern California manufacturer, which recording- and film-industry veteran Alexander Rosson cofounded in 2009, ascended straight to the top tier of full-size-headphone producers with the $945 LCD-2. (The company’s inaugural release, the LCD-1, had a short […]

It is a tasty two-wheeled confection, a delicate retro-style moped inspired by board-track racers—those primitive motorcycles that in the early 20th century perilously rocketed around banked ovals made of wooden planks. Finished in custom colors and accented with pinstripes and machined-metal details, a Derringer looks like something that might have been ridden to the Five […]

In 1858, a french botanist named Henri Mouhot set off on a journey to Southeast Asia that began with a miserable four months at sea and continued with a trek beset by monsoons, floods, feverish heat, riled elephants, and rivers of leeches. But Mouhot emerged in Cambodia to encounter a vision so magical, he wrote, […]

Cessna’s Citation business jets have long been lauded for their speed, reliability, and performance, but they also have been criticized for their cramped cabins. The company has addressed this shortcoming by adding width. The new Citation Latitude, a $14.9 million midsize jet that Cessna expects to begin delivering in 2015, has a cabin measuring 6.4 […]

If Ferrari can be moved to design a station wagon and Porsche pressured into offering a sedan and a hybrid supercar, then it should startle no one to learn that Range Rover has built an SUV that is not shaped like a tea caddy. The buffed, rounded, long-tailed, and thoroughly contemporary Evoque marks the brand’s […]

The vast contemporary art collection at the Pompidou Center in Paris has been known to overwhelm visitors, yet Domoina de Brantes wends expertly through the galleries, guiding her charges to works of particular significance and giving a tutorial on the Paris art scene along the way. Stop­ping in front of Thomas Hirschhorn’s wall-size Outgrowth, she […]

Although it has been re-engineered and reshaped to accommodate its ingeniously designed retractable top, the Ferrari 458 Spider is essentially a convertible version of the 458 Italia coupe. But the folks at Ferrari expect the new model to serve a completely different purpose and attract a different type of driver.     Typical Italia owners, […]

After purchasing an unremarkable mid-1990s house in a private enclave of Los Angeles in 2008, the new owners—an investor; his wife, a philanthropist; and their two children—were faced with the prospect of a significant remodel that would meet their family’s needs and accommodate their growing art collection. They immediately called in Southern California designers Frank […]

In 2003, I was among the first guests to experience the Spa Montage Surrender at Southern California’s Montage Laguna Beach. So when I was recently offered a similar opportunity at the resort’s sister property in Utah, I was happy to capitulate. Montage Hotels & Resorts, which also operates a city hotel in Beverly Hills, officially […]

Brian Paul was walking off the 14th green at Kukui‘ula when he spotted the tail. Paul, the head golf pro at this new Tom Weiskopf–designed course on Kauai, is accustomed to seeing humpback whales in the adjacent Kukui‘ula Bay, but this one was different. “It started slapping its tail against the water over and over […]

In the game of love, a well-chosen gift never fails to score a few points. And the stakes run high on Valentine’s Day, when every paramour hopes to unwrap a perfectly tempting little something. So consider your loved one—lighthearted or elegant? cerebral, sweet, or sinful?—and then peruse these pages to find a gift that will […]

The Mayans were producing alcoholic beverages from the agave plant more than 500 years ago, but the pinnacle of such drinks in modern times—at least as far as extra añejo is concerned—has been reached only recently. Since March 2006, when the Consejo Regulador del Tequila, the agency that regulates Mexico’s tequila production, established the extra […]