Luxury’s 25 Most Innovative Brands

While most innovations serve society well, others lend new and terrible meaning to the concept of creative destruction—the process by which new systems and industries replace existing ones. “[The world] scraps its obsolete engines and dynamos,” observes Andrew Undershaft, the millionaire arms manufacturer in George Bernard Shaw’s 1905 play Major Barbara; “but it won’t scrap […]

The rocks that are the centerpieces of the rings, cuff links, pendants, and bracelets in a new collection from the David Yurman brand (212.752.4255, http://www.davidyurman.com) came to Earth, not from it. The jewelry designer Evan Yurman, working with his father, David, has fashioned the jewelry around bits of a meteorite that thousands of years ago […]

Even the most carefully considered wardrobe requires a few versatile components to lend the wearer a touch of personal style. One such item, the Corneliani ID jacket, introduced nearly a decade ago, takes rugged outerwear in a surprising yet natural direction by doubling as a sport coat. A removable inset enables the wearer to effortlessly […]

As its name implies, the Harry Winston Histoire de Tourbillon 4 (www.harrywinston.com) is the fourth—and most complex—iteration of the company’s tourbillon. The firm collaborated on the $696,600 timepiece with the boutique watchmaker Greubel Forsey, a master of the tourbillon design. The watch features a triple tourbillon composed of three concentric carriages, each moving at a […]

Pedigree, rather than taste, is often the decisive factor in the commercial success of a fine wine. Nowhere perhaps is this more true than in Champagne. No matter how delicate their texture or subtle their flavors, sparkling wines from other regions suffer in the eyes of the untutored for not having been produced in the […]

David Stewart, The Balvenie Distillery’s malt master, picks up a gold-etched bottle and gently decants a dram of single-malt whisky into a Glencairn tasting glass. He holds it to the light, gazing at it as if it were an old friend. And indeed it is. “This whisky and I,” he says, “have shared the last […]

In the Piedmont region of Italy, where Cristiano Cremi­nelli’s family has been curing artisanal meats since the 1600s, chubs of salami might be redolent with Barolo or white truffles.“In Italy, we make 900 kinds of salumi,” Creminelli says, using the collective term for salami, prosciutto, and other cured meats.“In Italy, the first religion is food.”  Six […]

Over the past few years, the upscale outdoors experience known as “glamping” has taken hold at resorts throughout North America. Country and mountain retreats from Colorado to British Columbia have developed high-end campsites that replace sleeping bags with king-size feather beds, trail mix with organic cuisine, and holes in the ground with en suite bathrooms. […]

Acclaimed as the Pilatus PC-12 and its newer NG variant may be, they are single-engine turboprops, and so they have their limitations. Specifically, the 322 mph maximum cruise speed of the PC-12 NG does not compete with that of a jet. And so in May, Pilatus—a Swiss manufacturer that has been in business for more […]

Some of the most thrilling sport sedans are the ones built by the Japanese marques specifically for track and rally competition. These cars are developed and designed with a form-follows-function philosophy. They lack even a pretense of luxury but often share their owners’ stables with far costlier and more elegant European machinery. Mitsubishi’s Lancer Evolution—better […]

At last september’s Monaco Yacht Show, the Italian shipyard Benetti presented 27 megayacht concepts from independent designers. One of the more striking concepts came from the desk of Luca Dini, a Florence-based naval architect who has had some 60 yachts built to date. Dini’s 236-foot motor yacht stood out with features that included side terraces […]

The country sport of deer stalking is a time-honored tradition in the Scottish Highlands. Unlike many forms of hunting, in which participants wait in hiding for their prey, stalkers in Scotland openly pursue deer on foot, often walking 6 to 12 miles a day over steep, treeless terrain for a closer shot at their target. […]

Few images are as ingrained in the collective American memory as the “Visor” photograph. Taken in 1969 by Neil Armstrong, the shot depicts fellow astronaut Buzz Aldrin on the surface of the moon during the first-ever lunar landing, with Armstrong and the Eagle spacecraft perfectly framed in Aldrin’s reflective visor. Armstrong captured the moment with […]

Sandy Paul’s love of carousel animals sprang from a thwarted wish. “It started when I was 4 or 5 years old, and my dad wouldn’t buy me a pony,” she says. “So I’d pedal to the local amusement park, pay a quarter to ride the carousel, and that was my pony.” Paul and her husband, […]

Since its founding 50 years ago, Lamborghini has consistently heralded the future and fueled imaginations with its groundbreaking designs. The revolutionary shape of the 350 GTV prototype of 1963—styled by Franco Scaglione, whose design philosophy was antipodal to that of Lamborghini’s more conservative competitor, Ferrari—established Lam­borghini as the marque that takes chances and pushes the […]

A common lament among certain collectors and industry insiders is that expanding group ownership of the leading watch brands (and the resulting incursion of corporate culture) has lowered a damper on new ideas at these houses, deterring watchmakers from taking risks. This theory, however, neglects to account for the recent creative surge at Cartier, the […]

Hermès has long been famous for its classic leather goods and accessories, including the Birkin bag, the H belt buckle, and a line of quietly distinctive ties. But in recent years, the French luxury house has also become known for its menswear, home furnishings, and more. Instead of just reinterpreting its signature design motifs for […]

Two integral components of high-end watchmaking—unorthodox com­plications and new materials technology—owe their genesis at least in part to the experiments of Ulysse Nardin, which was little more than a parvenu when the entrepreneur Rolf Schnyder revived the company in the 1980s. Schnyder was willing to take chances, and thanks to his friendship with Dr. Ludwig […]

Not long after the 40th anniversary of Audemars Piguet’s flagship Royal Oak model—an occasion the watchmaker celebrated in 2012 with various galas, the introduction of special models, and a global exhibition—another milestone is being observed, though with much less fanfare. The company released the Royal Oak Offshore in 1993, and that addition to the line […]

In 1858, Louis Vuitton created the first flat, stackable travel trunk—a concept that, though revolutionary for the luggage industry at the time, seems in hindsight a rather modest beginning for one of the world’s largest producers of luxury goods. Today, Louis Vuitton is a flagship brand of the LVMH group, the French conglomerate that generated […]

In 1987, when many American diners would have blanched at the idea of eating raw fish, Nobu Matsuhisa opened a small Japanese restaurant in Beverly Hills. Confronted by a customer who would not eat sashimi, Nobu, as he quickly became known, took the plate back to the kitchen and was struck by inspiration: He doused […]

In no field of endeavor is the friction between tradition and innovation more evident than in the making of fine wine; and no label presides more completely over past and future than Dom Pérignon, which has been credited with numerous firsts since 1668, when the Benedictine monk for whom the house is named assumed the […]

Wind-whipped, the wave rises, heaves, and churns as it rushes toward the shore and spits out a man in a black neoprene wet suit. His arms and legs flail as he sputters for air and struggles to his feet. It is, says Azzedine, his instructor from the Explora surfing school in Essaouira, Morocco, an improvement. […]

Weighing in at 50 pounds, about half of which is wool, Sharapova stands indifferent to an admiring crowd of international journalists. Named for the Russian tennis star, Sharapova is a prizewinning Australian merino sheep, and beneath her curly gray topcoat lies a snow-white fleece coveted for its silken texture and strong fiber. “It doesn’t feel […]

With his Porsche Panamera Turbo reaching near-breakneck speeds, Dieter Burmester casually navigates the afternoon traffic on a stretch of autobahn just outside Berlin. “I cannot live with MP3s!” shouts the 67-year-old founder, owner, and CEO of the Berlin-based Burmester Audiosysteme above the pristinely rendered music coming through the car’s 16-speaker, 1,000-plus-watt stereo system. “I never […]