Neue Luxury is a global dialogue on luxury in the 21st century.

When it comes to the world of niche and artisanal perfumery, it’s easy to obsess. As perhaps one of the most elegant and esoteric nomenclatures of art and science, haute perfumery has the ability to bottle the very best of artistic human endeavour.

It was during his high school years in Montana that Lonney White became “confused by the trendiness of colour” and shunned the palette entirely from his sartorial identity. He was instead solaced by the timeless allure of monochrome, with the stylistic code since creeping into his aesthetic as a neo-minimalist painter, sculptor and furniture designer.

Memories are so often olfactory. Although every scent is made of a simple combination of carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen and sulfur, the experience of scent is both subjective and personal. Selecting a fragrance for another is often one of life’s most intimate and difficult acts.

There is a word in Sanskrit—‘kalpa’—which means the passing of time on a grand, cosmological scale. Native speakers uphold that the movement of celestial bodies can be observed only during meditative transcendence. Horology might be a noble science, but the watchmakers on this list, who approach their work with temerity and lyricism, prove that the tradition holds something divine.

Lukas Machnik is far more than the sum of his parts. In myriad ventures— interior design, furniture, objects, art—the Chicago-based Pole imbues his work with the eye of an auteur. Avant-garde, haunting, graphic, bold—these are hardly commercial adjectives, and yet this is how you might describe the Machnik aesthetic, the ability to cross-reference and stamp personality onto a project with a profound disregard for convention.

Encounters with chthonian spirits—who leave their subterranean dwellings only when the beasts wake them—are rare. Talking to Monika Bielskyte, the Lithuanian-born creative director, consultant, strategist and self-proclaimed “techno nomad”, is like conversing with a good friend you might have only known from a prior life. You feel in good hands with her.

The interior artefacts and objects created by Achille Salvagni are deeply moving and considered objects d’art. Poised, eloquent and unquestionably luxurious, each piece is underpinned by unwavering commitment to detail, ideas and the use of the finest materials and craftsmanship. These are not just interior decorations but timeless pieces infused with history, context and the imagination.

Two years ago contemporary Chinese art dealer and collector Judith Neilson offered furniture designer Khai Liew perhaps the biggest private commission in Australia: 190 pieces, including a sixteen metre dining table made from Brazilian cherry wood.

Prestigious porcelain company Porzellan Manufaktur Nymphenburg looked to fashion to reprise the original avant garde status of their signature Commedia dell’Arte figurines. The Couture Edition was a gesture of rebellion in keeping with the company’s original integral focus on commissioning leading artists of the day.

There are few sensations that speak to our collective consciousness the way perfume does—its fragile, ephemeral nuances conjuring both fantasy and memory in our minds and bodies, with layered possibilities shifting between the wearer and those who share their personal space.

Woody Allen was once quoted as saying, “you can live to be 100 if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be a hundred”. And while some may subscribe to such a contrite and tortuous renunciation, our editorial team isn’t particularly enamoured with the thought of outliving a giant Aldabra tortoise.

One of Australian design’s most ambitious ventures, Broached Commissions is unusual in curating and commissioning its own designs. Using a core group of designers—Trent Jansen, Adam Goodrum and Charles Wilson—Lou Weis’s Melbourne-based venture is an exercise in design history. It explores how ideas arrived and evolved in Australia.