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

• TATSUO MIYAJIMA

  Without zero

  Tatsuo Miyajima is a veteran of the international exhibition circuit whose work has twice been included in the Venice Biennale (1988 and 1999). The artist believes that every human life is unique and important. To this end and over the last three decades, Miyajima has become known for his large-scale, immersive installations, which use LED-lit numbers, counting from one through to nine, backwards and forwards at different speeds, while never hitting zero.

• NICOLA FORMICHETTI

  From the faculty of misfits

  Nicola Formichetti never met Andy Warhol—their lifespans overlapped by ten years—but refers to the American artist as his “dream teacher”. Their post-mortem union transpired when Formichetti launched the Welcome to Diesel World exhibition in Melbourne in March of 2016, where Warhol’s high-gloss albeit chilled paintings of cultural icons were hanging in a major gallery. The pair’s parallels are simple: children of working class parents whose imaginations fought to keep up with the prodigious rate of artistic output.

• FRÉDÉRIC MALLE

  Editions de Parfums

  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.

FASHION

• VIKTOR&ROLF

  Fashion Artists

  I’m posing questions to Dutch fashion designers Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren that are a little more searching than most. Instead of asking about their hit fragrance, Flowerbomb (one bottle sold every three minutes), or their private relationship (former partners, now platonic—for the record), I’m plundering sociology, anthropology, in fact, any-ology I can muster.

• A FASHIONABLE LIFE

  In conversation with Daphne Guinness

  Isabella Blow was one of the fashion world’s great connoisseurs and bohemians, a British aristocrat, stylist, muse and mentor of young, seminal designers such as Alexander McQueen, Hussein Chalayan and milliner Philip Treacy, and models such as Stella Tennant, Honor Fraser and Sophie Dahl.

• LONNEY WHITE

  Dark materials

  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.

• ARMAND HADIDA

  Forever scouting

  “Fashion should always be about discovery and creating an identity. The idea isn’t just adding to the visual overload of clothing out there,” says Hadida, who is still as passionate and visionary about fashion as he was when he first opened the doors of L’Eclaireur in a Parisian basement in 1980.

• MAISON HARROLDS

  A unique theatre of experience

  The rules for a luxury brand used to be relatively simple. Be subtle, be exclusive, be surprising and create desire. However, with the rise of the conspicuous acquirer and the democratisation and proliferation of luxury, volume consumption and brand identity erosion seem to be the order of the day. 

• VETEMENTS

  Investigative fashion

  In the midst of the current volatile and frenzied fashion landscape, a label has appeared that is challenging the once unquestioned codes of the show system, and producing intriguing urban collections that are electrifying both customers and critics alike. Georgian born Demna Gvasalia is the man fronting the Vetements collective.

• TONY GARIFALAKIS

  Mob Rule

  His use of spray paint, with its associations of graffiti and vandalism, formed a rebellious and anarchic foil to the neat and straight lines preferred by government officials. And where the FBI’s redactions targeted information too sensitive to be released, Garifalakis took aim at the most public of all information: the faces of models and celebrities.

• THOM BROWNE

  Properness and perversion

  In 2003, American essayist Judith Thurman, while covering the men’s collections in Milan and Paris for The New Yorker, wrote, “The flash of an ankle used to represent the chasm between a sophisticate and a rube.” Had she turned toward her countryman Thom Browne, who introduced his ready-to-wear collection that same year, she might have noticed a seismic shift in culturally sanctioned displays of masculine (that is to say, American) vanity.

FASHION

• STELLA MCCARTNEY

  The principle of change

  All hail Stella McCartney, the designer who has made ethical business a cornerstone of her label by practicing sustainable production methods, all the while reinforcing her unique creative vision. Her successes so transparent that she is merely known by the moniker Stella, shedding any demand for a surname.

• SIMPLICITY AND DECADENCE

  Neue Selects

  Conceived upon a nexus of art and science, perfumus, or ‘to smoke through’ in the Latin tongue, may be the only earthly counterpart to ambrosia. Neue Fashion explores seven of the world’s most unique olfactory creations that stimulate our imagination and highlight the dualities between heritage and modernity, simplicity and decadence.