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

• OLIVIER ROUSTEING

  Commanding the army

  Rousteing knows when a beautiful woman with attitude is in need of a coat of armour. He is most closely associated with the Kardashians, the behemoths of reality television. Kim wears his clothes with aplomb. Her half sister, Kendall Jenner, made her Paris runway debut at Rousteing’s show. They edge into each other’s Instagram snapshots, a tool that Rousteing uses to connect with his fans as he “grows up with the house”.

• TIM BLANKS

  The voice of experience

  On the face of it, Tim Blanks, the renowned fashion critic, doesn’t fit the preconceived idea of a fashion journalist. Famous for his year round uniform of short sleeved floral shirts, he has been producing whip smart reviews for more than three decades that concentrate on the runway soundtrack and the current political climate as much as they do the clothes.

• INEZ & VINOODH

  Dutch courage

  Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin are two names that are quite a mouthful. Between them, the Dutch photographers boast ten tongue-twisting syllables. Like the photographs they produce; fashion images, portraits, advertising campaigns, their names have become synonymous with a space between normal and strange, light and dark, self explanatory and the mysteriously glamorous.

ART & FASHION

• ALBERTO BURRI

  Materials of reconstruction

  Known for ‘painting without paint’, Burri would tear, stitch, burn and batter his creations into submission. In the words of the Italian critic, Emilio Vila, Burri’s works were “nourished by matter that conserves only a tragic reminiscence of painting, almost as if it were asphyxiated; a material that is devitalised, impoverished, rotted, consumed and already wasted away”.

• ANDREW BOLTON

  Conserving cultural artefacts

  Today, the reinvigorated and much celebrated Costume Institute is led by British born curator Andrew Bolton. He has been responsible for megawatt shows including 2011’s Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, and last year’s China: Through the Looking Glass, which most notably broke all attendance records for the department.

• WIM DELVOYE

  Twisted desire

  The sculptural works of Belgian artist Wim Delvoye are strewn with winding helixes, spiralling ladders, windmills, wheels and coiled digestive tracts, whose movements lead us around, back to the beginnings. These elusive, twisting motifs evoke an ambivalence with regards to notions of progress—rather than advancing forwards, we encounter things in states of contorted escape and evasion, turning away and unweaving themselves.

• TONY SALAMÉ

  Aïshti

  Lebanese businessman and collector Tony Salamé stood on an escalator above a crowd of some 2000 lavishly dressed socialites, art world impresarios, politicians and journalists. They joined him for the much anticipated launch of Aïshti, the enormous $100 million mall and art foundation set alongside the picturesque Mediterranean, 20 minutes from Beirut.

• AMERICAN GIGOLO

  The birth of the Armani man

  It’s a crisp evening in October 2000 and a myriad of celebrities, journalists, clients and friends of the house, are gathered in the Guggenheim Museum in New York City to celebrate a self-titled retrospective of the finest work from fashion designer Giorgio Armani. After an introductory speech downstairs, guests are free to wander through the exhibition at their own leisure, winding through decades of sartorial style and elegance. 

• ANTHONY VACCARELLO

  A handful of lust

  Vaccarello’s silhouette is centred on desire itself in its most visceral, liquid form—the silky dresses with incendiary splits that travel imprudently northwards, far beyond the hip bone and into the sphere of brazen exhibitionism—the kind that would once have resulted in rampant persecution.

• FLAVIO MANZONI

  Intuition and serendipity

  Flavio Manzoni imbues every conversation with candour and passion, his sentences scattered with literary quotes and references to works of art and architecture. According to the self-taught designer, great automotive design is achieved by cross-fertilising disparate disciplines and appreciating intuition and serendipity throughout the process.

• Art and Fashion

  Enriching luminaries

  Contemporaneously art and fashion are economic and cultural bedfellows, but it wasn’t always so. Historically art and fashion found themselves philosophically opposed. Within each discipline there traditionally existed a hierarchy of value. Fashion was understood to be fickle, transient and in constant flux, and art was considered intellectual, even elitist.

FASHION

• Musée Yves Saint Laurent

  Artisanat

  When 30-year-old Yves Saint Laurent ventured to Marrakesh for the first time in 1966, he became so infatuated with the ‘red city’ that he often returned with his long term companion and business partner, Pierre Bergé, eventually buying a home that once belonged to painter Jacques Majorelle.

• NOKI

  The doctor will see you now

  “Cult is a word you would never say in Hollywood,” John Waters once said. “Cult means that [the film] lost money and three smart people liked it.” Though many would refuse to admit it, cult status is the absolute zenith of creative ambition. For truly provocative artists and designers, even the most glittering of institutional success will never compare to the eternal glory of becoming a cult symbol.

• LVMH PRIZE

  The new and the next

  It is a well known truth that fashion can be a notoriously difficult, competitive and enervating industry, especially for an enthusiastic young designer starting out with limited funds and scant business knowledge. There is mounting pressure to design and produce numerous collections with a unique signature that pleases both press and buyer.

• AMERICAN GIGOLO

  The birth of the Armani man

  It’s a crisp evening in October 2000 and a myriad of celebrities, journalists, clients and friends of the house, are gathered in the Guggenheim Museum in New York City to celebrate a self-titled retrospective of the finest work from fashion designer Giorgio Armani. After an introductory speech downstairs, guests are free to wander through the exhibition at their own leisure, winding through decades of sartorial style and elegance. 

• ICONIC COLLABORATIONS

  Neue Selects

  The runway show is universally considered to be the perfect distillation of a designer’s creativity. Each season creative and artistic directors lead a team of multidisciplinary agents in a quest to help realise their visions. Neue Selects celebrates seven creative luminaries who, through their innovation and poise, have helped elevate fashion into an art form. 

• PATRONS OF ART

  Neue Selects

  Patrons have long played a pivotal role in the art world by influencing trends in art collecting and by championing the career longevity of iconic and emerging artists. Unbound by the bureaucracy of institution based collecting, patrons are empowered to acquire and commission art projects based upon passion, instinct, strategic investment and emotional connection.

• GEZA SCHOEN

  Iso E Super

  Berlin based perfumer and renowned nose Geza Schoen redefined the industry in 2006 with the introduction of Escentric Molecules 01, the beginning of a range of astonishing molecular scents that pushed the traditional boundaries of fragrance.

• THE PHILOSOPHY OF DESIRE

  Neue Perspective

  Desire is always an expression of value: for this rather than that; for him rather than her; and now rather than later. Hunger, thirst, arousal, wish—these commit us to the world. Regardless of what we think, or what we think we think, desire takes over from mere existence. This is rightly frightening, threatening our ideas of liberty. Before we can deliberate and decide, we find we have already chosen.

AUTOMOTIVE & GASTRONOMY

• MASSIMILIANO ALAJMO

  A force of nature

  A modestly sized, mythical space where alchemy and intense experimentation come together to present some of the most exciting food in the world. If that sounds overzealous, it is meant to. Once you have sampled Alajmo’s food there is no going back.

• BLACK BADGE

  The dark side of Rolls-Royce

  In response to a diversifying and increasingly demanding client base, Rolls-Royce have created Black Badge: A new Rolls-Royce that defies convention with customised details, dark features and the finest of Rolls-Royce technology and advancements.