Cartier’s Stylish Lunch, La Double J Links With Medine Cohen, Samuel Ross’ Absolut Design
STYLISH AUTOS: On Sunday, England was divided between two stylish sporting events: the 2023 Wimbledon Championships and the 2023 Festival of Speed in Chichester.
At the latter, Cartier hosted its annual lunch at the Goodwood Estate, which is the seat of Charles Gordon-Lennox, 11th Duke of Richmond, to celebrate the winners of the Style et Luxe competition.
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The duke hosted with Laurent Feniou, the U.K. managing director of Cartier.
The Style et Luxe is different from the auto rally competition that takes place at Goodwood; with the help of Cartier, it invites tastemakers from different industries; past guests have included architect Nicholas Grimshaw, singer Bryan Ferry, professor Penny Sparke and designer Sir Terence Conran.
This year, the judging panel was made up of Cartier ambassadors Emma Corrin and Ramla Ali, as well as Marc Newson, Sir Jonathan Ive, Flavio Manzoni, Jordan Rand, Nick Foulkes and Adam Baidawi.
There were nine categories, where each winner was handed a medal and the overall winner received a Cartier cup. The winning car for 2023 was the 1937 Bentley 4 1?4-liter Rothschild Sedanca Coupe by Gurney Nutting Simon Taylor.
Blue and white were the theme of this year’s Cartier lunch, which was showcased via a flower installation containing green, violet and white hydrangeas and roses. Meanwhile, a cream-hued tent was erected for the lunch where burrata, beef from the Goodwood Estate and pavlova were served, followed by an afternoon tea that took place inside the tents as a result of windy weather.
Fashion designers and editors mingled with artists, actors and architects at each table. In attendance were Meg Bellamy and Ed McVey, the stars of the next season of “The Crown,” where they will play Kate Middleton and Prince William; Dubai-based artist Nat Bowen, who makes colorful canvases made of resin; India Ria Amarteifio, who plays a young Queen Charlotte in Netflix’s “Queen Charlotte,” and Roksanda Ilin?i?, who arrived with her husband and daughter, wearing a dress that had subtle hints to the flag of Serbia as a means of support for fellow Serbian Novak Djokovic, who was competing at Wimbledon. — HIKMAT MOHAMMED
LMC x LDJ: Leandra Medine Cohen and La DoubleJ’s founder JJ Martin have joined forces on a capsule collection with a charity bent.
The joint project marks the debut of La DoubleJ’s Sisterhood Collections, special collaborative capsules, a portion of sales from which is donated to support a charitable cause.
For this seminal line, Medine Cohen and Martin developed a five-item range crafted entirely with Cooperativa Alice, an Italian organization focusing on the rehabilitation of incarcerated women by training them in textile manufacturing and tailoring.
The collection includes two apron dresses — originally inspired by the La DoubleJ ones worn by the staff at the Ladurée patisserie in New York — an apron top and two flared pants, all imbued with a flamboyant vibe via patterns, brocades and feather trims. In sync with La DoubleJ’s ethos, each piece can be either worn in coordinated sets or mixed and matched.
Retailing between $590 and $950, the Leandra Medine Cohen x La DoubleJ capsule collection launched Tuesday on La DoubleJ’s online store. A portion of sales will be donated to Cooperativa Alice.
Launched in 1992, the organization has been fighting prejudice and supporting the rehabilitation of incarcerated women through fairly paid work, while affirming its commitment to protecting traditional Italian crafts.
Working members of the cooperative in the women’s sections of Lombardy’s prisons learn a trade while help to preserve a local know-how and, thanks to their work, they can return to assume active roles in society. So far the organization has enabled more than 450 marginalized women to achieve economic independence.
“The cooperativa is a unique case study in having purpose and how much it can impact a person’s life — giving the women somewhere to go every day and an opportunity to earn a wage while still incarcerated. It demonstrates an inspiring commitment on the part of the country to the rehabilitation of its citizens,” Medine Cohen said.
“This is one of the things that I’ve always loved about Italy — there is this sense of social duty and civic duty,” echoed Martin. “There’s so much beauty that comes out of that because they really try to take care of people and they [Cooperative Alice] have an incredible success rate.”
Martin is not new to collaborating with women. As reported, last year she teamed with Valentina De Santis, as La DoubleJ took over Lake Como’s Passalacqua luxury hotel helmed by the latter, marking the brand’s first interior design project. — SANDRA SALIBIAN
ABSOLUTELY DESIGNED: Absolut Vodka has teamed with British fashion designer and founder of A-Cold-Wall Samuel Ross via his industrial design practice SR_A on a limited run of China-inspired bottles and gift sets for the local market.
A weeklong pop-up showcasing the collaboration will open Thursday in the New World Development-owned shopping mall K11 Shanghai. Ross will travel to China for the launch.
The limited-edition design is based on the original, transparent Absolut Vodka bottle and the brand’s blue lettering. It comes with a red dot grid “representing individuals and blurs, symbolizing the gathering of people,” and reflecting “the close integration and interaction of people and cities” of China, according to the brand.
The gift set retails for 1,299 renminbi, or $181.12, and includes an ice bucket and a cooler in red, a nod to China’s signature color. Both items are made entirely of stainless steel from customized molds and have been spray-painted with environmentally friendly paints. The cooler replicates the shape of the bottle, with a double-layered structure for longer cooling.
The brands said the collaboration enables them to “demonstrate their shared pursuit of cultural integration and co-creation, providing the Chinese trendsetting youth with a consumer experience that blends fashion, industrial aesthetics and art,” and allows Absolut to “better integrate into the lives of China’s young generation.”
The bottles will be available exclusively in the Swedish vodka brand’s Tmall store with the functional design objects offered solely through Absolut Lab, the company’s WeChat mini-program, beginning Friday.
A-Cold-Wall was one of the first international fashion brands to double down on the Chinese market as the pandemic came to an end. It unveiled its first stand-alone store in Beijing’s affluent shopping development Taikoo Li Sanlitun last summer.
The store was the result of a partnership with brand-management specialist Power Rich and with Tomorrow, which acquired a minority stake in A-Cold-Wall in 2018.
According to Ross, China represents a significant percentage of the brand’s annual revenues, which tripled between 2019 to 2022. Ross said his brand is “really keen to continue to grow that market.” — TIANWEI ZHANG
OCEAN BOUND: In a move that further unites the design and yachting worlds, Salone del Mobile’s president Maria Porro has been appointed as chair of a jury for Genoa’s International Boat Show’s Design Innovation Award. In a statement released Tuesday, the nautical fair’s organizers said the award ceremony will take place during the annual fair at the Genoa Stock Exchange on Sept. 22 — the second day of the six-day show that will end Sept. 26.
Founded 60 years ago, the Genoa Boat Show unites leaders of the yachting sector, of which Genoa, with its fabled shipbuilding and maritime tradition — has been on the pulse for decades.
The Design Innovation Award was established by Confindustria Nautica (the national nautical business consortium) and the company I Saloni Nautici in 2020 as a way to highlight the world of the sector’s torchbearers.
Porro will helm the work of a committee made up of industry experts — recognized professional figures in the fields of sailing, design and culture — who will choose the winners and products that stand out in the realms of research, innovation, formal and technical quality and sustainability.
Salone del Mobile said the decision to appoint Porro as president was based on her ability to impart “bold perspectives and insights, especially in the fields of environmental, economic and social responsibility,” and “her strong belief that the design of today, along with the creative potential of the upcoming generation, will produce virtuous solutions that will accelerate the changes our planet so badly needs.”
In a statement, Porro highlighted the similarities between the Genoa boat show and Milan’s Salone del Mobile, underscoring their role in propelling the work of international tastemakers and innovators to the fore.
“There’s a powerful bond between the International Boat Show and the Salone del Mobile, which makes me particularly honored to have been invited to chair the Design Innovation Award Jury… I look forward to working with my colleagues to support and promote the quality and excellence of boats that will stand out for their innovation, aesthetics, on-board comfort, energy efficiency and sustainable production,” she said.
Led by companies like luxury yacht maker Ferretti Group, which is listed in Hong Kong and in Milan, the value of the production of Italy’s yachting sector stood at 3.6 billion in 2021, according to the study titled “The State of the Art of the Global Yachting Market” presented by Deloitte and Confindustria Nautica in April. Figures for 2022 have yet to be released but revenue forecasts for Italian shipyards in 2022 are expected to post a growth rate of between 15 and 20 percent. The report also said that the global yachting market was worth 52 billion euros in 2021 and around 60 percent of that value was related to new boat production. — SOFIA CELESTE
SCOTT’S NEW GIG: Luke Bryan is willing to share — to a degree.
The country music superstar, who fronts the Jockey Outdoors collection, has welcomed Dylan Scott, another country artist, as the brand’s latest ambassador.
In a tongue-in-cheek Instagram video, Scott visits Bryan in his tour bus and they’re both wearing identical long-sleeved white Henleys and casual brown pants. “It looks like you opened the door to my house, my closet and got in my wardrobe,” Bryan said. Scott responds that the collection looked “pretty good” on him and he was proud to be the newest — and youngest — partner of the Jockey Outdoors Collection family. But Bryan reminds him it was actually the Jockey Outdoors by Luke Bryan collection.
Scott, a popular singer and Academy of Country Music nominee for New Male Artist of the Year, is an avid outdoorsman and family man, similar to Bryan. He will be featured in ads that were shot in a farm outside of Nashville, Tennessee, for both the Outdoors and Made in America collections.
“We were drawn to Dylan because of his dedication to his family and community, passion for the outdoors, highly engaged fanbase and, of course, exceptional musical talent,” said Tom Hutchison, vice president of marketing for Jockey. “His values align nicely with ours, and it’s these common threads that make him a great ‘fit’ for our Jockey Outdoors and Jockey Made in America Collections.”
Scott, who has had three number-one singles at country radio, “My Girl,” “Nobody” and “New Truck,” said: “I’m absolutely beside myself to be partnering with such a legendary brand like Jockey. I’ve worn Jockey for so many years — not just because of the quality of their clothes, but the values they represent — family, community, traditions and service to others — things that are as equally important to me.
“I also have to admit, representing Luke Bryan’s clothing line is pretty cool, too,” he added. “I remember when I was 17 or 18 years old watching him perform, looking up to him, and now that we’re friends, to rep his Jockey Outdoors clothing line, it’s pretty cool. My favorite piece in the Jockey Made in America Collection is the Heritage T-shirt. It fits well, is comfortable and my wife likes it on me, so that’s a plus. I also think I pull it off better than Luke Bryan.”
Bryan has been an ambassador for Jockey since 2020 and worked with the brand to launch the Jockey Outdoors Collection last year. — JEAN E. PALMIERI
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