Celebrity Life

The luxury fashion house has pulled out from the Milan Men’s Fashion Week and Paris Haute Couture Week happening in January.

The post Giorgio Armani Cancels Runway Shows Amidst Rising Covid-19 Cases appeared first on LUXUO.

As Chaumet's CEO Jean-Marc Mansvelt tells us, bringing the house's 240-year heritage into the modern era is an immense task that amounts to a "daily obsession". But if the new pieces in the Chaumet Joséphine collection are anything to go by, the Place Vendôme stalwart is heading in the right direction.

What kind of woman today does the Joséphine collection appeal to?

First, it’s about a woman with a certain character. Because when you choose to wear a tiara on your finger, you’re making a choice of distinction, a choice of character. You’re sending a message to say you’re not like everyone else and you have a certain strength and a certain personality. But also a sense of virtuosity, grace and beauty, because it’s not for women who want to be too provocative.

It’s a way to set your personality. And then of course, there are two major reasons to become a client of Joséphine. On one side, it remains one of the favourite pieces chosen for a bridal purpose. It’s connected to the initial history of Chaumet, the history of the power and love between Napoleon and Joséphine. And Napoleon is known everywhere, that’s incredible. There’s another type of client on the other side of the connection with the pearls, the coloured stones, something a bit easier and more accessible.

This year, Chaumet's creations have also incorporated sleeker, more modern takes on the tiara. Can you tell us a bit about the new high jewellery?

After many creations that were a bit more tiara-like, a bit more decorative, more visible, more baroque in a certain way, we wanted to enrich the collection with new ways to mix and match, and to go for designs that were slicker, with a more minimalist approach, because that’s also the style of today. We have a feeling that clients today are a little more understated, and we have the capacity to create beauty through a fine line, rather than an accumulation. So one of our high- jewellery pieces, which is sort of a V with a stone in suspension, doesn’t shout about its design. It’s all about balance.

This year is the 10th anniversary of the Joséphine collection...

But we don’t mark it that way for two reasons. I always feel that if you start doing anniversaries for everything, then at the end, what’s the meaning in it? Last year, when we did the 240 years of Chaumet, that was slightly different. For Chaumet, our heritage is much longer than a decade, it’s about centuries. Instead, this year, we’re celebrating our connection with the 200th anniversary of the death of Napoleon, which is significant in Europe and in France. We’ve done an exhibition at 12 Place Vendôme that was open to the public which tells the love story of Napoleon and Josephine through 150 different objects, beautiful loans from museums and private owners.

Which piece proved to be the most challenging piece in the collection?

The most discussed and the most debated one was the watch. Because we’re clearly a jeweller, and we’ve focused all our efforts and attention on jewellery. But since a few years ago, we’ve reassessed and repositioned what watches mean for Chaumet. It’s true that with the business of watches within Chaumet, we’ve really tried to be coherent with what the story of watchmaking for Chaumet is as a jeweller. One of our challenges was to look at the market – in the market, 90 percent of watches are round – and nobody’s waiting for Chaumet to create a round watch, because we already have thousands of beautiful options on the market.

We decided on a shaped watch, and it wasn’t very difficult to settle on the pear shape, like an illusion of a diamond. We also faceted the watch’s dial.

How do you balance 240 years of heritage behind a brand and stay relevant at the same time?

That’s really the obsession every single day. How do we continue the narrative, the link to the story? Since the pandemic, we’ve seen clients choose Chaumet because there’s longevity. And so it becomes a daily obsession of ours to convey this message to our clients through different means, including the digital approach, so we can speak to the needs of our audience today. We also go through the traditional channels and have books and exhibitions. I regularly write down on paper in two columns: on one side, how much do we tell the story of Chaumet, and on the other, how do we take a contemporary approach, either through the narrative or through using different tools? I take a step back and ask myself is there a balance? If we’re going too much in one direction, maybe it’s time to rebalance. It’s in everything we do.

The post Nonchalant Sophistication at Giorgio Armani Men Autumn/Winter 2021 appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.

The luscious fabric gets a hero’s reception at Giorgio Armani autumn/winter 2021. Hand-painted with hues coming from new artisanal craft techniques, this is truly elevated velvet, dusted off and freshened up for the contemporary woman.

Our favourite items might just be the sumptuous velvet jackets and suits that sensually skim the body. Go fitted and cropped for more youthful appeal or long, languid jackets for an ethereal, effortless look. Often coming accented with silver thread and crystal embellishments, these fluid pieces shimmer under the light with iridescence.

Discover the full collection at Armani.com.

The post Velvet: The New Star at Giorgio Armani Autumn/Winter 2021 Women’s Show appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.

The sun, the sea, and a whole lot of nostalgia – Giorgio Armani's Spring/Summer 2022 Women's Collection is tinged with exquisitely Armanian tropes mixed with nomadic elements and colours.

The messaging is strong in Giorgio Armani's collection for women next spring/ summer. The designer reminded us all of where it all began by presenting the collection at Via Borgonuovo 21, at the historic theatre underneath his own Milanese home that has been the backdrop for some memorable fashion shows more than twenty years ago.

The whole collection feels like a comeback, too: built over a set that pays tribute to the sun and sea, the collection was everything we love about Armani, mixed with a sense of nomadic adventure. It was a wonderful juxtaposition of structure and precision with a sense of freedom that is achieved by the lightness in both materials and hues.

Two recurring accents tie the entire collection together – knotted scarves and crocheted caps cover the head, while flat shoes triumph on the runway, either open on the toe or laced around the foot. The collection starts off with blues and whites and lively touches of red. There are soft and elongated jackets, some with knotted closures; trousers as wide as skirts, or with tapered volumes; little tops, and tunics.

Later, pale and airy greys, soft blues and greens for pure jackets, flowing trousers and long floaty skirts transition into an explosion of colour and spontaneous layering in reds and purples. Accessories are bold and streamlined: handbags with rounded shapes, small bags with curved handles, then larger totes and crocheted shoulder bags.

And who can forget the eveningwear? This is Giorgio Armani we're talking about. The gowns are luminous and weightless in layered tulle, skimming over the body in infinitely soft nuances of colour.

The post Kicking It Back Old-School with Giorgio Armani Women Spring/Summer 2022 appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.

Nonchalant luxury and high sophistication — there is a sense of romance and grandeur in the women’s looks at Giorgio Armani’s Autumn/Winter collection this year.

Seemingly every collection in the year’s autumn/winter season has its designers looking to the future, towards a post-pandemic world. The Giorgio Armani collection is clear in its vision — we will make a triumphant return to refined looks, indulging in glorious eveningwear in silky and soft materials while retaining the comfort-first attitude we’ve all developed while at home, social distancing.

The womenswear sat prettily in a pink to blue-green gradient colour family (think: baby pinks, purples, greens with turquoise reflects, all shades of blue) lending a soft, watercolour feel to outfits and helping in creating a nature-focused, oceanic ambience.

The loose and casual tailoring, with cinched waists and wide shoulders, billowing trouser pants and swathes of material draped on models hinted at a more relaxed attitude to formalwear, after months of isolation. Couture-typical abstract silhouettes also made an appearance, with over-the-top spiral embellishments resembling waves, peacock tails and flowers.

The head-to-toe monochromatic looks included all-black and all-silver ensembles; an ultramarine, violet and Prussian blue patchwork trouser suit over a periwinkle and cerulean blouse; and a slinky sheer indigo dress with beaded petal and leaf stitchwork. Plush black velvet was juxtaposed with shinier ultrafine satin-silk and metallic and reflective fabrics. Flowing coral-like ruffles ran along the collars of blouses and at the cuffs of sleeves.

Beautifully embroidered jackets and gossamer dresses made the most impact — an air of nonchalant luxury, effortless and subdued but purposeful.

You can see the whole Giorgio Armani Women Autumn/Winter 2021 collection and more in person at various Giorgio Armani branches in Hong Kong, including at Chater House in Central, on Canton Road in Tsim Sha Tsui,and at K11 Musea in Tsim Sha Tsui.

Find out more at Armani.com

The post A Sense of Romance at Giorgio Armani Women Autumn/Winter 2021 appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.

The Carlyle hotel-inspired bolthole -- slated to open on the uppermost floors of Rosewood Hong Kong later this year -- will offer a blueprint for the eponymous group's vision of "a new kind of international members' club". We venture north of the harbour to discover just what that entails...

Hitherto, the Hong Kong ecosystem of private members' clubs has been split broadly between two camps: at one end, you have venerable institutions catered to the needs of the city's professionals (the FCC) and those who surround them (the KCC); at the other, a burgeoning array of social haunts meant to profit from the growing number of Silicon Valley types -- hawkers of crypto, CBD cafes, and other speculative investment opportunities -- who reside here.

Call me Debbie Downer, but neither feels like an especially glam place to visit. After all, such clubs justify their patronage by way of mostly pragmatic considerations: a convenient location; access to business networking opportunities; affordable gym membership; and so forth. This, as Rosewood Hotels CEO Sonia Cheng well knows is where Carlyle & Co. can break the mould -- by conjuring a little glamour into Hong Kong's mostly comatose members' club scene.

Best thought of as a kind of pied-à-terre to the Rosewood Hong Kong (spanning the 54th-56th floor of the hotel) Carlyle & Co. is, in effect, Cheng's answer to the boutique members' clubs that have dominated pop culture these last 20 years. In Hong Kong -- where bureaucratic red tape is frequent; and decent-sized real estate scant -- her hotel group's latest venture feels especially impressive -- if for no other reason than the sheer audacity of it all.

In recent weeks, the first details of the club's leviathan 25,000 sq. ft. premises have begun to emerge, inspired in broad strokes by the "intriguing, inimitable and ultimately indefinable" style of The Carlyle in New York (incidentally also a brand owned by Rosewood Hotels). To orchestrate this vision of Hong Kong-via-Manhattan, Rosewood turned to British designer Ilse Crawford, whose approach has imbued the club's many rooms with a light, playful sensibility -- affording each a healthy dose of individual personality.

For fusty decadents like yours truly, the gentlemen's spaces -- including a barber, shoeshine, and capsule store by an award-winning haberdasher -- hold immense charm -- even though they espouse just one of many eclectic visual styles members will enjoy each time they navigate the club. The aforementioned differ significantly from spaces like the Cabaret Bar and Sitting Room, both of which employ the medium of painting (by artists Jean-Philippe Delhomme and Christina Zimpel respectively) to celebrate The Carlyle hotel's legendary Bemelmans murals.

Supper & Supping

In the spirit of its progenitor, the various dining venues at Carlyle & Co. seem to be accompanied by an august sense of occasion. The crux of the action happens at the brasserie, which (like any decent club restaurant in Hong Kong) serves a medley of Western, Chinese, and all-day delicacies. Here, the focus is on simply cooking the freshest produce the club can source -- various of the small plates are smoked, cured, or otherwise preserved in-house -- yet it's hardly the most theatrical outlet. That honour belongs to Café Carlyle, an intimate supper club intended as the local chapter of the eponymous tippling destination in New York. Members can expect this to be the repository of the club's live musical programming, which (consistent with the historic acts that have taken to the stage at the Carlyle hotel) will include an assortment of uniquely American artforms like jazz, funk, and blues.

Members craving a dose of sunshine can also take a selection of food and drink on the club's 55th-floor terrace, which (much like the Rosewood property at large) enjoys the sort of view that's conducive to sonnet writing or spontaneous tears of joy. Flanking one end of that terrace, you'll find the local chapter of Bemelmans Bar. Like its namesake, the menu here is split roughly equally between fine wines, punchbowls and classic cocktails; though, at the weekend, you can expect a certain frenetic atmosphere to take hold, as the space merges with the terrace for live DJ performances against the backdrop of Victoria Harbour.

Cosy quarters, brimming with personality

Though Carlyle & Co. members can easily book themselves into one of the 400-plus rooms at the surrounding Rosewood property, the entire 54th floor of the club is given over to eight themed suites -- all of which celebrate the history of The Carlyle hotel. More or less equal in size, each offers an inviting and distinctive interior personality. If you're retiring following an evening spent drinking (one too many) Martinis for instance, the 'Tommy' seems an apt choice -- named for and inspired by the legendary Bemelmans bartender Mr. Tommy Rowles. Other known personalities include Dorothy Draper, the original 'modern Baroque' decorator of The Carlyle's interiors; and Eartha Kitt, the renowned actress and Broadway musician. For dedicated students of café society, a stay in every single suite would seem like money well-spent.

A variety of membership packages are available at Carlyle & Co., with or without health club membership. To learn more about rates (or inquire about eligibility) visit Carlyle & Co. online.

The post Giorgio Armani’s New Normal Capsule Range Mixes the Feminine with Masculine appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.

The latest ready-to-wear design from The Anthology deepens the brand's burgeoning reputation for sartorial clothing that's elegant yet easy-wearing -- a winning combo even when you're aren't 'working' from home.

Last April, while institutions around the globe were struggling to contain the fear and uncertainty wrought by a now-familiar contagion, huge numbers of clothing brands dealing in what we'd call 'classic menswear' were on the brink of a similarly existential collapse. With offices emptying out at record rates and 'stay home' orders being enforced worldwide (many of them still ongoing today) it seemed that the long-prophesied 'death of the suit', and by association, tailored clothing, had finally arrived.

Multinational menswear outfitters in the mould of J Crew -- known in their heyday for peddling slim, modish suits in malls from Indonesia to Alaska -- disappeared overnight, having failed to recognise (or worse, acknowledge) the sea change that has been taking place in men's fashion these last six years. And that's before we were all locked up, drinking badly-made cocktails over Zoom.

Fortunately, a handful of smaller brands (including an inexplicable number focusing on sartorial clothing, in Hong Kong) have managed to make lemonade out of the current crisis, principally by taking familiar styles of clothing and cranking the comfort factor, both literal and emotional, up high. Those themes were at the forefront of the design process when Hong Kong-based The Anthology released its 'Lazyman' in 2020: a "casual, multifunctional jacket" that's a no-brainer for the 'working from home' brigade, but still smart enough to warrant a place in your wardrobe when the pandemic inevitably ends.

To complement this beloved "blazer alternative", the brand has just released the 'Taskmaster' -- a quasi-outerwear design that rustles many of the same thematic feathers as its predecessor, while expanding The Anthology's casualwear universe. "If the Lazyman is an alternative to the office-appropriate navy sport coat," says co-founder Buzz Tang, "then the Taskmaster is our answer to the classic American work shirt."

It turns out that The Anthology's answer to workwear of the 21st century owes a debt to designers like Ant Franco and Jerry Lorenzo. In an era when fashion's influences are rapidly decamping between art, history, and pop culture, that's certainly no bad thing. Commencing from the reference point of the American workshirt, Tang & co continually tweaked the Taskmaster until they arrived at something suitably "fast-adapting" for a mixture of modern urban situations. It's for working, for loafing, for when you're stuck at home working on your loaves.

Almost by necessity, that makes this different to the scores of workwear designs which have come before: the body is shorter and slimmed for a closer fit, ensuring it wears well even whilst tucked beneath a trouser waistband; whereas the chest pockets have been expanded to handle the tools of modern professionals -- two oversized, postbox-style shapes roomy enough to stash your phone, spectacles, currency or even a palm-sized writing aid.

Intriguing choices in fabric are a signature at The Anthology, and the Taskmaster is no exception in this regard. For the Taskmaster, the brand has chosen to keep its sartorial sensibilities low-key, working closely with its Italian textile partners on a corded glencheck that juxtaposes a sumptuous handle with hardwearing, robust externalities. I say 'low key' since the colour here has enough degrees of separation to isolate it from the exploded plaids we're used to seeing on the high street. According to Tang, this corduroy begins life as a dusty beige cotton that's woven over with cords, shaded in what he likes to call "bleeding fountain pen". Collectively, those colours are redolent of a quill and ink -- an allusion, very nearly imperceptible, to The Anthology's blue feather logo.

The 'Taskmaster' overshirt is now available for HK$3,300. To learn more, visit The Anthology online.

The post Timeless Thoughts: Giorgio Armani’s Effortlessly Elegant Aesthetic appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.