Celebrity Life

If there's one thing we know and love about H. Moser & Cie, it's the two polar opposite sides to the watchmaker. There's perhaps no other company crazy enough to make watches out of cheese or poke fun at Apple Watch (even if it's just to make a point), and yet have a complete grasp of elegance and minimalism, reimagining complications and creating the most stunning fumé and Vantablack dials.

It's the latter that caught the attention of Mark Cho, who first met Edouard Meylan, CEO of Moser in New York two years ago. An avid watch collector, Cho was fascinated by Moser's dials – and when both men began chatting, they realised they had a shared passion for clothing and watches. Soon enough, the idea of a collaboration began to surface.

Cho co-founded The Armoury, a highly specialised menswear brand alongside business partner Alan See in 2010, to bring classic tailoring and style to the modern man while telling the stories of truly exceptional craftsmen and their products. They have created collaboration watches before – just last year, The Armoury partnered with independent Scottish watch brand Anordain to create a small production of mechanical watches with special vitreous enamel dials.

But this year, it's Moser on the map. The Endeavour Small Seconds Total Eclipse is truly a Mark Cho watch. "When Edouard and I first started talking about the idea of making a watch together, my main requirement was that it was small," says Cho in the official release. "I like watches that are discreet but reveal a deeper complexity if you pay them some attention. To me, H. Moser & Cie's fumé dial and Vantablack dial are iconic and I wanted to work with one of them as a starting point for the design. Quickly, I started to favour the Vantablack and I had the idea to add markings to the dial somehow. My design partner, Elliot Hammer, suggested that we imagine the design with the theme of a total solar eclipse. Thus, the Endeavour Small Seconds Total Eclipse was born."

The watch is a perfect balance of science and poetry. Named the blackest black, Vantablack absorbs 99.965 percent of light and is a material made from carbon nanotubes. Like a solar eclipse, the Vantablack dial evokes the silhouette of the moon, edged by a thin steel bezel and red gold or steel polished inner bezel that depicts the halo of the solar corona. We can't stare too long at a solar eclipse but at this watch, we can.

Cho also asked for subtle details to be added to the dial, including small seconds, Breguet hands and dotted hour markers in steel or red gold. This last part presented a rather large challenge to the watchmaker. Vantablack isn't a pigment but carbon nanostructures that cannot come into contact with anything else. It took some trial and error but the final creation is absolutely worth it.

Insisting on creating a small size watch at 38mm, the Endeavour Small Seconds Total Eclipse is also the smallest Endeavour watch to date. "Absolutely everything in this model links back to this quest for ultimate elegance, combining classicism with a contemporary feel," says Meylan. "Its 38mm diameter is perfectly balanced. We opted for the smallest and finest of our movements, the hand-wound HMC 327 calibre with an offset small second at 6 o'clock, reminiscent of a pocket-watch style."

The watch comes with a black calf leather strap specifically designed by The Armoury to enhance the overall elegance of the watch. Two editions are available, both cased in steel, but one with red gold indices and hands, and the other in all-steel. The Endeavour Small Seconds Total Eclipse is limited to 28 pieces per version.

The timepieces are now available in The Armoury stores in New York and Hong Kong, as well as online at both The Armoury and H. Moser & Cie.

The post The Armoury Collabs with H. Moser & Cie on the Ultimate Gentleman’s Timepiece 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 Mark Cho of Drake’s and The Armoury Boutiques on How Gentlemanly Style Has Evolved appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.