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.

Peerless casualwear, cut crystal tumblers, one of the suavest calendar watches on the market -- fret not sons and daughters, our annual Father's Day Gift Guide once again returns to save the day.

Every year without fail, I'm obliged to put together a neat little edit of Father's Day gift ideas; and every year, I struggle to craft a suitably compelling psychological profile for the kind of paterfamilias who wants both a 5-figure bottle of whisky and a zany casual shirt inspired by the intersection between art, music, and skate culture. Then again, in 2021, that feels a lot like the modern experience of being a dad: it's a journey full of contradictions, intriguing mishmashes, and ever-surprising choices. That's a big part of why this Father's Day guide was written without a specific male archetype in mind. We believe nothing ought to preclude men with offspring from being as excited about haute horlogerie are they are, say, superlative books on China's culinary traditions; or a nylon holdall (chockful of extra baby wipes perhaps?) made for roughin' it at the weekends. I could go on.

Regardless of what 'type' of dad yours is -- whether he be trad, rad, or even just a little bit of a lad -- we'd wager there's something in this edit that speaks to the transcendent appeal of beautiful, well-crafted objects -- the kind that last a lifetime, which one day may well find their way into your possession. Certainly a win-win in our book.

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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.

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The acclaimed menswear brand's new lookbook recalls all that is magical about the 'Athens of the Middle Ages' -- its art, cuisine, and knack for fostering lasting friendships. 

Since the earliest days of the pandemic, 'nostalgia for travel' has been a constant inspiration for brands operating in every corner of fashion's ecosystem. But I'll be damned if I've seen more than a handful of players hit the nail on the head so poignantly as The Armoury. Round about now, Hong Kong's preeminent ambassadors of "international classic" style -- now in the habit of co-designing many of the labels they stock -- would be departing Florence following the conclusion of Pitti Uomo -- the bi-annual menswear tradeshow that had its most recent edition cancelled to "contain the spread of COVID-19 in [Italy]". That resultant gap in the traditional fashion calendar has given the brand sufficient time and space to reckon with Florence's significance -- as an epicentre of work and wonderment.

"Looking back, [Florence] holds many important memories for us," says Mark Cho, co-founder of The Armoury. "More than just the setting for Pitti Uomo (where we see our suppliers and sample new product), to me it always feels like the place for an especially congenial family reunion with our peers in the industry. A yearning for physical reconnection led us to incorporate as much reference material as we could for SS21: of our friends and the many locales in Florence that make it so special."

Each look featured in the campaign has been shot in-studio (by erstwhile collaborator Ken Wu), then intercut with footage of previous editions of Pitti Uomo; and even some original illustrations from Vogue Japan blogger Misako Otani. More travel editorial than straight-up catalogue, the campaign pulls together a selection of tailored and casual looks, all insouciant enough to be worn in the heart of the Florentine (or indeed southeast Asian) summer.

Absent occasional (some might say unavoidable) hat-tips to cultural landmarks the likes of the Palazzo Vecchio, SS21's thematic touchstones are as varied as the clothes they inspire. Burnished wingtip oxfords evoke the colour of an especially vermouth-heavy Negroni (reputedly invented here in the early 20th century); while trousers in crisp mohairs or high-twist wool suggest the cool, blue tint of cobblestone streets around Atelier Liverano. Colours coax the eye rather than transfixing: the optimal choice for a collection with so much in the way of sportswear. Scottish-made knitwear; cropped blousons; the ultimate pair of chinos: not unlike the gelato that inspired them, these are simple pleasures. All are worth revisiting.

To view the complete SS21 lookbook, visit The Armoury online.

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