Every perfume tells a story … some a little more seafaring than others. Carlos Huber swaps top notes with Susan Skelly If there were such a thing as a perfume novelist, Carlos Huber would be its Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It’s not enough for a fragrance to have a formula and category, it has to have…
My imagination is bigger than yours! In department store windows around the world, every picture tells a different Christmas story… Wizard of Oz creator L Frank Baum first imagined his tiny, fantastic worlds in the Christmas windows of department stores. Generations later, they continue to enchant. Michael Stahl and Susan Skelly press noses against the…
With Abercrombie & Kent, Geoffrey Kent pioneered a style of luxury travel that now takes thousands of trekkers to the planet’s wildest frontiers. In this extract from a new memoir, Safari, he reflects on the journey. When my parents [John and Valerie Kent] and I went into business in 1962, to most people in the…
Hollywood starlet Cyd Charisse was known as “the girl with the million-dollar pins who danced rings around Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire”. So it’s apt that this million-dollar ring by Australian jeweller Mondial Pink Diamond Atelier is named after her (with a happy nod to the colour cerise). The dancer died in 2008, the year…
The Cook Islands’ pearl industry is turning to fashion to put its lustrous lollies back on the map, reports Susan Skelly. The Cook Island’s shimmering pearls are about to have their moment in the sun as Italian designer Daniela Cicero works them into the high-end Kalia range for the Style Pasifika Collection destined for Milan and Dubai…
A new treasure trove of wearable silver is inspiration for gift hunters, collectors and connoisseurs. Aficionados of vintage Scandinavian silver are making a beeline for Christopher Becker’s shiny new pocket gallery in Sydney’s Potts Point, called Antiques-Art-Design. His seductive display of Danish, Swedish and Norwegian pieces – polished to a mirror shine – includes designs…
If you could bottle a bushranger – and his campfire … Enterprising Sydney art dealer Michael Reid has sought inspiration from the Australian bush for a new line of beard oil. Forget your patchouli, vetiver, sandalwood and cedar, to tame the big bushy beard, you need a scent that is more pioneering – bushranger, campfire, cinnamon whiskey, or good…
A gleaming new fleet of bespoke motor yachts does the rounds of Sydney Harbour It’s not every day a man asks you if you’d like to see his engines. Bruce Scott does, and it’s hard to refuse. If what’s below deck on the highly polished, immaculately designed and kitted out 73ft motor yacht Komotion has…
Art vs shopping ? Tough call. If you had just one day in Paris … The Paris shopping playground that is Galeries Lafayette came to Sydney this week to spruik its “nouveau chic” makeover and new customer treats over pastries and smoked salmon at the Sofitel Wentworth. In the hands of one family group for…
Franck Muller makes the coolest, craziest, watches. In Sydney to open a new store, we find out what makes him tick Swiss watchmaker Franck Muller is attracted to precision, power and perfection. Which might explain why his inspiration in recent times has reached from the high seas to grand prix racetracks to nature’s underbelly….