The Realist’s Guide To The Metaverse
How do you navigate an immersive virtual world that’s still mostly conceptual yet manages to generate billions of dollars?
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One of the most buzzed-about destinations of 2022 is barely developed and widely misunderstood, starting with the fact that it isn’t, strictly speaking, real. And despite that existential disadvantage, the metaverse has managed to attract some of the world’s biggest brands, from Sotheby’s to the fashion houses (among them Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Dior) who’ve set up shop in the virtual universe to drop capsule collections, mint NFTs and auction off multimillion-dollar digital artworks. Along the way, the metaverse also became the hottest concert venue of pandemic-struck 2021, with A-list performances by Ariana Grande, Lil Nas X and Justin Bieber, all in avatar form.
Which is all fine, but what is it? The term itself, coined in Neal Stephenson’s 1992 sci-fi novel Snow Crash, is already headed for middle age, while the technological capability to create a fully immersive, interconnected virtual world remains a dream locked inside the mind of a yet-to-be-imagined supercomputer. Still, the headlines keep coming, from Ralph Lauren’s winter-themed virtual fashion retail village to the hyper-realistic “meta-human” avatars that are being generated by Epic Games’ Unreal Engine digital creation studio. For a universe that doesn’t yet exist, the metaverse is surprisingly, if intangibly, real.
THE LAY OF THE “LAND”
The reason you’ve heard of the metaverse at all is almost certainly Facebook’s October 2021 announcement that it would be investing “many billions of dollars for years to come” into the space, during a presentation in which CEO Mark Zuckerberg declared, with the fervent, unblinking enthusiasm of a newly initiated cult member, that the company was also changing its name—to Meta. Based on the rendered animations and demos shown during the announcement, the rebranded tech giant’s idea for its namesake future seems to boil down to a very boring Matrix taking place inside a Nintendo Wii, where you hang out, work and take exercise classes in fully immersive 3-D.
But such a hyperscale interconnected virtual world is only one of several possible futures for the metaverse, and it’s not everybody’s first choice. Right now, “the metaverse is kind of the merging of crypto and gaming,” says Karinna Grant, cofounder and co-CEO of The Dematerialised, a creator of and “marketspace” for digital fashion, accessories and collectibles. Crypto may provide some of the metaverse’s funding, but gaming is its technological bedrock, a digital-native industry with billions of global users that’s been creating immersive universes for decades.
Some of the biggest multiplayer franchises, including Fortnite, Halo and Minecraft, have evolved into self-contained worlds with GDP-level in-game economies. Consider these titles and those like them—developer-controlled storytelling gameplay that includes shared social spaces and experiences—as the moneyed establishment of gaming real estate in the metaverse. Of that group, Fortnite has locked down the most high-profile collaborations, activations and merch, including virtual Air Jordan sneakers, takeovers by Star Wars and Stranger Things and high-fashion avatar outfits—aka skins—and accessories designed by Balenciaga. Across the philosophical sound are the creator-led platforms, gamified world-building engines and marketplaces that don’t rely on contest or competition. Chief among these is Roblox, an online platform that’s like a massive virtual rec room and hangout, with over 10 million designers creating virtual experiences and items for its nearly 50 million average daily users.
“We now have a generation of kids who have grown up with 3-D interactive gaming where they intuitively know how to socialise in these experiences,” says Roblox chief business officer Craig Donato. Metaverse experiences such as Roblox, he says, are “fundamentally social—you’re doing them with other people.” For hundreds of millions of digital natives, hanging out together in virtual spaces “is a whole dimension to how they live their lives.”
Which explains the recent evolution of the virtual economy: as a sizable portion of that gaming-first demographic ages into the stage where one begins to desire the finer things in virtual life, a more sophisticated marketplace has emerged. Where once the majority of users went to Roblox primarily for game-type experiences, Donato says, “now people are going to see concerts, or
to see the debut of a movie, or a fashion launch like the new Gucci line.”
It turns out that industries naturally pollinated by population density—art, fashion, retail, entertainment, gambling—have no problem blossoming without the actual, physical density part; the dollars are real even if the users are ciphers. Consider the metaverse in its current state, then, as the entrepreneurial outer fringes of a gaming industry grown so large its gravitational force is now swallowing entire other economies.
HOW DO I GET IN?
When picturing the metaverse, many people imagine strapping on a virtual-reality headset and wandering around the type of bounded, orderly space we’re used to in the physical world: walking down a virtual main street, popping into a virtual boutique. Certain elements of that scenario exist today, including VR headsets—the biggest brand, Oculus, is owned by Meta and popular for immersive 3-D games such as Beat Saber—as well as shared, simulated 3-D spaces as experienced inside Roblox or Microsoft’s Mesh for Teams enterprise application, accessed through that company’s $5,599 HoloLens 2.
In actual reality, almost no one uses virtual reality to experience the metaverse, which is still almost entirely seen through the two-dimensional screens of gaming monitors, laptops, tablets and phones. Despite the revolutionary rhetoric around the future of the metaverse—and there’s a lot, much of it with a passion for decentralisation, to be anchored in a next-gen, blockchain-based internet iteration called Web3—the unsexy reality of the current metaverse is that it runs on Web 2.0 and is most often accessed through the portable little supercomputers we still think of as phones.
But despite the handheld convenience, getting around the metaverse is difficult. It’s basically Los Angeles, a vast sprawl of disconnected enclaves where everywhere you want to go is a world away and you can’t tell how old anyone really is. Now picture each neighbourhood operating somewhere between an all-inclusive resort and an isolated nation-state: Every platform in the metaverse requires its own sign-in and its own avatar; it sells its own non-transferable goods and services and uses its own fiat currency to do so. Imports are almost as rare as exports, which are nonexistent.
These are the present-day, “small-m” metaverses that may one day be incorporated into a vast, interconnected capital-M Metaverse, with the ability to travel among worlds with all of your likenesses and inventory in tow, known as interoperability. There are many ideas of the metaverse that don’t include interoperability on such a grand scale, or even at all, but if you want to understand the headlines about luxury brands jumping into the space, consider that Meta, the seventh-largest company in the world by market cap, just committed to building its infrastructure.
WHERE DO THEY KEEP THE VALUABLES?
Art and retail are the current main attractions of the metaverse, and so far pretty much every newsworthy, big-name sale in the metaverse, from those Bored Ape cartoons infiltrating Twitter avatars to the unsanctioned “MetaBirkin” virtual representation of the famous Hermès handbag that sold for over $40,000—currently the subject of a lawsuit by the French luxury house—has been an NFT. That means a “non-fungible token”, a term that concurrently refers to both the virtual creation and the corresponding certificate of ownership and authenticity (the token) that lives on the blockchain and is updated with each transfer of ownership.
NFTs are all the rage despite still being of limited utility. “One of the criticisms around NFTs and digital assets is how do you show people you have them? How do you showcase your trophy pieces?” Grant says. Whether you’ve purchased a virtual sneaker or a commissioned artwork, the typical answer is that you’re given access to an image file that can be posted to Instagram or Twitter or digitally overlaid in Snapchat—and often, that’s it.
Dedicated NFT viewers, such as those from the Mynt, Spatial and CryptoVoxels, are a more elegant and contextual solution. Cyberart studio Accursed Share, which most recently collaborated on a series of multimedia NFTs with celebrity photographer Frederic Auerbach, featuring behind-the-scenes images and video from shoots with Mike Tyson, Natalie Portman, Zendaya and other stars, is working on its own proprietary NFT viewer. More useful still are in-real-life NFT frames, such as Samsung’s Frame TV, that can display your digital artwork on a physical wall.
“Christie’s and Sotheby’s, which are completely established and traditional auction houses, are a big part of the legitimation of the space,” says Mónica Belevan, chief concept officer of Accursed Share. “They’ve become like intermediaries in saying, ‘No, this actually has value. This
is actually real and happening.’ ”
The main place to display digital purchases is your avatar. Nearly every platform has a stock-in-trade of upgrades, skins, accessories, badges and effects—
a fresh supply of covetable gear is the engine of any in-game economy. Gucci, Ralph Lauren and Tommy Hilfiger have all designed digital wares for Roblox, while Nike, Moncler and Balenciaga have created avatars and merch for Fortnite, with Balenciaga announcing in January it would launch a dedicated metaverse division.
Yet all of those different products from different brands appeared, essentially, the same: like video game clothes. But there is an entirely more rarefied version of virtual fashion. The Fabricant builds bespoke, platform-specific couture garments and accessories with the digital craftsmanship and production values of a Hollywood studio. “We’re really lucky to be able to hire incredibly talented digital fashion designers, 3-D environment creators, visual effects people, lighting specialists—that all goes into what we do, which is why we have such a movie-industry-level finish,” says Michaela Larosse, head of content for The Fabricant. Larosse also describes the house’s upcoming co-creation platform, the Fabricant Studio, in which brands can “drop” digital fashion collections for modification, or selected graphic designers can stock custom-made digital fabrics, and with the help of the Studio’s design tool, users can create their own one-off pieces, which they can then mint as NFTs and wear in virtual worlds. “It’s like a digital atelier,” Larosse says. “You step in, you choose the fabric, you choose the silhouette.” The idea is a glimpse of an emerging creation economy called direct-to-avatar.
And yet, as with the rest of the metaverse, nearly all retail remains confined within two-dimensional device screens, despite the potential of 3-D virtual reality. “When I tried on a VR headset for the first time, I was like, ‘I’m not a gamer, but I’d love to shop like this,’ ” says Neha Singh, former head of product for Vogue.com and founder of Obsess, which since 2018 has been building bespoke virtual-shopping platforms for luxury brands including Fendi, Ferragamo and Vacheron Constantin. “For the first few years of the company, we were building for virtual-reality headsets,” she says. “But of course, it was too early for headsets.”
It still is. Today, Obsess mostly builds web-based experiences, such as a virtual tour of Vacheron’s new NYC flagship, complete with high-fidelity digital renderings of the physical location and shoppable virtual merchandise. Ferragamo, meanwhile, designed a grand villa, entirely virtual, with soaring arched windows, a pistachio paint job and its own interactive advertising campaigns hung like virtual art on the walls. You can click through either on your phone or a web browser. “It’s not something where you need to download an app or run a virtual-reality headset,” Singh says. “It’s something that’s accessible.”
Karinna Grant, of The Dematerialised, sees another display avenue opening in the near future—she believes a new generation of phones will be able to project holograms “by the end of this year or the beginning of next,” allowing everyday users to bring digital pieces into physical space. “There are certain fashion pieces I’d love to sit on my desk at home,” she says.
But for the foreseeable future, everything’s an NFT, especially given the favourable economics involved. Unlike with virtual goods, resale terms can be baked into the NFT contract at the blockchain level, ensuring that for every resale transaction going forward, the artist or brand gets a fresh percentage of the sale.
It’s a revenue stream, in perpetuity, for each and every digital artifact created.
WHO OWNS THE REAL ESTATE?
Despite the metaverse’s theoretical promise of a limitless, unbounded new universe, plenty of virtual developers have been busy creating blockchain-backed digital real estate, and digital speculators have been obligingly snapping it up. Decentraland calls itself the “first fully decentralised virtual world,” a Roblox-style creation engine, peer-to-peer marketplace and gaming world where users can buy, sell and even rent virtual land via the Ethereum blockchain. It’s controlled by a DAO, a decentralised authority organisation popular in the cryptocurrency and digital-art spaces that has no circumscribed leadership and makes decisions by voting on proposals submitted from within the group. Upland, meanwhile, decided to harness the frothing, real-world real-estate delirium by selling GPS-perfect, blockchain-backed inventories of New York, Los Angeles and other hot housing markets, sending physical property owners scrambling for their calculator apps, wondering just who owns their plot in the metaverse—and how much they paid for it.
But there’s another use, according to Grant. “It’s becoming the case now that a lot of DAOs and the different collectives, which are investment arms to collect digital assets, are only allowed to buy things on the preface that it will have to be shown publicly,” she says, and “some collectors are specifically buying land where they can showcase their NFT collection.”
SO, WHAT’S THE POINT?
It takes very little poking around to realise the entire point of the place is that it’s an economy, stupid, but more importantly, it’s a frontier economy, with the type of open, unregulated space that has always attracted dreamers, artists, preachers, freethinkers, crackpots, grifters and the just plain bored.
Most of us have no reason to spend time in the metaverse—yet—but like all good destinations, it resonates because of its otherness, not despite it. Its outlandish premise proves the general rule that groups of people behave fundamentally the same no matter where we’re hanging out: we joke, compete, flirt, form cliques, show off, gossip and try to one-up each other. We’ll buy clothes for digital bodies that require no covering and grind away at gamified facsimiles of service jobs in a world that has no need for gravity, let alone pizza parlours. We act, even in a virtual universe, overwhelmingly, inescapably human.
And after two years of mostly keeping the global economy running amid lockdowns and widespread social isolation, suddenly the metaverse, in all its fundamentally remote, online, chatting, virtual interaction, seems not just imaginable or even plausible, but familiar. The virtual horizon is nowhere as far off as we once thought. And besides, the metaverse has a built-in survival advantage, one that no sane observer of modern culture would bet against: it’s the only reality around with a selfie view.
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Watch of the Week: TAG Heuer Formula 1 | Kith
The legendary sports watch returns, but with an unexpected twist.
Over the last few years, watch pundits have predicted the return of the eccentric TAG Heuer Formula 1, in some shape or form. It was all but confirmed when TAG Heuer’s heritage director, Nicholas Biebuyck, teased a slew of vintage models on his Instagram account in the aftermath of last year’s Watches & Wonders 2023 in Geneva. And when speaking with Frédéric Arnault at last year’s trade fair, the former CEO asked me directly if the brand were to relaunch its legacy Formula 1 collection, loved by collectors globally, how should they go about it?
My answer to the baited entreaty definitely didn’t mention a collaboration with Ronnie Fieg of Kith, one of the world’s biggest streetwear fashion labels. Still, here we are: the TAG Heuer Formula 1 is officially back and as colourful as ever.
As the watch industry enters its hype era—in recent years, we’ve seen MoonSwatches, Scuba Fifty Fathoms, and John Mayer G-Shocks—the new Formula 1 x Kith collaboration might be the coolest yet.
Here’s the lowdown: overnight, TAG Heuer, together with Kith, took to socials to unveil a special, limited-edition collection of Formula 1 timepieces, inspired by the original collection from the 1980s. There are 10 new watches, all limited, with some designed on a stainless steel bracelet and some on an upgraded rubber strap; both options nod to the originals.
Seven are exclusive to Kith and its global stores (New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Hawaii, Tokyo, Toronto, and Paris, to be specific), and are made in an abundance of colours. Two are exclusive to TAG Heuer; and one is “shared” between TAG Heuer and Kith—this is a highlight of the collection, in our opinion. A faithful play on the original composite quartz watch from 1986, this model, limited to just 1,350 pieces globally, features the classic black bezel with red accents, a stainless steel bracelet, and that creamy eggshell dial, in all of its vintage-inspired glory. There’s no doubt that this particular model will present as pure nostalgia for those old enough to remember when the original TAG Heuer Formula 1 made its debut.
Of course, throughout the collection, Fieg’s design cues are punctuated: the “TAG” is replaced with “Kith,” forming a contentious new brand name for this specific release, as well as Kith’s slogan, “Just Us.”
Collectors and purists alike will appreciate the dedication to the original Formula 1 collection: features like the 35mm Arnite cases—sourced from the original 80s-era supplier—the form hour hand, a triangle with a dot inside at 12 o’clock, indices that alternate every quarter between shields and dots, and a contrasting minuterie, are all welcomed design specs that make this collaboration so great.
Every TAG Heuer Formula 1 | Kith timepiece will be presented in an eye-catching box that complements the fun and colour theme of Formula 1 but drives home the premium status of this collaboration. On that note, at $2,200 a piece, this isn’t exactly an approachable quartz watch but reflects the exclusive nature of Fieg’s Kith brand and the pieces he designs (largely limited-edition).
So, what do we think? It’s important not to understate the significance of the arrival of the TAG Heuer Formula 1 in 1986, in what would prove integral in setting up the brand for success throughout the 90’s—it was the very first watch collection to have “TAG Heuer” branding, after all—but also in helping to establish a new generation of watch consumer. Like Fieg, many millennial enthusiasts will recall their sentimental ties with the Formula 1, often their first timepiece in their horological journey.
This is as faithful of a reissue as we’ll get from TAG Heuer right now, and budding watch fans should be pleased with the result. To TAG Heuer’s credit, a great deal of research has gone into perfecting and replicating this iconic collection’s proportions, materials, and aesthetic for the modern-day consumer. Sure, it would have been nice to see a full lume dial, a distinguishing feature on some of the original pieces—why this wasn’t done is lost on me—and perhaps a more approachable price point, but there’s no doubt these will become an instant hit in the days to come.
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The TAG Heuer Formula 1 | Kith collection will be available on Friday, May 3rd, exclusively in-store at select TAG Heuer and Kith locations in Miami, and available starting Monday, May 6th, at select TAG Heuer boutiques, all Kith shops, and online at Kith.com. To see the full collection, visit tagheuer.com
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8 Fascinating Facts You Didn’t Know About Aston Martin
The British sports car company is most famous as the vehicle of choice for James Bond, but Aston Martin has an interesting history beyond 007.
Aston Martin will forever be associated with James Bond, ever since everyone’s favourite spy took delivery of his signature silver DB5 in the 1964 film Goldfinger. But there’s a lot more to the history of this famed British sports car brand beyond its association with the fictional British Secret Service agent.
Let’s dive into the long and colourful history of Aston Martin.
The origin of the Aston Martin name
The company that would become Aston Martin started out as a car dealership. In 1912, Englishmen Robert Bamford and Lionel Martin partnered to sell cars, but soon after they decided to build their own models. Their first prototype debuted in 1915, named in honour of Martin, a racing driver, and his favourite racing venue, Aston Hills. Thus, the name Aston Martin was born.
A speed-demon co-founder banned from driving
Aston Martin co-founder Lionel Martin wasn’t just a keen racing driver—he was an all-out speed demon. As a student, Martin won numerous gruelling bicycle racing records, including riding nearly the full width of England in one 22-hour stretch. He competed in motorcycle and sidecar races and automotive hillclimb competitions. It seems he also brought that need for speed to the public roadways: In 1909, having neglected to pay a previous speeding fine, Martin was caught driving 41.5 km/ph in London and was banned from driving for two years—during which he set yet another cross-country bicycle record.
A tractor company takes over
The years after World War I were tumultuous for Aston Martin, with financial difficulties and numerous takeovers. In 1947, Aston Martin went up for sale and was purchased by David Brown Limited, a company that specialised in farm tractors and industrial gears. Sir David Brown, grandson of the company’s founder, was a lifelong car enthusiast and racer, having built his own competition cars while working as an engineer at the family company. The first car built by Aston Martin after this takeover was called the DB1, named after the tractor company (and the man) that had saved the carmaker.
An indirect connection to Bentley
Around the same time that Sir David Brown took over Aston Martin, he purchased another struggling British carmaker, Lagonda. The company was developing a revolutionary twin-cam six-cylinder engine called the LB6, and Sir David wanted the engine for his new line of Aston Martin sports cars. The Lagonda engine had been designed by none other than W.O. Bentley—the man who co-founded Bentley Motors, who had long since been pushed out of the company bearing his name.
The history of the DB Series
Aston Martin built seven vehicles named in honour of owner Sir David Brown: The DB1, DB2, DB3, DB4, DB5, DB6, and the combo-breaker DBS all bore Sir David’s initials. In 1972, Sir David sold the car company, and the new owners ended the DB series of vehicles, but the name was revived in 1993 with the DB7 in honour of Sir David—who himself was given an honorary position at the company that same year.
Bond, James Bond
Of course, the most famous Aston Martin of them all is the DB5. Just over 1,000 examples were built between 1963 and 1965, but millions worldwide know this as the James Bond car. In the books, author Ian Fleming had specified an earlier Aston Martin DB Mark III as Bond’s car. Still, the DB5 was introduced in the 1964 Bond film Goldfinger, equipped with gadgets including machine guns, smoke screens, oil slicks, an ejector seat, and rotating license plates. Bond has driven several Aston Martin models over the years, including a V8 Vantage, a V12 Vanquish, and two DBS models, but the original DB5 will always be considered the quintessential Bond car.
The angular years
Today, the Aston Martin badge is most closely associated with swooping, evocatively curvy car designs, but in the 1970s the company was obsessed with angular, wedge-shaped designs. The trend began in 1976 with the Aston Martin Lagonda, a shockingly unconventional four-door luxury sedan with “folded-paper” body styling and the world’s first all-digital instrument panel. The Lagonda’s styling was further evolved in 1979 with the Bulldog, a radical concept car with gullwing doors and a sharply pointed nose. The Bulldog was meant to become the fastest road car on earth, but the project was abandoned before production could begin.
For Bond’s eyes only
While most of James Bond’s Aston Martins have been commercially available to anyone who could afford one, the DB10 seen in the 2015 film Spectre was exclusive to 007. As Aston Martin executive Marek Reichman explained to Variety, director Sam Mendes, producer Barbara Broccoli, and Bond star Daniel Craig were touring Aston Martin’s design studios when they saw a concept sketch on the wall. The Bond team insisted that this should be 007’s next car, and Aston Martin spent the next six months furiously working to turn the drawing into a real-world car. The DB10 was unveiled during the launch of the film Spectre, and eight of the 10 examples built were featured in the movie, with the remaining two used for promotional appearances.
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What Venice’s New Tourist Tax Means for Your Next Trip
The Italian city will now charge visitors an entry fee during peak season.
Visiting the Floating City just got a bit more expensive.
Venice is officially the first metropolis in the world to start implementing a day-trip fee in an effort to help the Italian hot spot combat overtourism during peak season, The Associated Press reported. The new program, which went into effect, requires travellers to cough up roughly €5 (about $AUD8.50) per person before they can explore the city’s canals and historic sites. Back in January, Venice also announced that starting in June, it would cap the size of tourist groups to 25 people and prohibit loudspeakers in the city centre and the islands of Murano, Burano, and Torcello.
“We need to find a new balance between the tourists and residents,’ Simone Venturini, the city’s top tourism official, told AP News. “We need to safeguard the spaces of the residents, of course, and we need to discourage the arrival of day-trippers on some particular days.”
During this trial phase, the fee only applies to the 29 days deemed the busiest—between April 25 and July 14—and tickets will remain valid from 8:30 am to 4 pm. Visitors under 14 years of age will be allowed in free of charge in addition to guests with hotel reservations. However, the latter must apply online beforehand to request an exemption. Day-trippers can also pre-pay for tickets online via the city’s official tourism site or snap them up in person at the Santa Lucia train station.
“With courage and great humility, we are introducing this system because we want to give a future to Venice and leave this heritage of humanity to future generations,” Venice Mayor Luigi Brugnaro said in a statement on X (formerly known as Twitter) regarding the city’s much-talked-about entry fee.
Despite the mayor’s backing, it’s apparent that residents weren’t totally pleased with the program. The regulation led to protests and riots outside of the train station, The Independent reported. “We are against this measure because it will do nothing to stop overtourism,” resident Cristina Romieri told the outlet. “Moreover, it is such a complex regulation with so many exceptions that it will also be difficult to enforce it.”
While Venice is the first city to carry out the new day-tripper fee, several other European locales have introduced or raised tourist taxes to fend off large crowds and boost the local economy. Most recently, Barcelona increased its city-wide tourist tax. Similarly, you’ll have to pay an extra “climate crisis resilience” tax if you plan on visiting Greece that will fund the country’s disaster recovery projects.
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Omega Reveals a New Speedmaster Ahead of the Paris 2024 Olympics
Your first look at the new Speedmaster Chronoscope, designed in the colour theme of the Paris Olympics.
The starters are on the blocks, and with less than 100 days to go until the Paris 2024 Olympics, luxury Swiss watchmaker Omega was bound to release something spectacular to mark its bragging rights as the official timekeeper for the Summer Games. Enter the new 43mm Speedmaster Chronoscope, available in new colourways—gold, black, and white—in line with the colour theme of the Olympic Games in Paris this July.
So, what do we get in this nicely-wrapped, Olympics-inspired package? Technically, there are four new podium-worthy iterations of the iconic Speedmaster.
The new versions present handsomely in stainless steel or 18K Moonshine Gold—the brand’s proprietary yellow gold known for its enduring shine. The steel version has an anodised aluminium bezel and a stainless steel bracelet or vintage-inspired perforated leather strap. The Moonshine Gold iteration boasts a ceramic bezel; it will most likely appease Speedy collectors, particularly those with an affinity for Omega’s long-standing role as stewards of the Olympic Games.
Notably, each watch bears an attractive white opaline dial; the background to three dark grey timing scales in a 1940s “snail” design. Of course, this Speedmaster Chronoscope is special in its own right. For the most part, the overall look of the Speedmaster has remained true to its 1957 origins. This Speedmaster, however, adopts Omega’s Chronoscope design from 2021, including the storied tachymeter scale, along with a telemeter, and pulsometer scale—essentially, three different measurements on the wrist.
While the technical nature of this timepiece won’t interest some, others will revel in its theatrics. Turn over each timepiece, and instead of a transparent crystal caseback, there is a stamped medallion featuring a mirror-polished Paris 2024 logo, along with “Paris 2024” and the Olympic Rings—a subtle nod to this year’s games.
Powering this Olympiad offering—and ensuring the greatest level of accuracy—is the Co-Axial Master Chronometer Calibre 9908 and 9909, certified by METAS.
A Speedmaster to commemorate the Olympic Games was as sure a bet as Mondo Deplantis winning gold in the men’s pole vault—especially after Omega revealed its Olympic-edition Seamaster Diver 300m “Paris 2024” last year—but they delivered a great addition to the legacy collection, without gimmickry.
However, the all-gold Speedmaster is 85K at the top end of the scale, which is a lot of money for a watch of this stature. By comparison, the immaculate Speedmaster Moonshine gold with a sun-brushed green PVD “step” dial is 15K cheaper, albeit without the Chronoscope complications.
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The Omega Speedmaster Chronoscope in stainless steel with a leather strap is priced at $15,725; stainless steel with steel bracelet at $16,275; 18k Moonshine Gold on leather strap $54,325; and 18k Moonshine Gold with matching gold bracelet $85,350, available at Omega boutiques now.
Discover the collection here
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Here’s What Goes Into Making Jay-Z’s $1,800 Champagne
We put Armand de Brignac Blanc de Noirs Assemblage No. 4 under the microsope.
In our quest to locate the most exclusive and exciting wines for our readers, we usually ask the question, “How many bottles of this were made?” Often, we get a general response based on an annual average, although many Champagne houses simply respond, “We do not wish to communicate our quantities.” As far as we’re concerned, that’s pretty much like pleading the Fifth on the witness stand; yes, you’re not incriminating yourself, but anyone paying attention knows you’re probably guilty of something. In the case of some Champagne houses, that something is making a whole lot of bottles—millions of them—while creating an illusion of rarity.
We received the exact opposite reply regarding Armand de Brignac Blanc de Noirs Assemblage No. 4. Yasmin Allen, the company’s president and CEO, told us only 7,328 bottles would be released of this Pinot Noir offering. It’s good to know that with a sticker price of around $1,800, it’s highly limited, but it still makes one wonder what’s so exceptional about it.
Known by its nickname, Ace of Spades, for its distinctive and decorative metallic packaging, Armand de Brignac is owned by Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy and Jay-Z and is produced by Champagne Cattier. Each bottle of Assemblage No. 4 is numbered; a small plate on the back reads “Assemblage Four, [X,XXX]/7,328, Disgorged: 20 April, 2023.” Prior to disgorgement, it spent seven years in the bottle on lees after primary fermentation mostly in stainless steel with a small amount in concrete. That’s the longest of the house’s Champagnes spent on the lees, but Allen says the winemaking team tasted along the way and would have disgorged earlier than planned if they’d felt the time was right.
Chef de cave, Alexandre Cattier, says the wine is sourced from some of the best Premier and Grand Cru Pinot Noir–producing villages in the Champagne region, including Chigny-les-Roses, Verzenay, Rilly-la-Montagne, Verzy, Ludes, Mailly-Champagne, and Ville-sur-Arce in the Aube département. This is considered a multi-vintage expression, using wine from a consecutive trio of vintages—2013, 2014, and 2015—to create an “intense and rich” blend. Seventy percent of the offering is from 2015 (hailed as one of the finest vintages in recent memory), with 15 percent each from the other two years.
This precisely crafted Champagne uses only the tête de cuvée juice, a highly selective extraction process. As Allen points out, “the winemakers solely take the first and freshest portion of the gentle cuvée grape press,” which assures that the finished wine will be the highest quality. Armand de Brignac used grapes from various sites and three different vintages so the final product would reflect the house signature style. This is the fourth release in a series that began with Assemblage No. 1. “Testing different levels of intensity of aromas with the balance of red and dark fruits has been a guiding principle between the Blanc de Noirs that followed,” Allen explains.
The CEO recommends allowing the Assemblage No. 4 to linger in your glass for a while, telling us, “Your palette will go on a journey, evolving from one incredible aroma to the next as the wine warms in your glass where it will open up to an extraordinary length.” We found it to have a gorgeous bouquet of raspberry and Mission fig with hints of river rock; as it opened, notes of toasted almond and just-baked brioche became noticeable. With striking acidity and a vein of minerality, it has luscious nectarine, passion fruit, candied orange peel, and red plum flavors with touches of beeswax and a whiff of baking spices on the enduring finish. We enjoyed our bottle with a roast chicken rubbed with butter and herbes de Provence and savored the final, extremely rare sip with a bit of Stilton. Unfortunately, the pairing possibilities are not infinite with this release; there are only 7,327 more ways to enjoy yours.
