Cartier is a brand synonymous with lavish city living. Yet despite its swathe of multi-storey monuments to all things brilliant, it’s a rather unassuming Maison, set amidst the rolling green fields of La Chaux-de-Fond, where the house’s most special brand of magic is woven.

Seasoned connoisseurs of fine watches and jewellery are now well familiar with the works of the Maison des Métiers d’art—a special workshop set up by Cartier in late 2014 to serve as a temple of traditional craftsmanship. Home to a host of artisans, many of whom have been working for Cartier for years, it has since become the de facto birthplace for Cartier’s most limited and special creations, bridging the space between haute jewellery and high horology while providing a unique ecosystem where one can influence the other.

Now a decade into its significant life, the Maison des Métiers d’art is celebrating ten years of growth and evolution. It has transformed from a special preserve for a once-threatened generation of artisans into a place where a new set of pioneering artists and craftspeople can emerge and thrive.

As guests and visitors look on, metalworkers and enamel artists create exquisite works of art using techniques and traditions once on the verge of extinction while innovative and experimenting with their own. Precious metal workers use granulation and filigree, techniques that date back to well before the start of the common era, to create one-of-a-kind reliefs.

Elsewhere, composers, engravers, and master setters experiment across experimental and traditional realms, working with everything from the most precious gems to simple stone, wood, and straw to produce pieces that, regardless of their composition, push the brand’s boundaries of creativity and attention to detail. A typical piece by the Maison des Métiers d’art takes hundreds of hours to produce.

In a world of luxury often defined by sales figures and splashy celebrity endorsements, the artistic merits of a house like Cartier can sometimes be in danger of getting lost among the noise. However, in this revered Maison, one is reminded of the craftsmanship and creativity that sets some institutions apart from the rest.

Los Angeles does not want for star wattage, but for years now, the city’s hotel scene has been a little lacklustre. So news that the beloved Montage hotel has been completely redone under the Maybourne brand (the British powerhouse that operates Claridge’s, The Connaught, and Berkeley Hotels in London, and the recently opened Maybourne Riviera on the Côte d’Azur) should come as a boon to Australians looking for a new Tinseltown bolthole.

Situated within Beverly Hills’ famous Golden Triangle, just north of Wilshire Boulevard and Four Season’s Beverly Wilshire, and one block from the world-renowned luxury retailers, restaurants and celeb-spotting of Rodeo Drive, The Maybourne Beverly Hills offers a chic retreat from the designer flexing at its doorstep; a rare escape in the heart of this storied enclave that flies under the radar like a cap-wearing celeb dodging the paparazzi.

Set amid the manicured, Mediterranean-style Beverly Cañon Gardens plaza, which unfolds from the hotel’s west entrance, the new incarnation of Montage Beverly Hills (55 suites and 20 private residences, each with a balcony or patio with a courtyard or city view) still evokes the grand estates of Old Hollywood while feeling like you’re in a European mainstay.

Revealing a restrained new guestroom and suite design by Bryan O’Sullivan, a blue-chip art collection and some of the most solicitous staff in town, the Maybourne speaks in a laid-back Californian accent but still holds true to the luxury touchpoints of five-star service for which one of the world’s most exclusive neighbourhoods—and hotel brands—is known.

“It’s reassuringly British when it comes to service—it’s a culture of yes,” says Linden Pride, the Australian restaurant and bar owner behind the award-winning Caffe Dante in New York and Bobbie’s, the new speakeasy opening this month below Neil Perry’s new Song Bird restaurant in Sydney’s Double Bay (page 40). Pride should know; he lived at the Maybourne for almost a year while he and his partner, Nathalie Hudson, set up Dante, the stunning new restaurant and bar on the hotel’s ninth-floor rooftop. “Looking out from the roof onto lemon and olive trees, it’s easy to forget that you’re in Southern California, not Europe.”

Opened last year, Dante has quickly become one of the hottest reservations in town, luring in celebrities from Baz Luhrmann and Catherine Martin to the entire Real Madrid soccer team. Like its sister outposts in New York (besides the Greenwich Village original, a West Village location opened in 2020), the focus here is on non-threatening antipasti and aperitivi in a produce-driven menu of fresh familiar stalwarts, with the addition of wood-fired dishes from a giant pizza oven at the heart of the room. Just as it does in New York, a negroni cart does the rounds, and each afternoon is welcomed with a martini happy hour.

It’s all fittingly Cali-chill. The only drama in the place is a striking ceiling fresco by Los Angeles artist Abel Macias, which dominates the 146-seat room. “Nathalie and I had just been to Europe when we decided to open up here,” Pride recalls, “and the Sistine Chapel blew us away. When we saw the domed ceiling in this room it was a no-brainer.”

Dante joins a string of newcomers in the area, including New York transplants Café Boulud, Marea and Cipriani. Don’t look now, but with arrivals like the Maybourne and Dante, one of the world’s stuffiest cities—yes, Beverly Hills is its own 14.8 km² metropolis—might just be entering a new golden age.

The Maybourne

Quick and easy yacht access. Arrival by seaplane. A touch of caviar and vintage Champagne to kick things off? Catalina has in spades what the Emerald City is truly famous for.  Even after three decades of service, this Rose Bay fixture remains a desirable address.

Afternoons and evenings here always manage to etch themselves on the memory for years to come. And this year, as Catalina marks its 30 anniversary, it’s appropriate to raise a glass to this institution’s winning formula that balances a dramatic outlook with a calming interior.

Whether you’re watching the seaplanes take off by day or being mesmerised by the shadow play of seagulls on the curving terrace by night, Sydney Harbour provides a stunning backdrop.

It’s a magical setting that is made sweeter by how little the place has changed.

Executive Chef Mark Axisa and Head Chef Alan O’Keeffe have established a reputation for bright clean flavours and healthy-ish fare. Produce and textures on the menu are simple but never staid and unlike many chefs who get way too tricky in the kitchen, Catalina’s chefs have created a menu that is full of dishes you actually want to eat.

It includes Glacier 51 toothfish served with a cigar of spanner crab roulade, and juicy Spanish mackerel cooked to perfection in red curry sauce with crunchy sugar snap peas. To up the ante this summer you can also indulge in a delicious Rock lobster risotto, order Catalina’s signature suckling pig or hail down their new roaming dessert cocktail trolley (created by designer du jour David Caon).

“We’re about to celebrate 30 years, which is an achievement we’re very proud of,” said owner and founder Judy McMahon at Veuve Clicquot’s 2015 La Grande Dame launch in August. 

Dressed in an immaculate white head-to-toe outfit, McMahon was quick to acknowledge the commitment and support of her children James and Kate who have stepped up to the plate since the passing of her late husband, Michael, in early 2020.

The new guard is flying the flag for fine dining in his honour, serving plenty of freshly shucked Sydney rock oysters, pouring energetic wines from all over the world and maintaining an elegant continuum beloved by Sydney locals.

And because everything tastes better with a view,  there’s really no better place to unwind that here, with a fine glass of Veuve Clicquot La Grande Dame rosé Champagne and a trout and herring roe churro.

Catalina

The Jewel Private Residences in Surfer’s paradise are an adventure in style. Located steps from the ocean, between the prime coastal locations of Surfer’s Paradise and Broadbeach, these fully complete apartments with access to five-star resort living on absolute beachfront have been attracting prestige property buyers, bon vivants and design aficionados since they went on the market.

So much so that the 100 apartments released to the market in three stages have been snapped up for a cool $200 million; the 30 apartments in Stage Three that were released last month have totalled $60 million in sales.

It’s not hard to see why. Located in a $1.5 billion three-tower landmark district encompassing two towers dedicated to the Jewel Private Residences, as well as the five-star hotel tower The Langham, Gold Coast, these stunning apartments with their distinctive glass curtain walling system, present a unique opportunity for savvy buyers. In fact, the precinct offers the first prestige international hotel and towers with unfettered beachfront access to be built on the Gold Coast in 30 years.

Says Total Property Group managing director Adrian Parsons, “Jewel steps straight off the sand into The Langham Gold Coast’s luxurious five-star amenities, including the Lagoon Pool with swim-up bar, 26 & Sunny Café, restaurant Akoya and T’ang Court, lobby bar, and wellness facilities.”

Not that there is much reason to leave these life-style-envy-inducing homes. In addition to the unrivalled views, the residences contain state-of-the-art gourmet kitchens with stone benchtops with 60mm edges (some with large island benches and waterfall edges), stone splashbacks and top-of-the-line Miele appliances. Premium residences feature sumptuous bathrooms appointed with stone-top vanities, black glass framed walls and free-standing baths.

The building, the result of a collaboration between Oppenheim Architects and DBI, employs sophisticated facade technologies to ensure shading from sun and shelter from the wind, delivering a 5-star green star building, that is as handsome as it is sustainable. Put simply, it represents the pinnacle of luxury living on the Gold Coast—the best of the best.

A perfect fit for Robb Report, in other words. Which is why we are thrilled to be partnering with Jewel Private Residences on our Car of the Year 2024 event (COTY) being held on the Gold Coast next week. As one of our marquee events of the year, COTY is a 2-day adventure, celebrating excellence in automative design and engineering, bolstered by an exciting program of activations featuring not only the world’s top motoring marques but also some of the world’s leading luxury brands. An experience not to be missed and simply the best.

For information on apartments at Jewel Private Residences Gold Coast, visit jewelprivateresidences.com.au or phone Total Property Group on 1300 552 456.

For more information on Car of the Year 2024, visit our Events Page.

Before social media became the lingua franca of the watch world, there were forums. And on those forums, collectors—especially collectors of vintage Rolex—often traded timepieces amongst each other.

The advent of Instagram in the early 2010s, coupled with the explosion in interest in vintage timepieces, drew attention to this corner of the watch world, and with that attention came increased competition for the finest examples. In the case of six- and seven-figure watches, high-end dealers, like James Lamdin, founder and vice president of vintage and pre-owned watches at Analog:Shift, became trusted intermediaries, negotiating sales for pieces not once or twice but often multiple times as they made the rounds of the collector community.

“There are watches out there that may not be massively rare by reference, but are by example,” Lamdin tells Robb Report. “Tropical patina, ghosted bezel, or celebrity provenance—it’s that watch. When those watches go into a collection, usually it’s with the implicit understanding that they’re valuable and people will want them from you and will make you a profit when you sell them.”

The best dealers have built relationships with collectors around the world and often have first right of refusal when those pieces come back to market. But even still, the most coveted models can still slip through their fingers.

Eric Wind, of Wind Vintage in Palm Beach, Fla., has lost and found some of the world’s most storied watches. In 2015, when he was vice president, senior specialist at Christie’s in New York, Wind came across a “super rare” 1957 Audemars Piguet Ref. 5516 perpetual calendar that had languished in rural Florida until the nephew of the original owner consigned it to Christie’s. The first perpetual calendar wristwatch to feature a leap-year indicator, the piece was one of just nine made by Audemars Piguet in the 1950s. Wind considers it “the one in the best condition.”

He showed it to one of Christie’s better-known clients, Patrick Getreid, owner of the OAK Collection, who purchased it in 2015 for $545,000. In 2023, Getreid consigned it to Christie’s in Hong Kong. That’s when Wind decided to give the piece another shot.

“I had registered to bid on it but at the last minute, I got cold feet,” Wind continues. “It was starting kind of high compared with what Getreide had paid for it. I was bidding remotely from Florida, but when no one else is bidding, you’re kind of wondering if you’re a genius or a fool. Is there something everyone else knows that I don’t? The question was about market value. The watch ended up passing and I purchased it via private sale—or private treaty, as it’s known—after the sale. I had two clients who really wanted it. I offered it to both, but one was more ready to pull the trigger and he got it. It never saw the light of day.” That Audemars Piguet perpetual calendar, Wind says, “remains one of my top five watches on the planet.”

As he reflected on the piece’s winding journey, Wind considered his own role in its comings and goings. “It was fun to be part of the lifecycle of that watch, from when it was discovered in rural Florida and consigned to Christie’s, and then sold to a great collector, who sold it again,” he says. “I imagine it will come back to me at some point. I don’t know if it will be two years from now or 40 years.”

Another grail watch that Wind helped shepherd to a client was an exceptional Paul Newman Rolex Daytona Panda reference 2623 with a full set and a tropical dial that was sold by a small Swedish auction house just under a decade ago. “Another dealer got it,” Wind explains. “I was still at Christie’s, and I fell in love with the watch. This dealer who had it for a year then sold it to an Italian dealer, who then sold it to a collector in Asia. I was tracking the watch on Instagram and saw the collector post it. By that time, I had become a dealer.

“I made an offer to the collector to purchase it on behalf of my client,” he adds. “It had been owned by a Swedish boat captain and had been given to him by the family he worked for, the equivalent of the Rockefellers in Sweden. We had to arrange shipment to the U.S. by Malca-Amit armored transport. Whenever these high-value watches move around, you have to deal with armored shipments, customs, proper transportation, and a lot of paperwork. It takes some time but it’s well worth it.”

Both the AP perpetual calendar and Daytona were original and unpolished—“the kind of watches I look for,” Wind says. “It’s funny how watches circle around. Within the high-end watch world, we’re not talking about thousands and thousands of watches. We’re talking about a relatively small amount of great watches.”

Eric Ku, a high-end vintage dealer in Northern California, certainly knows the drill.

About 15 years ago, he was offered a first-of-its-kind 1996 Rolex Cosmograph Daytona “Rainbow” reference 16599 in white gold on a leather strap.

“I’ve been hunting jeweled Rolexes for a really long time, before it was a cool thing,” Ku, cofounder of the online auction site Loupe This, says. “The watch first surfaced to me around 15 years ago. It was offered to me by a dealer in the Middle East and was coming from, allegedly, a member of a royal family. At the time, the pricing was completely different than it is today. After going back and forth, I offered $130,500 and the seller wanted $136,462. I lost the watch. I was gutted. I’d been stalking the watch. But at the time, relative to the market, it didn’t make sense for me. It was a really tough time, might have been around the financial crisis. I felt confident it would come back to me, but it didn’t.

“Then, in 2012, Rolex introduced its new rainbow Daytona,” Ku says. “I had no doubt about the authenticity of the watch I’d lost out on, but seeing the new rainbow Daytona completely validated me and erased any scintilla of a doubt that I had about the watch. Fast forward a couple years: The watch was offered to me again privately, by a different person in the Middle East at a significant multiple of the original offering—let’s say in the mid six-figures. I bought it.”

In 2017, Ku sold the watch to an important collector based overseas, “a person of very high taste and connoisseurship who appreciated the rarity of that watch,” he says. The collector, by Ku’s reckoning, also appreciated the story of its journey. “Dealers and old collectors always like trading war stories,” he says. “What’s the one thing that got away and then it came back? The collector got sold on the story.”

Now, the watch is coming back to market on Nov. 8 at Phillips Geneva, where it’s being offered in a sale dedicated to neo-vintage timepieces (Reloaded: The Rebirth of Mechanical Watchmaking 1980-1999) and is estimated to fetch in excess of $5.93  million.

“It’s probably the sexiest watch of the season,” Ku says.