Hollywood is famously awash in irony and blood feuds. So perhaps it’s fitting that, after locking horns for decades in Europe over Gucci, Hedi Slimane and the finest Champagnes, Bernard Arnault and François-Henri Pinault have exported their Gallic rivalry across the Atlantic, each billionaire now determined to conquer the epicentre of film and television just as he has vanquished the world of luxury.

The dueling titans are building foundations in Hollywood that could be transformative not only for their many brands, which are chockablock with unplumbed archives, but also for the entertainment business, which knows how to tell a compelling tale. Last September, Pinault, chairman and chief executive of Kering, bought a majority stake in the CAA talent agency for a reported US$2.8 billion (around $4.3 billion) through his family’s private-investment group, Artémis. Kering, a publicly traded company controlled by Pinault, was not directly involved, but the move raised speculation that its brands—which include Saint Laurent, Alexander McQueen, Gucci, Balenciaga and Boucheron—could benefit from entertainment relationships, particularly among celebrities, who remain the world’s most powerful influencers. 

Months later, Arnault, chairman and chief executive of LVMH (also a public company), one-upped Pinault by launching an entirely new entertainment studio in partnership with well-connected Hollywood marketing veterans who, in case the move didn’t sting enough, once worked for CAA. Arnault named the studio 22 Montaigne Entertainment, after his company’s plush address in Paris’s 8th arrondissement, and placed his eldest son, Antoine, in charge. 

By the time its formation was announced in February, 22 Montaigne, via its new partners at Superconnector Studios, was reportedly already in talks with potential collaborators, such as Imagine Entertainment, founded by Ron Howard and Brian Grazer, and Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine. The latter, known for The Morning Show and Big Little Lies, focuses on stories about women, who happen to be LVMH’s primary consumers. Imagine the dramatic, not to mention comedic, tales buried in the vaults of a company that owns Louis 

Vuitton, Christian Dior, Givenchy, Tiffany & Co. and Dom Pérignon, among dozens of other top names. The possibilities for brand-centric film, television, streaming and podcast projects that can bring their archives to life are practically endless. 

What we’re seeing in real time is a collapsing of the traditional walls between entertainment and luxury—or, more bluntly, a disintegration of the space between storytelling and advertising. Fashion houses have long made nimble use of respected contemporary artists, enlisting them for merchandise collaborations in order to inject a dose of highbrow imprimatur into their wares. More recently, this fluidity has infiltrated the music industry: Pharrell Williams, the massively successful recording artist and producer, is not a trained fashion designer but last year was named creative director of Louis Vuitton menswear, where he’s churning out vibe-y videos, shutting down Paris streets with fashion shows, and racking up social-media engagement. Fashion is now aiming squarely for your screens. 

“The sectors of film and art and fashion have become so intertwined today that there’s no separation,” says Robert Burke, chairman of the consulting firm Robert Burke Associates, who counts several luxury giants among his clients. 

In front of the camera, fashion and film have been cosy for decades, trading on celebrities’ fame for advertising campaigns and costuming deals. 

Designers have always nurtured close liaisons with stars—think of the symbiotic relationship between Hubert de Givenchy and Audrey Hepburn, or the way Giorgio Armani burst into our collective consciousness (and wardrobes) by outfitting Richard Gere in American Gigolo. The occasional lucky release has also proved beneficial: the film adaptation of The Devil Wears Prada, the plot of which had next to nothing to do with the Italian maison, elevated it to household-name status in the 2000s, and a certain jeweller has been dining out on Breakfast at Tiffany’s for over six decades. “Still today, that movie and the image of Audrey Hepburn drive tremendous traffic to the Tiffany store,” Burke says. 

Fashion-centric documentaries, from 1995’s Unzipped to Dior and I in 2014, have proved surprisingly appealing, and competition shows à la Project Runway oddly enduring. Now, top houses are recognising film and TV as more than publicity platforms: They see them as a means to expand the mass appetite for high fashion through entertainment, not just via fragrances and wallets. 

One of the curiosities about Pinault’s and Arnault’s forays into Hollywood is how secretive they’ve both been about something so very public. (Both declined to comment for this article or to make any executive available for an on-the-record interview.) In fact, while it’s usually buyers who make announcements of this nature, a press  release on the sale of the CAA stake was issued by the seller, TPG, which clearly wanted to trumpet the deal to its investors. Pinault was quoted in TPG’s release, noting that CAA would add “increased diversity, both in terms of geographical footprint and business activities” to Artémis’s $43 billion (around $66 billion) in assets. He has nevertheless declined every interview request. His longtime spokesman at Kering says that CAA is a private family-investment matter. 

LVMH made its own announcement about 22 Montaigne’s launch, sending out a three-page press release from Paris and serving up a few interviews in the business media with its North American chief executive, Anish Melwani, who will manage the operations of the studio along with Antoine Arnault, head of LVMH image and environment. Melwani’s interviews appear to have been seen within the company as a rare misstep. When the news made global headlines—from the Financial Times to Fortune to Fast Company—LVMH and its partners at Superconnector Studios retreated, halting all interviews. “It took them by surprise that this got the amount of attention it got,” a person close to LVMH tells Robb Report, calling the coverage “overblown”. 

Arnault and Pinault are not pioneering the alignment between Hollywood and consumer brands. Nike’s Waffle Iron Entertainment, launched in 2021, already has a first-look deal with Apple TV+ and produced The Day Sports Stood Still for HBO, as well as Apple TV’s Ja Morant docuseries Promiseland, merging sports-oriented content with Nike’s athletic products. In fact, one of 22 Montaigne’s partners at Superconnector, a Hollywood marketer named Jae Goodman, helped create Waffle Iron Entertainment. And last year, Authentic Brands, which owns the intellectual property for dozens of marques, from Barneys New York to Elvis Presley to David Beckham, launched Authentic Studios to build films, television shows and other entertainment around its brands. 

The approaches taken by the two Frenchmen—the mirthful François-Henri Pinault, known by friends as FHP, and the meticulous Bernard Arnault, affectionately called Monsieur Arnault—reflect how they run their respective corporate empires. In some ways they’re mirror images, each building businesses from luxury goods and related playthings of the rich and famous. Their private family offices even neighbour each other across a quiet plaza in Paris not far from the Grand Palais, with Arnault’s Financière Agache located at 11 rue François Premier, and Financière Pinault just down the rue at number 12. 

LVMH dwarfs Kering by many measures. Its 75 brands are deep with heritage, often centuries old, and generated revenues of over $93 billion (around $143 billion) in 2023, while Kering’s dozen or so are younger and produced over $21 billion (around $32 billion) in revenues last year. The conglomerates have been fierce rivals for decades, competing with each other not only for retail sales but also for companies and talent. Their struggle for control of Gucci in the late 1990s, when Tom Ford was arguably the most influential designer on the scene (and Pinault’s father, François, faced off against Arnault), was epic, and top names have often bounced between the two camps, most notably Hedi Slimane, who jumped from LVMH (Dior Homme) to Kering (YSL) and back (Celine). Taking notes, screenwriters? 

While Arnault is an efficient planner who keeps things centrally organised—opening a Hollywood studio to serve all of LVMH fits his profile perfectly—Pinault can be more capricious and prefers to leave details up to brands and their managers. Arnault’s Hollywood manoeuvring appears coolly calculated, while Pinault’s multibillion-dollar investment for 56 percent of CAA has proved something of a head-scratcher to observers from both industries. “If you would have asked me who would come along to acquire CAA, it certainly wouldn’t have been a company that was rooted in fashion and luxury,” says Keith Baptista, cofounder of Prodject, which forged early connections between fashion and entertainment with shows such as Rihanna’s Savage x Fenty special on Prime Video. 

Still, in an age when celebrities are the most valuable influencers (think Anya Taylor-Joy’s gushy Instagram post thanking Dior, Tiffany and Jaeger-LeCoultre for her Oscars ensemble in March, which has garnered 2.8 million likes from her 10.6 million followers as of press time, or Taylor Swift’s 284 million Instagram followers, which make her a one-woman media empire) and when creative direction is more about cultural access than apparel design, Pinault now has one of the most potent contact lists on the planet. 

CAA represents thousands of actors, directors, models, musical artists, athletes, coaches and other stars. Its agents are some of the world’s most adroit dealmakers. The firm, whose stone-and-glass headquarters looms over Century City, California, boasts that it pioneered talent agencies’ incursions into the sports business, investment banking, venture funds and brand-marketing services, not to mention developing a business arm in China, which is every luxury executive’s fervent dream market. 

Hollywood observers suggest the real winners of the deal are the co-chairmen of CAA—Bryan Lourd, Richard Lovett, and Kevin Huvane—who have an opportunity to unload part of their own stakes for as much as $200 million (around $310 million), according to a Financial Times report last September. Then there’s former majority owner TPG, the financial-services firm that sold its shares to Artémis. TPG, which first bought a piece of CAA in 2010, had been looking to cash out of the long-held investment and realise its gains without having to invest more in the agency’s future growth. Few clear options emerged until Pinault happened along. 

“Do I think it’s good for Richard, Kevin and the management team? Yes,” says an executive at a rival agency, who suggests that CAA is a trophy acquisition for the Pinaults. In addition to the family’s stake in Kering, CAA will sit alongside a billionaire’s playground of other assets: Christie’s auction house, Artémis Domaines estates, French soccer team Stade Rennais FC, several media and tech investments that include a stake in TikTok-owner ByteDance, and a substantial private art collection. 

This executive questions, however, whether the family is prepared to invest the additional money required to expand CAA as its rivals, including United Talent Agency and William Morris Endeavor, push into new fields, and as revenue streams morph. “Do I think it’s good for CAA in the long run? No.” 

But from CAA’s perspective, according to an insider there, Pinault represents a smart, hands-off owner much like TPG was, and not just a private-equity investor with a short-term outlook. It’s expected that board seats will be taken by either Pinault or his Artémis deputy chief executives, Héloïse Temple-Boyer, who sits on Kering’s board, and Alban Gréget.
“We’re not part of his company. We’re just another investment,” this insider says of Pinault. “He knows what he knows. He knows what he doesn’t know. He lets people manage. TPG was the same way.” 

But CAA also apparently believes that Pinault has something to offer the agency other than cash. “He has a familiarity in businesses driven by talent. That’s something that he has that normal private equity doesn’t,” the insider says. “We’re just at the beginning stages of figuring out what those opportunities are.” 

Adding to the trophy speculation is the presence of Pinault’s wife, the 57-year-old Oscar-nominated actress Salma Hayek, the mother of his youngest child. (Another of his four children is just a year older and is the son of supermodel Linda Evangelista.) Pinault, who is 61, is often photographed standing behind Hayek, unidentified by paparazzi but holding her coat and bag while she signs autographs. 

Hayek is represented by CAA, which now answers to her husband. A person who has worked under Pinault for years notes that the actress is close with several of CAA’s principals. “If you want my opinion,” they say, “I think the whole thing is kind of strange. I think it’s Salma-inspired.” 

Several Hollywood executives, none of whom would speak on the record, challenged initial speculation that Pinault’s control of CAA will help Kering recruit talent to wear or advertise its labels. Proposing such alliances might instead raise suspicions that they are more for the benefit of Kering and CAA corporately. 

“You can’t just jam people in. The agents are going to ask for the richest deal,” says another agency rival, who cites the fiduciary responsibility that agents have for their clients’ best interests. What’s more, the rival adds, “The people who run fashion houses don’t give a shit about the corporate synergies. You can’t tell them they have to use Tom Cruise.” 

Like LVMH, Kering is also backing at least one filmmaking venture in support of its brands’ entertainment ambitions. Saint Laurent made a splash at Cannes last year, not just on the red car- pet but also by producing a short cowboy movie by acclaimed Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar, starring Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal, called Strange Way of Life. 

The title is the first from Saint Laurent Productions, a film-production company the label launched last year, led by its creative director, Anthony Vaccarello. The designer has more projects in the works by Oscar-winning director Paolo Sorrentino and heavyweights David Cronenberg, Abel Ferrara, Wong Kar-wai, Jim Jarmusch and Gaspar Noé. 

Vaccarello designed the costumes for Strange Way of Life, so it’s a safe bet that he’ll do the same for future films. People close to the label say the venture began because Vaccarello, a film lover, pressed for the new creative outlet. (He’s not the first designer to catch the movie bug: Tom Ford directed two acclaimed—and, naturally, stylish—features before selling his eponymous brand to Estée Lauder last year; he now focuses full-time on moviemaking.) At the Saint Laurent Productions launch in April 2023, Vaccarello told Variety that filmmaking gives him “the opportunity to expand the vision I have for Saint Laurent through a medium that has more permanence than clothes”. 

“You can still see a film in 10 or 30 years, if it’s good,” the designer said. “In some ways, making a film can be more impactful than a seasonal collection. For me it’s a natural extension to another field of creativity that perhaps is more general and popular.” 

One more thing promises to be new and fascinatingly strange about these luxury conglomerates’ invasion of the Hollywood jungle: their investments will certainly make odd bedfellows, albeit indirectly, of Pinault and Arnault. 

There is every likelihood that Arnault’s 22 Montaigne will soon be dealmaking with Pinault’s CAA to lock in directors, writers and stars. Scarlett Johansson is both a CAA client and a Louis Vuitton brand ambassador. Natalie Portman, also repped by CAA, is a leading face for Arnault’s pet label, Dior, which is the first luxury house he bought when building LVMH. 

Such crossovers aren’t unusual in Hollywood, where individuals are accustomed to working for rival studios or networks. Unheard of, though, is Arnault’s paying Pinault, via CAA, for the privilege—and here’s our elevator pitch—of signing Ryan Gosling to a Netflix drama, directed by Steven Spielberg, that tells the story of a 17th-century Benedictine monk who perfected the making of Champagne. Dom Pérignon: the Movie, coming soon?

Illustration by SAM GREEN

There’s very little innovation without simplification—after all, no one wins friends or influences people by making things harder. So it’s no surprise that spring’s best new clothing feels lighter, looser, fresher—and a lot easier to wear than all the layers you may have donned over the winter.

To celebrate that happy fact, we traveled to Provence—the region that perfected the beautiful life—to capture the season’s finest wares in an environment that reflects their carefree aura. And whether you spend this spring swaddled in Alanui’s enviable knitwear or suited up in Brunello Cucinelli, you should be able to do what the models in the next several images are doing: Relax.

All Photographed by Zeb Daemen Styled by Alex Badia

On him: Tod’s cotton jacket, $4,230; Corneliani cotton knit shirt, $1,285; Officine Générale cotton pants, $550. On her: Hermès linen overcoat with leather collar, $10,135; Chloé wool turtleneck sweater, $1,345.

On him: Dries Van Noten brown linen, viscose and silk coat, $3,610; Ralph Lauren Purple Label white cotton and silk henley shirt, $600; Giorgio Armani cognac linen pants, $3,170, and brown leather belt, $640; Hermès black sandals with notched sole in liquorice cotton serge and calfskin, $1,390. On her: Dries Van Noten camel cotton coat, $2,555; Hermès red knitted cropped top, $2,725, bandeau, $2,725, and skirt (worn as a dress), $3,515; Hunter olive-leaf boots, $280; Tiffany & Co. Lock necklace in 18-karat yellow gold, $6,355. 

Brunello Cucinelli wool and linen denim-effect-twill one-and-a-half-breasted suit, $9,220, and denim shirt, $1,740; Tod’s leather loafers, $1,580; Rolex Datejust, stylist’s own. 

Alanui cashmere and cotton cardigan, $3,835; Loro Piana linen shirt, $1,360; Kiton silk and linen pants, $13,070 (for full suit); Hermès silk scarf, $325; Giubert leather belt, $425. 

On him: Boglioli wool blazer, $2,495; Officine Générale cotton shirt, $490; Berluti cotton pants, $1,240; Hermès silk Twilly scarf, $325; Ralph Lauren Purple Label canvas espadrilles, $750. 

Chloé coconut-milk linen-crepe sable hooded cape (price upon request); Dior black silk skirt with ruffles (price upon request) and fringed canvas boots (price upon request); Piaget Possession open hoop earrings in 18-karat rose gold and diamonds, $7,490, open ring in 18-karat rose gold and diamonds, $7,565, and Decor Palace ring in 18-karat rose gold and diamonds, $6,280. 

On him: Tod’s cotton jacket, $4,230; Corneliani cotton knit shirt, $1,285; Officine Générale cotton pants, $550. On her: Hermès linen overcoat with leather collar, $10,135, and leather boots, $3,985; Chloé wool turtleneck sweater, $1,345. 

On her: Loewe wool sweater, $4,160, and suede trousers (price upon request); Dries Van Noten shoes (price upon request). 

On him: Loro Piana baby cashmere cardigan, $7,185, sweater, $4,765, and wool, linen and cashmere pants, $2,120; Giorgio Armani belt, $645. 

Photographed at Chateau d’Estoublon. 

Casting and Market Editor, Men’s:  Luis Campuzano                                                                                                                                 Market Editor, Women’s: Emily Mercer
Models: David Miller and Gabriela Salvadó
Senior Fashion Market Editor, Accessories: Thomas Waller                                                                                                                      Watch and Jewellery Editor: Paige Reddinger
Fashion Assistant: Annelise Lombart-Platet
Makeup Artist: Vera Dierckx using Less Is More Organics Cosmetics                                                                                                   Hairstylist: Eduardo Bravo
Photo Director: Irene Opezzo                                                                                                                                                                        Photo Assistant: Koen Vernimmen                                                                                                                                                                     Production: yours, 

Style is never dependent upon resources, just as taste isn’t determined by a price tag. 

The truly stylish, and those with intriguing taste, rarely begin developing their personal aesthetic at the point when their bank balance reflects their success. For Tyler, the Creator, two-time Grammy-winning artist, producer, director, composer and designer, the collecting bug that set in motion the eclectic nature of his passions and career started with, well, Hot Wheels. 

“I didn’t play with toys much as a kid,” he says, “but Hot Wheels… was definitely my number-one collection. I had probably seven, and some I kept until my teen years.” 

Tyler Okonma, as he was known back then, is a professional chameleon. His past several albums have involved creating personas he inhabits for the promotional cycle of the project and then switches out for whatever’s next. His last two releases both won Best Rap Album Grammys and brought him global attention. 

Of all the obsessions you see on these pages—many long-lived, some relatively new—music remains his first love. On the days we spend with him in LA, Tyler, 31, is constantly humming, crooning and rhyming. In the past 15 years, he has veered from alt rap to rock to soul and R&B, but always with hip-hop overtones, knowing wordplay and a raised eyebrow. And in the accompanying videos, which he directs himself (as Wolf Haley), he has offered glimpses of an interior world he’s fiercely protective of. 

He’s never invited anyone in—until now. “I’m a pretty private dude, so doing this for Robb Report was, like, a big task for me,” he says. So why do it at all? His answer speaks to how he approaches his work and, to an extent, his life. 

“I said, ‘Fuck it, I’m going to change all the colours of my cars anyway. I might as well get the ill photo of the whole collection, and I might as well show all these cool trunks because who knows, man, something could happen in three years where I try to go bald and become vegan and start a family and I don’t want any of this shit anymore. So why not document it while I have the most pride for it, which is the era I’m in right now.’ ”

Cars 

It’s a one-man concours. While there’s a supercar in there—the McLaren 675LT under the tree—and you’ll spot the obligatory SUV, nothing about this grouping is predictable, whether for a car collector, a musician or whatever is next for Tyler, a mogul-in-waiting. Asked to give his garage an overarching theme, Tyler offers, “Boxy cars, pastel colours.” And it’s clear that this aesthetic is no whim. 

“I’ve always liked cars,” he says. “I remember being 11, and I had a toy version of a Ferrari 550 Maranello, and I was so obsessed. And then I turned 15, and I was like, ‘Man, that Golf GTI Volkswagen looks so cool.’ ” 

He got his first set of wheels for his 19th birthday. It was “this gross, square-ish Honda Accord. Ill shape. Then I got my [BMW] M3 E92. Frost white, two-door. I loved that car. And then, I always wanted a [BMW] M3, an old-school E30. And once I got that, I saw what a Lancia was. I was like, ‘What is this? This car is cool.’ And once I got into that and understood what that ’80s rally shit was, it was a wrap.” 

The theme continued: “When I saw that Rolls-Royce [the Camargue] that looked like it was in the vein of that Fiat and those Lancias, my brain exploded. You know people hated that car when it came out? Crazy. I think it’s beautiful.” 

Tyler had no qualms about changing the colours of his rides, switching out tyres and accessorising. He doesn’t hold with the “keep vintage, vintage” brigade. “That shit is so corny, bro,” he says. “ ‘Oh it was made this year. Don’t touch it.’ Why would you buy something and not make it yours? People be like, ‘Oh, it still has the original engine.’ I don’t give a fuck. That engine is slow as hell. 

Update my shit. I want AC. It’s hot in this car.” “And fuck the original paint,” he adds. “Or if you love the original paint, more power to you. But if you want to make it black, and you’re like, ‘But this paint was put on before the internet was made,’ then change it. You bought it. Why not enjoy it? ’Cause you could die tomorrow and be like, ‘Always wanted it black, but everyone on this car forum and message board is going to respect me because I kept the original paint, even though I’m dead.’ ” 

Tyler’s collections don’t sit there gathering dust. “I drive most of [the cars] when I can… My Cullinan is my everyday. It’s truly a first-class seat on a plane. But then my BMW—if I had to rob a bank, I would probably use that car. Because I just know it so well, I control it differently. I drift in it, making a little left turn and letting the ass shoot out and stuff, before I go back on the straight.” 

While he’s pretty happy with his current lot, there’s always space for one more. Maybe three. “I want a LaFerrari. That’s my dream. Make that shit dark Kelly green. When I get that car, I’m driving five miles per hour everywhere. I want everyone to see me in that vehicle. One day I’ll have an F40. One day I’m going to get the Lamborghini truck, the old one. Jay-Z pulled up on me in one, and I was like, ‘You are a psycho, man.’ ”

Print 

“I got into magazines pretty heavy,” Tyler says of his teenage years. “Anything with N.E.R.D. or Eminem or skateboarding. And because those are three different types of things, it opened my eyes to so many other things. And it just grew.” 

He has an extensive library of magazines and coffee-table books, ranging from Japanese and British style mags to US hip-hop and street-culture titles, vintage newspapers and large-scale monographs on fashion, art and history as well as random subjects such as street style or architecture. For Tyler, the accumulation of knowledge is a pleasure. “I do like learning and having random facts about stuff… I’ve always liked books and [finding] information. I wish more people did that. I wish more people were on the internet sharing information of shit they like and not spending that time talking about, ‘Oh, I’m disappointed in Ron,’ ” he says, referring to some fictional celebrity. “Ignore it and tell us some information, so I can learn from that.” Not a fan of gossip, then. “It’s terrible.” 

Bikes 

Tyler, the Creator is a biker. And like his love affair with cars, this one runs deep: he can recount every bicycle he has had since his mother gave him his first to teach him to ride without training wheels. Mountain bikes, BMXs, one that “got stolen from my grandmother’s house. I was bummed”, all the way up to what you see here, just a handful of the two-wheelers in his collection. 

“They’re the coolest thing ever to me,” he says. “I love biking. It’s freeing. It’s meditation. It’s a massage. It’s peace… Sometimes we’ll do 50 miles on the BMX.” 

The bike with the basket at the back of the shot is very special. By Louis Vuitton, it’s a collaboration with Tamboite, an artisanal Parisian bike maker established in 1912, and was something Tyler had his eye on for a while and was given after scoring the LV Virgil Abloh in memoriam presentation. Because of that, it comes loaded with meaning. “When I rode the bike at the show earlier this year, I was happy,” he recalls. “Because one, just doing it for Virgil. That was a sick moment. Love to that man, for everything he’s done, not just for me but just in general. Two, hearing my music being presented in that way, with the orchestra, is something I’ve always dreamed about, but a lot of people never gave me a chance. So that was a moment. But three, I was on a bike that I wanted. If you see me, I’m just smiling and grinning the whole time.”  

Jewellery 

Giant daisies, a palm-sized bellhop figurine and a re-creation of his own Igor character face are just a few examples of the gem-encrusted pieces in Tyler’s over-the-top jewelry collection. If his watches feel almost reserved, his neck candy is straight-up in your face: each one a custom creation. Early pieces were made by LA jeweler Ben Baller, but recent designs have been executed by Alex Moss, based in NYC. Both Baller and Moss were tasked with creating the artist’s more outré pieces, referencing characters from each of his albums. Caryn Alpert, another LA jeweller, is frequently tapped for Tyler’s less flamboyant pieces—a necklace she created using four of his draft sketches ended up encrusted with large amethysts, sapphires, rubies and diamonds, among many other stones. 

His creativity, however, gets more fully expressed in his thematic pieces revolving around previous albums. “You got the Cherry Bomb piece of the face, and then you got the Flower Boy necklace, where I was like, ‘Man, I want a garden. I want to wear a garden on my neck,’ so I fucking drew [it] up and figured out like, ‘Oh, I’ll do the bumblebee, and I’ll do the flower, and this and that.’ ” One of his pride-and-joy pieces is the Bunny Hop neck- lace featuring a yellow-diamond-encrusted bellhop (that alter ego again) holding two pink-sapphire cases that open at their hinges. It hangs from a chain of gem-encrusted “gum- balls” and received endless press after he wore it at the BET Hip Hop Awards last year while picking up another gong. 

But his collection is as much for his own pleasure as for public consumption. Even the undersides of some of his pieces come decorated. One example: the flipside of his flower necklace spells out “Scum Fuck Flower Boy.” It’s certainly not the kind of thing you would find at any Place Vendôme jeweller. But hey, that’s precisely the point. 

Trunks 

“These trunks, I used to throw them in the street as soon as I bought them,” says Tyler, by way of establishing that he isn’t overly delicate with his possessions, a theme that runs through our conversations. When he talks about them, though, it’s with a breathy kind of awe. “Sometimes, I’ll just look at this trunk wall and some of these wood canvas boxes, which to some is just luggage, but I’m just looking like, ‘Man, the time they put into this,’ ” he says. Like his cars and bikes, the steamers serve their original purpose. “Anytime I travel, I use these,” he says. “When I played at Something in the Water, Pharrell’s festival, I put all my shit in here—my toothbrush, clothes and boxers.” 

His interest in trunks was initially piqued by the colourful prints Takashi Murakami created for Louis Vuitton, and he tried to make his own back in 2014. But it wasn’t until a few years later, when he saw Balenciaga’s vivid, oversized and striped picnic-style laundry bags, that an infatuation began. “I wanted every fucking colour, but I couldn’t put my computer and stuff inside of it because it wasn’t protecting it,” he says. “So, the first little briefcase I got was a Louis Vuitton one with a taxi on the side, or some bullshit they painted on it. Ever since that moment, I was like, ‘Oh shit, I could fit clothes in this. This is the perfect size and shape. How did they make this?’ Then the obsession started.” Never satisfied with just collecting, he wanted to know everything about their origin. “I dive into that time, and I just get obsessed with the history of it.” 

His collection is broad, ranging from vintage to ultra-rare to modern, vibrant pieces he has designed himself. One Vuitton trunk from 1904 still has its ripped label stuck on from when it boarded the Queen Elizabeth in 1949 and is embellished with hand-stitched cotton LV monograms embroidered onto the leather. Another has a blue, green and pink leopard print—Tyler had it made for his Golf Le Fleur fashion label. “We found this hip dude in the middle-of-nowhere in France who is a trunk maker, and he made the first Le Fleur trunk for us that we sold in 2021,” he says. “He made two for me, and he made this super-special one-of-one Le Fleur piece.” 

Whenever he’s on tour, Tyler goes treasure hunting at antiques stores, but his latest acquisition came after he spotted a guy at Abloh’s Louis Vuitton show in Paris, for which he composed the soundtrack, holding a particularly striking Louis Vuitton carrier. “I’m like, ‘What the fuck is that?’ ” he says. “I needed it. I had to have it.” But this piece, which looks like the trunk version of his Cartier Crash with its asymmetrical wave shape and blurred monogram LV logos, is proving to be a bit more precious. “I will say, that’s the one trunk I didn’t throw in the middle of the street when I got it.”

Music 

To explain fully what music means to him, Tyler talks about death. He wants to explore loss—not of life but of opportunity. “I’m not scared of death in itself. What I’m scared of is the music that I won’t get to hear after I’m gone,” he says. “That’s the biggest bummer. Every day I’m on YouTube, scouring, looking, listening, clicking, learning. Like, dude, isn’t it crazy? One of your favourite songs of all-time, you haven’t heard yet?” The moment of discovering something new is magical. “Shout out Shazam. Shazam is truly like inhalers, insulin, the internet—like, greatest inventions of all time.” What’s the last track he identified with the app, then? The iPhone comes out. “ ‘Breeze’ by STUTS. I haven’t listened to it since, ’cause it was in a random restaurant, but it probably had some good chords that I liked.” 

The varied selection he picked for the shoot includes Brit acid-jazz group Jamiroquai, trip-hop pioneers Portishead, ’70s French jazz experimentalists Cortex and some classic Stevie Wonder, among others. 

Tyler is an equal-opportunity listener. “I love music so much, man,” he says. “I mean, I cry to that shit, right? All the time. “As much as I love music, I’m not a super snob—yet!—about hi-fi and McIntosh and stuff. But I do have some really nice speakers set up in my room, not too much low end, not too crazy. I listen to most of my music in the car, but sometimes, if an album’s coming out, I’ll invite friends over and we’ll listen to it in the front room, front to back. We don’t speak, we’re not on our phones. And that’s fun.” 

Watches 

Who says fast food isn’t good for you? The unlikely piece that informed Tyler’s current collection of predominantly vintage Cartier was a SpongeBob SquarePants watch he found in a Burger King kid’s meal when he was around 13. “I based a lot of my watch taste just off of how light it feels and how it could be colourful, too,” he says. “It doesn’t always have to be gold and iced-out.” In fact, that’s just not his style. “I’ve seen some Rolexes, vintage ones, I really like, but aside from that, I’m just okay with the Cartiers. They bring me joy.” 

As was obvious from his willingness to kneel perilously close to the swimming pool’s edge to get the perfect light for this shot, Tyler is decidedly not precious about his precious pieces. “I perform in my watches,” he says. “I’ll jump in the water. I’ll bike with them. I sweat in them.” Like Andy Warhol, he rarely winds most of them, not least that highly covetable Cartier Crash—a watch that became red-hot after being seen on both Kanye West and then Tyler a few years ago—which has never told the right time more than twice a day. “The battery doesn’t work,” he says. “The fucking strap is sweated through. It’s dirty; it has dents in it. I’m not spending all this money on these things that I claim I like and not enjoying them. I’m living in all of it.” 

Each piece is loved for different reasons. Speaking about his striking square-faced, red-strapped Obus—a Cartier from the 1980s he successfully bid on at a live auction in Monaco in 2021—he likens its oversized blue Roman numerals to a Picasso, saying it looks sketch-like, whereas the strap reminds him of places he has stayed in Rome and Paris. “It’s [like] these super-over-the-top gaudy hotels where it’s lamps everywhere and red velvet, and it’s like, ‘Dude, I just need a bed,’ ” he says. 

As for his Crash, he loves its references, intended or coincidental, to surrealism, with which he is well versed, reeling off modern adherents Marion Peck and Mark Ryden: “I love these things that are regular, but kind of skewed.” 

“I based a lot of my watch taste just off of how light it feels and how it could be colourful, too. It doesn’t always have to be gold and iced-out.”  

Ferrari may be the most recognisable supercar manufacturer on earth. Throughout its 80-plus-year history, the company has introduced some of the most legendary and desirable sports cars ever made. Hard to believe, but founder Enzo Ferrari viewed the road-car company as something of a necessary distraction, a way to make money to support his ultimate lifelong passion—racing. This is the story of the intensely private, ruthlessly domineering, obsessive, and somewhat tragic figure who founded a juggernaut Formula 1 team, and then built the world’s most highly-desired sports cars to support it.

Motor-Obsessed in Modena

Enzo Anselmo Giuseppe Maria Ferrari was born in February 1898 in Modena, a city in northern Italy. The Ferrari family were working-class people—Enzo’s father Alfredo had a small workshop where he did fabrication and mechanical work for the local railroad. Enzo had little formal education, instead working alongside his father in the workshop. When he was 10 years old, Enzo witness the event that would set him on the course of his life’s work: He watched as Italian racing driver Felice Nazzaro won first place in the 1908 Circuito di Bologna, an automobile race held on the roads of the nearby city of Bologna. From then on, Enzo Ferrari dreamed of becoming a racing driver.

Ferrari served in World War I with the Italian army, but was discharged in 1918 after becoming gravely ill during the flu pandemic that swept through Europe. He had already been subject to great personal loss, witnessing as his father and his older brother Alfredo Jr., known in the family as Dino, died from the flu. Family tragedy would come to define Enzo Ferrari’s life.

Once a Racer, Always a Racer

In 1919, Enzo Ferrari competed in his first automobile race, driving for Costruzioni Meccaniche Nazionali, a small automaker in Milan. The following year, Ferrari was hired as a professional racing driver for Alfa Romeo, then one of the most dominant automakers in European racing. The talented Ferrari won three Grand Prix races in Italy in 1924.

In these early days, auto racing was often a gruesome sport. As a professional competitor, Ferrari witnessed the deaths of two of his driving heroes, Ugo Sivocci and Antonio Ascari, and the experience affected him deeply. Despite his obsession with racing, Ferrari would later admit that he competed “halfheartedly” in the wake of these deaths. But as his fervor behind the wheel began to wane, Ferrari was developing a new interest in how racing was managed from behind the pit wall. When Enzo’s son Alfredo was born in 1932, the new father quit driving race cars and focused on building and managing his own racing team.

That team was called Scuderia Ferrari (literally, “Ferrari Stables,”) and from the start it was home to the best racing drivers, including legendary pilot Tazio Nuvolari. The Ferrari team soon adopted the logo of the black prancing horse, once worn as a good-luck charm by World War I Italian fighter pilot Francesco Baracca. The stallion appeared on the Ferrari team’s Alfa Romeo race cars, but would soon come to be associated with Ferrari’s own automotive creations.

The Founding of Ferrari

Amid long-simmering disagreements, Enzo Ferrari ended his relationship with Alfa Romeo in 1939. He started a company in Modena manufacturing race-car parts, but with the outbreak of World War II, Ferrari was forced to turn over his factory to be used by the Mussolini government’s war effort. The facility was destroyed by Allied bombing, forcing Ferrari to move production from Modena to Maranello. In 1947, Enzo Ferrari officially launched the car company that still bears his name to this day.

From that moment, Enzo Ferrari viewed the Alfa Romeo racing team as his ultimate rival. The first Ferrari race cars entered competition in 1948, and the following year, drivers Luigi Chinetti and Peter Michell-Thomson cinched Ferrari’s first major victory at the 1949 24 Hours of Le Mans. In 1950, Formula One was established; Ferrari entered in the inaugural Driver’s World Championship, and is the only team to have competed in every season of F1 racing from its inauguration to the current day. The Ferrari racing team nabbed its first F1 Grand Prix at Silverstone in 1951, and won the F1 championship in 1952 and 1953, sealing the newly-formed company’s reputation as an F1 juggernaut—and vanquishing rival Alfa Romeo.

Road Cars to Fund Racing

The very first automobiles to bear the Ferrari name were built in 1947, when the company turned out two examples of the 125 Sport. The first road-going Ferraris were built in 1948, and soon, the company was turning out front-engine, V-12-powered sports cars and grand tourers.

Famously, Enzo Ferrari viewed his company’s business in road-going cars as a necessary but not-very-enticing way to make money to fund the company’s racing efforts. Soon, though, Ferrari’s output of sports cars would greatly exceed the number of race cars the company sold. Enzo Ferrari himself had little interest in sports cars, which at the time were raw, punishing machines with little concession to comfort. For his own daily driving, Enzo preferred opulent grand-touring cars, and he often chose to ride around in a chauffeured luxury sedan.

Tragedy and Enzo

Enzo Ferrari’s life was often punctuated by great tragedy. He was known to keep a distant relationship with his team’s racing drivers, seemingly as a way of preventing his own emotional hardship in an era when racing drivers often died in competition. In 1956, Enzo suffered the greatest tragedy of his life when Dino, his beloved son, died at age 24 from complications of muscular dystrophy. Dino had learned engineering and design alongside his father, and in the months leading up to his death, had been working on development of a V6 racing engine. In tribute to Dino, the series of V6 and V8 engines that stemmed from his engineering work were known as Ferrari Dino engines, and the Ferrari company went on to build a Dino line of road cars using variants of these engines. After Dino’s passing, Enzo Ferrari spent the rest of his life in mourning. He wore black clothes every day, and made daily visits to Dino’s grave.

Flirting with Ford, Committed to Fiat

In 1963, Enzo Ferrari began secret conversations with the Ford Motor Company. The American automaker was interested in taking over Ferrari, which would have made Enzo a fabulously wealthy man, but the founder withdrew from negotiations at the last minute, as Ford would not let him maintain full independent control over the racing division. Ferrari had been riding high in sports-car racing, winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans six times in a row from 1960 to 1965; incensed, Ford Motor Company launched a no-holds-barred effort to topple Ferrari, culminating in the Ford GT40 winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans four times straight from 1966 through 1969.

The company’s finances were still in dire condition, and in 1969, Enzo Ferrari sold 50 percent of his company to Italian automaker giant Fiat. While he stepped down as director of Ferrari’s production-car division, the agreement left Enzo fully in charge of Ferrari’s racing programs, and had Fiat paying royalties for use of Ferrari’s facilities in Maranello and Modena.

Later Years

It’s reported that Enzo Ferrari rarely left his hometown region of Maranello and Modena after the 1950s, and never attended any races taking place outside of Italy in his later years. He was an intensely private person, ruling Ferrari largely from behind the scenes, and was rarely interviewed or seen publicly. Enzo had an illegitimate son, Piero, with his mistress in 1945, but the son was not recognised as part of the Ferrari family until Enzo’s wife died in 1978. Piero Ferrari now serves as a vice-chairman of Ferrari, owning roughly 10 percent of the company.

Enzo Ferrari died in 1988 from complications of leukemia, at 90 years old. He had just witnessed the unveiling of the Ferrari F40 supercar, which would go on to become legendary in part as the final Ferrari model approved by Enzo himself. He was buried in a private ceremony attended only by immediate family, and his death was not announced until after his funeral had been concluded. A few weeks after Enzo’s death, the Ferrari F1 team took first and second place at the Italian Grand Prix, the only race not won by McLaren in the 1988 F1 season.

Enzo Ferrari was posthumously inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 1998, and added to the Automotive Hall of Fame in 2000. In 2002, Enzo Ferrari’s life and legacy were honoured when the company launched the Ferrari Enzo, a mid-engine supercar built in limited numbers and priced at $650,000—the fastest and most expensive Ferrari built to date.

When news broke that 81-year-old Hermès heir Nicolas Puech was planning to leave his $20 billion fortune to his longtime gardener, eyebrows were raised from here to France—though not necessarily among the fashion set. From Yves Saint Laurent’s Jardin Majorelle in Marrakesh to Hubert de Givenchy’s decades-long collaboration with his dear friend, client and legendary green thumb Bunny Mellon, a well-tended garden has always been one of the ultimate expressions of truly great taste (Mellon’s gardening hats and smocks were custom-made Givenchy, bien sur).

“Gardening is therapeutic for me, and I eagerly anticipate spending time in my garden out East during the summer and fall,” says Todd Snyder, who recently collaborated with the owners of Windham, NY-based boutique Gardenheir after learning about their work from colleagues. “While I may not be a horticultural expert, tending to my plants for the upcoming seasons brings me joy.

Can you wear gardening clothes in the city? The Gardenheir founders answer your most pressing questions.

It stands to reason that a fashion designer would take a natural shine gardening, not only given the play of color and scale and the desire to achieve an ideal composition but the simple seasonality of it all. For a profession that must constantly work in the future tense, such a hobby offers an opportunity to slow down while still planning ahead. Much like a creative establishing a brand’s DNA over many seasons, the greatest gardens take time to mature. “The appeal of this collaboration stems from our shared commitment with the Gardenheir founders to modernize traditional field clothing while preserving its genuine functionality and purpose,” says Snyder.

“We are on the cusp of another shift in menswear, where the outdoors and a connection to nature is becoming more and more desired,” he adds, noting that the market’s desire for stylish “workwear” is showing no signs of waning. Last summer appeared to mark a pivotal moment when Loewe’s Jonathan Anderson tapped renowned green thumb Charlie McCormick—1/2 of one of Britain’s most stylish couples along with decorator extraordinaire Ben Pentreath, whose clients include the Prince and Princess of Wales—to front a campaign promoting the Spanish luxury brand’s new range of fruit and vegetable-scented candles.

Ditto multi-hyphenate Jasper Conran, who despite having recently opened a boutique hotel in Morocco and designing clothing and home decor, appears to be most at ease in his glorious English garden. Perhaps that’s how he manages it all with such style? And I’d be remiss to not mention Flamingo Estate, one of the most exciting brands to emerge in recent years, which grew out of a single Los Angeles garden and produces small-batch items such as local honey made in partnership with likeminded celebrities such as Jane Goodall.

What to do should you have been born with a black thumb? “We completely understand that there are plenty of others who’ve discovered us and have no experience or interest in gardening . . . at least not yet!” say Gardenheir founders Alan Calpe and Christopher Crawford. In fact, I know several stylish New Yorkers who swear by the duo’s cork-lined, Italian-made clogs that come in a rainbow of colors.

Do Calpe and Crawford worry at all about it being a fleeting trend? “We’re flattered that Gardenheir draws in a fashion or design-driven customer. But we know the trendiness of things can come and go,” says Crawford. “While gardening is certainly having a moment, our feeling is that gardening ultimately isn’t a trend, but rather a classic that is just starting to be recognized in the United States the way it has in Europe and other parts of the world for quite a long time.”