Time is of the essence in our new Winter 2024 issue. We showcase the highlights from the recent Watches & Wonders fair in Geneva, including the best in men’s and women’s haute horology and get to know the young social media stars shaking up the watch scene.

Every minute counts as we discover everything there is to know about whisky, sing the praises of timeless Naomi Campbell, and turn back the clock with a visit to the world’s best skin clinic for men.

Elsewhere, we dawdle in Double Bay, the exclusive Eastern Suburbs enclave that is undergoing a renaissance, and spend time in a new Sydney parfumerie and a private gallery advising canny art investors.

On the travel front, we make haste while the sun shines and head to Rajasthan and Paris, before whiling away the hours in Mexico and Australia’s first truly private island. After all, time is the ultimate luxury. Make the most of it while you can.

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When the Art Basel fair opens in Switzerland in June, it will do so with a certain swagger. Art currently tops Knight Frank’s Luxury Investment Index, with prices rising by 11 percent in 2023; by comparison, the values of rare whisky, classic cars, handbags and furniture fell. Transaction volumes are also on an upward trajectory; 39.4 million buys were logged globally last year, with figures more pronounced at the “affordable” end of the scale.

That doesn’t mean the action has stalled at the pinnacle of the market—far from it. In May at Christie’s in New York, Andy Warhol’s Flowers (1964), a huge 208 cm by 208 cm fluorescent silkscreen, fetched US$30.5 million (around $46 million), while Georgia O’Keeffe’s close-up oil painting Red Poppy (1928) secured US$14 million (around $21 million). Spring auction sales across the metropolis approached US$1.4 billion (around $2.1 billion), confirming the Big Apple’s reputation as the city whose art market never sleeps. 

In this context, the importance of how to invest wisely and ensure the sound provenance of your purchase comes into even sharper focus. Enter Jesse-Jack De Deyne and Boris Cornelissen, whose A Secondary Eye gallery functions are both a private space with rotating exhibitions, and somewhere serious investors can buy and sell with confidence.

“We offer access to some of the finest works entering the secondary market in Australia and operate with a stringent provenance framework in place,” says De Deyne from the company’s top-floor space overlooking leafy Queen Street in Sydney’s Woollahra.

The gallery launched in May with a presentation of rare works by Rover Thomas, the late East Kimberley artist who represented Australia at the 1990 Venice Biennale—which will not come as a surprise to those in-the-know, as De Deyne specialises in Australian Indigenous art and comes to Sydney with a background as a director at Maningrida Arts & Culture in Arnhem Land, Northern Territory. Cornelissen, meanwhile, is a former contemporary art specialist from Sotheby’s in London and Hong Kong.

“We are most effective when a prospective client comes to us with a specific artwork in mind,” explains De Deyne. “They may have recently been to Canberra to visit the highly regarded exhibition of Emily Kame Kngwarreye at the National Gallery of Australia and there is a specific period of the artist that they are drawn to. Through our contacts, we may be able to help source available related works that would not necessarily appear at auction.”

Though A Secondary Eye was founded in 2020 in Brisbane, De Denye says the larger pool of collectors in Sydney drew him and his partner south. The new gallery’s private aspect seems to be a key selling point for the duo, who prize discretion above all else.

“Whereas auctions are publicly advertised, a private dealer can offer a work discreetly to a handful of clients without over-exposing it,” says De Denye. “And we can also present works in a more considered way through curated, high-quality exhibitions that tell the story of each work.”

Follow A Secondary Eye here for future exhibitions. 

Last summer, when Aston Martin unveiled the Valour—a $1 million-plus V-12 model with a manual transmission and limited to 110 examples—Aston’s Formula 1 driver Fernando Alonso was intrigued. Yet the former F1 World Champion challenged the British automaker’s bespoke division, Q by Aston Martin, with a commission that called for the Valour’s comely design but would be built as a lighter, more muscular, and more track-focused expression. The result was the extremely lithe and powerful Valiant.

Priced at what Aston Martin cites as “upwards of £2 million (more than $3.75 million AUD), the Valiant is, effectively, what you’d get if Alonso was allowed to design a homologated race car for the road. The Valiant’s output is owed to the same 5.2-litre, twin-turbo V-12 engine given to the Valour, though engineers have recalibrated it to squeeze out an additional 21.6 kW, bringing the total to 547 kW, while both models deliver 6,400 kgm of torque. And the six-speed gearbox employs a manual and mechanical limited-slip differential.

We recently got a sneak peek at the full carbon-bodied Valiant at Aston’s New York City showroom, and a number of the design flourishes leap out: those 21-inch forged magnesium wheels with carbon aero discs (inspired by the 1980 RHAM/1 “Muncher” Le Mans car); the Kamm tail, featuring that handsome ducktail sweeping up below the fixed wing; the quad-exit titanium exhaust; and the removal of the sides of the transmission tunnel in order to expose the linkages before rising to a gated shifter.

What’s happening within the chassis is equally artful. Take the mechanical limited-slip diff, selected over an e-diff due to its positive throttle engagement out of corners. “We carefully focused on the ramp angles of the diff to give optimum balance for stability on turn-in and corner exit,” says Simon Newton, Aston Martin’s director of vehicle dynamics. And no, it doesn’t have rev-match; drivers will, according to Newton, get “the full experience of working harder.”

Then there are the Multimatic Adaptive Spool Valve (ASV) dampers, largely reserved for race cars like the Ford GT. The ASV units afford higher levels of response, simultaneously adjusting each corner unit in less than six milliseconds for optimal performance and handling. Newton cites the integration of the ASV dampers as the largest engineering challenge of the project, adding that now “it’s part of the fabric of the car.”

The real validation, though, will come when Alonso first hops into that custom Recaro seat and hurls the Valiant around an F1 circuit. “Fernando will drive it at Silverstone, and then we’d like to give him other environments, such as Nardò Ring [in Italy] and some tracks in southern Spain,” says Newton, who mentions that Alonso will also have road time in the test mule since “working on the road as well is a key part of the Valiant.” Newton is anticipating feedback around what Alonso loves most about a car, “a good front end with good turn-in response.”

The fact that all 38 examples of the Valiant are already accounted for is no surprise. “A V-12 manual is increasingly rare, but demand is there,” acknowledges Alex Long, the marque’s head of product and marketing strategy. “In pairing [a manual] with our V-12, it brings alive the engine; you feel the torque in a completely different way than when a torque converter smooths it out for you.”

Long admits that developing this new V-12 power plant, which Aston will use through 2030, has been a “massive investment on our part, one we sweated over on whether to double down on,” but believes the team chose wisely, opining that “EV sports-car demand isn’t there.” More V-12 manuals will be emerging from Gaydon, per Long, though they will be in very restricted volumes.

As for the Valiant, the public will get an opportunity to see (and hear) it sprint up the hill at the 2024 Goodwood Festival of Speed, where it will be piloted by Alonso, of course. Deliveries are scheduled to begin in the fall.

Find out more about Aston Martin’s plans for the Goodwood Festival of Speed.

If you were wondering whether Jaeger-LeCoultre could top its 2023 Reverso novelties—yes, we’re still dreaming about the Reverso Tribute Chronograph—you’d be wrong to doubt the 190-year-old watchmaker from the Vallée de Joux.

Okay, so we didn’t see any collector favourites in Reverso or Polaris models, but the brand did put on quite a show with four new reveals—the Duometre Heliotourbillon Perpetual, Duometre Quantieme Lunaire, Master Ultra Thin Perpetual Calendar, and Duometre Chronograph Moon—highlighting its more intricate, high horology skills as it sets out its stall for 2024.

The latter was one of the standouts of the fair. Unveiled in 2007 as a chronograph, the new piece has been reimagined as a celestial complication. Available in platinum, and pink gold, the new Duometre iterations come with an entirely new calibre, dial and case, and is an elegant expression of the company’s watchmaking ethos.

The Calibre 391 introduces a fully integrated in-house movement that utilises a manually wound mono-pusher chronograph, a moonphase and night-day complications, as well as two power reserve indicators and a seconde foudroyante (flying seconds) display. Activate the mono-pusher and the hand runs to a remarkably precise one sixth of a second.

The new Master Ultra Thin Perpetual Calendar, on the other hand, will appease traditionalists with a refreshing update to its case and dial design. We get a new pink gold model with a midnight-blue sunray dial—as well as a significant increase in power reserve; 70 hours, to be exact.

jaeger-lecoultre.com

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Read more about this year’s Watches & Wonders exhibition at robbreport.com.au

Anyone on tick tock knows that today’s status-obsessed youth is under the spell of fine fragrance. The more obscure, the better. Junior voluptuaries these days are bewitched by esoteric trails like Xerjoff Erba Pura and Creed Aventus. Not surprisingly, there has been an uptick in the theft of rare and expensive perfumes, with many department stores keeping them locked away. Libertine, a new temple to haute parfumerie in the stylish heart of Sydney’s Paddington, would benefit from hiring security guards. A boon to local devotees and anyone looking to broaden their scent IQ, the place carries Xerjoff and Creed, and a slew of other cult brands, including Amouage, Roja, Memo, Parfums de Marly and Mizensir. 

It’s enough to drive a perfume apostle to distraction. Created by interior designer du jour Tamsin Johnson, the unisex store recalls classical pharmacies down to the bespoke timber cabinetry and brushed metal railings. Stained oak French chiffoniers and marble plinths teem with flowers, candles, room diffusers and, of course, the world’s finest perfumes. 

A lush courtyard offers respite from the perfumed splendour, and opens onto a section in the back that serves as an event space and stocks limited-edition fragrances (some selling for up to $3,500) alongside a selection of curios and homewares.

Owner Nick Smart wanted “to create a space that hasn’t been seen in Australian beauty retail”. With his new 200 m² flagship, Smart has exceeded his ambition, creating an unrivalled olfactory adventure that is so dizzying, it occasionally resembles overeating chocolate. Or spending too many hours on TikTok.

Libertine Parfumerie, shop 6/134-140 Oxford Street, Paddington, NSW, is open from 10.00 am–5.30 pm, seven days a week.