Robb Read: Australian Designer Marc Newson
Newson reflects on the changing world, designing for the one per cent and what the future holds.
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“Fundamentally, my job is problem-solving. Designing always boils back to the fact you’re solving problems,” says Marc Newson, explaining his role as a designer with fingers in many, many pies.
“You’re a gun for hire. A troubleshooter. Why are you doing it otherwise? The reason you do this is you’re either dissatisfied with the way things are or something needs to be improved. So clearly, my job relies on the reality that there is a degree of dissatisfaction and an unworthiness in products out there. If everything was perfect, I’d be out of a job.”
As one of the world’s most influential modern industrial designers, it’s much easier to list what the Sydney-born, UK-based designer’s Midas pen has not touched in his pursuit of perfection. His oeuvre spans furniture, jewellery, luggage, aviation, timepieces, interiors, homewares, marine, footwear, technology and aerospace. His client list includes Louis Vuitton, Hermès, Nike, Hennessy, Dom Pérignon, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Georg Jensen, R.M Williams and Riva; and his CV reads creative director of Qantas and special projects designer for Apple (where he helped design the Apple Watch).
Newson’s most famous pieces are arguably the Lockheed Lounge, Embryo Chair and Ikepod watch. The latter is a cult-status watch company he co-founded in 1994 and departed in 2012—a disappointing victim of a lack of resources more than anything, he says.
“The Ikepod was an unmitigated commercial failure, but the fact that the watchband lived on in the Apple Watch is an indication it wasn’t the product that was at fault,” he shrugs.
The company has been recently resurrected by its new owners, without Newson or his cofounder Oliver Ike. Blurring the line between art and design, Newson is the only designer to be represented by the contemporary art heavyweight Gagosian Gallery; and his work sits in the collections of National Gallery of Victoria, The Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, V&A Museum, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Vitra Design Museum, Israel Museum and Musée des Arts Décoratifs. If you don’t know him by name, you will surely know the 56-year-old visionary by design.
The day we speak, the United Kingdom, which has been Newson’s home since 1997, has been on COVID-19 lockdown for mere weeks. The designer is holed-up in the rural splendour of the Cotswolds district, attempting to work from home across his own design studio and LoveFrom, a new and super-hyped design firm co-founded with friend and former Apple design chief Jony Ive.
“It’s been fantastic because it’s given us a moment to breathe,” he says of launching the latter amid global chaos. “There was a point where opportunities were piling up, and I don’t mean to sound ungrateful but [recent events] have provided a really interesting opportunity to reflect on what’s important.”
Newson labels himself a pro-multitasker, but also admits he’s never known any other way. “Thankfully, nothing has been cancelled, but some things have been slowed. Honestly, for me in my current situation, that’s welcome respite from the usual frenetic, nonstop pressure.”
We’re speaking while he’s on an ‘essential’ run, stretching the legs of his vintage Aston Martin DB4. The Aston, as it turns out, had a flat battery that resulted in him needing to be rescued by a family member, and a return phone call. An inconvenience to Newson, but a forgivable one because the DB4 is, after all, one of the most beautiful Aston Martins ever created—and one of many classics that make up his car collection.
“I have a bunch of old sports cars—Bugattis, Astons, Ferraris and Alfas,” he says. “The DB4 is one of the more drivable cars I have… well, usually,” he says, laughing. “I’ve had it for a long time—I bought it with my very first pay cheque.”
Such chatter brings us to the subject of modern car culture. As a vintage car lover, bona fide problem solver and one-time car designer (a concept for Ford in 1999), how does he feel about the EV-olution?
“I’m not much of a modern car person,” he offers. “Obviously it’s good that emissions are being reduced, but I’ve been quite vocal about electric vehicles—I’m just not convinced they fundamentally address the problem. I would much rather have seen the fuel cell championed—that’s far more sustainable.”
Newson has been an outspoken critic of modern automotive design for some time (“It’s sort of gratuitous”) though he also owns a couple of contemporary cars, including a Range Rover that he accepts may be a cliché, but is innocuous design-wise.
“For me, there’s a world of difference between older cars and new cars. I mean, they kind of have nothing to do with each other, really, in my mind. The values that I respond to in older cars. It’s like anything, if something is well-made and not inherently disposable, it’s just far more sustainable by nature.”
Despite attending art school in the mid-’80s, Newson found himself gravitating towards design. He insists there was not one moment where he felt he was on the road to fame—rather, a trail of toil that saw him work in Japan, Italy and Paris, the latter where he eventually set up a studio.
Even so, Newson’s curved, futuristic designs came to define the aesthetic of the late-’90s and early-’00s. “It’s much easier to see in retrospect,” he says, retaining a nuanced Australian accent.“
At the time, you’re so immersed in it, you don’t see the forest for the trees… But yes, now and again I have the opportunity to sit back and look at [earlier] stuff.”
He points to his work with Ford on its strikingly fun 1999 concept car. “I’m constantly reminded by people both in the automotive industry and outside of it, about how contemporary it is, which is a great compliment.”
Indeed, the now 21-year-old Ford 021C would easily rival the hype-filled new Honda E on several fronts, not least its unique sense of charm.
Line up the big hitters of the last century—from Le Corbusier to Dieter Rams, Florence Knoll Bassett to Zaha Hadid—and often a designer’s success isn’t defined by their time, but their outlook on it. Newson doesn’t design for the now, he designs for the future.
“I’ve been working on an office chair now for like, seven years,” he sighs. “It’s completely and utterly insane. It shouldn’t take that long! But it’s not unheard of for some projects to take five years. So you need to be able to look to the future—if you can’t, then everything you do will be obsolete by the time it reaches the public.”
The world being in a state of current uncertainty begs the question: how does he troubleshoot for global flux?
“You just ignore the pace at which things are changing,” he says. “I don’t think about it. You can’t. If you do, you’ll be dumbstruck.”
Newson, who talks in what seems like a long series of ellipses, takes a lengthy pause. “Anyway, even though things are moving so quickly—and I’m not talking about tech, I’m talking about aesthetics—fundamental values always hold true.”
His formula, he eventually offers, is simple: do things at his own pace, on his terms, sticking to his guns. “You have to be mindful of the world we live in but not get bogged down by it,” he says.
The tales of Apple’s inner-utopia have become the stuff of legend, especially among the design and tech communities, and Newson does nothing to shatter the myth. From the beginnings of their partnership at Apple, Newson says he and Ive had a synchronistic way of working—a philosophy that they will carry into LoveFrom (the company’s name itself is a nod to Steve Jobs’ from-the-heart creative ethos).
Indeed, a lot of it comes from a common problem-solving attitude, but also, Apple gave its team the freedom to work as such.
“With Apple, more than an aesthetic, it was a philosophy,” Newson says of working with the tech giant. “Things are done in a very singular way. Problems and goals are identified early on and constraints don’t become the parameter that dictate the way something is brought to market. If a piece of kit doesn’t exist, they will simply invent it, the production line that goes with it and the economy that surrounds it.”
This is not how most companies work.
“Industry generally works in a far more reactive way… It’s a bit like trying to figure out a better way to mend a flat tyre when you’d be better off just rethinking the wheel, so you never had flat tyres.”
Right now it’s hard to talk about manufacturing without exploring the notion of sustainability—a term that Newson finds as irritating as “wearable” and, well, “luxury”.
“It’s just become this blanket term that has found its way into our language,” he says. “There are a million aspects to sustainability. Material sustainability, philosophical sustainability and the whole question of obsolescence… I’d like to think that I’m designing things that are not designed for landfill. That’s the worst demonstration of everything bad about our society, in terms of consumption.”
He adds: “I think for people like me, for designers to create great things, industry needs to get on board or to evolve in a way like Apple did. Where design and industry have completely, I believe, meshed.”
Granted, Newson’s biggest critics all seem to have the same issue with his work: it’s designed for the one per cent, the privileged. Jet pack prototypes, million-dollar chairs, special-edition fountain pens, speedboats—he’s even designed a $38,000 shotgun for Beretta, named the 486 by Marc Newson. But he argues that the elite have a conscious for craftmanship.
“Take the role of the Louis Vuitton luggage that I’ve designed. One of the really interesting things, and one of the reasons I respond positively to working with companies like that, is that everything they make is repairable. The alternative would be to design for some company that mass produces things, makes them far more accessible to the general population, but far worse for the environment because they simply can’t be repaired and end up on a rubbish pile.”
Newson recalls a quote from former Hermés CEO Jean-Louis Dumas (‘It’s not expensive, it’s costly; there’s a big difference’) before revealing that two megayachts he recently designed are being built.
Newson believes they could end up being among the biggest in the world, at least in terms of tonnage.
“It’s easy to poo-poo an oligarch who spends half a billion on a boat,” he offers. “But the reality is, as absurd as that is, it provides livelihoods for many, many thousands of fine craftspeople and enables fine crafts and engineering expertise that would cease to exist otherwise.”
There are many arguments about the role of design, or rather, what defines ‘good design’. For some, it’s form met with equal function; for others, that balance is asymmetrical. In
Newson’s case, being art-trained has sometimes meant his works blur the lines. Like his beloved DB4, they’re not always highly functional, but their beauty endures.
Take his famous Lockheed Lounge, which holds the record for the most expensive design object sold at auction (securing $4.69 million in 2015). Newson will readily admit that it’s not the plushest of chairs—but if you’re looking at his work through the same lens as a La-Z-boy, then it’s not for you.
“I’m designing sculpture or furniture or whatever you want to call it,” he says of his niche. “You can sit on these things. I don’t discourage people to sit on these things,
but they’re not much more comfortable than a bus stop. They have a function, but their primary function is not that. They have a different function.”
Newson is from the school of thought that design, at the very least, should provide choice. “One of the things that I love about design, it’s not like architecture in the sense that it’s imposed upon you,” he says. “If
you have to go to a certain building to work every day, and you hate it, there’s not a hell of a lot that you can do about it. Design has a much greater ability—you can either take it or leave it.”
This piece is from our new Design Issue – on sale now. Get your copy or subscribe here, or stay up to speed with the Robb Report weekly newsletter.
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How the Most Rare and Valuable Watches Are Traded Among Elite Collectors
Some of the world’s most interesting watches spend decades being traded privately before we learn about them.
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.
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When it comes to drinks, James Bond may be best associated with a martini—shaken, not stirred, of course. But the secret agent has been known to enjoy a glass or two of bubbly as well.
Champagne Bollinger has long been the Champagne of choice for Bond, and now the house is honouring that relationship with a special-edition bottle that commemorates the 60th anniversary of Goldfinger.
Whether you’re a Bond fan or a Champagne connoisseur, the $5,950 Champagne Bollinger 007 Goldfinger Limited Edition package is meant to appeal to both sensibilities.
The star of the show is the Champagne, of course: Here, Champagne Bollinger is offering a 2007 vintage Magnum, made from hand-picked grapes and aged 17 years in the house’s cellars. Spicy aromas on the nose are contrasted with notes of fruit, brioche, and honey. The Champagne has been packaged in a bespoke Globe-Trotter Air Cabin Case and comes with four Champagne Bollinger 007 glasses in which to enjoy the bubbly. Limited to just 200 individually numbered pieces, it’s a true collector’s item.
Champagne Bollinger has enjoyed a lengthy relationship with the James Bond franchise, dating back to when Roger Moore popped the first bottle in 1973’s Live and Let Die. Since then, the two have become almost inseparable, and Champagne Bollinger is proudly being served at the very first official James Bond bar, which just opened in London. If you can’t snag the limited-edition set for yourself, you can at least imbibe in a glass of the good stuff at the 007 at Burlington Arcade.
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While it’s unlikely that many of us can channel the special agent when it comes to his escapades and hijinks, we should delight in the fact that we can embrace our inner Bond by sidling up to the 007 bar or throwing back a glass of the Champagne Bollinger 007 Goldfinger Limited Edition. It’s exactly how our favorite M16 agent would want us to honour him.
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Golden Touch
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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.
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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.
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Hibiki 40 Year Old Resets the Bar for One of Whisky’s Most Exalted Names
The legendary blender reasserts itself in the industry’s uppermost pantheon with its oldest and rarest blended release ever.
Over the last decade, whiskies from Suntory’s famed Hibiki stable have gone from a top-shelf staple to the new byword for luxury in the increasingly rarefied world of Japanese whisky. As stocks of its famed age statement blends drew ever lower, the air of exclusivity around the distillery grew and grew – something that has stuck around even as the brand’s new flagship blend, Harmony, became more readily available once more.
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As with Hibiki’s other blends, Suntory’s Chief Blender, Shinji Fukuyo, has spent years perfecting a blend that brings some of Japan’s oldest and finest spirits into perfect harmony – achieving a smoothness and complexity that takes the brand’s hallmark qualities to a new plane. Single malts from Yamazaki, Hakushu, and Chita all feature, having been individually aged for four decades to form a true expression of the place they were made, before making their way into the final blend.
Truly a multi-generational blend, Hibiki 40 Year Old is designed not just as an expression of the skills and expertise passed down through generations of individual distillers, but that of Fukuyo’s forebears, legendary Suntory blenders Shingo and Shinjiro Torii.
The result is a final liquid rich with sweet fresh fruit, light citrus zest, and spice, supported by a luxurious undercurrent of acacia honey and dried fruit. Each crystal bottle is adorned with a mother-of-pearl inlay and decorated with a handcrafted label from Japanese washi artist Eriko Horiki.
While age statement single malts in the four- and five-decade category have become increasingly the vogue in recent years, never before has a blended whisky been attempted with such old stock—a unique challenge for its maker.
“Behind the elegance and bloom that is typical of Hibiki, there is a sense of subduedness,
like that of an old temple, and a wabi-sabi patina due to the long aging process,” says Fukuyo. “I would like people to enjoy the pure and pure aroma that has been sharpened over the years; the tranquility of old temples and storehouses and the nostalgic warm feeling that accompanies them.”
Limited to just 400 bottles, Hibiki 40 Year Old will release on October 4th, with bottles retailing at $75,000.
Australian fans of the brand will have the unique opportunity to immerse themselves in the Hibiki 40 Year Old experience, including a taste of the exalted liquid, at an exclusive event at Clare Smyth’s Oncore on October 24th, 2025. Tickets are available for $1,800 per person.
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White Lotus-ing? How Hit Films and TV Shows Are Inspiring Elite Travelers to ‘Set-Jet’ Across the Globe
It’s not just The White Lotus. Prestige TV and blockbuster films set in far-flung destinations are driving bookings like never before.
“As seen on TV” may have lowbrow connotations, but the recent glut of award-winning shows and films set in alluring, far-flung locations is causing an unprecedented run on the world’s best hotels. Call it set-jetting: planning your vacation around a destination featured in a popular series or movie. And while romantic suites and beloved characters have gotten people on planes since the golden age of film, what has changed is how central beautiful venues have become to plots.
“The way that The White Lotus used the destination to tell the story was really unique,” says Misty Belles, an executive at the global travel-adviser network Virtuoso. It also made its settings—the Four Seasons resorts in Maui and Taormina, Sicily—nigh un-bookable. And it’s hardly the only example: “Paris wasn’t hurting for eyes, but Emily in Paris showed the city in a more playful way,” Belles notes. “And people weren’t exactly flocking to Richmond before Ted Lasso.”
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The trend is so strong that a property doesn’t even need to be connected to a show to benefit from its boom. Henley Vazquez, cofounder of the New York–based travel agency Fora, points to Bridgerton’s impact on English estate hotels.
“Heckfield Place [used to be] a hard sell,” she says of the five-star Georgian mansion in Hampshire. “Now, people are dying to go there. It wasn’t featured in Bridgerton, but it’s just that kind of place.”
Others insist on the real deal. Jennifer Schwartz, managing director of Authentic Explorations, works with one family to build trips based on the Game of Thrones universe.
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“They went out of their way in Portugal” to visit Monsanto, the setting for Dragonstone in House of the Dragon, she notes. “It’s definitely a criterion on which they choose where they want to vacation.”
For travelers who want more than simply to follow in their favorite character’s footsteps, London’s Black Tomato takes things several steps further. Since 2023, it has planned high-octane itineraries based on the James Bond franchise and works with the films’ producers, Eon Productions, to make you feel like an MI6 agent. (Some trips even offer lessons with Daniel Craig’s stunt double, Lee Morrison.)
The 007 success has inspired more such trips. “We’ve just recently launched itineraries inspired by Yellowstone and Ripley, focusing on Montana and Wyoming and Italy, respectively,” says cofounder Tom Marchant.
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Still, it’s important to remember that sharp camerawork—and editing—accounts for a lot of the on-screen magic. Schwartz, of Authentic Explorations, notes that “the White Lotus hotel” in Sicily is “not super accessible, but it’s filmed as if the beach is right there.” In reality, the shore club from the show’s second season is 133 miles away. “People go to the place and they’re like, ‘You have to get in a car to go to the beach? What do you mean?’ ”
So where shouldn’t you go? Netflix’s The Perfect Couple will likely send hordes to Nantucket next summer, and The White Lotus’s third season, set on the Thai island Koh Samui, has already caused a local spike—and it’s not even on the air yet.
Bookings of Virtuoso’s properties in the region are up 38 percent since the show was announced. Luckily, Belles says, the effect doesn’t linger. “We typically see a good two-year impact on a set-jetting destination.”
