Something in the Air  

Tasmania is a haven for the slower side of life—unless you happen to be driving the new electric Porsche Taycan over heart-stopping, rally-bred roads.

By Noelle Faulkner  11/12/2024

You have to hand it to the Tasmania tourism department; its “come down for air” campaign manages to capture the essence of the island’s magic in less than five words. Granted, there are few places with so much inspiration to work with. Australia’s most southern state is a haven for the creative, the adventurer and the culinary devotee; a destination where ancient forests whisper into the wind, where sunlight ricochets off rugged rock faces, where one can feel extremely small under the vast, starry skies. It is also home to some of the country’s most pleasurable driving roads.

Porsche Taycan Photo: Porsche

Over a few days in April and May, the Apple Isle hosts the world-famous Targa Tasmania. Launched in 1992, Australia’s first tarmac-based rally event runs along the winding, undulating public routes between Launceston and Hobart, and represents the perfect marriage of homegrown motorsport culture and the awe we feel towards our lands. Porsche has won more tarmac rally victories in Australia than any other marque, including 11 in Tassie. So naturally, a single-day road trip here calls for a machine stamped with the gold, horse-adorned crest; a car that understands the roads and nods to the growing movement towards sustainable living and respect for the natural world. Meet the new Porsche Taycan.

Porsche Taycan Photo: Porsche

As the world’s first high-performance EV from a major (and legendary) sportscar manufacturer, Taycan set the bar upon arrival in 2019—a time when Tesla dominated the EV market—to show car enthusiasts, pleasure-seekers and EV-skeptics exactly how much soul an electric vehicle could have. Where Elon Musk’s brand had built a culture of hype and bragging rights around straight-line speed, Porsche did what it does best and engineered an automobile designed for real-world drivers, one that wowed critics for not only performing like a Porsche sportscar but having the brand’s trademark driving feel. Five years on, Porsche has just dropped the latest Taycan, which has undergone the biggest and most comprehensive updates so far, making it meaner, faster and more efficient.

Porsche Taycan Photo: Porsche

Seven new variants are on offer in Australia, ranging in price from $174,500 (Taycan) to $373,600 (Taycan Turbo S) and across two body shapes, a sedan and the wagon-like Cross Turismo. The majority of the Taycan model updates have occurred under the skin or inside the cabin (including a new infotainment and connectivity system, and optional passenger screen), but it has undergone some nips and tucks on the exterior in the form of new lights and new front wings. 

Our adventure will take us from Hobart to Swansea (about midway up the east coast), along some of the roads used in the Targa. As oft happens on press junkets, a posse of test cars are lined up outside the airport, collectively resplendent in the fresh Tasmanian air. I’ve been allocated the second-from-the-top Turbo in Porsche’s gorgeous Oak Green with a sexy smooth black interior, and the cooly athletic-looking 4S Cross Turismo in a new sage paint called Shade Green Metallic—which we will pilot first.

The Cottages accommodation at Piermont, Tasmania.

As we leave Hobart central, all 380 kW (440 kW with overboost) and 710Nm of the 4S Cross Turismo is eager for the open road. Heading west via the Tasman Highway, we drive past Montagu Bay and over the mighty Tasman Bridge and River Derwent, and up out of the traffic towards the Mount Faulkner Conservation Area. The tarmac ahead to Molesworth is full of twists, turns and a handful of little hairpins, with 8 km of road being one of those Targa Tasmania stages. With a couple of clicks, I switch into driving mode into Sport. Instantly, the steering becomes more direct, the acceleration bursts into life, the all-wheel drive shifts to a rear-bias, and the battery’s cooling and heating strategy flicks over to focus on performance. All in all, it’s a more dynamic and very Porsche-y drive, and despite having a bigger body shape, the 4S Cross Turismo hides its size very well. 

Porsche Taycan Photo: Porsche Taycan

The new upgrades to the Taycan include a bigger, yet lighter, battery and motor efficiency upgrades, so our 4S Cross Turismo now has 601 km of range (587 km on the Taycan Turbo), better energy recuperation and faster charging that can take up to 320kW DC of charge (50k W more than before) which is excellent news for range replenishment for the impatient—around 315 km of range in just ten minutes, if the conditions are right.

Porsche Taycan Photo: Porsche

The spirited forest drive leads us to The Agrarian Kitchen in New Norfolk, one of Tasmania’s not-so-best-kept culinary secrets. Part garden, part cooking school, part award-amassing restaurant, the building was a former mental asylum, giving it that colonial spookiness that permeates a lot of Tasmanian heritage architecture. More than anything though, the eatery is a pure embodiment of garden-to-table eating. Many of the ingredients deployed on the $195 tasting menu are foraged or sourced from the garden grounds or local farmers and fishermen. You can expect a little Japanese flair here too, courtesy of co-founder and head chef Rodney Dunn, who worked under Tetsuya Wakuda at Tetsuya’s in Sydney.

The Agrarian Kitchen

Dragging oneself away from The Agrarian Kitchen is no small task, but the second half of the trip awaits—and it’s a potentially thrilling two-hour backroad run up to Swansea, swapping from the 4s into the Turbo variant. The route heads back down through Molesworth and over the Derwent River again, this time taking the Bowen Bridge to the north, towards Mount Direction Conservation Area. As the road snakes and undulates, an optimal opportunity arises to put the new Porsche Active Ride suspension through its paces. The beauty of the updated system is in the way it levels the car so you feel planted, dynamic and in control, even during hard braking, steering and exhilarating acceleration. 

Porsche Taycan 4S Photo: Porsche

Free of traffic, things get more jazzy, and we hit another serpentine Targa stage on Grasstree Hill Road. I say free of traffic, but a universal road rule is wherever you are in the world, there will always be a caravan. And in Tasmania, they multiply. Aside from the Taycan Turbo’s mammoth output of 520 kW/940 Nm and blinding 0-100km/h 2.7-second leap, it’s also packing a party trick up its sleeve borrowed from the Porsche 911: the push-to-pass feature. When pressed, it can elicit (depending on the variant) an extra 70 kW of boost for up to 10 seconds. What does this look like? Imagine the overtake of your dreams, if said dreams meant driving a Porsche that could emulate the Millennium Falcon going into hyperdrive. Goodbye caravans.

The Cottages, accommodation at Piermont, Tasmania.

Eventually we arrive at our final destination, the broody coastline of Swansea, for an adrenal reset. Our stay is at Piedmont Retreat, a villa-style colonial residence nestled in the heart of the coastal wilderness. That evening, I take a walking trail map from my room in search of pademelons (Tasmania’s cutest marsupial residents) and reflect on the all-electric Taycan in the context of these adventurous lands.

Both car and island offer the opportunity to seek thrills but bestow even more than they claim on paper. It’s the little man-made engineering tricks that make the Taycan seem like a Porsche first, EV second, surpassing what most sports-car punters would expect from an electric machine. On the other hand, it’s the uncontrollable forces of nature that ensure Tasmania feels incomparable to anywhere else on earth, reminding you take in some of that much-advertised air and exhale. Only then can you experience the relief of knowing the pleasure of driving is not dead. porsche.com 

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Omega Just Unveiled 9 Watches in Its New Constellation Observatory Collection

The line-up shows up a bevy of metals and colours, too, as well as two new calibres.

By Nicole Hoey 31/03/2026

Omega’s latest watch is in a universe of its own.

The Swiss watchmaker just unveiled its new Constellation Observatory Collection today, the next step in its Constellation lineage and the first two-hand hour and minute timepieces to ever earn Master Chronometer certification. And if you were paying attention to any of the dazzling watches spotted at the Oscars this year, you would’ve caught a glimpse of the new line already: Sinners star Delroy Lindo rocked one of the models on the Academy Awards red carpet, giving us a pre-release preview of the collection.

Developed at Omega’s new Laboratoire de Précision (its chronometer testing lab open to all brands), the collection houses a set of nine 39.4 mm watches. The watches underwent 25 days of scrutiny there, analysed via a new acoustic testing method that recorded every sound emitted from the timepiece to track irregularities, temperature sensitivities, and more in the name of all things precision. (Details such as water resistance and power reserve are also thoroughly examined.) This meticulous process is all in the name of snagging that Master Chronometer label, meaning that the timepiece is highly accurate and surpasses the threshold for ultra-high performance. The Constellation Observatory Collection has now changed the game, though, thanks to its lack of a seconds hand.

A watch from the Constellation Observatory Collection, with the Observatory dome on display. Omega

“Until now, precision certification has required a seconds hand,” Raynald Aeschlimann, president and CEO of OMEGA, said in a press statement. “The development of a new acoustic testing methodology has made that requirement obsolete. It is this breakthrough that has enabled us to present the Constellation Observatory, the first two-hand watch to achieve Master Chronometer certification.”

In addition to notching its place in history, the collection also debuted a new pair of movements: the Calibre 8915 and the Calibre 8914, each perched on a skeletonised rotor base. The former’s Grand Luxe iteration will appear on the 950 Platinum-Gold model in the collection, which offers up that base in 18-karat Sedna Gold alongside a Constellation medallion in 18-karat white gold with an Observatory dome done in white opal enamel surrounded by stars. The second Calibre 8915, the Luxe, will find its home on the other precious-metal models in the line, either made with the brand’s 18-karat Sedna, Moonshine, or Canopus gold seen across the case, the hand-guilloché dial, and, of course, the movement itself. (Lindo chose to rock the Moonshine Gold on Moonshine Gold iteration, priced at approximately $86,000, for Sinners‘s big night at the Oscars.) As for the Calibre 8914, it can be found in the collection’s four steel models.

 

Omega Constellation Observatory Collection
A look at a gold case-back from the collection. Omega

Each model is a callback to myriad design features on past Omega models. That two-hand dial, for one, comes from the 1948 Centenary (the brand’s first chronometer-certified automatic wristwatch), while the pie-pan dial (seen in various blue, green, and golden hues throughout the line) and that Constellation medallion caseback both appear on watches from 1952. The star adorning the space above 6 o’clock also harks back to 1950s timepieces from Omega. And to finish off the look, you can opt for alligator straps in a variety of colours, or perhaps a gold iteration to match the precious-metal models; the brick-like pattern on the 18-karat Moonshine bracelet was also inspired by Omega watches from the ’50s.

We’ll have to keep our eyes peeled for any other Constellation Observatory timepieces (or any other unreleased models from the brand) at the rest of the star-studded events headed our way this year—perhaps the Met Gala?

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Best Combustion Supercar: Ferrari 12Cilindri Spider

A modern classic in the making, combining naturally aspirated power with elegant restraint to deliver performance that feels as refined as it is visceral.

By Vince Jackson 20/04/2026

In a year when carmakers of all persuasions sheepishly extended hyperbolic electric targets, it’s fitting that the monastic puritans of Maranello—who, lest we forget, won’t finally yield to the sin of battery power until October with the Elettrica—opted to make combustion their major power play.

As an uncertain future of AI omnipresence barrels towards us, the 12Cilindri—an analogue, open-topped tribute to Ferrari’s late-’60s/early-’70s grand tourer, the Daytona—represents a defiant fade into the past, a pause for breath, a fleeting return to The Good Times when nascent technology provoked excitement rather than existential dread.

Guiding this automotive nostalgia trip is, as the nomenclature suggests, a naturally aspirated 6.5-litre V12 engine, generating an unceasing wave of power as it sears towards the 9,500 rpm redline with relative nonchalance. That’s because the 12Cilindri is not a mouth-foaming attack-dog. It scales performance heights with the refinement of the finest Italian works of art; its “Bumpy Road” mode facilitates comfy al fresco GT cruising, and even the imperious powerplant is mannerly at most speeds.

For all the yesteryear romance, progressive technologies and engineering, such as a world-class 8-speed transmission, advanced electronic aids and independent four-wheel steering, are baked into the deal. The 12Cilindri’s clean, stark design somehow toggles between retro and modern; and while vaguely polarising, one can’t ignore its magnetic road presence.

In terms of aesthetics, Ferrari describes the 12Cilindri as being “ready for space”; in many ways, a fantasy vehicle that transports users to another dimension is probably what the world needs right now.

The Numbers

Engine: 6.5-litre V12

Power: 610kW

Torque: 678 Nm

Transmission: 8-speed dual-clutch auto

0-100 km/h: 2.95 seconds

Top speed: 340 km/h

Price: From $886,800

Photography by SONDR.
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Inside Loro Piana’s First Sydney Boutique

A first Australian address brings the Italian house’s textile-led approach to retail full circle.

By Horacio Silva 26/03/2026

On the fourth floor of Westfield Sydney, near the Castlereagh and Market Street entrance—in the space formerly occupied by Chanel—Loro Piana has opened its first Australian boutique. It is a significant address change for that corner of the mall, and a meaningful one for the Italian house, which has sourced Australian merino wool for decades but until now had no retail presence here.

The facade is understated—creamy, tactile, more about texture than theatre. Inside, the store unfolds across a single, expansive level divided into distinct men’s and women’s wings. The separation is clear without being heavy-handed: womenswear leads from soft accessories and leather goods into ready-to-wear, while menswear occupies its own assured territory, with tailoring and outerwear given proper breathing room. Footwear (supple loafers, luxurious slides, pared-back sneakers) is particularly strong, and the sunglasses are a quiet standout: mineral-toned frames with a disciplined elegance that feels entirely of the house.

That same restraint carries into the interiors, where the surfaces do much of the talking. Walls are wrapped in the company’s own linen and cashmere; carpets are custom, dense underfoot, softening the acoustics and the pace. Oak and carabottino wood add warmth without fuss; marble accents introduce a cool counterpoint. The effect is a composed space calibrated around material, proportion and restraint.

The Spring 2026 collection now in store underscores that sensibility. Silhouettes are elongated and fluid; cashmere, silk and featherweight merino move in sandy neutrals, creams and muddied earth tones, with flashes of marigold and pale turquoise breaking the calm. Tailoring is softly structured and projects confidence without aggression. Leather goods arrive in buttery skins that feel almost pre-lived, as though time has already worked its magic.

What distinguishes Loro Piana, particularly in a market that has grown noisier by the season, is its refusal to perform luxury in an obvious register. There are no oversized insignias telegraphing allegiance. Instead, the status is encoded in fibre count, in hand-feel, in how a coat hangs from the shoulder. It assumes the wearer knows and, crucially, does not need to announce it.

Sydney’s luxury landscape has matured in recent years; global houses no longer test the waters but commit to them. Yet Loro Piana’s arrival feels different. It is not trend-driven expansion but material logic. For a country whose sheep stations have long contributed to the house’s fabric story, this boutique reads almost as a thank-you note written in cashmere.

 

Photography: Courtesy of Loro Piana.

 

 

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This Stylish, Water-Resistant Dopp Kit Might Be the Last One You Ever Buy

Patricks’s limited-edition wash bag is designed to keep liquids in and out, so it can come along wherever your travels take you.

By Justin Fenner 11/03/2026

If all you’re going to do is look at it, a leather Dopp kit from a fashion house is a fine choice. But if you take travelling seriously—and do it often, for business, pleasure, or both—such a bag will inevitably end up blemished with droplets of water or stained by errant flecks of toothpaste. Get stuck with a cavalier team of baggage handlers, and it can even get soaked in your favourite fragrance or anti-ageing serum.

But Patricks, the high-performance Australian grooming brand stocked in Harrods and Bergdorf Goodman, has a solution. Its limited-edition bathroom bag, called BB1, is purpose-built to protect everything inside and out. Conceived by industrial designer George Cunningham with brand founder Patrick Kidd, the cuboid design is executed in a water-resistant recycled nylon you can rinse clean. It’s lined with a thin layer of shock-absorbing foam to safeguard your products, but if a bottle somehow gets cracked in transit, the two-way water-resistant zippers and sealed seams (which keep liquids from seeping in or out) ensure that whatever leaks won’t ruin your cashmere. Inside, two dual-sided zippered compartments are ideally sized to fit toothbrushes, razors, and other small essentials.

And though its clean lines and rugged construction make it undeniably masculine, its greatest feature is borrowed from women’s makeup bags. Like the best of these, BB1 unzips to lie flat, giving you unobstructed access to everything inside. Well, you and the 999 other gentlemen who move fast enough to snag one. $289

Courtesy of Patricks

1. Hanging Loop 

The G-hook system isn’t just a stylish handle: You can also use it to hang the bag from a hook or secure it to your carry-on.

2. Two-Way Zipper

The closures are water-resistant in both directions, meaning liquids won’t get in or out.

3. Fold-flat Construction

BB1 opens to 180 degrees, letting you scan its 4.2-litre capacity at a quick glance.

4. Technical-Fabric Shell

The durable recycled-nylon is easy to maintain and woven to survive splashes and leaks from your go-to products.

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You Can Now Place Bets on the Future Prices of Rolex Models

And which models will get discontinued next, thanks to a new collaboration between Kalshi and Bezel.

By Nicole Hoey 11/03/2026

You can bet on pretty much anything these days, from when Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce will get married to who will be the next James Bond—and now that includes the Rollies on your wrist, or on your wishlist.

Prediction market platform Kalshi, regulated in the U.S., and luxe watch marketplace Bezel have teamed up on a new platform called Watch Futures that allows users to splash down cash on where they think the prices of a particular luxe timepiece are going, whether that’s a Rolex Submariner or a coveted Patek Philippe, Time & Tide reported.

You can also place a wager on which models might be discontinued, as well as any future launches from the top watchmakers on the new platform; with Watches and Wonders coming up, it’s certainly a well-timed launch that could see a lot of activity as a slew of new releases are announced at the event.

Watch Futures is all based on Beztimate, Bezel’s system (once used only internally) to help it accurately calculate the market price of a timepiece. It draws data from real-time transactions, live bids, verified sales, and other market offers to spawn its own series of independent valuation models to establish a watch’s value. From there, it’s up to bettors to place their wagers, and then the platform will showcase any price fluctuations or other updates as time goes on.

This new platform could have some pretty large implications for the watch industry.  As any horological savant would know, the internet and collectors alike are constantly chattering about which models are on the way out or when a certain timepiece of the moment’s time in the limelight will fade, of course, having a large impact on the prices of said model. And now, a Watch Futures user can have a direct stake in where a model is headed—and if they own said timepiece, it can be a protection from dwindling values on the marketplace, say, if a user places a bet on their model losing value and that actually comes to fruition.

To see Watch Futures in real time (and scope out how some pieces in your collection are faring), you can use the Kalshi app or its website.

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