Big In…
These six up-and-comers have built their businesses in far-flung corners of the world. Could they be the next big names in global luxury?
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A few names reign supreme when it comes to luxury—and you know who we’re talking about. They tend to be based in Western centres of commerce and design: New York City, Paris, London, and Switzerland, to name a few. But a new wave of stars across disciplines have honed their talents in more far-flung locales and are on the cusp of conquering the U.S. market. From Australia to India, China, Lebanon, and Turkey, these six up-and-comers are primed to have a breakout year on the global stage.
AUSTRALIA| Patrick Johnson
Patrick Johnson knows all about the tyranny of distance. When we meet in late January, the Sydney-based designer and tailor behind the P.Johnson label has just returned from a month of skiing in Verbier with family and friends. He is home for a microsecond before jetting off to do a photoshoot in London, attend a trade fair in Milan and visit suppliers in Tokyo.
“I’m usually on the road for at least four months of the year,” he says, enjoying a temporary respite in a downstairs area of the chic Eastern Suburbs home he shares with his wife, the interior designer Tamsin Johnson, and their two children. Johnson, 44, is dressed in a pair of green double-pleated pants, an Oxford shirt and a T-shirt, all of his own making; his left arm is adorned with a vintage Reverso watch that his wife bought him for his 30th birthday, a P.Johnson bracelet, two Cartier ‘Eternity’ rings and a customised signet ring on his pinkie, which used to have a smile emoji but now bears a turtle.
“I always try to make a little time for fun and inspiration when I travel, but it takes its toll. The upside is, you know, we get to live in Australia.” Home serves him well. Since hanging out his shingle in Brisbane in 2008, Johnson has invigorated the moribund Australian menswear scene with his modern take on perennially cool threads that nod to style heroes like designer Giorgio Armani and Gianni Agnelli, the Italian industrialist and cofounder of Fiat. (An enormous black and white image of the turned-out tycoon greets customers at the entrance to Johnson’s artfully appointed Paddington boutique in Sydney.) In addition to the original Brisbane store, he now has three locations in Sydney, with another three in Melbourne, and one each in London and New York. Then there are the regular trunk shows in Perth, Adelaide, Auckland, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Los Angeles and Miami. When does he find the time to sew?
Not content with having become the go-to haberdasher for dapper gents—from the banking and legal set to more creative types who turn to him mostly for made-to-order pieces though he also sells ready-to-wear and accessories—he recently expanded into women’s wear. Just as with his men’s offerings, which avoid frippery in favour of stylish wardrobe staples that won’t scare the cat, his refined women’s ready-to-wear clothes are released in small capsule drops and eschew the built-in obsolescence of trend-driven labels.
“I am very conscious of waste in our business,” he says. “We try to operate in a way that we don’t contribute to landfill too much, and we don’t overproduce things. We used to wholesale, but it got out of hand, and I thought, hey, what are we doing here? We have a responsibility not to mindlessly feed the consumption cycle.”
Besides, he continues, the best part of his job is interacting with his clients to find out what is essential to them. “It sounds nerdy, but I love being a merchant and I love retail,” he gushes. “And by working with a client and being able to say, Hey, get that one for now, let’s think about that piece for next time, it allows us to grow with them and put the brakes on overconsumption.”
Unlike many fashion brands, it doesn’t sound like he is in a rush to expand his mini empire, even if a luxury conglomerate like LVMH or Kering comes knocking. “Look, never say never, and those companies have some impressive aspects to them,” he says. “You need some growth to stay alive, but I’ve got no interest in being the biggest. As naive as this sounds, I want to be the best retailer in the world. That’s really what I’m trying to do.” —HORACIO SILVA
MEXICO | Olivia Villanti
“Quiet Luxury” may be the catchphrase these days, but Olivia Villanti has been crafting her own timeless, high-quality, understated aesthetic since she founded her Mexico City–based womenswear label four years ago.
After transitioning from dance to a career in fashion—which included stints at a PR agency and the now-defunct Lucky magazine—Villanti began working as a copywriter for J. Crew during the Mickey Drexler days and later became the editorial director at its Madewell offshoot. In 2019, the Rhinebeck, N.Y., native relocated to Mexico City, where her husband is originally from; the couple planned on staying only a year, but then the pandemic hit.
Villanti found herself rummaging through her in-laws’ fabric and shirting studio, Gilly e Hijos, which her husband’s grandfather started after he emigrated from France. “He developed relationships with some really amazing mills,” she says. Now run by Villanti’s uncle-in-law, Bruno Gilly, the atelier specializes in bespoke men’s shirting using European textiles. “I was so charmed by the fact that you could walk into the offices of my in-laws as a male client and choose from eight different collars, inner linings, buttons, and cuffs,” Villanti says. “I don’t know many people that are offering this experience to women.”
In 2020, she started sampling patterns and designed a tunic-length tuxedo top that became the jumping-off point for her own made-to-order clothing line, which she named Chava Studio, using a Mexican slang term for a young woman. The online-only brand quickly gained an ardent following for its fresh take on shirting: a juxtaposition of traditional men’s tailoring with a decidedly feminine perspective that results in button-front styles with details such as cocktail cuffs, cutaway collars, and puffed sleeves. Swiss cotton is her go-to fabric, but she also uses silk and linen.
Villanti, 42, has no formal design training, yet she learned the ins and outs (say, how to properly fuse interlining to a collar) under Gilly’s tutelage. His team of four seamstresses help produce the clothes, along with Villanti’s two tailors.
Chava has seven styles in its core collection and drops 10 to 12 limited-edition pieces each season. The runs are often in short supply because, to reduce waste, Villanti relies primarily on deadstock materials the atelier has archived over the years. She buys a few fabrics directly off the line, among them the white twill for Chava’s tuxedo shirt. But others, such as fine Alumo cotton, must be sourced seasonally, and the amount she’s able to acquire dictates how many shirts can be cut. In addition to shirting, Chava offers tailored basics in both ready-to-wear and made-to-measure options, including trousers, blazers, and even hair accessories that salvage fabric scraps. Prices for the fall collection start at $395 for a shirt.
For made-to-order designs, clients can send Chava their measurements, do a virtual session with help from Villanti, or make an appointment at the Mexico City showroom; Villanti also occasionally holds trunk shows in New York City and Los Angeles. For now, her focus remains on markets in the U.S. and Mexico, and she has recently started looking at bigger facilities to increase Chava’s output. On average, the company now produces fewer than 20 items per week.
“I love the idea of us growing, and it’s scary, but I can see how many more opportunities it would give us to play and come up with new designs more frequently,” Villanti says. As for where she gets her inspiration, “I’m going to say something obnoxious: me.” —ABIGAIL MONTANEZ
INDIA | Vikram Goyal
After quitting his high-finance job in Hong Kong in 2000, Vikram Goyal returned to his native India—and found his calling. The Princeton-educated Delhi native, who’d also worked for the World Bank in the U.S., saw opportunities in his home country as it unshackled itself from longtime economic protectionism. Media and telecoms were booming… until they weren’t. “It was buzzing when I came back here, and then the sector just imploded,” the now-59-year-old recalls. “But, at the back of my mind, I’d always wanted to work with something indigenous.”
So he ditched his finance career and took a leap of faith, first venturing into an Ayurvedic beauty line called Kama Ayurveda (since sold to fashion and cosmetics giant Puig) and then a design studio in New Delhi. He had no formal training but had been immersed in Indian crafts since childhood, when he took regular trips to Rajasthan to visit his grandfather, an avid collector of Indian miniatures. Goyal wanted his new enterprise to pay tribute to both that tradition and the man who schooled him in it by showcasing the artistry of the country’s metalworkers. His connections (Goyal descends from Udaipur nobility) and unusual approach to materials—swapping in brass for the more typical gold, for example—earned him major commissions domestically.
He has since spent more than two decades building his business into a 200-person atelier catering to India’s elite. Now, Goyal is about to make a splashy debut stateside. He has just signed with Los Angeles–based design gallery FuturePerfect, which will spotlight his collection in a stand-alone booth at this year’s DesignMiami in December, while his collaboration with wallpaper specialists de Gournay, taking inspiration from the 16th-century Book of Dreams, housed in Rajasthan, arrives this month.
Goyal, who studied engineering, provides creative direction and business acumen, but as he considers himself neither an artist nor a designer, he leaves execution to the dozens of artisans he employs. The studio focuses squarely on metal, whether brutalist objects or welded, sculptural furniture. Still, it’s best known for expertise in hollow joinery and repoussé, the painstaking technique in which bas-relief-style images are pounded into a sheet of bronze.
“It’s all to do with control—over your hands, your breath—so you have to be very calm to get it right,” he explains. “It’s not like wood, chipping off, because applying pressure in one area will be at the expense of what’s beside it.” The method is also time-consuming; it might take a team of six workers 10 weeks to finish a single ornate piece. Goyal likens the ancient process to “drawing, but with metal.” No wonder prices for small panels start at $20,000 and can run to $350,000 for a 30-foot-long mural.
Goyal believes the key to his success lies in vertical integration. In India, most craftspeople of this ilk continue to be self-employed, which limits their efficiency and, therefore, their output. Goyal has instead assembled a staff that can handle every stage of product development. “We have designers, engineers, architects, and artisans working collectively, which means we’re able to take risks and push the envelope,” he says of their experimental work: The new wallpaper, for example, is an expression of repoussé-like imagery but in a different material. And that’s not the only distinction between his studio and a traditional workshop. “The bulk of my senior management and designers are women,” he notes, “and I intend to keep it that way.”
The studio’s shimmeringly decorative work is intended to evoke Indian culture while still adopting a modern, international design language. “You see a lot of metal in India—it’s part of everyday life from surface decoration to ritual vessels—but you also see a lot of brass and gold across the Art Deco buildings in Paris or New York,” Goyal explains. “You don’t see that so much in contemporary product design—it’s all just a grayish tone.” He pauses. “That will change.” —MARK ELLWOOD
CHINA | Qin Gan
China has come to dominate industrial watchmaking to such a degree that some collectors dispute out of hand that a Chinese watchmaker, without European training or Swiss-bestowed credentials, is even capable of producing a truly fine timepiece—say, one with mirror-grade chamfered edges that meet elegant Geneva stripes running all the way into tight corners. But Qin Gan, of Chong-qing, an enormous city in the country’s southwest, is creating watches that do precisely that.
Though Qin has crafted highly complicated models incorporating tourbillons, chiming mechanisms, and even automata, it’s his refined time-only designs—the Pastorale I, released in 2019, and especially the Pastorale II, recently revised in 18-karat white or rose gold and priced at $46,000—that have serious collectors adding their names to his three-year waiting list: Many enthusiasts consider time-only watches to be the purest expression of mechanical and aesthetic harmony, to say nothing of dress watches’ growing cachet.
Though he has seen the Pastorale II only in photographs, Paul Boutros, head of watches for the Americas at Philips, says he is “extremely impressed with the overall design, size, proportions, and finishing quality,” from the black-polished components to the champlevé enamel. “That he executes all of the finishing work himself without a support network in China makes the watch all the more impressive.”
Hong Kong–based financier James Li, who owns timepieces from F. P. Journe and other high-end independent makers, has been waiting for his Pastorale II for three years and tells Robb Report that when he finally saw the prototype sample, “I was blown away. The impression it gives me is very, very high-end—high horology. Every angle you look at it from, you can tell design details have been paid attention to.”
Qin, 55, grew up in a milieu familiar to many master horologists: His father ran a small watch and clock shop, and Qin remembers him working on European models such as Rolex, Omega, and Enicar. “This was in the 1970s, toward the end of the Cultural Revolution,” he recalls, noting that his father’s clients were “mostly the elite people of the society—company managers, army officials, and individual merchants.”
Though Qin studied art history and visual art, he always gravitated back to horology. “But it wasn’t until 2005 that I started making my own watches full-time,” he notes. “That’s when I really began practicing the polishing seriously.”
As Qin further studied the watchmaking process in books and on the internet, he came to realize that the local equipment available to him was not up to snuff—so he built his own. He retired most of those DIY tools a decade ago and purchased “some really top-tier, top-notch machines,” he says, “for instance, the Geneva-stripes machine and some other small, modern machines for polishing.” For cutting gears and pinions, he uses a Swiss gear-hobbing device, which sits behind him as we speak, its familiar industrial-beige paint job and exposed drive belts looking decidedly mid–20th century.
Riccardo Svelto
Qin fabricates the majority of the parts himself, but he imports the mainspring, hairspring, and shock-absorption system from Switzerland and Germany and sources cases from China before hand-finishing them; all told, he’s working in the same manner as most individual makers of high-end watches, wherever they’re based. As for the notion that such a beautifully crafted watch could not otherwise be made in China, chalk it up to a long-standing Eurocentric bias within the collector community.
His countrymen in that circle, Li says, “are so proud that finally there is a Chinese watchmaker who can make fine pieces at this level.” For Li himself, he adds, it was “hugely, hugely” important that Qin has emerged in China.
One day, Qin would like to return to building more complicated watches. For the foreseeable future, though, he can produce about 15 Pastorales a year, meaning his client base will remain small by necessity. But his renown faces no such constraint. “The kind of people inquiring about my watches have been collecting for a very long time, and they tend to have a mature aesthetic,” he says. “That’s what resonates with my work.” —ALLEN FARMELO
LEBANON | Joelle Kharrat
Coming of age in Beirut in the 1990s, Joelle Kharrat was surrounded by elaborate gold necklaces and stacks of bracelets. “In Lebanon, there is really a culture around jewellery,” she says. “My mom used to wear a lot of jewelry, like all Lebanese women, so it really influenced me and has always been there.” Nevertheless, her namesake collection doesn’t look anything like the ornate creations typically worn in the region. In fact, you might be hard-pressed to find her pieces in stores there. “I don’t even try too much in Beirut,” says Kharrat, 46, though she remains based in the capital and operates her business there. “I don’t think they can understand the concept, because it’s a very different way of wearing jewelry here.” Abroad, however, her sculptural totem necklaces have been capturing the attention of aficionados in the U.S. and Europe since their launch in 2022.
Kharrat’s breakout success isn’t entirely a surprise. Her fashion-jewelry label, Jojoba, which she ran for 10 years until 2018, was well-received internationally and sold at major global luxury e-tailers such as Net-a-Porter and MatchesFashion. But after a whirlwind of events—from the pandemic to a financial crisis in Beirut to her father’s death—she stopped working for two years. That time, however, proved to be fertile creative ground. “I kept on drawing and drawing, and I don’t know why, but I kept on working on this totem, because I’m very inspired by Saloua Raouda Choucair,” says Kharrat, referring to one of Lebanon’s most acclaimed modern artists. “She did these totems and compilations of elements, and I kept on doing the same thing. I think I was going through a phase, and I was really lost, so I needed something very strong.”
Emerging from a need for an artistic outlet during a time of loss, the totems became symbolic talismans of her own transformation. “I always loved fine jewelry,” she says, “so when my dad passed away, I said, ‘You know what? I’m going to do what I like.’ ”
The pendants are made by local craftspeople and are available either in solid 18-karat gold or a mix of the precious metal with everything from diamonds, mother-of-pearl, and pink opal to turquoise and wood. Each piece of the totems unscrews along a central spine so that owners can connect or remove elements. “I love when people call me after and ask, ‘Can I add a piece? Can I add diamonds?’ ” says Kharrat.
Her inventive formula quickly took off. The hip Parisian boutique By Marie was the first to embrace her designs (she jets to her apartment in that city about once a month), and her necklaces can now be found in a few select retailers around the globe, from Tiny Gods in Charlotte, N.C., to Aubade in Kuwait. Three more will soon carry the line in the U.S., and a major online retailer is expected to follow. For now, she’s sticking to her singular style, with plans to introduce earrings and a bangle. “I just want to do it the way I’m doing it nowadays because it makes me happy,” she says. “I don’t want to push it, and I don’t want to be everywhere.” —PAIGE REDDINGER
TURKEY | Ali Sayakci
By the age of 26, entrepreneur Ali Sayakci had already carved out a successful career exporting marble from his native Turkey. Less than a decade later, he decided to dive headfirst into the marine industry. The self-described ideas man, who studied abroad in the U.K. and had extensive family connections to yachting, attended a maritime conference in England in 2011 that inspired him to create a new type of explorer yacht.
“At the time, explorers were highly functional vessels but were rather ugly,” the 46-year-old tells Robb Report from his new 90-foot model in Bodrum. “My goal was to make one that was sexier, and slightly faster, than the others on the water. I thought we could use the curves of the new Range Rover.”
Sayakci enlisted Dutch studio Vripack to make his dream of a sleek SUV for the seas a reality. “They were—they still are—the best at designing expedition vessels,” he says. Senior designer Robin de Vries finished drafting the first iteration in 2013, and Sayakci began building the inaugural hull in 2016, wrapping construction in 2018. He christened the 85-footer Rock. The name was a nod to not only his marble enterprise but also his family’s roots in mining—his grandfather was one of the world’s biggest boron suppliers, he says—as well as the robust nature of the go-anywhere cruiser. Sayakci took Rock to the Cannes Yachting Festival the same year and sold it on the first day. The Swiss buyer wasn’t the only seafarer impressed with its debut: One industry publication called it “a revelation in the yachting sector.”
That success prompted Sayakci’s wife to propose he take over her late father’s company Evadne Yachts in 2020. He obliged but decided to ditch the sailing ships the Istanbul yard had been producing and start an entire Rock line.
In the niche field of explorers, much larger players were operating in Italy, the Netherlands, and Taiwan, not to mention other Turkish outfits that had entered the fray as well, but Sayakci believed he had pinpointed latent demand. “I thought, you know, there will be more need for explorers with a contemporary style,” he says.
As predicted, the explorer segment has grown exceedingly popular over the past few years, with more yards catering to owners looking to traverse the remotest corners of the globe in the lap of luxury. Sayakci believes his Rock vessels have an edge thanks to the design team’s “very Dutch approach” to maximizing square footage on the steel-hulled yachts and using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to “solve the speed problem.”
Sayakci has also given the fleet his unique stamp while simultaneously putting his quarries to good use: Via a virtual tour of the new Rock 90 beach club, he points out the elegant marble furniture, plus some exterior metalwork inspired by his Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore. The vessel, christened Rock X, with a base price of roughly $7.18 million, was set to be displayed at the Cannes and Monaco yacht shows in September—but he may decide not to part with it. “She was built on spec,” he says with a smile. “I can keep or sell.”
The Rock lineup currently counts five models, ranging from the original Rock 85 to the nearly 138-foot Big Rock 140. Evadne has transitioned from building yachts “one by one” to what Sayakci calls a “production-line model,” meaning it can start turning out standardized platforms at speed. The yard has delivered four hulls in the past six years, with two more currently under construction. High-profile clients include a film producer in Hong Kong and an influencer in China. Sayakci says he hasn’t yet landed a U.S. client because he keeps selling the yachts before they can be seen at the stateside shows—but he’s confident that American buyers will appreciate his designs. “I think the best market for us is the U.S.”
Objectively, Rock’s momentum is a major achievement in an industry that’s slow to change, but Sayakci says that entrepreneurs like him seldom feel successful because they are “always looking forward.” To wit, he has just launched a new water brand. It surely won’t be his last big idea. —RACHEL CORMACK
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Home is Where the Art Is
Six standout Australian galleries to know now.
Australia’s gallery scene is booming. More galleries than ever before are going on the road to participate in art fairs in scene that is rapidly maturing. Meet the passionate local owners from around Australia who are energising the creative milieu with the abstract, the edgy, the Indigenous and the generally astounding.
Hugo Michell Gallery
The district may not roll off the artistic tongue like Paris’s Montmartre or London’s Shoreditch, and yet the prim hedges of Adelaide’s Beulah Park suburb provide cover to a stealth powerhouse of the Australian contemporary art movement, tucked away in a charming, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it converted Victorian workers’ cottage. Since 2008, the Hugo Michell Gallery has unflappably carried the torch for established and emerging acts with equal fidelity, across a broad sweep of mediums from photography to printmaking, textile to ceramic. “We try not to get caught up in the hype and handle each artist we represent with the nuance required for promoting their work,” says Michell, currently counting 28 artists on his books. One notable on this year’s busy docket is Melbourne-based Richard Lewer, a social realist—already snapped up by the National Galleries of Australia and Victoria, no less—who for a month from April 10th will probe the uneasy relationship between crime, sport and religion. While comfortable in the skin of his homely suburban bolthole, Michell is not averse to braving the rigours of the Australian art fair circuit (“They’re a bit of a circus, but who doesn’t love a circus?) and often undertakes house visits to acquaint himself with the whims of new customers. “One of the things that gives me the most joy is building a collection for a client,” he says. “We have worked with for 16 years, tailoring and sourcing works for them.” More proof that you don’t need a headline location to generate the biggest stories.
hugomichellgallery.com
Cassandra Bird Gallery
The art sphere often challenges the myth that married partners should not become gallerists—see Iwan and Manuela Wirth of Hauser & Wirth fame, among other examples. And so it is that Cassandra Bird and husband Fabian Jentsch are rapidly cementing a reputation as one the Australian art scene’s supercouples with their 2023-acquired Potts Point space, an expansive four-level heritage terrace fizzing with congeniality, making visitors feel like they have popped to a friend’s (expertly curated) home for elevenses. Which is no great shock: the property doubles as the duo’s own home. Bird brings a wealth of experience, and a hefty contacts book, thanks to long, respected stints in the Big Apple and Berlin, and nine years at Sydney’s RoslynOxley9 Gallery; Jentsch, meanwhile, is an experienced artist, exhibition maker and set designer. “We try to enthuse people, get them excited as we are about those we work with,” says Bird. Meander across the property’s wooden floorboards—perhaps diverting for a chat in the communal courtyard that doubles as a social hub and ideas-exchange forum—and you will enter the realm of Perth-born graphic painter Jedda Daisy-Culley, who has a hallway and wall dedicated to her work; venture upstairs and deep dive into locally based experimental photographer Laura Moore; head into the basement and peruse the collective works the Tennant Creek Brio, out of Warumungu Country in the Northern Territory. All 24 of the gallery’s artists unite under the theme of timelessness. “We are into investigating quality and showing transformational and breakout work from artists,” says Jentsch. “The work we choose must have something that is strong value for us.” Here’s to the sanctity of marriage.
D’lan Contemporary
It speaks volumes for the international reach of Indigenous art that D’lan Contemporary opened an outpost in New York long before expanding the gallery beyond its Melbourne roots to set up shop in Sydney. Then again, founder and director D’lan Davidson is not afraid of expanding his frontiers as a means of hawking Australia’s most vital cultural outpourings; in 2016, he left the Sotheby’s Australia auction house, where he was ensconced as head of aboriginal art, to launch D’lan Contemporary as the go-to gallery for secondary market First Nations art; and he recently travelled to Maastricht in the Netherlands for the prestigious European Fine Arts Foundation Art Fair, promoting a series of Western Arnhem bark paintings and works by Paddy Bedford, Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Rover Thomas and other. Closer to home, Davidson has surrounded himself with a team brimming with the requisite Indigenous art smarts, including chief curator and gallery director Luke Scholes. From May 8th-July 4th, the Significant exhibition, a mainstay of the Melbourne gallery for the past ten years, will show across all three of D’lan Contemporary’s locations. “Our exhibitions and all our advocacy work seek to further support and develop the burgeoning global interest in Australian First Nations art and artists,” says Scholes. As if further proof were needed of its commitment, the gallery donates 30 percent of its profit back to artists and their communities. Bravo.
N.Smith Gallery
Enter Nick Smith’s compact office and you notice how the walls are studded by the artworks of those he represents; this is a man, you feel, who has a more intimate connection to his stable than the average gallery chief—an instinct confirmed upon discovering that he has invested his entire life savings into the Surry Hills space. When we meet, Smith’s whiteboard is teeming with collaborative projects, hinting heavily at the kind of edgy, thought-provoking artists that his outfit—comprised of five full-time staff—is renowned for nurturing. “It’s constant, but amazing,” says Smith in his typically reserved manner, more studious scientist than reengage gallerist. “I wanted to contribute to culture in my own way.” The gallery’s current ascension allays any empathetic fears of impending financial doom. This past February, Smith—who cut his teeth at Philip Bacon Galleries in Brisbane and Sydney’s Sullivan+Strumpf—collaborated with the Australian High Commission in India to represent Darrell Sibosado at India Art Fair ’25, and throughout the year will be partnering with the Sydney chapter of Soho House to host a series of private viewings and artist studio visits. Even so, he now splits his time equally between private and public projects, often mentoring artists at all stages of their creative journeys. “It’s that forward momentum. It’s that feeling of progressions and going somewhere that I love,” says Smith. Indeed, the only way is up.
Palas
It is hard—nay, almost impossible—to imagine Palas founders Tania Doropoulos and Matt Glenn frantically trying to scoop up whoever is flavour of the month on Sydney’s perennially shifting art circuit. Here are young gallery partners prone to a slower, more considered approach, instead recruiting a tight roster of internationally famed artists, and choosing to nurture relationships that have been years, sometime decades, in the making. Case in point: video performance maestro Shaun Gladwell, who represented Australia at the 2007 Venice Biennale (a 20-year affiliate), and Melbourne-based artist and noise-musician Marco Fusinato (15 years), who also flew the artistic green and gold at the same festival in 2022. Add to that list Canadian multi-media artist Tamara Henderson and Irish sculptor Eva Rothschild, currently working out of London, and it is clear Palas have a formidable roll call to lean on. “We’re investing a huge amount of time into their processes as art makers,” says Doropoulos. “And I think by extension, we’ve got really good working relationships with other galleries throughout the world.” For its founders, the Palas gallery—which opened in Sydney’s resolutely hipster Waterloo suburb just over a year ago with a silkscreen painting medley by the aforementioned Fusinato—is somewhat of a flag-planting endeavour on home soil: both earned a certain amount of their stripes overseas—Doropoulos as former artistic director of Frieze London and Frieze Studios, and Glenn at Sadie Coles HQ, also in the British capital. Australian art disciples will no doubt be praying for a long domestic residency.
Coma
If Sotiris Sotiriou’s consciously balanced ensemble of black Saint Laurent suit, single gold chain and flash of bare chest are anything to go by, the Coma gallery founder wields a sharp eye—a handy attribute to have when your career depends on identifying aesthetic clout, what hits and what doesn’t. From humble beginnings in 2016 in a subterranean road space next to Elvis Pizza on Sydney’s New South Head Road, his enterprise gradually flowered, first to East Sydney, then Chippendale, before fully blooming at his current space in up-and-coming Marrickville, in what was once a coffee factory. The predominantly light-industrial area has witnessed around half a dozen new gallery debuts in recent years, and Coma’s door-fling, filled as it was with hip young Inner West couples sourcing bold, ambitious art for their homes and offices, suggests Sotiriou has timed his arrival to perfection. February’s opening exhibition was hosted by Australian (but Santa Fe based) figurative painter Justin Williams, whose approach riffs on the folkloric traditions of Russian and Polish art, rich with symbolism and psychological details; this work forms a striking counterpoint to the abstract expressionism of other Sotiriou recruits, such as Zara June Williams and her partner Jack Lanagan Dunbar. The Coma head honcho, who had a spell selling to wealthy clients at Nanda Hobbs, says that private clients now make up most of his customer base. This year, as he prepares to attend three international art fairs, he estimates his artistic head count to increase by 30 percent. He can, no doubt, also point you in the direction of a fine tailor.
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Car of the Year
Always an unmissable highlight of the automotive calendar, Robb Report ANZ’s annual motoring awards set a new benchmark among glorious Gold Coast tarmac.
Over two unforgettable days, our motoring sages and VIP guests embarked on an exhilarating journey from Surfers Paradise to Brisbane and back again—traversing an irresistible selection of terrain in our exotic rides, from deserted rainforest-lined b-roads to testing mountain switchbacks with dizzying—sometimes heart-in-mouth—views over the southern Queensland peninsula. And as befitting an event starring the crème de la crème of auto marques, we did so while savouring the best in luxury and gastronomy—capped off with an extraordinary superyacht experience at Sanctuary Cove.
The ten contenders for the Car of the Year were not the only dream machines on show. The first day’s adventure kicked off at the Langham Hotel and included a midday pit stop at the glorious Beechmont Estate, where our fleet of drivers were greeted by a stunning array of vintage cars exhibited in a concours d’elegance-style display.
The sumptuous feast for the eyes on offer at Beechmont, a quaint country village located between the Lamington Plateau and Tamborine Mountain, was followed by a meal for the ages prepared by executive chefs Chris and Alex Norman at the property’s hatted restaurant, The Paddock.
Then, itching to remount our steeds, it was time to hit the road again, with our drivers—all sporting Onitsuka Tiger’s new driving shoes—hightailing it to Brisbane and The Calile Hotel, a property which has been scooping accolades like Jay Leno collects supercars.
After some much needed relaxation by the pool, that evening the drivers and press were joined by local luminaries in the hotel’s private dining room. Over an extravagant banquet they got to compare notes on marvels of engineering and design that they’d had the chance to pilot all day. They were also treated to a showcase of spectacular Jacob & Co. timepieces and Hardy Brothers jewellery and an elegant sufficiency of 40-year Glenfiddich whiskey served in gold cups worth $60,000 a pop. It made for animated discussions and more than a little impromptu shopping.
And did we mention the luxury yacht experience? After a full itinerary of adventures on the road, the day ended with an invigorating late-afternoon of luxuriating aboard two new Riviera Yacht releases—the 6800 Sport Yacht and the 585 SUV—where our intrepid drivers and assorted press got to literally and figuratively take their hands off the wheel and make a case for their car of the year. As the forthcoming pages attest, they were more than spoiled for choice. But who would take centre stage on the winners’ podium?
OVERALL WINNER
BEST SPORTS CAR
BEST LUXURY HYBRID
BEST PERFORMANCE SUPERCAR
BEST ROADSTER
BEST CAR DESIGN
BEST ELECTRIC PERFORMANCE CAR
BEST SUV
Cruise along to robbreport.com.au/events for more supercars and luxury motoring.
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Cool as Ice
Mercedes-Benz’s CEO Ola Källenius is expert at racing a nearly four-tonne truck across a frozen lake. Can he steer the marque’s EV-focused future as adeptly?
Ola Källenius is standing in a cold, bare workshop just south of the Arctic Circle in his native Sweden. A heavily disguised prototype of the new electric G-Class SUV—not yet launched when we meet—has just returned from high-speed, low-grip testing on tracks cut into the frozen lakes nearby and is being hoisted into the air on a hydraulic lift for inspection. As it drips meltwater onto the concrete floor, Källenius, CEO of the Mercedes-Benz Group, eats his lunch (today, a premade sandwich and a carton of juice) and speaks in fluent German to the mostly Austrian engineers who spend months in this bleak locale ensuring that the company’s new models can cope with the types of conditions in which vanishingly few customers will ever actually drive. They discuss the truck’s handling on ice and the progress of its test program. Källenius compliments them on the car’s dynamics—how stable it remained even at speed, how safe he felt driving it—and asks them how long they’re here.
“There are some harsh realities to this job, and to the car industry,” he tells me later. “But this is what I love doing: spending time with our designers, or driving with you on an ice-lake in Sweden, or talking to these engineers. I wanted to congratulate them on what they’ve achieved. We get to enjoy a nice couple of days here, but they’re here for a long time.”
At 193 cm, Källenius might tower over most of them physically, but there’s nothing in his demeanor that hints at the disparity in their corporate statuses. Nor is this the kind of place you’d expect to find the head of one of the world’s great luxury brands: a man paid roughly $22 million last year to lead the 166,000 employees of a company valued at around $75 billion, whose founder, Carl Benz, invented the motor car and whose genuinely iconic logo has graced the nose of everything from popemobiles and Lewis Hamilton’s Formula 1 racer to the most expensive automobile ever sold at auction. In a recent report, investment analysts Bernstein described Mercedes-Benz under Källenius’s reign as a “four-wheeled cash-generation machine”.
Courtesy of Mercedes-Benz
But the celebrated car marques are not like luxury brands that make watches or couture or accessories or Champagne. Look beyond the alluring badge and bodywork for a moment: the objects Mercedes-Benz and its rivals produce are insanely complex, ever-changing and hugely capital-intensive—and must succeed in an utterly cutthroat market. Their impact on the environment and the economy has always made them perennial hot-button issues politically. But the electrification of the automobile has put these companies in the geopolitical crosshairs like never before, as governments swap tariffs and risk a global trade war to ensure that they keep their respective shares of the car industry, even as it undergoes an unprecedented transformation.
And of course, the cars need to be remade, too. Add the impact of electrification to Källenius’s own manifesto for Mercedes-Benz, and this storied marque is likely to change more in the next decade than it did in the previous 138 years. “It’s a once-in-a-century transformation,” he says. “We are reinventing our original invention.”
So who is the guy steering Mercedes through this tumult? What’s his plan? And what cars will he give us? Källenius has sat for plenty of interviews in his five years as CEO (his second five-year term is set to conclude in 2029), but this is the first time that he has offered anything more. Robb Report was invited to spend the weekend with him in Arjeplog, the tiny northern-Swedish town whose population swells fourfold each winter as the global car industry descends to test its secret new models on the area’s frozen lakes. Spy photographers abound, but to reduce the chance of its future lineup being scooped, Mercedes rents its own private expanse of sheet ice from a local landowner. I watch Källenius as he test-drives the electric G at his empire’s oddest and most northerly outpost, meets local staff and records social-media footage. He drives some other, more secret new electric AMGs that I am definitely not allowed to see, whose debuts are much further off and which, when not on the ice, remain hidden beneath their heavy covers outside the workshop.
Courtesy of Mercedes-Benz
Källenius has a reputation for being fearsomely intelligent, rational and efficient, but also not the type of hyper-alpha asshole who too often comes to lead a carmaker. Over the weekend, I see that sharpness not just in the logic of his answers, but in the nuance of the English prose, as perfect as his German, in which he delivers them.
I’m not sure I’d want those piercing blue eyes and that high-wattage intellect turned on me in a meeting if I didn’t have my numbers straight, but his non-asshole character dominates. It comes through in the easy egalitarianism he displays with the engineers in the workshop, or how he notices and thanks waitstaff, or the way he’s enjoying a casual dinner and a beer with a long table of employees of all stripes when I first arrive at the unglamorous Silverhatten hotel where he’s staying—a glorified bunkhouse for the United Nations of engineers and test-drivers who flock here. This is clearly a leader who sees the obligations of his office as clearly as its privileges: an attitude underpinned by a natural Nordic modesty and reserve.
Courtesy of Mercedes-Benz
“I guess your personality is something that forms in younger years, and I’m not sure you can fundamentally change it,” he tells me over coffee one morning. “There is a Swedish core in the way I act, and maybe most Swedes are not kick-the-door-down types. I believe this should be true for anybody who is at Mercedes or has the privilege to lead Mercedes: We are custodians of that star for a brief moment. It’s my job to hand it over safe and in better condition. The person is not the brand.”
Perhaps not, but the brand will look very different by the time this person is done with it in 2029. And you can add loyalty to that list of his qualities: Källenius has never worked anywhere else, having joined Mercedes-Benz in 1993 straight out of the Stockholm School of Economics, where he founded an American football team called the Traders, for which he was captain of the offense. True to form, he studied tapes of the Chicago Bears and New England Patriots in order to write the team playbooks. At Mercedes, he was a finance guy at first; an early posting took him to Alabama, to help set up the Mercedes factory in Tuscaloosa, where he became—and remains—a Crimson Tide fan.
In 2003, at the age of just 34, he was put in charge of the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren supercar project; two years later, he was given control of Mercedes-Benz High Performance Powertrains, the firm’s in-house Formula 1 engine-maker. After a year as vice president and CEO of Mercedes-Benz US International back in Tuscaloosa, he was recalled to Germany in 2010 to become vice president and managing director of AMG, Mercedes’s high-performance road-car division. Then came two board positions to prove his breadth of ability—sales and marketing, followed by research and development—before he ascended to the top job in 2019 at the age of 50.
The electric G-Class we’re about to drive together (now officially if awkwardly named the “G580 with EQ Technology”) is a neat encapsulation of many of the things Källenius has tried to do at Mercedes. First, it’s an EV, which fits his initial plan to make everything electric—“where market conditions allow”—by 2030. Second, it’s expensive, with a starting price in the US of $161,500 (around $257,000, though likely to cost more in Australia). Another critical if controversial part of his manifesto is to shift Mercedes upmarket; he spun off the truck business early and is currently in the process of dropping high-volume, low-margin models including the A- and B-Classes. And lastly, he wants new models to still feel like Mercedes vehicles, even if the design that underpins them is radically different from what came before. And the G-Wagen—with its gloriously anachronistic overengineering that you can feel and hear every time you clunk a door shut—epitomises the Mercedes ethos whether the vehicle is gas or electric.
Other new Mercedes EVs go much further in their innovation, gaining greater advantage from their electric drivetrains given that they were designed as EVs from the outset. They use Mercedes’s new MB.OS operating system with built-in AI and receive fresh design cues inside and out—not least the mad, vast, almost full-width hyperscreen user interface—rather than the same upright, rectilinear lines first sketched out to suit the needs of farmers and soldiers when the G-Class was introduced 45 years ago.
But as shorthand for old Merc meeting new, the electric G is perfect, and it’s pleasing to be driven in it by the CEO on whose watch it was conceived and executed. “Yes, this is an electric G,” he says as he drifts it across the glassy frozen lake, “but it’s 100 percent G. The most important box for any G-Class to tick is the Schöckl mountain in Austria, to earn that Schöckl-proven plaque they all have. I did five trips up and down it in the electric G in the autumn, and not only can it do the Schöckl, I felt it could do the Schöckl best of all.”
His stints at AMG, in Formula 1, and with McLaren have turned this “spreadsheet guy” into a skilled driver, though most Swedes seem to have the ability to safely slide a car on ice coded into their DNA. Even with the G sideways at around 110 km/h, a plume of snow and ice billowing high behind it, Källenius has enough spare mental-processing capacity to adjust the screen settings while telling a funny story about the very first time an electric G even crossed his mind.
He was at the Detroit Auto Show in 2018, when the company was first showing the revised G-Class. Arnold Schwarzenegger came to the unveiling and asked Källenius’s predecessor, Dieter Zetsche, if an electric version was in the cards. “Dr. Zetsche said, ‘Yes, of course,’ Källenius recalls. “I was head of R & D at the time, and one of my colleagues turned to me and said, ‘Do we even have an electric G in the plan?’ I said that I guessed we did now.”
Those less keen on electric cars than Arnie and Ola might be pleased by the fact that the ambition to be battery-only by 2030 has fizzled fast. Mercedes now predicts that EVs and plug-in hybrids will account for only half of its sales by the late 2020s, and the company is refreshing its range of gas engines to keep them relevant and selling deep into the 2030s. This is a systemic issue and no reflection on Mercedes products; Källenius has always averred “where market conditions allow”, and market conditions currently don’t. But the retreat is still slightly awkward.
Courtesy of Mercedes-Benz
“The early adopter phase is over,” he tells me. “Now we need to convince every customer. I think it would be a mistake to say, ‘Okay, electric is growing a bit slower, let’s sit back, wait, and not do anything.’ Because if you put product into the market that is so convincing that most customers go, ‘Yeah, maybe I didn’t have iPhone 1, but iPhone 4 looks pretty good,’ you can get very quick, even exponential growth. And if you were the one that said, ‘I’m not going to set sail here; let’s wait and see what the weather does,’ all the other boats would be out on the ocean, and you’d miss the race.”
But if buyers are going to be sold on EVs by the technology rather than by brand power, what does Mercedes’ 138 years of history count for? With customers attracted to new EV marques that are able to innovate unconstrained by precedent—and one of those brands having a market cap 7.5 times that of Mercedes, despite selling a few hundred thousand fewer cars per year—does heritage become a liability rather than an asset?
“We also do unconventional things,” Källenius insists. “With blow-your-mind–type features like the crazy hyperscreen in the EQS and the EQE, a lot of people are looking at Mercedes who perhaps didn’t look before. We are one of the biggest automotive sponsors in e-sports. Formula 1 is off the charts; 53 percent of F1 fans are between 15 and 35, and 37 percent are women. When we do crazy things like the G-Class collaborations with Moncler or the late Virgil Abloh, you go beyond the traditional auto crowd to one that buys from other luxury brands. My test is if one of my kids sends me a picture and goes, like, ‘Dad, what is this?’ I got their attention.”
I wonder how the former finance guy now handles running one of the world’s great luxury brands and to whom he looks for inspiration. He acknowledges that he meets with Bernard Arnault at LVMH and Jean- Frédéric Dufour at Rolex but is coy about the nature of their discussions.
“We also reach out to people in other luxury businesses to understand how they think,” Källenius notes. “I had the good fortune to meet Brunello Cucinelli, and he invited me down to Solomeo, the hamlet which he has helped to restore. It’s one of the most beautiful villages I’ve ever seen. I learned a lot about fabrics, quality, stealth luxury, sometimes not emphasising the brand so much. A fine gentleman like that has a very clear understanding of what luxury means in his business. We brought some secret new-vehicle designs to show him and to get his input.”
Courtesy of Mercedes-Benz
“Maybe you can’t compare a high-intensity, high-engineering, high-capital-investment good like a car to a piece of clothing,” he adds. “They are different businesses. But good chefs eat in each other’s restaurants even though they have a totally different style of cooking, just to see what the others are doing. But when you go back into your kitchen, you’re still the chef, and you put together the recipe.”
I sense a slight frustration from the hyperrational Swede—perhaps that he believes he has gotten the recipe right but has to wait a bit longer for diners’ tastes to catch up. In many cases, judged on any objective criteria, the new Mercedes EVs will be the best cars the company has ever made, including the electric G. The customers, though, are as busy trying to get their heads around this brave new world as the automotive CEOs are.
“This is definitely the most transformative decade since the inception of the company,” Källenius agrees. “But we’ve always done this. The Swabian engineers who founded Mercedes didn’t look at the horseshoe and think, ‘How do we make this lighter to make the horse run faster?’ They wanted to get the horse out of the equation and do something new. That attitude hasn’t changed. We’ve always looked through the windscreen, not in the mirror.”
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By Mark Ellwood
14/04/2025
07/04/2025
Men at Play
Two restless entrepreneurs build a Belizean island paradise especially for those “aha! moments”.
Though he’s supposed to be in what he calls his “play years” now, Knoxville-based real-estate entrepreneur Steve Hall still finds himself working on vacation. After a trip to Belize, he got the itch to build something new and started meeting with developers. Hall hit it off with David Keener, CEO and owner of Vision Properties, and together they acquired an isolated tract on Placencia Caye, a private island just five minutes by boat from the mainland.
After two and a half years of work, they’ve recently started welcoming guests to Prana Maya, a secluded, wellness-focused retreat that enjoys expansive views of the Caribbean Sea, the island’s lagoon and the Maya Mountains. “We designed everything to inspire people,” Hall says of the property. “Every aspect of the resort is intentional. Every service we offer is designed to create that ‘aha! moment’ that will rock someone’s world.”
The property includes seven three- and four-bedroom villas featuring locally carved wooden doors. The breezy, secluded structures are sited to prioritise views of the water, and each has its own plunge pool. Rooms at the Inn—a collection of 10 airy, light-filled suites—face the ocean. Each guest has an assigned butler, and every bed at the resort is fitted with a custom grounding mat, designed to replicate a connection with nature; some studies suggest they promote mental and physical well-being.
Belize’s tropical landscape is the catalyst for getting outdoors. Its unique saltwater flats give sport-fishing aficionados a bucket-list opportunity: catching what the International Game Fishing Association calls the Grand Slam—permit, tarpon and bonefish—all in one day. So Hall and Keener recruited High Adventure Company, a global outfitter with 30 years of guiding expertise, to take guests on exclusive angling excursions. The resort will also offer cave-tubing, jungle-trekking, zip-lining and diving trips.
Courtesy of Prana Maya
If you’re in search of less rugged activities, head to the spa and wellness centre. The design team placed it on prime real estate: the Inn’s top floor, which has 360-degree water views and 5 m ceilings. Here, you’ll find a yoga studio, five private treatment rooms and a sound-therapy space. You can also enjoy Prana Maya’s private beach, the only sandy stretch on the island that isn’t shared with another property.
At The Grill, the open-air restaurant, executive chef Liesel Kirste cooks with indigenous ingredients—many sourced from the resort’s four-hectare farm. The menu includes elevated fare such as locally caught lobster, grilled and served over fresh pasta. Even components of more casual dishes are made from scratch: at the Island Club—with its outdoor kitchen, lawn games and forthcoming palapa-shaded pickleball court—the ketchup and mayonnaise are made in-house. That gives the culinary team the flexibility to design a bespoke menu, upon request, to suit your nutritional needs.
Ultimately, Prana Maya is the expression of a million small details (down to the reef-safe spa products, curated by a Belizean supplier) and the location’s natural majesty. “When you get out to the island site, see the spectacular views of the Caribbean, turn another direction and see the beauty of the Maya Mountains, it is such an awesome and almost overwhelming feeling,” Hall says. One he is determined to share with everyone who visits.
Top image: Benedict Kim/Courtesy of Prana Maya
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How to Use Your Dress Watch to Nail Casual Style This Autumn
The dress watch is back and more laid-back than ever. Here’s how to rock your Cartier and Piaget pieces with casual looks
After the seemingly never-ending hype around steel sports watches, dress watches have been making a comeback. But it’s not just the average 42 mm dress watch that’s sparking interest (although, those too, are in the running), but also funky vintage diamond-accented timepieces or small-sized, almost feminine pieces are trending. Recently, actor Paul Mescal was spotted on the red carpet of the Annual Academy Museum Gala wearing a Cartier Tank Mini with his tux, while sports legend Dwyane Wade wore a 28 mm diamond Tiffany & Co. Eternity watch with his black tie ensemble to the same event. While these guys were wearing dress watches in their intended setting, here we show you how to make a dress watch work for casual weekend wear too.
Try dabbling in unexpected pairings like an army green Ghiaia safari jacket with a vintage Chopard Happy Diamonds timepiece or Breguet Classique Ref. 7147 (the ultimate dressy timekeeper) with a Louis Vuitton sweatsuit and a Brioni overcoat. Anything goes these days and the more unexpected the timepiece, the stronger the statement. It’s good news all around—for your wardrobe and your investments in the vault.
Above: Blancpain 39.7 mm Villeret Ultraplate in 18-karat red gold, $69,675; Tod’s faux-shearling and denim jacket, $5,6859; Tom Ford cashmere and silk turtleneck, $2,535.
PHOTOGRAPHED BY MATALLINA. WATCH EDITOR, PAIGE REDDINGER. FASHION DIRECTOR, ALEX BADIA. STYLE EDITOR, NAOMI ROUGEAU.
Jaeger-LeCoultre 40 mm Reverso One Duetto Jewellery in 18-karat pink gold and diamonds, $79,560. Right: Chopard 32 mm vintage Happy Diamonds in 18-karat white gold and diamonds, $19,930, analogshift.com; Ghiaia cotton safari jacket, $1,426; Eton cotton T-shirt, 358; Hermès denim trousers, $1,674.
Audemars Piguet 34 mm vintage automatic ultrathin watch in 18-karat white gold and diamonds, $9,300, classicwatchny.com. Right: Cartier 41.4 mm Tortue in platinum, $35,600, limited to 200; Gabriela Hearst hand-knit cashmere sweater, $2,500; Officine Générale cotton-poplin shirt, $315.
Breguet 40 mm Classique Ref. 7147 in 18-karat white gold, $37,468; Brioni wool and cashmere overcoat, $12,233, and silk knit crewneck sweater, $2,224; Louis Vuitton wool track pants, $2,120, and wool hooded jacket, $5,002. Right: Patek Philippe 39 mm Calatrava Ref. 6119R-001 in 18-karat rose gold, $52,791.
Piaget 45 mm Andy Warhol in 18-karat rose gold, $69,198. Right: Rolex 29 mm vintage King Midas Ref. 4342 in 18-karat yellow gold, $28,301, classicwatchny.com; Brunello Cucinelli denim shirt, $1,586; Tom Ford cotton chinos, $1,259; Berluti leather belt, $1,132.
Model: Arthur Sales
Grooming: Amanda Wilson
Senior market editor and casting: Luis Campuzano
Photo director: Irene Opezzo
Photo assistant: Alejandro Suarez
Prop stylist: Elizabeth Derwin
