Norbert Stumpfl: The Thinking Man’s Designer

The man behind Brioni’s re-emergence as the arbiter of elegance. And his timing is impeccable.

By Kareem Rashed, Photography By Ilaria Magliocchetti Lombi 14/10/2021

Norbert Stumpfl is standing on a rooftop terrace off Rome’s Piazza Navona on a scorching summer day, surveying the ancient cityscape with the critical eye of a designer. “Rome has a lot of beauty,” the Austrian-born transplant, who has also lived for long stretches in both London and Paris, concedes. But, unusually, he finds that the bounty of classical wonders can grow a bit stale: “They don’t really change a lot.” After all, it’s not called the Eternal City for nothing.

The Italian capital’s immutable nature may be its defining feature, but Stumpfl has brought seismic change to at least one Roman landmark. Since taking the helm as Brioni’s creative director in 2018, he has dusted off the colossus of Italian tailoring and steadily, subtly—but firmly—imbued it with new life. Rather than simply strip it down to studs and rebuild it without a thought for its place in history, as one of his predecessors attempted with disastrous consequences, he has faithfully restored the brand, managing to make elegance relevant for today.

“I want to innovate and continue the story a little bit, because I think there is so much there,” says the 44-year-old designer, who helped revive moribund menswear lines at Lanvin and Balenciaga. Speaking in a hushed tone almost drowned out by the cacophony of the streets below, Stumpfl may be reserved but he doesn’t lack nerve. At a time when four-figure sneakers and haute couture hoodies are luxury fashion’s North Star, understatement is a statement in itself.

His designs, combining exceptional craftsmanship with a casual, toss-it-on attitude, bridge the ever-widening gap between traditional tailor shops and what’s coming down the runway, speaking to both worlds without conforming to either. From double-breasted suits rendered with all the softness of pyjamas to precisely cut safari shirts in sumptuous silk twill, Stumpfl’s modernised wardrobe staples have won rave reviews from critics and attracted an influx of new patrons.

“Ten years ago, men like our clients had many more rules to follow,” he says. “I don’t think a 50-year-old needs to look like he’s not modern anymore.” The brand may be best known for outfitting masters of the universe in quintessential power suits, but Stumpfl is keenly aware that, today, power isn’t defined by a roped shoulder and a Windsor knot.

“If I just did classic men’s clothes, in the end, it gets boring,” Stumpfl says. Though acknowledging that exquisite tailoring is and always will be Brioni’s MO, he notes, “I don’t want to find myself at some point when fashion moves on and the lifestyle of our clients moves on.”

Stumpfl’s own outfit epitomises sartorial power circa 2021: what appears to be a standard work shirt, albeit a very handsome one, is crafted from a double-faced Super 150s wool-and-silk suiting textile, which is meticulously split by hand to become airy and lightweight before being fashioned into a shirt—a process that Stumpfl notes is even more complex than constructing one of the brand’s suit jackets. Paired with linen trousers in a matching shade of cadet blue, it’s worn with all the ease of an old T-shirt.

“It’s all about this personal luxury, which people don’t see but gives you a kind of comfort,” Stumpfl says, describing both his own style and his vision for the brand. “Something which doesn’t shout, but you still know it’s there.”

Stumpfl was installed at Brioni after the house had endured a particularly rocky period. In 2012 descendants of the company’s founders sold it to Kering, owner of perpetually buzzy labels such as Gucci and Balenciaga. Brioni then went through a string of four design directors in five years, with results ranging from snoozy to shocking. Justin O’Shea, a design novice and street-style fop who’d been handed the reins in 2016, notoriously recruited Metallica as the poster stars for his rocker-infused revamp. During his tenure, O’Shea managed to entirely reshape the brand in a play for millennial hype: the classic looping script logo was replaced with a punky Gothic font, the wood-panelled boutiques were transformed with Instagram-friendly marble and chrome, and the clothes skewed more pimp than presidential (think red satin shirts, crocodile coats and an abundance of chinchilla). This “new” Brioni survived for only six months, but it very publicly exposed the brand’s identity crisis.

That Brad Pitt is now the face of the label says all one needs to know about Brioni in the Stumpfl era. After years of the actor politely declining the company’s advances, he reached out after seeing Stumpfl’s new direction to commission a bespoke tuxedo. Pitt went on to collaborate with Stumpfl on BP Signature, a spring ’21 capsule collection of his favourite pieces—washed-silk utility jackets, a cashmere polo, a re-creation of the tux he wore to accept his Oscar for best supporting actor in 2020—and provided the designer with one of his proudest moments since taking the job.

Brad Pitt, winner of Best Actor in a Supporting Role for “Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood”, poses in the press room during 92nd Annual Academy Awards.

During the photoshoot for the collection’s ad campaign, Pitt’s assistant summoned Stumpfl into the actor’s dressing room. “It was like, ‘Hmm, what did I do wrong?’ ” the designer recalls. “Then he’s like, ‘Norbert, I wanted to tell you: since I’m wearing Brioni, I look great but I feel amazing. I just wanted to thank you for doing these kinds of clothes.’ I was crying!”

Stumpfl displays an earnest wonderment at where he’s found himself, revealing glimpses of the boy who grew up on a farm in Austria. “I was a little bit of an outsider . . . not like the other boys who were more into football,” he says. “I always knew I would leave eventually.” Fate provided his ticket out.

A school close to Stumpfl’s home happened to have a vocational program dedicated to tailoring. He enrolled at 13 years old out of convenience and fell in love with the craft of menswear. At the same time that he was making his own suits to wear to school, Stumpfl began idolising the agenda-setting designs of Helmut Lang and Jil Sander. He tracked down the closest boutique selling Lang and took a job nearby, saving his wages to buy a Lang of his own. After moving to upstate New York to sharpen his English (and sneaking down to Manhattan to go clubbing), Stumpfl landed in London to attend Central Saint Martins, the influential design school.

“One of the first things I remember being amazed by was Norbert’s wardrobe. It was impeccable,” says fellow designer Daphne Karras, who met Stumpfl when they were students and has been his wife for 14 years. “He always had this taste of classic modernity; from the moment I met him, that aesthetic was there.”

Danielle Scutt, another classmate, similarly recalls being stunned to see Stumpfl show up one day with a Cartier Pasha on his wrist: “I mean, we were students! And then he has this watch with a sapphire on it?” As Karras points out, “He worked every weekend for this. His love of beauty wasn’t handed to him. It’s something he educated himself on. He really found pleasure in discovering this universe.”

Stumpfl says he’s always been enamoured of “extreme luxury”. He still wears that Pasha and has added further blue-chip timepieces to his collection, such as an early Audemars Piguet Royal Oak and a 1960s Heuer chronograph. A self-professed minimalist, he is diligent about buying only pieces with staying power, from Arne Jacobsen chairs to Ellsworth Kelly lithographs. It’s this obsession with quality that first led him to Brioni, becoming a customer before he would make the house his home.

From the beginning, Stumpfl’s tailoring background made him stand out from the fashion pack. While at Saint Martins, a friend working at Alexander McQueen called him when, the night before a campaign shoot, all of the clothes had to be taken down in size. Stumpfl delivered, and McQueen, himself a Savile Row alumnus, was so impressed that he enlisted Stumpfl to tailor pieces for his infamous runway shows.

Soon after completing school in 2005, Stumpfl was tapped by Lanvin creative director Alber Elbaz to be the number two on the team relaunching the brand’s menswear. The late Elbaz—whose womenswear was celebrated for being as wearable as it was imaginative—taught Stumpfl the importance of always staying grounded in reality.

“He would always tell me: ‘A lot of designers are making things that, in terms of food, would be like foie gras on top of caviar with mozzarella—really good ingredients but too much,’” Stumpfl recalls.

He left Lanvin in 2014 to head up Balenciaga’s menswear during Alexander Wang’s tenure. After two years, Wang was traded out and Stumpfl worked briefly with Demna Gvasalia, then moved to Louis Vuitton under Kim Jones, who’d been impressed by Stumpfl’s student designs when he was a visiting tutor at Saint Martins. Before Jones moved to Dior, he connected Stumpfl with Haider Ackermann, Berluti’s recently appointed creative director. “It was a breath of serenity when he entered,” says Ackermann, describing Stumpfl’s precision and “immaculate proportions” as his greatest talent. “He’s quiet but he’s confident, and that’s what luxury is about . . . this elegance o discretion.” Beautiful as Berluti was under them, fashion’s musical chairs struck again after barely one year.

Although he has been a repeat victim of the industry’s insatiable appetite for novelty, Stumpfl doesn’t harbour any bitterness. But he was weary enough to turn down several offers, uninterested in attempting to create next season’s hottest sneaker. When Brioni came calling, however, it instinctively felt like a match.

Founded in 1945, Brioni pioneered menswear as we know it. The Roman tailoring firm was the first to put men on the catwalk, in 1952, thumbing its nose at the industry’s sobriety and giving men permission to have fun with fashion. Press at the time heralded Brioni as menswear’s Dior, its influence as widespread as the French couturier’s New Look was for women. As guys traded in their fatigues for body-skimming suits, Brioni became the bellwether for a new breed of male refinement.

“The founders were using fabrics that were unheard of in menswear,” says Stumpfl, an astute student of the archives. “It was completely going in a different direction of what was happening at the time . . . almost like Demna at Balenciaga, something really on the edge,” he continues, referencing Balenciaga’s current creative director, a primary architect of the high-fashion hoodie craze.

While such enfants terribles claimed the mantle of cool, Brioni’s early reputation for trendsetting settled into one for beautifully made, if a bit uninspired, business suits. In today’s fashion landscape, a bastion of tailored sophistication risks going the way of the frock coat, but, perhaps counterintuitively, taking over a collection in crisis has its appeal. “It’s kind of nice to step into these companies where people don’t expect anything of you,” Stumpfl says, comparing Brioni’s muddled identity to Lanvin’s dormant menswear before he started. “You see the change that you can bring as a designer.”

Stumpfl has not only righted the ship, he’s steered it into new waters. Fitting bespoke clients in London last year, he was surprised to find guys as young as 19 coming in alongside the captains of industry he’d expected. Perhaps more impressively, a range of equally successful women have joined the ranks of Brioni shoppers since Stumpfl took charge. “He brings a nobility to Brioni,” says Ackermann, who notes that Stumpfl has a knack for making “the perfect piece”, such as Pitt’s tuxedo.

Heady as Brioni’s wares may be, Stumpfl isn’t too precious about them—a point that has been underscored by his fashion-week presentations. For his spring 2020 collection that was revealed to the media a year earlier, he staged an assortment of tableaux with mannequins cheekily acting out a day in the life of the Brioni man, from soaking in a bath drawn by a woman wearing boxers, to crashing on the couch after a black-tie gala, with numerous high jinks in between.

“He’s practical but he has a more playful, fun side,” says Mattias Karlsson, a stylist who’s known Stumpfl since his Saint Martins days and has worked on every Brioni presentation since the designer started. “When we’re working, it’s very spontaneous. It’s a joyful process.” Avoiding self-serious fashion shows with Adonises strutting down a catwalk is very much intentional. Stumpfl sees it as a typically Italian attitude: “They just put the clothes on and go on with their life. The clothes can be a little creased, it doesn’t matter.”

It’s Stumpfl’s lack of pretension that gives once-buttoned-up Brioni a sense of levity and, more vitally, modernity. “I have both sides in me,” the designer reflects, his measured expression curling into a grin. “I’m quite quiet and traditional, but then on the other side, I’m also quite fearless.”

The latter has been most apparent in Stumpfl’s eccentric eveningwear, such as the 24-karat-gold-plated tuxedo that Leslie Odom Jr. sported at this year’s Academy Awards. While it may seem counter to the subtle elegance of his daywear, Stumpfl points out that avant-garde dinner jackets are what first put Brioni on the map: “Having this history, I’m allowed to dare.”

That tuxedo is one of countless examples of the painstaking textile development that has become Stumpfl’s signature. (The electromagnetic technology that yielded the gilded yet supple fabric has been employed by only one other firm: the Vatican.) Karras, who is now a consultant designing Brioni’s knitwear and serving as Stumpfl’s unofficial right hand in R&D, says that although he favours classic silhouettes, “where he gets really creative is in how things are made. He’s almost working more as an architect than a designer.”

While Stumpfl expected some of the more outré pieces, such as a dinner jacket in an opulent floral jacquard, to be eye candy for store windows, he reports that the item sold out—and this was during the height of the pandemic. Explaining the allure of this particular piece—its fabric is woven on a Venetian loom dating back to the 17th century, requiring three months of milling to produce enough yardage for a single jacket—Stumpfl visibly tears up.

“It was, like, 20 tailors around, looking at this jacket being made, and they were like, ‘Wow, this is Brioni,’” the designer says. “This is what I love.”

At Stumpfl’s home, an appreciation for craft, both old and new, extends to all corners of his life. The wisteria-clad townhouse in Rome’s bohemian Monti district combines ancient architecture with sleek midcentury furnishings in the same unfussy style that marks his creations. In bare feet, the designer glides about the open kitchen, vetoing candles for the table setting while preparing a simple supper of pasta with fresh tomatoes like a true Italian. (The chocolates served for dessert show he hasn’t lost his Austrian sweet tooth.)

Modernist that he is, Stumpfl still marvels at the beauty he encounters on his daily walk to Brioni’s headquarters—passing the majestic fountains of Piazza della Repubblica and the gilded mosaics of Santa Maria Maggiore—saying, “Sometimes I feel like I’m on a holiday which continues.”

After more than a decade in Paris, Stumpfl has come to appreciate the relaxed pace of Roman life. “It’s like a little village,” he says. “It kind of suits me now.” And although he’d been concerned about relocating his two daughters, they’re happy to have traded a concrete playground in the Marais for the gardens of Villa Borghese. (“Every day, they come home dirty—like, full of mud.”)

While this is the first time that Stumpfl and Karras have been on the same design team, it’s something of a reunion—the couple met sharing a worktable at school. “She’s somebody who I can trust completely. I think she’s much more talented than I am,” he says. “Because there is a lot of stress, if you can trust someone a hundred percent, you have more eyes on everything.”

But that’s not to say Stumpfl doesn’t have deep respect for the wealth of knowledge in Brioni’s atelier. “He’s really a collaborator,” Karras says of his leadership. “When he likes something, he likes it. And if he doesn’t, he doesn’t. But even when he disagrees with you, he’s doing it in a way that’s soft and considerate and eloquent.”

Stumpfl is just as exacting when he’s off duty—he can spend hours tending to his orchids or his aquarium. The meditative upkeep of bonsai is a particular passion; he purchased one upon his arrival in Italy and, after three years of careful monitoring to ensure it would survive sweltering Roman summers, he only recently allowed himself to buy another. (“Super nerd!” he exclaims.) Discussing his horticultural pursuits, the otherwise sedate Stumpfl is as animated as he is when detailing technical tailoring feats. It makes sense: the invisible artistry of bonsai pruning isn’t all that different from the stealth luxury he’s brought to Brioni.

“I want people to recognise a Brioni man on the street and say, ‘Oh, he looks great,’ but they shouldn’t know it’s Brioni,” he says, in what marketing executives everywhere would see as blasphemy. Stumpfl is an adherent to the if-you-know-you-know school of chic, favouring clothing that is most appreciated by wearing it. “These guys don’t need to say they’re in Brioni—they’re not choosing it for that.”

He’s aware that the brand’s exquisitely understated offerings—and dizzyingly high prices—are not for everyone, and he wants to keep it that way. “It might be completely different from what my colleagues, other designers, are thinking,” he says, acknowledging that an instantly identifiable product is the Holy Grail for most brands—even Hermès has its Birkins. That might be the conventional logic, but “I’m the opposite.” Quiet as he may be, Stumpfl’s strategy has been validated. He has seen Roman style and conquered it.

This piece comes from the new Spring Issue – on sale now. Get your copy or subscribe hereor stay up to speed on all things with Robb Report’s weekly luxury insights.

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SpaceX’s Starship Could Launch Its Next Test Flight in Two Weeks

Elon Musk’s company is moving swiftly after a successful launch about a month ago.

By Tori Latham 12/11/2024

SpaceX is moving ahead quickly with its Starship rocket.

Elon Musk’s space-exploration company announced on Wednesday that the next Starship test flight could take place as soon as two weeks from now, Wired reported. That’s just about a month after the previous test flight, in which SpaceX successfully caught the Starship booster on its launchpad.

The sixth test flight could happen as early as November 18, and it’ll include a few changes from the most recent Starship flight, the publication noted. While the trajectory will be mostly the same, the SpaceX team is including updates to the hardware and the software in response to what they learned from the prior flight. There will be extra redundancy added to the booster propulsion systems, better structural strength at key areas, and a shorter timeline for offloading propellants from the booster following its catch, among other improvements.

Notably, the next test will include the relighting of one engine during the flight, Wired wrote. This is integral to Starship’s development, and it will eventually allow the rocket to make a controlled reentry into Earth’s atmosphere after orbital missions. Moving forward, it will also let Starship carry out commercial missions and could help with the pathway toward launches of Starlink, SpaceX satellites that will provide internet capability.

Another key change for the sixth test flight is that SpaceX is aiming for a late-afternoon launch. All previous flights have taken off around dawn from Texas, but changing the timing means that Starship could reenter into the Indian Ocean during daylight hours. Once the sixth flight takes off, it’ll be the last launch of the initial version of the vehicle, Wired added, before the next generation Starship takes its place.

SpaceX has been carrying out test flights of the Starship rocket since April 2023—with varied results. In that first launch, the rocket exploded just minutes after taking off, although Musk deemed it a success, with the SpaceX team learning from those initial difficulties. Over the past year and half, they’ve made a number of changes that resulted in the breakthrough that occurred just last month.

Now it seems like Starship development is really ramping up, and we may get even more launches in quick succession if this next flight goes well. Eventually, we could be seeing quite a bit of the Starship rocket.

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How the Porsche 911 Turbo Became a Performance Legend

Once meaning merely a forced-induction engine, turbo came to signify so much more

By Will Sabel Courtney 13/11/2024

The turbocharger is, at its core, an elegant piece of engineering. Two interconnected fans: one is spun by the force of an engine’s exhaust flowing over it, a motion that is then transferred to the second fan to make it spin, compressing the air and helping it generate more power. It’s been around for more than a century — found first in planes, ships, and trains, then working its way to trucks and passenger vehicles. These days, they’re ubiquitous in automotive lineups, their ability to provide more power from a smaller package a key tool in gaming government fleet efficiency mandates.

But only one car can claim to be the trendsetter that made “turbo” a household name: the Porsche 911 Turbo.

Ever had a coffee maker, vacuum, or hair dryer with a “turbo” function? You can thank Porsche for that. With the 911 Turbo, the brand took a simple mechanical means of boosting an engine and turned it into a synonym for speed and power, signifying performance in any context. Even Porsche does it now; you won’t find a turbocharger on the all-electric Taycan or  Macan EV, but the automaker still uses the T-word to denote the most powerful variants.

To learn the roots of the term’s current common use, however, we have to trace the lineage of Porsche’s turbocharged sports cars back to the first time Zuffenhausen slapped a snail on a 911’s flat-six. This is the history of the Porsche 911 Turbo.

The very first 911 Turbo wasn’t technically even called the 911 Turbo. Instead, it was known as the 930 Turbo — 930 being the designator used at Porsche to describe the model. (Keep in mind, this was back when the 911’s internal code was still just, well, 911.) The brand had been dallying with turbocharged engines for race cars since the 1960s, but in order to push into the series it wanted, it needed to homologate a vehicle for production that the racers could then be based on. So, come 1975, the automaker slapped a turbocharger on the 3.0-litre flat-six used in the sharp-edged Carrera RS 3.0 and dropped it in a 911 to make the 930.

Okay, it was a little more involved than that; engineers also upgraded the brakes, suspension and gearbox to accommodate the extra power — the latter actually a four-speed manual rather than the five-speed of regular 911s, but the added torque compensated for the difference. From the outside, the most notable change was found at the rear, where a massive spoiler dubbed the “whale tail” for its resemblance to a cetacean fluke increased downforce and helped the engine breathe; wider fenders also added panache.

Generally subtle changes, but the results were anything but. The engine’s 256 horsepower for European versions and 234 ponies for American ones wasn’t groundbreaking by today’s standards, but thanks to a delicate curb weight of around 1270 kilogram and a rear-mounted centre of gravity that aided the rear-wheel-drive car’s acceleration run, that first Turbo — or Turbo Carrera, as it was first known in the U.S. — did the 0-96 kph dash in 4.9 seconds, according to Car and Driver’s testing at the time. It was the first of many eye-popping results the Turbo would rack up in that benchmark trial over the generations.

Just as notable as the acceleration was the manner in which it was delivered. The 930’s big KKK turbocharger was notorious for its turbo lag, kicking on like an afterburner between 3000 and 4000 rpm. If that happened in a turn, the car was given to a sudden bout of oversteer; lifting off the throttle under those circumstances (a natural reaction) could make it worse. Add in the short wheelbase, and the Turbo developed a reputation for spinning out of control, leading it to receive the nickname of “Widowmaker.”

A batch of updates came in 1978, when Porsche pumped the engine up to 3.3 litres and made a few other adjustments to push power in European models to 221 kilowatts and U.S. ones to 196. The brakes, suspension and aerodynamics also received in-kind changes; the revised spoiler was dubbed the “tea tray.” By 1980, shifting emissions regulations made it too hard for Porsche to sell the 930 in the U.S. or Japan; by 1986, though, it was back, with power now up to 210 kilowatts and targa-top and convertible versions entering the fray. A new front end also became available for special order: the so-called Flachbau, or “flatnose,” which swapped out the classic round-eyed 911 face for one inspired by the 935 race car and its ever-so-Eighties pop-up headlights.

After 25 years on sale, the original 911 was finally retired in 1989, replaced by a new generation known internally as 964; to the public, it was still known simply as 911. The future of the 911 Turbo, however, had already been revealed by that point under another name. The Porsche 959, unveiled in 1986, was a bleeding-edge piece of automotive tech that turned the Turbo concept up to 11: it packed a compact 2.8-litre twin-turbo flat-six in the back that made an astounding 331 kilowatts horsepower, but routed it to all four wheels. Comfortable enough to drive daily yet swift enough to claim the title of the world’s fastest production car, it was unlike any street-legal machine the world had ever seen.

So when the new 964-generation 911 Turbo debuted in 1990, it would have been reasonable to expect it to follow closely in the 959’s tire tracks. In fact, though, the super-Porsche was so cutting edge, its influence would be more greatly seen in the following generation of Turbo (more on that in a bit). At launch in 1990, the 964 Turbo stuck with the 3.3-litre engine of the final 930 models — hence the car becoming known as the 911 Turbo 3.3 — albeit tweaked to turn out 316 hp. Likewise, its body more closely resembled the 930 than the 959; it still bore a tea tray spoiler out back, for example.

That first version was just a stopgap, however. By the car’s third model year, in 1993, Porsche had pulled together a more powerful motor to slide into the rear-mounted engine compartment, creating the 911 Turbo 3.6. As the name implies, the new motor — which, in naturally aspirated form, had launched with the 964 generation — displaced 3.6 litres and spun up 264 kilowatts. It wasn’t long for the world, lasting only a year, but it stuck around long enough to earn a star turn in the first Bad Boys film.

Porsche had one last card to play with the turbocharged 964 before it faded away. At the end of production, the company sent 93 chassis to its Exclusiv division to have them built into the 911 Turbo 3.6 S, which packed extra power — more boost and other adjustments turned the wick up to 283 kilowatts  — as well as unique air intakes and spoilers. The Flachbau treatment also returned as an option, although the headlights were now exposed. The Turbo 3.6 S was the first time Turbo and S were paired together, but it wouldn’t be the last.

The third-generation 911, known internally as the 993, first hit the streets in 1994 in Carrera form, and it landed with a bang. The tip-to-tail update not only brought a fresh, more streamlined design to the iconic sports car, it also civilised it, revising the suspension to tame some of the car’s more unruly traits, updating the 3.6-litre engine and adding a sixth cog to the manual gearbox.

And, with the arrival of the 993-generation 911 Turbo in 1995, the spirit of the 959 finally made its way to the mainstream sports car. The 3.6-litre flat-six was now twin-turbocharged for improved response, just like the 959; more consequentially, 959-style all-wheel-drive now came standard, helping the Turbo make the most of its 298 kilowatts. As always, flared fenders and a big spoiler in the back visually distinguished it from lesser 911s, but the new rear wing was more organically integrated into the design — less of a whale tail, more of a geologic feature.

The combination of 400 horses and four-wheel grip meant the 993 Turbo could redefine straight-line acceleration for the average driver. In Car and Driver testing, the car blitzed from 0-90 kph in 3.7 seconds — quick today, downright insane almost 30 years ago. As if that weren’t enough, Porsche quickly offered a factory option kit to add even more power, taking the flat-six to 316 kilowatts for the 1996 model year.

Then, as the 993 generation was starting to wind down, Porsche once again decided to spice up the 911 Turbo with a model wearing the S badge. Power was up, of course, to the aforementioned 316 kilowatts — but unlike the old 3.6 Turbo S, the top-shelf 993 Turbo received all the bells and whistles, from extra leather trim to carbon fibre add-ons to unique air intakes for the twin-turbo six. It didn’t make the Turbo much quicker, but it did make it more desirable — even if it meant a 60-percent higher price over the non-S version.

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The St. Regis Just Opened a Luxe New Property in Shanghai. Here’s a Look Inside

The new 192-key hotel is the brand’s 60th location.

By Tori Latham 08/11/2024

The St. Regis is celebrating a massive milestone halfway around the world from where the hotel brand first began.

The company just recently debuted its 60th property—the St. Regis on the Bund, Shanghai. The 192-key hotel is the St. Regis’s second opening in the city, and it combines the brand’s New York glamour with touches that honor Shanghai’s history.

Designed by Norman Foster and Heatherwick Studio, the property features a sleek exterior and an Art Deco–inspired interior, reminiscent of Shanghai in the 1920s. The latter is replete with magnolia motifs, Su embroidery, and more than 70 original artworks. The guest rooms, meanwhile, include 13 suites with residential-style layouts and views of the Huangpu River and the surrounding Bund area. St. Regis’s iconic butler service is, of course, included as well.

As far as amenities go, the hotel emphasises its culinary delights. The St. Regis Brasserie is an all-day affair serving up both Chinese and Western cuisine, while Celestial Court is a high-end Chinese restaurant designed for celebrations and large gatherings. The St. Regis Bar pays homage to the chain’s New York roots, serving up the brand’s signature Bloody Mary, as well as drinks like the Bund Snapper, with Shanghai’s five spices, zaolu rice wine vinegar, and osmanthus. And by the end of the year, the property will add the Drawing Room, meant for light meals and refreshments like afternoon tea or an evening Champagne sabrage.

If you’re coming to Shanghai to relax, you need not look much further than the St. Regis Spa, with three private spaces and treatments that blend modern skin care with ancient practices. Or you can fit in a workout whenever you like at the 24-hour fitness centre.

“The opening of the St. Regis on the Bund, Shanghai marks a pivotal moment in the brand’s expansion, as we celebrate the debut of our 60th property globally,” Jenni Benzaquen, the senior vice president and global brand leader of the Ritz-Carlton, St. Regis, and Bulgari Hotels & Resorts, said in a statement. “With this milestone, we continue to offer our discerning guests unparalleled experiences on the Bund, blending the rich cultural heritage of Shanghai with the signature rituals and bespoke service that define St. Regis.”

Given the central location, the well-appointed rooms, and the numerous amenities, it sounds like it may be worth exploring Shanghai—and the St. Regis—for your next trip abroad.

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From Striped Hawaiian Shirts to Colorful Ceramics: 4 Luxe Items You Can Buy at Italian Hotels

A handful of Italy’s most beloved family-owned hotels are morphing into luxury brands of their own. Here, four in-house items worth traveling for. 

By Naomi Rougeau 04/11/2024

Hotel Passalacqua, Lake Como 

These days, it takes more than the finest linens and a Michelin-starred restaurant to take the No. 1 spot on a list of the world’s 50 best hotels, which Hotel Passalacqua did in 2023. The spa is stellar, to be sure, as is the pool house, which was decorated in collaboration with J. J. Martin of La Double J. But to fully embrace the villeggiatura and sense of place, even the tiniest details matter. Case in point: the hotel’s signature brass-fish bottle opener (there are also key chains), which will mentally transport you back to Lake Como every time you reach for a cold one. 

Le Sirenuse, Positano 

The red cliff-top hotel with sweeping views needs little introduction. Its owners, the Sersale family, were early to embrace the branding potential of the beloved property by launching an on-site boutique, Emporio Sirenuse, in 1993. These days, you can find Le Sirenuse’s clothing and swimwear everywhere from Net-a-Porter to Harrod’s, but nothing matches shopping the collection in person. If there’s only room in the suitcase for one thing, snag the brand’s riff on
the Hawaiian shirt in vacation-ready stripes. 

Borgo Santo Pietro, Palazzetto 

At Borgo Santo Pietro in Tuscany, the focus is on the serene landscape. (The spot was once a healing rest stop for medieval pilgrims.) Naturally, there’s an emphasis on farm-to-table cuisine, but more interesting might be the farm-to-spa treatments. Made in-house, the renowned Seed to Skin range draws on local remedies dating back to at least 1129; expect natural ingredients such as butterfat, thermal water, and raw honey. Grab the award-winning Eye Rescue Duo, a secret weapon for maintaining your post-vacation glow. 

Palazzo Avino, Ravello 

A once-private villa built in the 12th century, Palazzo Avino is one of the Amalfi Coast’s most celebrated hotels. When a former art gallery adjacent to Ravello’s beloved “pink palace” came up for sale, hotelier Mariella Avino and her sister Attilia made an offer. Mariella envisioned the new space, now dubbed the Pink Closet, as a spot to promote homegrown talent, partnering with the Camera Nazionale della Moda in order to provide a platform for emerging designers. We like the colorful, locally made ceramics—perfect for alfresco entertaining.

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Electric Air Taxis Are One Step Closer to Hitting the Skies

Electric aircraft are the darlings at this week’s annual NBAA business aviation conference in Las Vegas. Yesterday, the FAA signed a milestone rule that allows eVTOLs to move into aviation’s mainstream.

By Daniel Cote 08/11/2024

Just consider the increasing velocity of technological innovation and change and how it has shaped our lives in the last 20 years, says noted astrophysicist, futurist, and author Neil deGrasse Tyson in kicking off the 2024 NBAABusiness Aviation Convention & Exhibition (NBAA-BACE) in Las Vegas.

Organizers expect about 19,000 attendees this year visiting 8,000 exhibitors between the Las Vegas Convention Center and Henderson airport, the static display with business aircraft on display.

It was an auspicious start for the Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) sector, comprised of the new generation of electric air-taxi makers such as Joby Aviation, Archer, and Lilium. These firms have had limited displays at past NBAA shows, but yesterday was more like a formal coming-of-age party for the fledgling sector.

During the keynote, Bonnie Simi—pilot, former Olympic athlete, and Joby Aviation’s president of operations—interviewed Tyson about the pace of technology as well as the future of the Advanced Air Mobility movement (AAM), which includes electric air taxis.

Tyson told the packed hall that history reminds us that innovations come from places you don’t often expect. Take the iPhone, he said. Apple didn’t invent GPS, music, or cellular communications, but the company assembled the technologies to create one of the most transformative devices in the history of inventions, the astrophysicist explained.

Aviation is entering a similar innovative period with advanced air mobility, efficiency, and sustainability, added NBAA president and CEO Ed Bolen, who also addressed the audience during the keynote. Bolen discussed the pace of aviation advancement with FAA’s administrator Michael Whitaker, who was on hand to sign a Special Federal Aviation Regulation (SFAR) establishing the final rule for a regulatory framework for the new category of eVTOL (electric vertical takeoff and landing) aircraft.

“It is an extraordinary moment in history,” Whitaker said, noting that AAM represents an entirely new aircraft category, typically involving a combination of rotor and fixed-wing aircraft.

The FAA also recognizes that you can’t certify an aircraft and do not have a way to operate it as intended, Whitaker added. This final rule creates the blueprint for integrating this technology and modeling an ecosystem for operations. “I don’t know the last time we went from an idea to a final rule in 16 months,” said Whitaker, who has had a long history working with both the FAA and aviation, including a stint at eVTOL maker Supernal. “That is light speed for rulemaking.”

The final rule, he explained, creates a flexible climate for companies to train pilots, operate these aircraft, and safely integrate new technology.

AAM represents a “seminal moment” in aviation to help achieve net zero by 2050, Bolen says. “Over the last 40 years, the industry has been able to shrink its environmental footprint by 40 percent,” he added. “Every aircraft is 25 to 30 percent more efficient than its replacement aircraft. The industry has invested significantly in developing sustainable aviation fuels and advancements with electric, hydrogen, and hybrid propulsion systems.

One of the regulatory challenges, Whitaker added, is that the FAA doesn’t yet know how the business model will evolve. “Will this require departures every three minutes to the airport or primarily serve rural communities?” he asked, citing two possible futures for electric aircraft. “We need the regulatory flexibility to allow AAM businesses to succeed and do so safely.”

The topic was explored during a seminar on how advanced air mobility infrastructure will develop yesterday. Beta CEO Kyle Clarke, which makes eVTOLs, said his firm had built charging stations in airports across different states, with the goal of creating 150 charging facilities across the country.

Signature Aviation CEO Tony Lefebvre envisions significantly more infrastructure will be needed, so “we have the proper infrastructure to be able to support 600, 700, 800 locations—or coming up with alternatives, so that the [aircraft] can continue to fly out of one location and then reposition for charging,” he said, adding that development could happen at “an accelerated pace.”

From the future, NBAA looked to the past, recognizing Laurent and Pierre Beaudoin, the father-and-son team who have led Bombardier for more than 60 years with NBAA’s Meritorious Service to Aviation Award.

Since its beginnings in rural Quebec making snowmobiles, Bombardier has grown into an $8 billion global leader in business aviation. In 1966, Laurent became company president and took the the brand public in 1969. He diversified beyond snowmobiles by purchasing a train manufacturer in 1970, and purchased Canadair in 1986, which was the leading manufacturer of Challenger wide-body business jets, to become part of the aviation industry.

“Canadair was a big entrée into aviation, but we were fortunate to have the engineering staff in place,” Laurent told Robb Report. “The only thing they lacked was an entrepreneurial spirit and we were able to introduce that into the company.” Through his career, he also focused heavily on product design. “That’s always been important to me,” Laurent says. “Beyond it functioning, why shouldn’t it look attractive? Our aircraft look fast, even when they are sitting on a runway, they look like they want to go.”

In 2020, Bombardier sold off its railway business, becoming solely a business jet manufacturer, with multiple aircraft types across different categories, including its new flagship aircraft, the ultra-long-range Global 8000. “We still see a lot of upside for our company in this industry,” said Pierre. “The service business is one—there are a lot of aging aircraft out there, and we are also moving into military applications with our business jets. We see a very bright future there.”

The company remains focused on future aircraft. It has developed a blended-wing EcoJet Research Project to study and improve aerodynamics and propulsion efficiencies to reduce business jet emissions by up to 50 percent. “There are a lot of things being said about sustainability that are not always fact based,” said Laurent. “The EcoJet Project is an example of how we are going to study the things we can do to make a huge impact to reach that goal.”

NBAA-BACE offers dozens of seminars and workshops on all aspects of business aviation. It will run through October 24.

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