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HEADLINES

This week, at a glance.

• Soho House goes country club

• F1 layover, anyone?

• Where to drink a martini in Paris

• George Lucas’s billion-dollar museum

• The Porsche 911 you can only buy in the Alps

• The new A. Lange & Söhne Triple Split

• Aluminium luggage and the art of the dent

• No 1 Savile Row is back in business

• Emirates brings privacy to premium economy

• Aman is coming to Seoul

• Why St Kitts wants your fingerprints

• What we know about Pharrell’s Paris hotel

• Is your Oura actually doing anything?

• Finally, a proper sauna hat

• Atlas: a fitness tracker for the brain

• David Protein and the $2.25 billion protein bet

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TIME

What to do: culture, events, and experiences worth your time.

Soho House goes country club

Soho House has announced Soho River House, a country club along the Thames in Windsor, set to open next year. Anyone who has already spent a summer weekend at the River House pop-up at Oakley Court will recognise the idea – this is, after all, the permanent version of it. The centrepiece is a first for the group: a Racquet & Rowing Club, with tennis, padel and pickleball courts, boat storage and a launching ramp straight onto the water. Around it sit bedrooms, several restaurants and bars, a Soho Health Club, an outdoor onsen garden with cold plunge, and a 25-metre pool.

Soho Farmhouse in Oxfordshire showed the company a decade ago that members would drive out of London for a House with things to do, and it has leaned further into experiences ever since. River House takes that logic to its conclusion, built around the courts and the river with the bar in support, which is more or less where members’ clubs generally are heading. You can register your interest now at sohohouse.com.

F1 layover, anyone?

Qatar Airways has folded a Grand Prix into its stopover programme, so for the first time a three-day grandstand ticket comes bundled with the flights and the hotel for anyone passing through Doha on race weekend. Search dates between 27 and 29 November on Qatar Airways Holidays, pick from four hotel tiers, and a T16 Grandstand seat at Lusail is added to the booking – with a view of the final sector. Lusail is a night race under floodlights and the penultimate round of the season, and for anyone flying between Europe and Asia or Australia that week, a connection can now become a race weekend with very little extra effort. For pricing, head to Qatar Airways’ site and enter your itinerary.

Where to drink a martini in Paris

Colin Field has been named the world’s best bartender by both Forbes and Travel + Leisure, and for close to three decades he ran one of the most famous hotel bars in Paris. These days, he runs the lobby bar at Maison Proust – the 23-suite, thoroughly theatrical Jacques Garcia hotel in the upper Marais – and this week he unveiled his new menu. It's a martini list at heart. The first page is Field's own recipe, sketched out in his handwriting: gin infused with Sorrento lemons, two vermouths, a single frozen cube of honey water, stirred over ice. From there, the menu moves through his Clean Dirty Martini, made with a distilled olive from Avignon, and a vodka martini sharpened with ginger essence. At the top of the list sits the Folie de Proust, a glass of 1922 Château de Laubade Armagnac, the year Proust died, served with a bottle of Barons de Rothschild champagne. How good.

The bar itself, with its velvet banquettes, hidden library, and monumental fireplace, is a pleasure to sit in at any hour, and Friday – when Field is running the show from 5 o’clock – is really the night to go.

George Lucas’s billion-dollar museum

The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art opens in Los Angeles on 22 September, nine years after George Lucas and Mellody Hobson picked Exposition Park for it and five years after it was first supposed to open. Ma Yansong of MAD has produced a 300,000-square-foot building that looks like a spaceship come to rest, lifted off the ground on arched steel so the park flows underneath, with a further 11 acres of gardens around it. Inside are 35 galleries named for the experiences the pictures describe: love, family, work, play, adventure.

The museum argues that illustration is art, and it makes its case with range. Norman Rockwell hangs alongside Frida Kahlo, Artemisia Gentileschi alongside Robert Crumb, with Jack Kirby’s comic panels, Dorothea Lange’s photographs and Diego Rivera in between, more than 1,200 works from a collection of 40,000. Then comes the complete Lucasfilm archive, including Luke Skywalker’s landspeeder, in a show called Star Wars in Motion.

“This is a museum of the people’s art,” said Hobson, and the pricing agrees with her – $25 for adults, free for anyone 17 and under – with timed tickets on sale now through February 2027. Opening night on 19 September is co-chaired by Spielberg, Tom Cruise, Greta Gerwig, Guillermo del Toro, Jensen Huang and Pharrell.

FINANCIAL

What to buy: product launches and material obsessions.

The Porsche 911 you can only buy in the Alps

Porsche has built a 911 for the Alps – one that can only be bought there. The GT3 Bergsport is a collaboration between Porsche’s four Alpine subsidiaries: Austria, France, Italy and Switzerland, with 100 cars in total and sales restricted to customers in those four countries. It made its debut on Thursday at the Arosa ClassicCar hill climb, on the 7.3km Swiss course where Porsche’s Bergspyders raced in the 1960s.

Underneath the pretty package, it’s a GT3 with the Touring Package and a six-speed manual, and on top comes a specification designed for its mountain-going pedigree. There’s a front-axle lift for steep ramps, a 90-litre tank for long days on the passes, a roof-transport system with HEAD skis, and a new colour called Valleygreenmetallic, a deep green with gold particles in it – offset by orange calipers meant to recall alpenglow. The badge on the rear, by the photographer Stefan Bogner, carries four snow-white peaks, one per country. Though the internet’s geographers noted right away that the Alps pass through eight countries, and that Germany, Porsche’s own, sits among the excluded. A fair point Porsche will have to live with. Deliveries begin in winter 2027/2028, with pricing on application through Porsche Centres in the four markets.

The new A. Lange & Söhne Triple Split

Of all the things a mechanical watch can do, timing two events at once for 12 hours is among the hardest. The updated Triple Split from A. Lange & Söhne is, by the Glashütte manufacture’s account, the only split-seconds chronograph in the world that manages it. A standard split-seconds watch lets two hands sweep together, stops one for an intermediate time, then catches it up again, doing so just for a single minute. Lange extends the trick to the minute and hour counters as well, so two marathon runners, two laps of a hill climb or two flights can be timed against each other all afternoon. It takes a rather complex work of 567 parts to do it.

It was this week at the Concours of Elegance at Hampton Court Palace that Lange showed the new piece, and it’s the third version since the watch first appeared in 2018 – after the white gold original and a pink gold edition in 2021. The new one is a 100-piece edition in platinum, with a rhodium-coloured silver dial, darker grey subdials and blued split hands. It’s the coolest and heaviest of the three by some distance. The case remains 43.2mm across and 15.6mm tall, space the movement understandably requires, on a dark brown alligator strap with a platinum folding clasp. Long the watchmaker’s watchmaker, Lange is in fine form at the moment, and really the name collectors reach for when explaining that the very best of the trade isn’t all Swiss.

Aluminium luggage and the art of the dent

Aluminium luggage occupies a strange place in the world of things, as one of the few goods that seemingly improves in its owner’s eyes by being damaged. Rimowa started it in 1937 with a case built from aircraft alloy, added the grooves in 1950 in homage to a Junkers fuselage, and over the following decades the ribbed silver box became the most recognisable object on any baggage carousel, worth €640 million ($750 million) to LVMH for an 80% stake in 2016. The appeal is partly practical, sure. Aluminium can take a beating. But it’s mostly cultural if we’re being honest. A dented case says its owner goes places; the stickers and tags become a travel diary, and the whole thing acquires a patina that plastic is built to avoid.

Carl Friedrik has been the luggage brand of choice around here for a while, on the strength of Italian leather-trimmed polycarbonate cases and silent Japanese Hinomoto wheels, so when its aluminium carry-on arrived in March, the obvious question was when the big one would follow. This week those wishes were laid to rest. The new Aluminium Check-in is 76 litres and 6.4kg, with steel-reinforced corners, dual TSA combination locks, and the same interior layout, in black, chocolate, or cognac leather, at $1,095. It’s on pre-order now, and ships from 17 September, and the brochure describes future dents as “an evolving record of your travels”, which is exactly the right attitude.

No 1 Savile Row is back in business

Gieves & Hawkes reopened No 1 Savile Row on Tuesday after a summer behind hoardings, and the result is a refurbishment in the truest sense of the word. Plaster cornices have been redecorated, panelling refreshed and timber floors refinished across the 7,000-square-foot, Grade II-listed building, with a new Portland stone entrance laid in a keystone pattern. All of the joinery, furniture and display cabinets were made in Britain, and carry subtle rope motifs from the house’s naval past. Made-to-measure has grown into a larger space, and upstairs, the Robert Gieves Room now holds an installation of archive pieces put together with Adam Ellis Studio.

Few addresses on the Row carry as much history. Built in the mid-18th century as a home for the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, No 1 later housed the Royal Geographical Society, whose explorers were often dressed by the tailor, and has been a tailoring house since 1912. Gieves & Hawkes moved in during 1975, after the IRA bombed its Old Bond Street store, and the two have been more or less interchangeable in people’s minds ever since. Now owned by Frasers Group, the 255-year-old house, a Royal Warrant holder since 1789, has bespoke, made-to-measure, ready-to-wear and the military department all back under one roof, with bespoke by appointment.

LOCATION

Where to go: travel and mobility for the globally curious.

Emirates brings privacy to premium economy

Emirates unveiled a new premium economy seat on Thursday, and with it a full-height divider between every pair of seats, which rises and lowers electrically and locks wherever it’s set – a first for the cabin class, Emirates says. The seat is fully electric for the first time too, with preset lounge and meal positions. It reclines into a cradle without tipping into the row behind, while a redesigned leather headrest, wireless charging and a tray table with a built-in phone holder round out a list typically reserved for business class. Arriving in a 28-seat cabin on the new A350s Emirates is currently taking delivery of, the seat is 20 inches wide and up to 39 inches of pitch – and while the airline hasn’t yet said which route will see it first, its A350s tend to fly the medium-haul routes into Europe and Asia.

Aman is coming to Seoul

Aman announced its first property in South Korea on Wednesday, in Cheongdam – the most expensive stretch of Gangnam – on a site overlooking the Han River, and its shape says a good deal about how the brand now builds in cities. Aman Seoul will stack a hotel, 49 branded residences and a members-only Aman Club into a 38-storey tower with eight floors below ground. It’ll be roughly 70,000 square metres in all, with a multi-floor wellness offering, Aman’s own restaurants, a club pool, gym and lounges, and a separate entrance for each element. The interiors draw on Korean spatial traditions and materials, developed with local craftspeople.

The developer is Shinsegae Property, the real estate arm of the Korean retail group, and the project is the first result of a joint venture signed in July between Shinsegae and OKO Group, the developer owned by Aman’s chairman Vlad Doronin. It’s a bet on Seoul as a luxury destination in its own right, a city whose influence in fashion, beauty, food and design has outpaced its supply of top-tier hotels. Zoom out, and it’s the latest in an urban run for Aman that began with Tokyo in 2014 and continued through New York and Bangkok, with Beverly Hills, Miami Beach, Dubai and Singapore still to come. No opening date has been given, though Korean press are writing 2029, so we can treat that as directional.

Why St Kitts wants your fingerprints

St Kitts and Nevis began issuing biometric passports on Tuesday, and for anyone who holds one of its citizenships by investment, the change comes with a deadline. Every citizen who came through the programme, dependants included, must complete biometric enrolment in person – fingerprints and facial capture at an approved centre – by 31 July 2027, after which the old passports stop being valid for travel. Enrolment has been open since April, and advisers report that appointment slots at newer centres such as Istanbul are limited, so the sensible plan is to allow a month or two between enrolment and the new passport arriving.

The reason is fairly simple: Europe. The European Commission has been watching the five Caribbean investor-citizenship programmes closely, and it’s strengthened the mechanism that lets it suspend visa-free access to the Schengen area – which is, of course, the reason people get these passports. Dating to 1984, the St Kitts programme is the oldest of its kind, with a minimum contribution of $250,000 these days, and it's now the first to make the process deliberately less convenient. An in-person appointment and a set of fingerprints make the passport harder to obtain and harder to abuse – the price of keeping Europe's visa-free door open. Historically, where St Kitts goes, the rest of the Caribbean follows. The advisory trade expects biometrics, and possibly residency requirements, to spread across the region over the next few years.

What we know about Pharrell’s Paris hotel

The former Hôtel Saint-James & Albany sits at 202 rue de Rivoli, directly opposite the Tuileries and a short walk from the Louvre, Place Vendôme and the shops of Saint-Honoré. In other words, a rather prime Parisian address. Since October 2024, it has belonged to a joint venture of Mohari Hospitality, Omnam Investment Group and Pharrell Williams – his first hotel co-investment – and planning documents that surfaced this summer have put shape to the project: 14,000 square metres in total, 106 rooms and suites, four private apartments, restaurants, several bars, a pool, a spa and a fitness floor. The Paris firm Valode & Pistre – which handled the Bulgari Hotel Paris – is leading the architecture.

Pharrell has been here before, in a sense, having opened the Goodtime Hotel in Miami Beach with David Grutman in 2021, and his partners are serious operators, with Mohari holding stakes in the Four Seasons Madrid and Tao Group, and Omnam carrying a record of reviving historic European buildings. The name, the operator, the opening date, and the rates are all still to come, as is any confirmation of how hands-on Pharrell’s creative role will be. For now, then, there’s an address and a floor plan, and both are promising.

HEALTH

How to live: wellness, performance, and the pursuit of longevity.

Is your Oura actually doing anything?

A proposed class action filed in California last month argues that the Oura ring cannot measure sleep stages at all, and that its marketing – “79% agreement” with clinical sleep labs, and more recently “95% Sleep Staging Accuracy” – amounts to false advertising. Sleep stages, the complaint says, are defined by brain activity, eye movement and muscle tone, measured in a lab with electrodes on the scalp, and a ring on the finger records none of those things. Oura instead infers them from heart rate, temperature and movement. The lawsuit cites a 2025 peer-reviewed study that put the ring’s four-stage accuracy at 53%, which the filing characterises as ‘a coin flip’.

Oura disputes the allegations and says it stands behind its science, pointing out that every consumer sleep wearable estimates stages from the same signals, and that peer-reviewed research supports the link between those signals and sleep stages. The ring, worn by 5.5 million people at last count, is a very good tracker of when someone fell asleep, how long they slept and how consistent their nights are – none of which the lawsuit contests – and a rougher guide to how many minutes of deep or REM sleep they got. The latter, unfortunately, seems to be the number people tend to obsess over. The case remains pending in California, and the court has yet to certify a class or rule on any of the claims.

Finally, a proper sauna hat

Anyone who has spent time in a Finnish sauna or a Russian banya will have noticed the felt hats. The logic is simple enough: the head overheats before the body does, a layer of wool keeps it cooler, and the session lasts longer and feels better for it, with the added benefit that the hair is spared repeated blasts of dry heat. The problem has always been the hats themselves. Most are Amazon-grade felt of uncertain origin, with the occasional novelty Viking helmet thrown in – a strange state of affairs, given how expensive sauna culture has become. Bjorli, which launched this week, is really the first attempt to make one properly, constructed from undyed baby alpaca from a single farm in the Peruvian Andes.

At $200, it’s not exactly priced for Amazon, drawing instead on the luxurification of sauna culture and the Loro Piana playbook of fine fibres sourced from far-flung corners of the globe. The brand’s public face is Aris Yeager, the 26-year-old Greek creator you’ll know better as The European Kid, his three-million-follower parody of a bratty French trust-fund heir. Behind him, a small team in Scandinavia designs the brand, which launches in limited drops with little paid marketing.

The proven health benefits of a sauna hat are thin as far as the science is yet concerned, though the anecdotal case is convincing and the hair protection is as close to fact as these things get. There’s something ritualistic about it too, and if the regulars in Helsinki wear one, anyone already spending hundreds a month on sessions has probably earned the right. They’re tastefully made, the founder story is a good one, and it’s a safe bet these will be turning up in the better bathhouses before long. Available now at bjorli.co.

Atlas: a fitness tracker for the brain

Wearables have measured the heart for 15 years, and this week a San Francisco startup called Atlas opened pre-orders for the first one that claims to measure the brain in daily life, all day. The Atlas 1.0 is an adhesive patch worn on the hairless skin behind the ear. It combines EEG electrodes with motion, skin-conductance and voice-vibration sensors – the last of which detects that its wearer is talking without recording the words – and feeds all of that into three live scores in an app: Presence, Stress and Energy Burn. The company’s claim to novelty is that it records usable brain activity while a person is moving, walking, talking or exercising, which conventional EEG cannot. Its algorithms, it says, are built on more than 500,000 real-life brain recordings.

The Pioneer Edition is $499, including three months of membership. After that, the subscription is $29.99 a month and covers the app, the analysis and fresh sensors, each of which lasts around two weeks. Shipping is estimated for the first quarter of 2027. Backed by $24 million from investors including Acrew Capital and HOF Capital, and picked for the NBA’s Launchpad programme, Atlas is careful to describe the device as a wellness product with no medical claims attached. A daily number for how present someone is could be the next frontier of self-knowledge, or a very expensive way to be told to put the phone down, and the first units arriving next spring will start to settle the question.

David Protein and the $2.25 billion protein bet

Medici Brands, the company behind the David protein bar, raised $250 million on Wednesday at a valuation of $2.25 billion, triple what it was worth a year ago, in a round co-led by Greenoaks and Valor Equity Partners with ICONIQ and Imaginary Ventures alongside. The speed is remarkable. David launched in September 2024 as a direct-to-consumer brand with a single product: a bar with 28 grams of protein, 150 calories, and zero sugar. Two years later, it’s in more than 35,000 stores, including Walmart, Target, and Costco. Frozen desserts and ready-to-drink shakes have followed, and revenue is heading past $300 million a year.

You might be familiar with the founder, Peter Rahal – he co-founded RXBAR and sold it to Kellogg for $600 million in 2017. This, his second act, is built on an ingredient as much as a brand. Medici owns Epogee, maker of a plant-based fat substitute called EPG that delivers the texture of fat with a fraction of the calories, and it’s using it to rebuild the snack aisle. HallPass, a low-sugar candy line Rahal calls “the Coke Zero of candy”, launched at Walmart in August, and a third brand, Rowdy, follows later this year. “We are not interested in telling people to stop eating the foods they love,” Rahal said this week. Eating something that resembles them, it seems, will do.

America’s protein obsession has done some good, since most people were eating too little of it, and David deserves credit for proving that a bar can taste decent at 150 calories. The harder question is whether the answer to junk food is more heavily engineered junk food, built on lab-engineered ingredients and a stack of sweeteners, and on that, the jury is still very much out. What the valuation can at least confirm is the size of the demand, and that anyone selling protein in a convenient wrapper right now is selling into a very hungry market. For now, the bars are a US-only proposition, sold direct and through the major American chains.

The Four Freedoms is presented by Ramp – the finance platform that helps businesses control spend, automate expenses, and manage bills. As a Liber reader, you can get $250 when you sign up here. T&Cs apply.

HEADLINES

This week, at a glance.

• Frieze Abu Dhabi and the great art land grab

• Monaco hosts a bike race

• Straker’s opens in New York this month

• The return of the Bentley magazine

• The Omega Speedmaster, now in small

• The slow reveal of Dunhill AW26

• Land Rover will sell you its Dakar-winning Defender

• Ricoh can’t make cameras fast enough

• Istanbul is now Europe’s busiest airport

• Ritz-Carlton Reserve goes urban

• ITA Airways now allows big dogs in the cabin

• Why NetJets stopped selling jet cards

• Reykjaböð: Iceland’s newest geothermal lagoon

• Jesse Itzler and the art of the misogi

• 56:51 – what the fastest half marathon ever tells us

• The Altar, New York’s new longevity bathhouse

Subscribe now

TIME

What to do: culture, events, and experiences worth your time.

Frieze Abu Dhabi and the great art land grab

Frieze named the 84 galleries for its first Abu Dhabi fair this week, confirming what October’s announcement promised: the emirate now has a marquee week on the global art calendar, 19 to 22 November at Manarat Al Saadiyat. Gagosian, Pace, Perrotin and Victoria Miro will show alongside the region’s most established dealers, with sculpture programmes, artist awards and talks built around the booths – a full cultural season compressed into four days.

The fair is one piece of a much larger project, as Abu Dhabi’s culture department has spent two decades building Saadiyat Island into a museum district to rival any capital, the Louvre Abu Dhabi already in place, a Guggenheim and the Zayed National Museum on the way, and it was that same department which brought Frieze in, evolving its homegrown fair of 17 years into this. Art Basel, meanwhile, opened in Doha this February – the world’s two biggest fair brands now sit 500km apart on the Gulf.

Monaco hosts a bike race

The Vuelta a España set off from Monaco last weekend, making the principality the first place to have hosted the start of all three cycling Grand Tours. The opening time trial borrowed generously from the Formula 1 circuit – starting from inside the casino and down around the hairpin through the marina’s storied streets. Watching from the barriers cost nothing, which the Grand Prix, however, cannot claim. Tadej Pogačar, a Monaco resident and the sport’s reigning force, won it by nine hundredths of a second – an F1 margin on an F1 track.

He took two more stages this week and built a lead of nearly four minutes, cruising toward the only Grand Tour missing from his collection. Then, on Saturday’s Stage 8, a rock on the roadside sent him over the bars at speed, and out of the race in an ambulance. It was his first abandonment in ten Grand Tours: a concussion, broken collarbone, and neck fracture.

His team says he is stable, and recovery will no doubt take a while – even for a Slovenian superhuman. The race, in all its brutality, carries on without him, suddenly wide open. The one Grand Tour he hasn’t won will have to wait.

Straker's opens in New York this month

Thomas Straker built an audience of millions on butter, parlayed it into Straker's, a Notting Hill dining room with a queue to match the following, and this week he confirmed the New York chapter will finally open this month. The address carries stories: 59 Grand Street in SoHo, home for three decades to Keith McNally’s Lucky Strike, a heritage space Straker says he walked into once and immediately knew was the one. Nine months of construction delays later, it’s emerged as a more grown-up room than London, cooking over fire in an open kitchen up front, a proper banquetted dining room under skylights at the back.

McNally himself gave a blessing of sorts, telling Straker he’d be in three times a week for lunch, provided the mussel flatbread makes the menu. It will.

The return of the Bentley magazine

Bentley has revived its 25-year-old customer magazine as W.O., named for founder Walter Owen Bentley, and to launch it, the marque has turned Automat in Mayfair into the Bentley Newsagent until 4 September. Pass through Mount Street this week and a limited-edition copy comes free with a coffee, while stocks last – a rather civilised transaction by launch standards.

A photograph in the Bentley archive shows four racing cars, and their drivers gathered on that very street in 1929, before departing for Le Mans, where Bentley would finish 1-2-3-4. The new issue, produced with contributors including photographer Greg Williams and Road Rat editor Peter Grunert, puts Billy Zane and his 1990 Turbo R on the cover, printed to coffee-table permanence: textured wrap, foil detailing, Bentley Green matched by hand.

FINANCIAL

What to buy: product launches and material obsessions.

The Omega Speedmaster, now in small

Omega has rebuilt its 38mm Speedmaster in the image of the Moonwatch, and about time – the outgoing small model, with its oval subdials and jewellery-box colourways, never truly convinced anyone. The new one gets round subdials, a proper bezel with the dot-over-ninety detail, the five-link bracelet, and, in the black no-date version, a recipe Omega hasn’t sold since the Speedmaster ‘Reduced’ disappeared in 2009.

Notably, the very first Speedmaster, in 1957, measured 38.6mm. This is a homecoming, in other words, and the 42mm everyone knows is the version that grew.

The release hasn’t arrived without criticism. The case sits nearly 15mm tall on the wrist – the main wearability issue the community has voiced disagreement with – and seven references at once is perhaps overkill when a couple would have landed harder. Still, with the whole industry trending smaller, it’s a step in the right direction. The steel classic starts at $6,500.

The slow reveal of Dunhill AW26

One of the most overlooked – or perhaps misunderstood – big names in designer menswear, Dunhill has just put its AW26 collection into stores and online, and the way it was rolled out deserves at least some of the attention the clothes themselves will no doubt receive. When Simon Holloway showed the collection in January, he did it privately, at Villa Mozart in Milan. No runway, that is. The campaign, shot by Ethan James Green with Lord Snowdon as muse, was published entirely in black and white – a match for the cold, grey English palette that inspired the collection.

Now, with the clothes finally buyable, the world gets the reveal in full colour. In an industry that frontloads its excitement six months before anything exists, letting anticipation build until it drags people into stores is a clever inversion, and a rather confident one. Hooked on dopamine and the comforts of immediacy, how nice a change it can be to enjoy the fruits of patience.

From the racks, a few of our favourites: the suede driving jacket, the camel hair cigar shirt jacket, a hilariously clever pill box lighter, the healthily-priced but knowingly on-brand padel brooch, and these double-faced cashmere scarves.

Land Rover will sell you its Dakar-winning Defender

In January, three near-production Defenders entered the Dakar Rally’s new Stock class and finished first, second and fourth, with the great Stéphane Peterhansel driving one of them. This month at Monterey Car Week, Land Rover revealed the road-legal version. The Defender Dakar keeps the race truck’s body architecture and driveline, adds a derestricted 626bhp V8 that out-powers the racer, and rides on 35-inch tyres with rally-spec dampers and a Flight Mode, which manages torque mid-jump – a feature no school pickup requires, and plenty will enjoy knowing exists.

It will be a limited edition, positioned above the $159,000 Octa, with production numbers and pricing revealed at the 2027 Dakar in January. Registrations of interest are already open. Land Rover has not stopped swinging since the modern Defender launched, and it doesn’t appear to be slowing down.

Ricoh can’t make cameras fast enough

The Ricoh GR IV has become the proper camera that ordinary people actually carry. It’s pocketable, sharp, mercifully simple, and it sells so well that Ricoh’s own financial reports credit the GR series for the company’s growth in cameras, with the recent Monochrome edition gone on arrival. This week brought the sequel announcement: the GR IVx, carrying a newly designed 40mm-equivalent lens, closer to how the eye actually sees, due this winter.

One practical note: as the outgoing GR IIIx ends production in October, anyone tempted by the current model should move before the stock does.

LOCATION

Where to go: travel and mobility for the globally curious.

Istanbul is now Europe’s busiest airport

For nearly thirty years, Heathrow was Europe’s front door. It held the busiest-airport title from 1996 to 2019, reclaimed it after the pandemic, but as of July, the crown belongs to Istanbul: 8.15 million passengers against Heathrow’s 7.86 million. Part of the new gap is circumstance, with Heathrow’s Middle East traffic down 20.2% amid the Iran-US conflict.

Istanbul, though, was built for exactly this, a mega-hub where Europe, Asia and Africa meet, feeding Turkish Airlines’ network, which flies to more countries than any other carrier. A fourth runway is even slated to open later this year. Heathrow, meanwhile, continues a decades-long debate about a third runway that, on the most optimistic timeline, would arrive in 2035. Credit where credit is due – they’ve done well to manage on two, all things considered.

Ritz-Carlton Reserve goes urban

There are only nine Ritz-Carlton Reserves on earth, all remote by design – cliffs in Los Cabos, jungle in Krabi, and that scarcity, really, is what has helped define the product. Marriott’s announcement last week broke the brand’s founding rule: the first city Reserve is coming to Shanghai, 110 rooms inside a 480-metre, 103-storey tower on the North Bund, the tallest building on the Puxi side of the river, slated for 2030.

Shanghai, upon opening, will become the only city in the world holding all eight of Marriott’s luxury brands, a fact the group slipped into its announcement almost as an aside, and one that says plenty about where hotel strategy is heading. A 2030 date announced in 2026 leaves room for the usual slippage, so treat the timeline as directional.

ITA Airways now allows big dogs in the cabin

Anyone who has tried to move a large dog across the world knows the maths never works. Most airlines cap cabin pets around 8kg, and the hold, for many owners, feels somewhere between stressful and unthinkable. The cost of the alternative, though – private charter through outfits like K9 Jets – essentially begins north of 5 figures. Big dogs cancel more relocations and long trips than anyone admits.

ITA Airways has now moved the line, becoming the first major carrier to allow dogs up to 30kg (66lb) in the cabin, no crate, on a mat beside their owner’s window seat. Dogs over 15kg (33lb) are booked into business class, which feels correct. There’s no scale at check-in, either, as a vet certificate issued within 20 days attests to weight and fitness to fly, and the dog needs its own booked space, plus a €95 ($110) fee per flight.

It’s limited to select Italian domestic routes for now, booked at least four days ahead, though the airline has signalled bigger ambitions. One carrier proving the concept is how these things start.

Why NetJets stopped selling jet cards

NetJets curtailed sales of its jet cards and leases in late July, only the second time in five years, and the reason is the opposite of trouble. The Berkshire Hathaway-owned operator says retention among fractional owners has never been higher, demand keeps arriving faster than aircraft do, and with 868 jets in the fleet, 80 more coming this year, and flight volumes up 11.8% in the first half, the constraint isn’t customers, it’s capacity.

In any fleet-based programme, fractional owners sit at the top of the priority ladder, cardholders below them, so protecting the owners means turning the card tap off. Fractional ownership, once the wonky middle child of private flying, has become the seat everyone wants, and competitors are reporting a surge as NetJets’ would-be cardholders shop elsewhere.

HEALTH

How to live: wellness, performance, and the pursuit of longevity.

Reykjaböð: Iceland’s newest geothermal lagoon

Iceland’s lagoon culture needs no introduction. The Blue Lagoon long ago became shorthand for the country itself, and this Tuesday, 1 September, a new contender opens at the foot of the Reykjadalur valley near Hveragerði, about 40 minutes from Reykjavík. Reykjaböð pairs a geothermal lagoon with a ten-stage Nordic bathhouse, saunas, cold plunges, and an Arctic room filled with actual snow, all at the trailhead of the hot-river valley hikers already adore. Bookings are open now, with lagoon passes from $65 and the full bathhouse circuit from $130.

Jesse Itzler and the art of the misogi

Jesse Itzler has built several fortunes, co-founding Marquis Jet, selling coconut water to Coca-Cola, buying into the Atlanta Hawks, and yet the thing our entrepreneurial readers most borrow from him is a calendar entry. The misogi, adapted from an ancient Japanese ritual, is his rule that every year must contain one defining challenge, committed to the calendar months in advance, and his conditions for choosing it are simple: a 50/50 chance of finishing, and don’t die. Past editions include a month living with a Navy SEAL, Ultraman, and biking across America.

This year’s, just completed around Vancouver, was the biggest yet, an Everesting triathlon he’s calling the 29029 Triple: two days biking repeats of Mt Seymour until he’d climbed the height of Everest, all 29,029 feet, then swimming Everest’s length, 5.5 miles, in Whistler’s Alta Lake, then hiking its height once more, back to back to back, 51 hours of effort in total. He is, by his own cheerful admission, a terrible swimmer, which was rather the point, and he’s the first person in the world to complete it.

The hiking leg doubled as 29029 Whistler, the flagship event of the endurance company Itzler co-founded in 2017, where 373 participants this year, the youngest 16 and the oldest 71, had 36 hours to summit Whistler Mountain eight times, 3,900 feet of climbing per lap at a 19.6% average grade, gondola down, earning the red hat that finishers wear like a medal. His own conclusion is the retainable bit: you will never regret putting something challenging on the calendar with friends. Bravo.

56:51 – what the fastest half marathon ever tells us

Yomif Kejelcha ran the fastest half marathon in history last Sunday in Buenos Aires, 56 minutes and 51 seconds, and the most useful detail for the average runner is not so much the time itself as his strategy – he covered the second 10km 34 seconds faster than the first. The negative split, easier preached than executed, remains the most reliable trick in distance running, and one of the world’s fastest men just demonstrated it at 4:20 per mile.

The record fell inside a sold-out mass race of 31,500 runners in Buenos Aires’ cool late-winter air, on a course redesigned this year to be faster – one that now needs its own certification before the record can be ratified. That’s no formality lately. The two would-be records before this one were rejected when officials ruled the pace car had shielded Jacob Kiplimo from the wind in Barcelona, and ratification is still pending half a year after his Lisbon effort.

The half marathon has outgrown its stepping-stone reputation, with its own records, tactics and stars, and for the amateur it remains the most honest distance there is: long enough to demand respect, short enough to train for with a job.

The Altar, New York’s new longevity bathhouse

New York’s recovery scene has a new centrepiece, as The Altar is now open on Fifth Avenue in the Flatiron. The space is built around a fifty-person ceremonial sauna billed as the city’s largest, where guided Aufguss sessions – the theatrical European towel-and-heat ritual – get performed at proper scale. The space splits in two: The Atrium for communal sauna and cold plunge, guided or self-directed, and The Practice for the longevity hardware, IV therapy, NAD+, red light, compression, and hyperbaric chambers. Bookings are live for both.s

The Four Freedoms is presented by Ramp – the finance platform that takes the admin out of company spend, so ambitious businesses can get on with the work itself.

HEADLINES

This week, at a glance.

• The US Open ticket price backlash

• Soho House’s identity crisis

• Jondal: Ibiza’s favourite reservation

• What went wrong at Williams?

• American Express is cutting credit limits

• A weekend with the Bentley Continental GT S

• The Blancpain Bathyscaphe 70th: Right watch, wrong price

• Is Phia phinished?

• Trenitalia is coming for the Eurostar

• The Slim Aarons school of hotel design

• Slovenia is having a record summer

• How fast can you book a private jet?

• Inside Germany’s last-man-standing ultramarathon

• Marylebone’s new longevity gym

• The Cadence Performance Center

• The rise of non-toxic workout wear

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TIME

What to do: culture, events, and experiences worth your time.

The US Open ticket price backlash

The US Open’s main draw begins on August 30th, and the cost of walking through the gates has become the story before a ball has been struck. Grounds passes carry a face value of $65 to $135 depending on the day, but those tickets sold out within hours of the May presale – the only passes available since have sat on Ticketmaster’s Verified Resale platform, the tournament’s official marketplace, where day one prices hit $363 this week. The pass covers the outer courts and unreserved seats in Louis Armstrong and the Grandstand, excluding Arthur Ashe.

Bill Ackman has led the backlash, pointing out that the USTA is a non-profit whose stated mission is the promotion of tennis, and asking how its marquee event arrived at a gate price roughly eight times Wimbledon’s – where a grounds pass this year cost £33 (about $45) and could actually be bought at that number through the queue. The US Open was long the accessible Slam, the one a New Yorker could decide to attend that morning, and that version is now largely theoretical, it would seem.

Soho House’s identity crisis

When Miami Pool House opened in 2022, it was Soho House distilled to a single idea – a club arranged around a pool, a cocktail list and a DJ booth. Now, a few years later, it closed last month for a full refurbishment, and when it reopens later this year, it will be a dedicated Soho Health Club. That means an indoor-outdoor gym, contrast suites, a racquet club, hyperbaric oxygen and cryotherapy, and a restaurant built around nutrient-rich cooking – the company’s largest South Florida investment since the club opened.

The renovation is the clearest statement yet of where the world’s most famous members club believes its future lies, and it’s a long way from the hedonism the brand was built on. Health and fitness offerings now span 46 houses worldwide; longevity studios are planned for 180 House, Barcelona, New York and the forthcoming Los Cabos opening, and Soho Beach House up the road is getting expanded spa and recovery facilities of its own.

Jondal: Ibiza’s favourite reservation

Six summers after Rafa Zafra first put tables on the sand at Cala Jondal, his beach restaurant has become the reservation to have on the island – a dining room in the sand serving more than 400 covers a day while turning away roughly 400 more requests. Zafra came through the kitchen at El Bulli before building the Estimar restaurants in Barcelona and Madrid, and Jondal applies that pedigree to the chiringuito format. Tapas magazine named it Best Chiringuito 2026 in July, and the Michelin Guide lists the restaurant.

The brand is now travelling, and this is the news: Jondal will stage a pop-up at El Jardín del Ritz at the Mandarin Oriental Ritz, Madrid, from September 10th to the 13th – timed to the city’s first Formula 1 Grand Prix, with reservations open now via reservations@jondal.es. An outpost in Los Cabos is also in the works (with no confirmed opening date), but for now, the original, as ever, takes bookings by WhatsApp.

What went wrong at Williams?

Williams spent two seasons promising that everything was going into the 2026 car, and the bet has not paid off – the FW48 arrived overweight and off the pace, the team hasn’t scored since Monaco, and neither Carlos Sainz nor Alex Albon has finished higher than 15th across the last four races. For a project that treated the new regulations as its great reset, this is the nightmare scenario, and Sainz spent much of the season sounding like a man reconsidering his options.

All that to say, the news that arrived on Wednesday was a bit of a surprise: he signed a multi-year extension reportedly worth up to €30 million (about $35 million) a season – exit clauses attached, mind you. The suave Spaniard is reportedly being paid at title-contender rates to wait for the project to come good, with a door left open if it doesn’t – and the alternatives were thin, since Mercedes and McLaren are settled, the Audi links never hardened, and Cadillac’s debut season has been bruising, with Sergio Pérez retiring from four of the last seven races.

The wider market now waits on bigger dominoes, with Max Verstappen’s reported performance clauses keeping speculation alive and Fernando Alonso’s future the other open question as racing resumes at today’s Dutch Grand Prix. Sainz’s signature settles one seat, and leaves Williams with everything still to prove.

FINANCIAL

What to buy: product launches and material obsessions.

American Express is cutting credit limits

American Express is reportedly cutting spending limits for some of the heaviest spenders on their personal cards, with cardholders describing tens of thousands of dollars – in some cases more than that – removed from their spending power overnight. The accounts circulating over the past two weeks share a profile: high monthly spend, long histories, on-time payments, and no warning.

Amex’s famously misunderstood “no preset spending limit” has always been dynamic, recalculated continuously against a multitude of factors, so the company is technically within their rights to cap spend. What’s drawing attention right now is the pattern – limits reportedly reduced for otherwise healthy customers all at once, which reads to some as a lender pulling back exposure across its book. The recession chatter has followed, with widely shared posts noting that comparable tightening was last reported around 2007 or 2019, though those claims come from commentators, and American Express has not commented on any policy change.

A weekend with the Bentley Continental GT S

Bentley has rarely been the obvious answer to the question of the most fun you can have in a British sports car, and the new Continental GT is the strongest case the marque has made in years. We took one down to Dorset during the peak of the London heatwave, and a few hundred miles made the intent clear – this thing has some edge. Our car was a Continental GT S, finished in matte British Racing Green with carbon ceramic brakes, carbon-fibre detailing and a titanium sports exhaust.

For all that edge, it’s unmistakably a Bentley – supremely comfortable, beautifully put together, and capable of attracting attention without trying. Three people sat in it easily, always impressive for a two-door, and it ate motorway miles with everything you touch feeling as considered as you’d hope. Give it some room, though, and there’s a proper car underneath the luxury – the V8 has grunt, and it’s considerably more playful than the badge suggests.

The fourth-generation Continental is now hybrid across the range, pairing the 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8 with an electric motor, including the GT S. The ‘great’ hybridisation of performance cars still takes some selling, though in a car built to cross countries, the logic lands, and the transition between power sources is reliably seamless. So could an Aston Martin still be the instinctive choice? Probably – though after a weekend with the Continental GT S, it’s no longer such an easy call.

The Blancpain Bathyscaphe 70th: Right watch, wrong price

Blancpain marked the 70th anniversary of the Bathyscaphe on Thursday with the watch collectors have spent a decade requesting – a faithful reproduction of a 1968 model, 37.4mm across, with a meteor grey dial and a limit of 300 pieces. The Bathyscaphe arrived in 1956 as the civilian counterpart to the Fifty Fathoms, the watch that effectively invented the dive category, and the reissue restores the compact proportions the modern collection abandoned – now with a sapphire crystal in place of the original’s Hesalite, the brand’s Calibre 1150 with silicon escapement and 100-hour power reserve, and an open caseback.

The number is where it unravels, since the reissue asks CHF 13,800 (about $17,100) – nearly CHF 3,000 over the standard Bathyscaphe at CHF 11,000 (about $13,600) – for a steel, time-and-date diver whose movement architecture traces back to a 1990s design. The watch is exactly right, and the price is a test of how much the nostalgia market will bear – with 300 pieces it will almost certainly sell out, which is different from being reasonable. Available through Blancpain boutiques.

Is Phia phinished?

Phia, the AI shopping assistant co-founded by Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni, has spent the month under a cloud after Bloomberg reported its founders knew for roughly seven months that the software was claiming commissions on sales it never drove – a timeline that sits awkwardly beside the company’s July statement that it had learned of the issue “within the last 24 hours.” The affiliate network Impact.com has suspended the company while it audits transactions, and Phia disputes elements of the reporting.

The maddening part is that the product was real, since users plainly loved a tool that scanned a garment page, compared prices across retailers and surfaced the resale market automatically – Phia raised more than $43 million on the strength of it. The business model just doesn’t really match the demand. Shoppers won’t pay for a savings tool, which means every extension monetises through affiliate commissions, and those are awarded to whoever owns the last cookie before checkout. You can see why the category keeps producing the same scandal – Honey faced its own allegations in late 2024 – and it is why the perfect shopping assistant remains unbuilt in an era when the technology is the easy part. AI can now read a product page as well as any personal shopper, and it still can’t fix an incentive problem.

The tools that survive scrutiny are the ones that make their money in the open, and in fashion that mostly means the aggregators – Lyst and ShopStyle index thousands of retailers, track price drops and alert you when the coat you’ve been circling gets marked down, earning a straightforward referral with no cookie games required. The resale check Phia automated is still worth doing manually, with Vestiaire Collective or The RealReal open in a second tab, since the best price on a current-season piece is often a barely worn one. Beyond that, the honest answer is that nothing needs installing at all.

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LOCATION

Where to go: travel and mobility for the globally curious.

Trenitalia is coming for the Eurostar

Trenitalia has confirmed a €2 billion (about $2.3 billion) order for 19 new high-speed trains, with ten earmarked for a planned London to Paris service targeting 2029 – the first direct challenge to the Eurostar since its cross-Channel monopoly began in 1994. For the millions of Brits for whom "the Eurostar" is simply the name of the route, competition should promise what the past three decades haven't offered – more departures, more seats and a reason for fares to come down.

The corridor is suddenly crowded with suitors, since Virgin has declared plans for a rival service around the end of the decade, while the Spanish-backed Evolyn and the start-up Gemini Trains have stated intentions of their own – though Trenitalia’s confirmed rolling-stock order makes it the most concrete challenger so far, and the widely expected first mover. The company’s high-speed Frecciarossa services have operated inside France since 2021, and anyone smirking at the thought of Italian trains on the route has presumably not stood on a British platform lately. Cross-Channel timelines have slipped before, so 2029 remains a target, with routes and fares still to be announced.

The Slim Aarons school of hotel design

Hotel design has developed a longing for 1965, and two properties this year make the case plainly. Zannier Île de Bendor, the Riviera's blockbuster opening, welcomed its first guests in May after a five-year revival of Paul Ricard's private island off Bandol. Its 39-room Delos wing is styled explicitly on the refined spirit of the 1960s French Riviera – fitting, for the island where Josephine Baker and Salvador Dalí once mixed with locals. Arnaud Zannier calls the island Paul Ricard’s dream, “a place of freedom, creativity and joy,” and the 93-key property leans fully into the era its founder defined.

In Ibiza, meanwhile, Mongibello has relaunched after a refurbishment that carried it from four stars to five, planting the Italian Riviera on the White Isle – a blue-and-white colour scheme, cobalt terrazzo floors and striped umbrellas, within reach of Pacha and UNVRS yet devoted to the art of doing nothing, with DuJour this week describing the poolside scene as evoking “a Slim Aarons lithograph.” The reference is literal inside, where his prints hang throughout the property, and his books stack the coffee tables.

The estate-stamped prints have sold in the thousands for years, and hospitality has now caught up to the wall art – selling the sixties as a place to check into, with poolside glamour, long lunches and the flattering light of an era most guests never saw. Zannier Île de Bendor operates seasonally from May 1st to November 1st, seven minutes by shuttle from Bandol via zannierhotels.com, and Mongibello takes bookings direct year-round.

Slovenia is having a record summer

Slovenia is on course for its best tourism year yet, with June overnight stays passing two million for the first time and the first half up around 5% on 2025 – itself a record year, with 17.8 million overnight stays. Records have become an annual event, telling the story of a country graduating from stopover to destination.

The pitch, for anyone who has found Austria or northern Italy appealing, is that Slovenia sits directly between them with a fraction of the crowds – Ljubljana remains one of Europe’s most pleasant small capitals, Lake Bled takes the postcard, and beyond them sit the Julian Alps, the Soča valley, the wine country of Vipava and Brda, and the Adriatic sliver at Piran. The hospitality has matured well beyond the capital too, with the strongest recent growth recorded in smaller regions like the Vipava Valley, Brda and Dolenjska, where serious countryside stays keep arriving.

Official July figures land from the statistical office within days, and every indicator this year has pointed the same way. September and October remain the move, with the Alps and the coast at their best and the peak crowds gone.

How fast can you book a private jet?

Chartering a private jet has long been a strangely analogue exercise – a chain of brokers, calls and emailed quotes that can stretch across a day, for a product costing five figures an hour. The newest attempt to fix it comes from EnterJet, the European charter marketplace founded in 2024 by Charles Robinson, whose AI agent Celeste takes bookings over WhatsApp – availability and pricing drawn from operators in real time and a human team supervising anything that needs eyes.

The proof case is a 3am request – a slot no broker loves. The client messaged Celeste on WhatsApp, spent around three minutes describing the trip, and had a confirmed $13,000 booking 46 minutes later, which EnterJet claims came in 5 to 10% below a traditional broker's price. The waiting time belongs to the operators, who still have to confirm the aircraft, so the three-minute pitch describes the client's side of the process, and that part appears to be real.

The rest of the sector is chasing the same fix, with Jet.AI booking by text and Elevate Jet pricing trips through an AI named Ruby, while traditional brokers argue that clients still want a human on the other end. For a service built on buying back time, the friction was always the odd part – and the answer to the question above is now minutes. Celeste operates via enterjet.co.

HEALTH

How to live: wellness, performance, and the pursuit of longevity.

Inside Germany’s last-man-standing ultramarathon

The Last Soul Ultra crowned its champion Tuesday morning at a former military base near Düsseldorf, whose location the organisers refuse to publish. American Mark Dowdle ran a four-mile loop every hour, on the hour, for 94 consecutive hours – 395 miles in all, outlasting a field of 169 runners.

The format is simple and brutal: every runner starts the same loop at the top of each hour; anyone who fails to finish or restart in time is eliminated, and the race ends only when one runner completes a loop alone. No spectators are admitted, and the venue stays secret. The race is instead followed on a round-the-clock livestream in German and English, while runners operate from a base camp of three-metre pitches, and any assistance on the loop means disqualification.

The event was created by ultrarunner Kim Gottwald together with former Germany footballer André Schürrle, and Gottwald won the first edition himself last October, at 67 laps – a number Dowdle has just raised by 27, which says something about how fast the format is professionalising. Entry is open to application from anyone, though the organisers handpick the field of 150, with selected runners paying €100 (about $115) within 48 hours to confirm their place. Dates for the next edition are unannounced, and applications, when they open, can be found at lastsoulultra.com.

Marylebone’s new longevity gym

Ydun, the strength studio founded in Milan a few steps from the Duomo, has opened in Marylebone with a training model built on the argument that muscular strength is the organising principle of longevity. Every member starts with a comprehensive assessment that shapes a personal training and recovery programme, and the pitch targets time-poor professionals who want the highest physiological return per hour spent.

The thesis has serious research behind it, since strength and muscle mass correlate strongly with healthy lifespan, metabolic function and bone density, and Ydun leans particularly into the case for women – positioning progressive loading as the foundation for bone density and hormonal health through every stage of life. After years of longevity conversation dominated by supplements, wearables and cold water, a studio arguing for load, properly programmed, is a welcome correction.

Further international locations seem to be signalled, memberships are by enquiry, and studio tours are bookable at ydun.life, with pricing as yet unpublished.

The Cadence Performance Center

Ross MacKay and George Heaton, the founders of the hydration brand Cadence, are building a training facility and headquarters in Los Angeles – the Cadence Performance Center, revealed through their own channels and positioned as the brand’s physical home. The CPC will house a strength and conditioning floor, field turf, a treadmill room, a product innovation space and a fuel shop stocked with the brand’s own range, alongside the company’s offices. “This is not a gym, not an office. It is a home,” MacKay wrote in a letter marking the project.

The CPC is the most literal expression yet of the founder-athlete culture the two men have come to represent (no pun intended, George), and their track records are why it warrants attention. MacKay is a former professional tennis player who founded the plant-based company Daring, worth a reported $325 million, while Heaton co-founded Represent, the British label whose 247 line turned his own training obsession into a category-dominating activewear business. Cadence is the real story, though, since the brand they launched in 2024 on the argument that hydration needed more salt has grown from a bootstrapped waitlist into shelves across the country. A clubhouse where athletes, staff and subscribers train under one roof is the perfect next step, and we’ll be anticipating it with excitement.

The rise of non-toxic workout wear

Katherine Sara, a biomedical science graduate with just over half a million TikTok followers, has become the face of a small boom in non-toxic workout wear. She relaunched her five-year-old label Jubilee as Layere last July – walking away from a brand generating more than $100,000 a month to rebuild it around the conviction that plastic doesn’t belong on skin – and the range spans pyjamas to workout sets, cut from 95% organic cotton and 5% spandex, with low-impact dyes and no PFAS repellents or antimicrobial coatings, at around $274 a set.

The marketing is where this differs from the green brands that came before, since sustainable fashion has spent a decade selling the planet's health, and Layere sells the wearer's – leading with microplastics on open pores and finishes the brand says research has linked to endocrine concerns, with the environmental case in a supporting role. Billed as “clean non-toxic organic wear,” Layere moves product through comment sections and unboxings, and demand is now outpacing supply. This week’s drop sold through right away.

HEADLINES

This week, at a glance.

• Inside the world’s longest horse race

• Monterey Car Week: What you’re missing

• West LA’s first private golf club in 50 years

• Why women’s cycling is worth the watch

• Brunello Cucinelli is all in on AI

• Introducing the Aston Martin Valen

• The collapse of Harvey Nichols

• Can Panerai save itself?

• You can buy this Greek island for $40 million

• The death of the airline lounge

• Emirates wants to make Milan a travel hub

• Brach and the art of the neighbourhood hotel

• London’s fancy new farm shop

• What Sweden knows about saunas

• How Technogym conquered the luxury gym

• Knightsbridge’s new women-only wellness club

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The Four Freedoms is presented by Ramp – the finance platform that takes the admin out of company spend, so ambitious businesses can get on with the work itself.

TIME

What to do: culture, events, and experiences worth your time.

Inside the world’s longest horse race

The Mongol Derby wrapped on Friday, the last of 43 riders crossing the finish flags after 10 days and 1,000km of Mongolian steppe. It’s the longest horse race in the world, and by most accounts the toughest, retracing the horse messenger network Genghis Khan established in 1224, a relay system that once carried news across an empire faster than anything else on earth. The modern version has kept the mechanics intact: riders navigate alone with a GPS, swap onto a fresh, semi-wild Mongolian horse at 28 stations kept by nomadic herding families, and cover roughly 35km per leg across terrain with no course markings, no crowds and no prize money to speak of.

The horses are the great equaliser, several hundred of them supplied by local herders and drawn by lottery, meaning a rider’s fate turns as much on the temperament of the animal underneath them as on any amount of preparation. Vets check every horse at every station, riding hours are strictly capped each day, and riders sleep where the steppe allows, often in the gers of the host families, which is how an endurance race doubles as the most immersive tour of nomadic Mongolia money can buy.

Since the first edition in 2009, finishing has mattered more than winning, and the organisers say as much themselves. Places are heavily vetted and heavily oversubscribed, with applications through The Equestrianists at equestrianists.com.

Monterey Car Week: What you’re missing

Monterey Car Week began in 1950, when 13 cars lined up on a Pebble Beach fairway for a concours held as a sideshow to a sports car race through the Del Monte Forest. This weekend, the 75th edition of that concours closes a week that drew roughly 100,000 people to more than 35 gatherings across the peninsula. The racing moved to Laguna Seca decades ago, where some 550 historic machines still get driven in anger each August, and everything else grew up around those two anchors: auctions, marque reunions, garden parties, and impromptu roadside gatherings where a Miura idling at a Carmel stop sign draws a bigger crowd than most ticketed events.

Somewhere along the way, the week outgrew the industry entirely and became car culture’s annual centre of gravity, closer in spirit to a fashion week than a trade show. Manufacturers time their debuts to it, the auction results set the collector market’s temperature for the year, and the concours lawn remains the hardest invitation in the automotive world, yet none of that is really why people come. For one week, the world’s rarest cars are out on public roads, in the fog, at petrol stations, driven by owners who spend the other 51 weeks hiding them, and anyone standing on a Carmel street corner sees machinery that otherwise lives behind glass. This year’s edition leaned into the occasion, with Ferrari as featured marque for the 75th anniversary and the largest gathering of Lamborghini Miuras ever assembled, marking that car’s 60th birthday.

West LA’s first private golf club in 50 years

A new private golf club is coming to West Los Angeles, and its founders claim it’s the Westside’s first in more than 50 years. Stableford, opening late this year on the Brentwood–Santa Monica corridor, arrives without a course: the 13,000 sq ft clubhouse is built instead around 8 TrackMan simulator lounges styled like private dining rooms, one of the largest indoor putting greens in the state, and on-site coaching from Lucas Wald, whose clients span entertainment, sport and business. The founders’ bet is that golf’s real place in a member’s week sits between rounds, in early mornings, weekday evenings and drinks after, none of which a traditional club ever captured.

Everything around the simulators belongs to a members club that happens to hold clubs, from recovery suites with cold plunges, Finnish saunas and red-light therapy, to a cocktail programme by one of Employees Only’s principal bartenders, to daily operations under Corey Bross, formerly of Bel Air Country Club. Membership caps in the low hundreds and moves by invitation, with interest registered at stableford.com.

Why women’s cycling is worth the watch

“Watch the Femmes” is the Tour de France Femmes’ own slogan, less a tagline than an instruction, and this year’s edition made obeying it easy. The race rolled out from Lausanne and finished 8 days later on the Côte d’Azur, crossing Mont Ventoux along the way, where Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney won the queen stage, and Marlen Reusser’s grip on yellow came apart on the mountain’s bare upper slopes. Demi Vollering won 3 stages and still didn’t take the jersey until the penultimate day, holding it into Nice to become the first rider to win the modern race twice, and the deciding gaps stayed narrow enough that the podium was live until the final weekend.

The spectacle gives up nothing to the men’s race, and neither does the hardware, since these are the same teams, the same team-issue bikes and the same sponsor arms race, pointed at the same mountains. What the Femmes still has, which its July counterpart lost years ago, is approachability, with roadside spots on a summit finish that don’t require camping out days ahead, and riders who’ll still stop at the team bus. Cycling remains the rare elite sport with no ticket, no gate and no hospitality mark-up between the public and the athletes, and the mountain stages of this race have become one of women's sport's great pilgrimages.

Next summer is the one to plan around, as the 2027 race opens with a 3-day Grand Départ in Great Britain, its first start outside mainland Europe, including 2 road stages and a time trial in London, while the men’s Tour leaves from Edinburgh. Both Tours starting in Britain in the same summer has never happened, and the full route lands at October’s presentation in Paris.

FINANCIAL

What to buy: product launches and material obsessions.

Brunello Cucinelli is all in on AI

Brunello Cucinelli has spent 3 years quietly building an AI company, and Salesforce just announced an investment in it. Solomei AI, founded by the designer in his Umbrian hamlet, recently replaced the brand’s website with Callimacus, a platform that works nothing like a shop: there are no pages, menus or categories, just AI agents reading a visitor’s intent and assembling the experience around it in real time, roughly what a good SA does in store, done by software. The name honours Callimachus, the librarian of Alexandria, and the project grew out of a collaboration between Cucinelli, Marc Benioff and what the founder describes as mathematicians, philosophers and humanists.

Salesforce’s stake, undisclosed in size, will push the platform to other clients across Europe and North America, which makes the king of cashmere the unlikely chairman of an AI company headquartered in a medieval village, and quite possibly the only one whose founding team included philosophers on purpose. The experience is live at brunellocucinelli.com, and you’re free to judge for yourself whether pageless shopping is the future, or, perhaps, just a beautiful Umbrian eccentricity. The wider deal still needs clearance under Italy’s “golden power” rules on strategic technology, so the paperwork isn’t quite finished.

Introducing the Aston Martin Valen

Aston Martin revealed the Valen at The Quail on Friday, and the headline claim holds up: 850PS from its twin-turbocharged 5.2-litre V12 makes this the most powerful front-engined production car ever built, by anyone. The body is entirely carbon fibre, 110kg has been shed from the platform that underpins the Vanquish, and the result reaches 60mph in 3.0 seconds on its way to a limited 214mph. Drive modes come in Sport, Sport+ and Track, nothing softer, and the name derives from the Latin valens, meaning strong.

As the latest of the Q division’s limited specials, after the Valour and the Valiant, its commercial fate is easy to predict, since both predecessors sold out almost immediately. Aston Martin will build 150 cars, all custom commissions through Q, reportedly from around $2 million. A bit of a shame so many launches these days are highly limited, but hey, at least they’re exciting.

The collapse of Harvey Nichols

Harvey Nichols entered administration this week and exited almost immediately, sold to Frasers Group in a pre-pack deal confirmed on Thursday for an undisclosed sum. The sale ends 35 years under Sir Dickson Poon, who bought the store from Burton Group in 1991 for £53.6m (about $68m), and it lands roughly where Mike Ashley predicted when he told the Financial Times the business was in a “death spiral”. Frasers beat Next to the asset, with around 1,200 jobs hanging in the balance at a retailer trading since 1831.

Beyond the familiar decline of the department store, Harvey Nichols was wounded by policy. Britain scrapped VAT-free shopping for tourists in January 2021, leaving London the only major European luxury capital where visitors can’t reclaim tax on purchases, a permanent 20% price disadvantage against Paris that proved close to fatal for a store built on precisely that shopper. Retailers have lobbied the Treasury for 5 years to reverse it, and Harvey Nichols is now the argument’s largest exhibit.

Under Frasers, the brand joins a luxury stable alongside Flannels, and the working assumption among analysts is that the Knightsbridge flagship survives under new ownership while the weaker regional stores face harder conversations. The stores remain open and trading through the transition.

Can Panerai save itself?

Few brands owned a decade the way Panerai owned the 2000s, when the oversized Luminor, born from 1950s Italian Navy commissions, became the default statement watch of a certain kind of successful man. The fashion for 44mm slabs of steel eventually receded, and the brand has spent the years since caught between its military archive and a market that moved on to smaller, subtler watches.

Its new Luminor Marina PAM01707 mines that archive with modern materials. The dial is pure 1960s: no date, small seconds at 9 o’clock, beige lume mimicking the warm patina of aged tritium, while the 44mm case is Carbotech, Panerai’s carbon composite, 64% lighter than titanium and 80% lighter than steel by the brand’s numbers, bringing the whole watch in at around 100g with the in-house P.9010 and its 3-day reserve inside. It's priced at $15,600, a figure we'd happily shrink by 25%, along with the case.

LOCATION

Where to go: travel and mobility for the globally curious.

You can buy this Greek island for $40 million

Argyronisos, a 60-acre private island in the northern Aegean, has come to market at €35m (about $40m) after more than 6 decades in the same family. The name translates to Silver Island, after the colour the olive leaves turn when the wind moves through them, and since 1961 the estate has been kept as a family home, an organic olive farm and, more recently, a small wellness retreat that hosted entrepreneurs and artists paying for the scarcest amenity in the Mediterranean, total privacy. The island sits in the Gulf of Pteleos off the northern tip of Evia, sheltered from the harder Aegean winds, with the Sporades on the doorstep and Athens about 50 minutes away by helicopter to the island’s own pad.

Greece counts thousands of islands, and buying one is less exotic than it sounds, since at any given moment a handful sit openly on the market. Nearly all of them, though, are bare rock, publicly owned or wrapped in the environmental and coastal planning rules that make building on virgin Greek land a decade-long proposition, which is what separates this listing: 11 preserved stone buildings totalling some 10,000 sq ft, among them a 2-storey villa, guesthouses and a chapel, all off-grid on solar with a backup generator and no cable to the mainland.

What it becomes next is the open question: whether a private residence, a continuation of the retreat, or the seed of something bigger in hospitality, the last of which would hang on planning approvals that Greece doesn’t hand out lightly. A sum this size also clears the Golden Visa threshold many times over, so the island effectively comes with Greek residency thrown in, the way lesser properties might throw in a parking space. The full listing is available at Engel & Völkers.

The death of the airline lounge

There was a brief golden age, roughly the last decade, when a single Priority Pass opened more than a thousand lounge doors worldwide, and it barely mattered which bank issued it. That era is closing. As of yesterday, Chase’s Sapphire Lounges no longer accept it, ending the annual free visit and the $75 walk-in for anyone carrying the pass through another issuer, and the reasoning is the one Amex has applied to its Centurion Lounges from day one: the rooms exist to sell the card, so the card is what opens the door.

The lounge itself has become the prize in banking's fight for premium customers, which is why Revolut, a company that built its fortune on nobody ever needing to visit a bank in person, announced its first physical lounge this week, due at Copenhagen Airport in 2027 with access tied to its top subscription tiers. Every player wants its own guarded room now, because a metal card or a cashback rate gets copied within a quarter, and a good space airside cannot be. The squeeze lands on the shared networks, namely Priority Pass, which is losing its best lounges one issuer at a time and increasingly offers only the uninspired second tier. Anyone paying for that membership outright, or picking a card because of it, holds a product worth less than it was a month ago.

Emirates wants to make Milan a travel hub

Emirates is close to winning approval for a Milan–Lima route, a flight that touches Dubai at no point, with Corriere della Sera reporting Italian government sign-off could come as early as October and sources pointing to Los Angeles, São Paulo, Santiago and Mexico City as further candidates from Malpensa. These are fifth-freedom rights, which let an airline sell seats between 2 foreign countries on a service that starts or ends at home, and Emirates already operates Europe’s most famous example, the Dubai–Milan–New York service it has flown since 2013, latterly on the A380, showers included.

Lima sits beyond nonstop range from Dubai, which makes Milan the natural bridge, and northern Italy’s wealthy catchment has been underserved on long-haul since Alitalia’s decline, a gap Lufthansa-owned ITA Airways hasn’t closed, so every route Emirates adds from Malpensa doubles as a challenge on ITA’s home soil. Emirates says it has no immediate plans to activate the flights, so this one belongs in the 2027 diary at the earliest.

Brach and the art of the neighbourhood hotel

Brach builds hotels for the neighbourhoods they sit in, as much for locals as for guests. That claim survives contact with reality, as anyone who’s had a Tuesday aperitivo at Brach Paris, surrounded almost entirely by Parisians, can confirm. The brand belongs to Evok Collection, owned by Pierre Bastid with the Courtin-Clarins family’s investment fund as a strategic shareholder, which develops slowly across 2 marques, the vibrant Brach and the more contemplative Nolinski, in Paris, Venice and Madrid, with Gassin on the Gulf of Saint-Tropez next on the slate. It’s family-money hospitality, built to hold, and the properties feel like it.

Rome was recently announced as Brach’s third address, a landmark former school 100 metres from Piazza del Popolo, reimagined under Philippe Starck’s artistic direction, as in Paris and Madrid, into 60 rooms and suites with terraces, a rooftop, and a sport and wellness club with a 25-metre pool. The hotel opens in March 2027, and reservations are already open through evokcollection.com.

HEALTH

How to live: wellness, performance, and the pursuit of longevity.

London’s fancy new farm shop

London Epicerie has just opened on Ebury Street in Belgravia, under the tagline “A Place for Better Food”, and it’s probably the capital’s prettiest place to do a weekly shop. Founders Jared Wybrow and Raissa van Dijk spent over a decade at London Cheesemongers building direct relationships with producers across Britain and Europe, and the shop is essentially that address book turned into a grocery. The wine programme is overseen by Daniel Garcia Thomas, formerly head sommelier at Brat, and nutritional therapist Edmund Swinburn is shaping the curation.

The premium grocer is booming on both sides of the Atlantic, with the likes of Miami’s Nude and NYC’s Meadow Lane acting as status venues where the basket doubles as an accessory. The cynical take on the whole category is pure LARP, wellness as costume, provenance as content for the grid – and some of the photoshoot-esque behaviour at these locations certainly supports the theory. That said, the performance and substance aren’t really in tension: the customer playing the lifestyle still (hopefully) eats the vegetables, and at examples like London Epicerie, the sourcing sounds positively rigorous. Belgravia looks to have got a good one then, and to be fair, interior design this good probably deserves a photoshoot.

What Sweden knows about saunas

A pink crystal has risen from one of Sweden’s most polluted former industrial sites, and it’s a sauna. Lithium Crystal Sauna, by Stockholm artist duo Bigert & Bergström, is the first permanent structure of WasteLand Climate Action Park in Skellefteå, built on a former pulp works that needed 17 years of soil remediation; its roughly 280 facets of pink mirrored steel reflect the river, the forest, and a landscape remade. Inside, a wood-lined chamber seats 12 around a battery-powered heater packed with 260kg of olivine stones.

In glorious Scandi fashion, Sweden treats heat therapy as public infrastructure and keeps commissioning serious artists to build it: Bigert & Bergström also made the golden Solar Egg sauna for the mining town of Kiruna back in 2017. Most of the world files the sauna under private amenity, a room in a basement or a membership tier, and a 12-seat public crystal on a reclaimed riverbank is a better piece of civic wellness than most of what currently gets sold to cities in masterplan form.

How Technogym conquered the luxury gym

Walk into the gym of nearly any truly great hotel on earth, and the equipment carries the same name: Technogym. The Italian maker has a hold on luxury hospitality that borders on monopoly, built over 4 decades from a single machine that 22-year-old Nerio Alessandri assembled in his garage in Cesena in 1983. The company is now official supplier to its 10th consecutive Olympic Games, from Sydney 2000 through Milano Cortina 2026, counts 70 million people training on its equipment daily across more than 100 countries, and trademarked the word “wellness” in combination long before wellness became an industry. It won the hotel floor on 2 fronts, with industrial design elegant enough for a grande dame’s interiors and connected software a property can plug into as easily as a spa booking system.

The newest installation might be the most telling, because Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc, by many measures the most storied luxury hotel in the world, has just fitted a fully integrated Technogym ecosystem. The floor carries Checkup, the AI-powered station that assesses a guest's condition and writes their programme, alongside the flagship Artis line, Reform for Pilates, Ride for connected cycling and Skillrow, all finished in the brand's new Sand Stone palette. The hotel's app now links to Technogym's, so a guest's programme follows them home after checkout. Alessandri likes to say that health and longevity are the true new luxury, and the Cap d’Antibes now agrees with him – albeit at several thousand euros a night (if they’ll even let you in).

Knightsbridge’s new women-only wellness club

LERÉI opens on Brompton Road on 10 September, joining the wave of wellness-first members clubs washing over London, with one clear point of difference: no men. That a club should have to advertise this at all says something about where fitness has landed, since the Pilates and longevity boom has pulled in everyone, and the studios that were once female spaces by default no longer are. The bet here is simple enough: that a meaningful number of women would happily pay to train, recover and socialise somewhere built entirely for them, without an audience, and the early numbers suggest the bet is right: membership is capped at 150, and more than 60% of the places went before the doors opened.

Tiers start at £1,000 (about $1,350) per month, the interiors come from the Italian design house Visionnaire, and the programming stretches from Lagree and suspended movement through hydrothermal contrast, oxygen dome treatments and Japanese head spa rituals. At the more serious end sits a collaboration with the genomics specialist Dr Mansoor Mohammed, whose DNA testing shapes each member’s programme around her biology and stage of life. A limited number of founding memberships remain available by application.

They call it ‘The Tuscan Dream’. But when you finally arrive at Castelfalfi’s strategic hilltop perch, you’ll notice it’s not exactly the image of terracotta, exposed beams and faded frescoes you’d expect from a hotel with such a tagline. Much of it is modern. Low-lit. Polished. The interior influence is unmistakably Asian – even beyond the RAKxa spa. Something you might expect from an existing hotel brand transplanted westward. But no, this is a standalone property. So why doesn’t it all look Tuscan?

Well, in short, because there are already plenty of Tuscan resorts that do. So when Sri Prakash Lohia, an Indian-born Indonesian industrialist, acquired the estate in 2021, he figured: why not do something different, add his own flavour?

Castelfalfi, in its entirety, is 2,700 acres – much more than your average walled resort. Looking out at the view, whether over a cappuccino at breakfast or a Negroni at aperitivo, much of the beautiful vista your eye meets is actually Castelfalfi land. Going out for a stroll or e-bike ride, it’s hard to know when you’ve left the perimeter. So with all this room, developing the hilltop into a resort didn’t just mean converting the old village into a hotel, which is what most borgos around here are constrained to do. It meant putting up a new building next to it, on empty land, with nothing to restore and nothing to imitate – hence the carte blanche. There was a unique freedom here not to conform. Some people will tell you the result is a place that feels fake. I disagree.

Adjacent to the new development, and connected by a cliffside walkway with the best views on the property, is the old village that includes the once Medici-owned castle – from which the resort derives its name. A Lombard noble called Faolfo fortified this hilltop in the 8th century as a lookout over the valley, and ‘Castrum Faolfi’ eventually wore itself down to ‘Castelfalfi’, as we know it today. By the 15th century, the castle belonged to the Caetani family, and it was Giovanfrancesco Caetani’s marriage to Costanza de’ Medici in 1489 that prompted the refurbishment of the fortress into somewhere rich people actually wanted to spend time. In that sense, I suppose Castelfalfi is merely following tradition – the castle has been carefully restored with exactly the same intention, and now holds La Rocca, the estate’s fine dining restaurant.

So, strictly speaking, we do have other families to thank for their stewardship of this hilltop. But make no mistake, the Medici DNA here runs deep. In the building names. In the crests adorning the walls. In the park below the village, still called Medicean. But, above all, the most Medici thing about the place is its sense of power and scale – it feels rich, in a few meanings of the word. That family knew how to spend, and Castelfalfi, in its modern era, definitely feels like a place where no cost has been spared to ensure excellence.

The difference is that, up on this hilltop, the money has gone into the land and the building rather than into an impression of Tuscany. Sure, you can go truffle hunting, and yes, you can make pizzas and drink local wine looking out at the hills. However, it doesn’t feel painfully manufactured, even though, of course, it is – this is a luxury hotel after all. The resort is honest; they know you’re here for the setting. And so there’s little competing with the hills – the most inimitable of Tuscany’s (many) qualities. When you stay at Castelfalfi, you might not befriend a local nonna over limoncello – it’s not that kind of ‘real’ – but you will end up taking home the place itself and not just a style or aesthetic.

When so much of the travel industry can feel, these days, like a daycare for guests that don’t know any better, it’s refreshing to show up to a place and have an experience that isn’t the exact same as the people you sat next to on the plane. Here, there’s enough on offer that it probably won’t even be the same as the people you sit next to at dinner. Castelfalfi reframes this special sliver of Italy, and in a roundabout way, it does more to preserve it than many of its cookie-cutter competitors. Perhaps here, then, ‘The Tuscan Dream’ isn’t referring to the one you book, but the one you have once you've left.

HEADLINES

This week, at a glance.

• Burberry takes over the V&A

• Grosvenor Square is complete

• So, what’s going on with the Polo Bar?

• Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, finally

• The new Audi Q9: better than you think

• How Loro Piana built a brand on waterproof wool

• The Rolex correction is complete

• Massimo Dutti: Mastering the mid-market shop

• Amanvari opens on Baja’s East Cape

• Avios finally builds a calendar

• Luura-Cliff opens in Paros

• Co-living in a Catalan farmhouse

• Thorne gets swallowed up

• Equinox lands in West Palm Beach

• The rise of the high-polyphenol olive oil

• Nike’s recovery slide, decoded

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HEADLINES

This week, at a glance.

• Inside the redesign of Palma’s superyacht club

• Soho House is coming to Venice Beach

• F1 returns to Sepang, nine years on

• Pogačar wins a fifth Tour, and breaks Alpe d’Huez

• Introducing the Loro Piana ‘Fast Walk’

• Embraer’s new jet can land itself

• The G-Class Cabriolet is coming back

• Molteni&C lands in Sydney

• A new look for Alpine House in Jackson Hole

• Four Seasons Mykonos has opened its doors

• London City Airport is finally getting a lounge

• Six Senses arrives on Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast

• THIS Gym is now open in South Austin

• Garmin comes for Whoop’s crown

• Creatine’s surprising role in fighting cancer

• L’Étape du Tour, the amateur’s Tour de France

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HEADLINES

This week, at a glance.

• Goodwood is coming to America

• Wimbledon 2026, recapped

• The Montreux Jazz Festival turns 60

• A new look for Soho House Paris

• Bentley’s first EV, the Torcal

• SpaceX IPO fuels uptick in private jet buyers

• A decade of JMM x Hopper sunglasses

• When does a Rolex stop being a Rolex?

• Gran Hotel Margalida opens in Mallorca

• UK–Switzerland deal eases travel

• Chapter Chianti opens in Tuscany

• Lily of the Valley announces an Alpine hotel

• Canyon Speedmax: The world’s fastest triathlon bike

• Helsinki gets an island dedicated to sauna

• Lanserhof introduces new Medical Concierge

• Supernatural opens ‘The Portal’ in Toronto

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HEADLINES

This week, at a glance.

• Louis Vuitton revives its Dolomites car rally

• Silverstone breaks Formula 1’s attendance record

• The Tour de France kicks off in Barcelona

• Scorpios Bodrum forced to close

• Audemars Piguet’s ex-CEO launches a watch brand

• Ferrari builds a “manual” 12Cilindri

• Ralph Lauren lands in Saint-Tropez

• Loro Piana fights to own the white sole

• Ytrí opens on a remote Norwegian island

• The Como villa from Casino Royale hits the market

• Fouquet’s opens its first hotel in Greece

• Global Entry trials kiosk-free camera lanes

• Sam Laidlow breaks the Ironman record, sort of

• Unilever weighs a bid for Thorne

• Neko Health adds body scans and wearables

• Amazfit launches the Helio Strap Pro

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I know I’m not the only one who finds myself rewatching vintage films of a bygone era in anticipation of upcoming summer holidays. Picturing myself with even an ounce of Alain Delon’s coolness is a good way to get excited about the slow schedule of al fresco dining, salt-stained espadrilles, and cicada soundscapes that lie ahead. This is no original experience, though. It is not special nor unique of me to fill this mental summer moodboard of mine with sun-soaked 60s Tropezian imagery. What is unique, however, is having those images bear close resemblance to the experience that actually awaits at the destination.

Never has this ritual been more prophetic than on a recent getaway to Villa Belrose. Perched a couple hundred metres up the hill in Gassin – the tiny commune just a 10-minute drive (or 40, on market days) from Saint-Tropez town – it’s precisely this location that lends itself to the careless, time-agnostic essence that always captivated me about La Piscine.

Many will tell you that Saint-Tropez is a fragment of what it used to be, and whether or not that’s worth complaining about, up here, looking down at the bay and east to the Med, it’s a conversation that never crosses the mind. From Belrose’s pooldeck, the town looks the same as it has done for decades – just far enough that no supercar crawling the quai will beg for your attention, no gold leaf or truffle gluttony will spoil the mood. And if you really want, you can even picture Le Sénéquier in all its pre-Instagram glory.

The point is, what Althoff Collection has created here is really a bastion of the Saint-Tropez experience that I, and perhaps you, too, envision when a Riviera retreat is what’s called for. Most of Belrose’s primarily European guests spend the vast majority of their time at the hotel. Between the well-stocked pool bar and excellent service, it’s easy to slip into a rosé-fuelled, sun-bed-supported afternoon slumber, not checking the time, simply relying on the position of the sun above to remind you when it’s time to head back to the suite and get ready for dinner. Which, the house car will be happy to whisk you into town for – that is, if you’re not dining at Le Belrose, the property’s restaurant under Michelin-starred chef Jimmy Coutel (you should be, and order the red mullet).

Beyond the 60s-inspired interior design (one of the least 60s things about the place), I think the reason I was more than happy to draw this comparison to La Piscine, is that Belrose does a wonderful job at creating a residential atmosphere. The place feels like your own, more than many of its local hospitality counterparts. The room count does help on that front, just 40, but it’s more than that. It’s the privacy, the terrace space, the fact that, after all, this was once, as the name suggests, a villa – the homely design is in its bones. And though, in the film, the villa’s idyll is swiftly dismantled by some not-so-moodboard-worthy behaviour, I can assure you our comparison here in Villa Belrose is a haven for nothing more sinister than some well-deserved indulgence.

HEADLINES

This week, at a glance.

• Vancouver is the World Cup’s best host city

• The Giorgio Armani Tennis Classic

• The world’s first three-star Mexican restaurant

• EYOS launches winter expeditions in Iceland

• Luxottica heir wants control of the empire

• Paris Fashion Week SS27

• Ferrari’s CMO steps down amid Luce debacle

• RH opens in Mayfair

• Villa d’Este opens Miralago on Lake Como

• Monocle names Tokyo the world’s most liveable city

• St Regis London opens for bookings

• The Dali EDITION opens in Yunnan

• LVMH eyes HYROX

• European heatwave cancels Ironman Nice

• Midjourney (the AI company) is building a spa

• Lake Garda gets a world-class cycle route

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HEADLINES

This week, at a glance.

• James Turrell opens a Skyspace in Denmark

• Art Basel 2026, recapped

• SailGP achieves 100% privatization

• WatchHouse opens in Abu Dhabi

• Milan Fashion Week SS27: Masculinity is back in style

• Rolex raises prices again

• Aston Martin cuts back on production

• Bang & Olufsen revives a 1985 turntable

• Qantas unveils the jet for the world’s longest flight

• Switzerland rejects a population cap

• Waldorf Astoria London opens for bookings

• Soho Roc House reopens with a refresh

• Canyon reveals a hazard-predicting bike

• Checking in on Zamaya in Tulum

• London announces a 100,000-person marathon for 2027

• Norway brings its own food to the World Cup

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HEADLINES

This week, at a glance.

• The Mille Miglia returns to its roots

• Langosteria opens in Porto Cervo and London

• Agua Madera opens a recording studio in Ibiza

• Toyota wins the Le Mans 24 Hours

• Hermès opens its biggest store in Europe

• Bucherer opens the world’s highest Rolex boutique

• Fritz Hansen and Technics pair light and sound

• Thom Sweeney opens on Madison Avenue

• The rise of the narrowbody

• Nolinski plans a hotel in Saint-Tropez

• Four Seasons reveals its second yacht

• Fouquet’s Paris becomes a Palace

• Cape Town becomes a marathon Major

• Discover Collection heads to Oman

• David’s ice cream isn’t ice cream

• Level Eleven plans a wellness club in Adelaide

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HEADLINES

This week, at a glance.

• Formula One’s luxury problem

• Zverev wins his first Grand Slam

• Avenue reopens high above Manhattan

• Prairie Ark lands in Inner Mongolia

• Audi unveils the Nuvolari

• Zegna takes Spring/Summer 2027 to Malibu

• Elie Saab designs the Bombardier Global 8000

• TAG Heuer unveils the Monaco Speed 12

• Mandarin Oriental opens in Mallorca

• Jacobsen Studio reveals Amancaya

• Riyadh Air readies for takeoff

• Four Seasons plans a hotel in Sevilla

• America runs short on protein

• SHA Mexico launches stem cell therapy

• Chilipad 2.0 redesigns the cooling bed

• Looksmaxxing fuels a peptide grey market

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HEADLINES

This week, at a glance.

• Isle of Man TT enters race week

• Shellona reveals its summer lineup

• Vingegaard completes cycling’s Grand Tour set

• Zuma brings its izakaya to Montenegro

• Richard Mille opens Monaco and Bangkok boutiques

• Oakridge Park opens in Vancouver

• Gus the T-rex heads to auction

• Ralph Lauren lands at Pebble Beach

• Château la Commaraine opens in Pommard

• Highstay launches L’Appartement Boétie

• Mauritius unveils a $1m golden visa

• Four Seasons opens on the Red Sea

• Oura Ring 5: The world’s smallest smart ring

• Equinox plans a Playa Vista club

• Resit’s smart cushion tracks posture

• Athletic and Bath Club opens in Bordeaux

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HEADLINES

This week, at a glance.

• Jack Nicklaus returns to design with NOKOSI

• Cannes belongs to the brands now

• Scott’s Mayfair is coming to New York

• Black Coffee brings the orchestra to the O2

• Ferrari unveils the Luce, its first electric car

• A. Lange & Söhne revives the Cabaret in honeygold

• Missoni is no longer a family company

• Audemars Piguet hands the Royal Oak to Ambush

• St. Clement: the Soho House founder’s first hotel

• Bali starts deporting the influencers

• Aman opens the books on Amanvari in Baja

• PS opens a private terminal at Dallas

• Tramp, the nightclub, opens a wellness club

• The Enhanced Games stumble in Las Vegas

• Nude: America’s healthiest grocery store

• Oura files to go public at $11 billion

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HEADLINES

This week, at a glance.

• Everest’s most crowded season on record

• Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este 2026

• Sinner completes the career Golden Masters

• Cucina Alba opens Alba Spiaggia at Montauk Yacht Club

• Lotus is going back to V8s

• Phillips sets a new world record for watch auctions

• The Gstaad Guy x Bentayga EWB Chalet Edition

• Checking in on Gucci under Demna

• One&Only and Raffles both announce Courchevel resorts

• Rosewood is coming to Tokyo

• Four Seasons opens 2028 private jet bookings

• Fouquet’s is headed to Mykonos

• Adidas and Satisfy announce a multi-year partnership

• Copenhagen’s Water Culture House nears opening

• Laurel Supply opens in West Hollywood

• Canyon launches the Endurace CF SLX

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HEADLINES

This week, at a glance.

• Estelle is coming to New York

• KOKO celebrates 125 years with a new recording studio

• Field Report: &ME in Los Angeles

• Aprilia sweep the Le Mans podium

• Audemars Piguet and Swatch reveal the Royal Pop

• Lamborghini unveils the Fenomeno Roadster

• Orion Yachts launches its debut superyacht

• Liaigre brings its furniture to Capella Sydney

• COMO Le Beauvallon reopens in Saint-Tropez

• Sublime Sand opens in Comporta

• VistaJet adds the Bombardier Global 8000

• Auberge announces its first African safari lodges

• Arc’teryx opens trail hubs in Tokyo

• San Francisco’s Nob Hill Spa gets a new life

• 1.3 million people applied for the 2027 London Marathon

• District Vision opens in Los Angeles

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HEADLINES

This week, at a glance.

• Antonelli takes his third win in Miami

• Lady Delilah comes to New York

• Checking in on SailGP

• 1927: Abu Dhabi’s new film members’ club

• Range Rover’s invitation-only SV Ultra

• Jacques Marie Mage opens in SoHo

• La Marzocco’s new home colourways

• Forte: the members-only supercar platform

• Zannier Île de Bendor is open

• Spirit Airlines is finished

• The Orient Express Corinthian sets sail

• Uber adds hotel bookings

• Six Senses Place opens in London

• Dream Seven: Paris’s new design-led Pilates studio

• The rise of the phone-free night out

• Meadow Lane eyes expansion

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HEADLINES

This week, at a glance.

• Milan Design Week: too much FOMO

• The Monaco Historic Grand Prix returns

• Ibiza opens for the summer

• Istanbul Park is back on the F1 calendar – from 2027

• RIMOWA makes furniture now

• Porsche exits Bugatti Rimac

• Range Rover Sport Twenty Edition

• BOSS and Ligne Roset reimagine the Togo

• Villa San Michele reopens after 18 months

• Air Canada’s Aeroplan quietly devalues

• Aman announces its first Texas retreat

• New Europe entry requirements are coming

• Climatic’s L Max lung health device

• Canyon Ranch Austin opens in September

• The shoe that broke the two-hour marathon

• Rostudios comes to New York

Read more