The winners of the 2010 AsiaSpa Awards were announced at a glamorous gala awards ceremony held in Hong Kong last Thursday.
Themed “Emerald Greenâ€, more than 400 of the industry’s top professionals mingled in Hong Kong’s newest design hotel, The Mira.
The coveted title of Destination Spa of the Year went to Koh Samui’s Kamalaya while the MiraSpa took home top honours as the year’s Best Urban Spa.
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A Paris mansion has been put on sale with a price tag of $140 million, making it the second most expensive property currently listed on the world market.
The nearly 28,000 sq. ft. property has 12 bedrooms and 12 baths along with four staff apartments.
Offered by Christie’s Great Estates affiliate Daniel Féau, the ultra-exclusive estate was built in 1912 for the Duchesse de Montmorency.
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Infiniti, the luxury Japanese automaker, has partnered with Volant, the Austria-based manufacturer of premium ski equipment to create one hundred of Infiniti-Volant Limited edition ski packs for winter sport enthusiasts in Europe.
The pack includes plus skis and bindings support bars for the car. Each pair of skis as Infiniti will be engraved with the name of the customer before delivery.
The hundred pairs of skis Volant packs Infiniti-limited edition, are available at any of the 40 centers Infiniti in Europe. Price: €2,300.
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Google sauntered into the world of haute couture on Wednesday with the launch of boutiques.com, an online shop that matches hot fashions to women’s tastes.
Style-conscious US women can create their own online boutiques or browse collections “curated by taste-makers” such as celebrities, designers, and fashion bloggers, according to Google product management director Munjal Shah.
Boutiques uses computer vision and machine learning technologies to match a woman’s tastes with clothing or accessories that she might find tempting.
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Omega is pushing for major expansion in the US, with nine stores slated to open across the country this week.
A Chicago boutique will be unveiled this Thursday (November 18), followed by other store launches in Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Seattle, Scottsdale, Ariz., Nashville, White Plains, N.Y., Hackensack, N.J., and Jacksonville, Fla.
The stores will offer Omega’s range of men’s and women’s watches, including the new Ladymatic line, for which Nicole Kidman is the official spokesperson.
Stephen Urquhart (below), Omega’s president, expects America to become Omega’s biggest market for corporate retail.
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This Artisan & Artist case for Leica M9 is made out of crocodile leather. A natural dye process is used in order to preserve the leather quality and indigo color.
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Wine experts Wednesday popped the corks of two bottles of champagne recently salvaged from the bottom of the Baltic Sea.
They had lain in a sunken ship for nearly 200 years, 50 meters below the surface in the waters south of Aaland, a Finnish-controlled archipelago of 6,500 islands.
On stage, they eased the fragile corks from the dark brown bottles — one from the house of Veuve-Clicquot and the other from the now extinct house of Juglar.
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Aston Martin has released a new and exclusive derivative of the Rapide, the new Rapide Luxe model.
The new trim essentially adds more functional features, a greater choice of paint and leather finishes as standard, and special bespoke accessories.
The automotive producer offers top standard colors for the vehicle, with the list including Concours Blue and the Bond-inspired Quantum Silver.
The list of goodies offered for the vehicle includes a special key that combines glass with stainless polished steel, as well as a bespoke six-piece Luggage Set.
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Hermes has released “Les 4 Mondes”, a coloring book for kids and adults. 12 pages with 24 designs for you to fill with color!
“Les 4 Mondes“, which is likely the most expensive coloring book in the world, is priced at $130 and is available now from USA.Hermes.com.
A rare pink diamond that is regarded as one of the most desirable and beautiful in the world was sold for a record 46.16 million dollars on Tuesday.
Sotheby’s had valued the 24.78 carat Fancy Intense Pink diamond mounted on a ring at 27 million to 38 million dollars ahead of the sale in a luxury lakeside hotel.
But intense bidding wiped out the record of over 24 million dollars set during an auction in December 2008 in the sale of a grey-blue diamond Wittelsbach.
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The world-renowned Franklin Mint has unveiled a rare and unprecedented work of artistry – the Taj Mahal Gold Coin – at their new Manhattan showroom.
Minted and designed by the world-renowned Monnaie de Paris, only 29 of these coins will ever be produced.
The coin is not only the first and only French coin comprised of over 2 lbs. of solid gold, but it is the world’s first coin to include 68 hand-set Cartier diamonds.
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Following the success of their concept car, Infiniti will unveil the Infiniti Essence Sculpture at the Los Angeles Auto Show in a few days.
Crafted from resin by the same creative minds behind the Essence concept, the Essence sculpture will only be produced in a limited run of 300 examples.
Infiniti has contacted Louis Vuitton, asking the luxury products to develop a carrying case (pictured below) for the No. One unit of the Essence Sculpture.
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The first ever retrospective dedicated to the designs of French couturier Jean-Paul Gaultier will be unveiled at The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in June 2011.
The Fashion World of Jean-Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk will display more than one hundred ensembles, including couture creations, as well as original sketches and photographs.
The exhibit will be organized into five main themes that inspired Gaultier‘s collections: Paris, Fusions, Multi-Gender, Eurotrash/X-rated and Metropolis.
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When it comes to meal time, the French do it differently. That is the argument being put to UNESCO as it decides this week whether French cuisine deserves a spot on its intangible heritage list.
“The gastronomic meal of the French” is seen as a strong contender as the UN agency meets in Nairobi from Monday to Friday to consider new submissions for the list, set up in 2003 to safeguard cultural traditions, rituals and crafts.
France’s submission to the list centres around the ritual of the festive meal in a country where food is a key part of social life.
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Google will launch its very own “create-your-own†boutique channel on Wednesday called Boutiques.com, reports WWD.
Fashion bloggers say that many of them have received an invitation from Google to attend an event in New York City next Wednesday evening.
The site, which will work in a similar way to Google search engine, will allow users to save items, brands and looks they love in their own personalised shop.
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Italian luxury house Gucci is the latest designer label to debut a children’s collection, joining the likes of Burberry, D&G and Dior.
Gucci will celebrate the launch of the new collection on November 20th, which is Universal Children’s Day, with children’s parties at six of its most important flagship stores in Milan, London, NYC, Los Angeles, Hong Kong and Tokyo.
Gucci Kids, which will kick off with the Spring/Summer 2011 collection, will include clothing lines for babies (0 to 24 months) and boys and girls (ages 2 to 8).
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Aston Martin’s new luxury city car Cygnet is making its global debut at Harrods in Knightsbridge, the world’s most prestigious department store.
The Toyota iQ-based Cygnet will go into production in 2011 at the company’s global headquarters in Gaydon and is expected to cost from £30,000.
Cygnet will be available to view at Harrods until Saturday 18th December with the car on sale now through Aston Martin’s European dealership network.
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Lamborghini is to introduce a greener supercar that will replace the iconic Murciélago, which has been Lamborghini’s flagship for over a decade.
Automotive News reports that the supercar’s replacement will slash carbon dioxide output by 20 percent, without sacrificing performance.
It will feature a 6.5 liter, 700-hp engine and will emit 398 g/km of carbon dioxide, down from 495 g/km in the old version.
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Lotus F1 boss Tony Fernandes said he will auction off seats on an AirAsia flight where Virgin boss Richard Branson will dress up as a ‘stewardess’.
The two airline bosses placed a bet at the beginning of the 2010 Formula One championship, agreeing that the one whose Formula One team lost would serve as a “stewardess” on the winner’s airline.
Although both teams completed the season with zero points on Sunday, Lotus were placed ahead of Branson’s Virgin Racing in the rankings by virtue of their better race finishing positions.
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A giant white truffle was sold off on Sunday for 105,000 euros (144,000 dollars) at a lavish auction near the town of Alba in northern Italy, organisers said.
The truffle, presented at the auction in the medieval Castello di Grinzane in a region of Italy famous for its cuisine, weighed 900 grammes.
The price per gramme for the truffle was therefore 117 euros — lower than the rate of 133 euros per gramme paid at the same auction last year.
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Italian luxury house Gucci is partaking in the global scavenger hunt organized by Jay-Z and search engine Bing in advance of the rapper’s book release.
The innovative marketing campaign physically placed pages from Jay Z’s memoir Decoded in various venues meaningful to the hip hop impresario, including the Delano Hotel in Miami and the Spotted Pig restaurant in New York.
Clues as to where pages were hidden were regularly revealed on the singer’s Facebook and Twitter pages as well as on a dedicated Bing website.
Last week, Gucci unveiled two of the book’s pages in the storefront windows of its Fifth Avenue flagship in New York.
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