Wellness is the New Healthy

The global health industry will top $1trillion in 2016*. Impressive. And surprising. Because most of the recent growth isn’t from drugs and beauty products, but from food brands. In particular, the brands which are outgrowing their competitors are the organics and “nutraceuticals”. Some of these might already be familiar to you – as will their price.…
View Post

Rush Hour: Testing the Limits of Bond’s Wheels

The things we buy are getting smarter. Many of them now know how to do all kinds of things we don’t. You’re not missing out on much when you don’t understand how to operate the eco-function on your washing machine or the reading mode option on your Samsung S5. But what about your new £190,000 car?…
View Post

Les Enfants Non Terribles: Hotel Le Bristol, Paris

The English language might have 25 different words for walking, but it’s missing a word for one particular kind of love. You and I recognise ‘parental love’ to mean that challenging mix of responsibility, necessary patience and occasional tough love. Do it right and we might see some ‘brotherly love’ between our children and perhaps even…
View Post

Felix Dennis RIU (Rest in Uproar)

It’s with great sadness that we heard in our office of the death today of the great publisher Felix Dennis. Sadness? Not sure what Felix would have made of that. He didn’t seem to have any time in his day for self-pity or regret. Back in 2011 he was generous enough to give Lusso’s Chris West and…
View Post

The Verbier to Go

For LUSSO 28, regular contributor Chris West stopped for 36 hours in Verbier to separate truth and rumour about the coming 2012-13 ski season. Verbier continues to amaze. That’s partly the stunning scenery but it’s also due to the stunning shortage of high-end luxury for the young and active European super-wealthy. The hedgie who’s happy to…
View Post

Sweet Sixteen: Delightful Charm in South Kensington

Kit Kemp’s done it again. Or more accurately, she’s re-done it again. The woman who brought modern elegance and a great night’s sleep to London with the Haymarket and Charlotte Street Hotels, and who persuaded New York to at least rest its head comfortably in the Crosby Street Hotel, has returned to splash some more…
View Post

Bullet Proof Fashions

Everyone likes adding on a few extras when they order their new car, that’s half the fun. The question is, where do you stop? If you are buying a new 7-series direct from BMW, pay another 600 and you get a phone in the back a good idea because in a car like this, you’re…
View Post

The Colonel – Clubbed to Death

“Not flying today, Colonel?” I asked. Now aged 67, the Colonel still spends a month of each year in the air. After 30 years distinguished service (in “the last remaining Regiment never to have been involved in either a TV series or a scandal involving one of the Royal Household staff”), he is now trotting…
View Post

Best Room in the House: Mandarin Oriental, San Francisco

When you walk into the horse shoe-shaped lobby, you couldn’t possibly criticise the correctness of the greeting from the staff arranged around you. It’s duly deferential, perhaps sometimes almost chirpy when the sun’s out, but it’d never stray into familiarity; I noticed I was wiping my feet an extra couple of times before I stepped…
View Post

Hotel Nevaï, Verbier

Why, when you build a new house, do you have to place the plug sockets halfway up the wall? So as not to discriminate against disabled people, obviously. It’s a piece of over-thought, under-considered Local Government-sponsored discrimination that manages, in the style of a pubescently-retarded Chinese gymnast, to simultaneously leap forward and reach high in…
View Post