› on the heels of yesterday's chat about unexamined luxury
Here’s Lapo Elkann—33-y.o. grandson of Gianni Agnelli, “obscenely rich playboy” and product consultant at Ferrari, cover boy of this week’s How to Spend It in this week’s FT—explaining how you can buy a “Tailor Made” custom Ferrari, but only within certain parameters of, erm. Taste. The photographs are utterly boggling.
“The Ferrari of someone’s dreams might cost 200,000 Euro, it might cost six million. […] Upholstery can be cashmere, moquette, stingray, woven metal or suede; […] we can go from cutting edge to jet fighter, from heritage to classic to race—but what it is not about is doing things that are foolish. Ferrari is a brand of humungous worth, it’s a paradise land in which you need to know how to leverage value so as not to tarnish what has already been created. […]”
He also cites Ralph Lauren’s fabled car collection as a source of ideas—and, by the look of one of Elkann’s personal cars, he’s rather inspired by the clothing, too. “This was the first of these to have a completely denim interior, he says proudly, opening the river’s door to a mate white and matte black 599 GB in whch the seats and dashboard are covered in the ubiquitous material, artfully torn and frayed in parts.
