Рубрика: General

The 216 stones showcase a novel patented cut with 37 precisely engineered facets. The 216 stones showcase a novel patented cut with 37 precisely engineered facets.

The Reservation: A new family-run restaurant in Europe’s food capital. 

While sun seekers flock to southern Spain, those in the know are going to the country’s wild north to visit the Basque Country, where the weather forecast is less reliable, but the food scene is among the best in the world. At its epicenter is San Sebastian, a dot of a city that all but sparkles with Michelin stars.

The newest star in that line up was awarded in late 2025 to Itzuli – a restaurant from Basque Country native, Iñigo Lavado. A short drive out of town in the hilltop village of Igeldo (with amazing views on a good day, and literally none on a cloudy one), Itzuli opened as the flagship restaurant at the five-star Hotel Luze. But, while this is undeniably a new project, it marks something as a homecoming for Iñigo who began his career in San Sebastian, before opening his first solo restaurant, Restaurante Iñigo Lavado, in the town of Irun, close to the French border. He returns with a team that has been at his side throughout his career.

See also: The Underrated Destinations Vying to Become the Next Foodie Hotspots

A family business, Iñigo’s partner Arantxa Martínez and fellow Basque native oversees the management of the dining room, and their eldest son Julen manages the wine program, armed with a sommelier degree from the Basque Culinary Center. His two younger siblings, María and Iñigo are also both studying at the culinary school, but pick up weekend shifts in their parent’s restaurant. The wholesome family element is far from just easy marketing fodder, and easily translates to the guest experience. Although Arantxa’s handshake greeting is formal, her accompanying “Welcome to our home!” is anything but. Several hours and even more courses later, the restaurant matriarch bids farewell with a kiss on each cheek.

Iñigo’s food has a similar character. Tasting menu only, on paper (and in its avant-garde plating), it looks high-brow. But start eating, and you’ll find familiar flavors in even the most complex dishes. Basque roots is a running vein, as is creativity. There are two menus: the first, Luis Irizar, is dedicated to Iñigo’s late mentor and one of the founding fathers of New Basque Cuisine; the second, Cocina de Emociones, is an exploration of his own personal and professional development.

See also: The Backyard Spirit Being Used in Michelin-Starred Restaurants

Julen’s accompanying wine pairing deftly bounces around Spain (and some other parts of Europe), prioritizing small-scale, organic producers, and is clearly not intimated by his father’s menu. The combinations are bold and fun: perhaps a unusually still glass of local Txakoli with a a jellied lobster salad; a 1996 Kerner Spätlese with a deconstructed pina colada, complete with coconut foam and pineapple chunks; or a zesty sherry-aged Palomino accompanying a fat Normandy oyster with pickled vegetables and Iberico jus. Nods to the family business continue: with the spiced whole pigeon comes a glass of 2005 Remelluri Reserva Rioja, chosen for the year Julen’s father first opened his restaurant. 

Itzuli’s crowd is mixed – there are the vacationing American couples in sneakers, inevitably drawn to Itzuli’s star power, but also intergenerational family tables, as well as groups of lunching Spanish ladies, apparently there for a birthday. At lunchtime mid-week, virtually every table is full. The space itself was designed by local interior designer Iñaki Biurrun, who captures the family’s playful take on fine dining. The tables are laden with perfectly pressed linens and there is a sense of ‘proper’ service, but swimsuit-clad sculptures along the wall (and used in plating) help stop Itzuli from feeling overly formal. It’s a carefully struck balance, suggesting the Lavado family knew exactly the kind of place they wanted Itzuli to be from the very beginning.

The 2026 BMW M2 CS is more aggressive, both visually and dynamically, yet still doesn’t distance itself enough from the base model. The 2026 BMW M2 CS is more aggressive, both visually and dynamically, yet still doesn’t distance itself enough from the base model.

The hip-hop mogul’s treasure trove of watches is now estimated to be worth $10 million. Here, he shows off 20 of his favorites. The hip-hop mogul’s treasure trove of watches is now estimated to be worth $10 million. Here, he shows off 20 of his favorites.

Lapland’s secretive former military outpost is now serving as a luxury lodge. 

Currently, the Adrian Newey–led squad sits in a tie for last place after two races. Currently, the Adrian Newey–led squad sits in a tie for last place after two races.

From Princess Catherine to the Queen Mother, Anna Murphy explores how the royals have long used fashion as a tool of influence. 

It’s the end of fashion month. The usual quartet of New York, London, Milan, Paris – in that order – was joined by Rome, where Valentino has just staged a show-cum-homage to mark the passing in January of its founder, Valentino Garavani, at the age of 93. 

A catwalk show is a fantasy, and there was none more fantastical than this one. Alessandro Michele, the house’s current creative director, is fully signed up to the froth- and frill-fuelled preferences of his illustrious antecedent. His was the ultimate palazzo-appropriate line up, its gaze firmly focused on the past. 

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But there have been some very different visions of contemporary luxury at other shows. Maria Grazia Chiuri’s mainly black, entirely restrained debut at another Italian brand, Fendi, for example, was the exemplification of less is more; of a rigorous modernity.

These opposing aesthetics – replicated to a greater and lesser degree throughout fashion month – have found an unexpected resonance for me in Justine Picardie’s fascinating new book Fashioning the Crown: A Story of Power, Conflict and Couture (Faber). 

A riposte to anyone who argues that clothes are a superfluity, Fashioning the Crown tells the story of the British Royal Family in the first decades of the 20th century through the prism of their wardrobes, ending with the coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953. 

These were often bumpy years. In the run up to World War I, when anti-German sentiment was at fever pitch in Britain, the family still went by the name Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, its lineage more Germanic than British. Rebranded as Windsor, the name was no longer a problem when World War II was declared, but there was still the small matter of a recent abdication by a Nazi-supporting king. What the Royals wore (or didn’t wear, on which more anon) aided their navigation of such turbulence. 

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Clothes are still part of the royal toolkit. The Princess of Wales’ sartorial serenity is currently helping the family through the Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor-related instability. Catherine may have stated last year that her office would no longer give the details of what she wears, the better to focus on what she does, yet, the two are – pun very much intended – interwoven. She is her image.

“The soft power of monarchy is always expressed through visual iconography, jewels and clothing,” is how Picardie put it to me recently. “For the key figures in the House of Windsor to navigate this latest crisis, they need to be as fluent in the language of fashion as their forebears. Given that they are not supposed to speak their minds, it’s their wardrobe that does the talking.” 

The balancing act for a modern queen-in-waiting such as Catherine is how to come across on the one hand as, in Picardie’s words, “more democratic and sympathetic”, while also still channelling that essential “mystery” famously referred to by Walter Bagehot in his 1867 book The English Constitution. “We must not let in daylight upon magic,” he wrote. Alas, it’s not merely that there’s been too much daylight recently but too much darkness. 

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Picardie is especially compelling on another moment of royal darkness, the years in and around Edward VIII’s abdication in 1936. By way of his subsequent marriage to Wallis Simpson, two contrasting aesthetics came head to head. And the potential ramifications were considerably more profound than a pair of catwalk brands jostling for commercial dominance. 

In the late 1930s the world order was in flux. It says something about how differently things could have ended – should he have been allowed to marry his bride and remain King – that everyone from the Nazi diplomat Joachim von Ribbentrop to Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists, expressed their unhappiness at Edward VIII’s abdication. 

There was nothing more contemporary-looking, more future-facing than the ‘hard chic’ – as delivered by labels such as Schiaparelli and Mainbocher – of the woman who was rebranded, alongside her Duke, the Duchess of Windsor. Yet beneath her unquestionable chic, and her husband’s, were deeply questionable politics. The couple were unabashed supporters of the Nazis, a regime that also styled itself as modernity incarnate. 

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How clever then of the man who had never thought he would be King, George VI, to decide that his wife, the woman the Brits still refer to as Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, should lean into the exact opposite with her wardrobe; should conjure up the Elysian Fields of the past. 

When the fashion designer Norman Hartnell was invited to Buckingham Palace in 1937, the King showed him the idealised, not to mention flouncy, royal portraits of the 19th-century German painter Franz Xaver Winterhalter. “His Majesty made it clear in his quiet way that I should attempt to capture this picturesque grace in the dresses I was to design for the Queen,” Hartnell recalled in his autobiography.

As Picardie writes, “This was a masterstroke – a superb visual riposte to the angular modernism embodied by Wallis Simpson.” Its apogee was reached in the all-white Hartnell-designed wardrobe that Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother wore for the royal tour of France a year later. 

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What better way to counter the steel-edged semiotics of Nazism than with the marshmallow of a gown she donned, like a 20th-century Titania, for a garden party in Bois de Boulogne?

Hartnell and, later, Hardy Amies, would go on to craft a similarly fairy-tale image for the young Princess Elizabeth – at that point, like Catherine now, another queen in waiting.

Last September the Princess of Wales looked straight out of a Winterhalter herself when she wore a gold Chantilly lace creation by Phillipa Lepley – accessorised with the £1 million Lover’s Knot tiara, her heaviest –  for a state banquet at Windsor Castle. She appeared transcendent; and, also, insurmountable. It was one of the greatest sartorial successes of her royal career, and also, it’s worth noting, about as far from ‘democratic’ as it’s possible to get. 

Fashioning the Crown serves as a reminder that clothes can be the very definition of soft power. The palazzo fashion of Valentino in Rome last week fades into insignificance next to the palace fashion of our royals. It’s shaped their past, and it is part of what will forge their future.

Heesen’s «Sophia» has a draft of just seven feet, enabling it to explore restricted areas like the Bahamas. Heesen’s «Sophia» has a draft of just seven feet, enabling it to explore restricted areas like the Bahamas.

Blazy’s debut collection has sparked a global rush. 

A review from the Financial Times described the opening look as something “real women with busy lives might like to actually dress” in, while Monocle said it was “a masterclass in tactile bouclé, finer-than-fine tweeds, artfully frayed hems, and supple leather”. Flip through the February issue of Vogue and you’ll find a full Chanel look spread across it’s pages. After years of mixed reviews for Blazy’s predecessor, Virginie Viard, the house can take comfort in knowing his debut has decisively won over the industry.

Further proof came last week when the collection finally landed in stores. During Paris Fashion Week, podcaster Recho Omondi stopped by a Chanel boutique – only to find plenty of her industry peers already there. Clearly, she wasn’t the only one hoping to secure a piece.

See also: Chanel’s New Direction – What’s Different and Will It Work?

Omondi documented the scene on TikTok, asking fellow shoppers what they were hoping to buy – and what they had managed to get their hands on. Lynette Nylander, Executive Digital Director of Harper’s Bazaar US, summed up the mood: “This is The Hunger Games of accessories buying.”

Knowing that Paris would be the first city to receive the collection, influencer Ro Brahman was determined to leave Fashion Week with either a pair of shoes or a bag. Her first attempt at the Rue Cambon boutique came a day too early, after she mistakenly thought the launch was happening 24 hours sooner than it was.

She returned the following day, only to discover that the bag she wanted wasn’t available at that particular branch – and with shows to dash between, there was no time to try another store. Undeterred, Brahman made a third attempt, hoping it might finally result in some arm candy. Instead, she was told that her chosen colourway had already sold out across the city.

“I was excited to see the collection in real life for the first time, and nervous because I was so scared everything was going to be sold out,” she says.

“Walking around the Rue de Carbon location, you could hear accents from all over the world. Celebrities, stylists, VIP Chanel clients, and people buying their first item from Chanel – everyone was there.”

See also: The Royal Money Powering Balmain and Valentino’s Runway Shows

Blazy was one of fifteen designers to debut their first collections for their respective fashion houses during the spring/summer 2026 shows. The latest round of creative-director musical chairs has been widely linked to the slowdown in luxury sales. According to Business of Fashion, an estimated 35 per cent of aspirational luxury customers pulled back on or delayed purchases between 2023 and 2025.

Interestingly, Chanel has had little reason to worry. Under Viard, the brand continued to grow financially year after year, with reports suggesting sales doubled during her tenure. If Chanel customers were consistently buying into her vision, the question now is whether a shift in creative direction might risk unsettling a loyal clientele.

“The heritage Chanel client may not engage in this new era in the same way the press does, but I think she’ll appreciate the different ways the collection invites her to wear the brand,” says Brahman. 

For Antonio Padilla, the man behind fashion Instagram @immaculate.style, resistance isn’t necessarily reflective of Blazy’s work. “There are going to be some customers that may refuse to buy anything new because they were so devoted to Karl Lagerfeld, which is okay,” he says. “That happens all the time when a new designer is brought into one of these large fashion houses.”

“Chanel has such a strong, historic identity, but Blazy has found a way to expand who the brand speaks to,” continues Brahman. “It feels like more people can imagine themselves as a ‘Chanel girl’ in this new era. The clothes still carry all the classic Chanel codes, but they feel more wearable, playful, and energetic.”

See also: How Blazy & Anderson Turned Paris Haute Couture SS26 Into a Fantasy-Filled Dreamscape

She notes that it’s already captured the attention of another demographic. “Historically, men haven’t participated in Chanel’s accessories culture the way they do at brands like Bottega,” she says. “But now you’re seeing the Pedro Pascals and Jacob Elordis of the world step into this new idea of the ‘Chanel man.’” Indeed, Harry Styles was spotted just last week with the accessory from look 44 of Matthieu Blazy’s Chanel Metiers d’art show.

The collection launched in the US on March 13 to similarly enthusiastic shoppers. Still, it will be a few weeks before Chanel has the data to gauge just how successful that first collection has been. “The US is still the biggest market for Chanel, so it’s important for the success of the business that Chanel does well here in the states,” says Padilla. “As more younger people are getting into fashion, now that it’s so accessible on social media, I think people will want to be part of this Blazy era in some way.”

In fact, Brahman’s convinced that customers will be leaving the store as content as she was, despite not even buying a piece. “When I look at the clothes, the shoes, the bags, the jewelry, there’s something about them that genuinely makes me smile. The collection just feels happy.”

Best known for his long-spanning modelling career, Jarrod Scott has since turned his attention to the alcohol industry. 

Yet when we meet over a video call, I get the feeling his modelling career is at the back of his mind. Instead, our conversation turns to harvesting seaweed, tracking down rare eucalyptus, and the differences between rose and jasmine when they hit the tongue.

For the past five years, Scott has been building something very different from a fashion career. Goldenbird, his ready-to-drink cocktail brand, is not just another celebrity backed venture. Scott is its founder, creative director, and sole recipe developer.

Back home in Australia, Scott’s obsession with flavor goes back to his childhood. “I was raised in a really poor family, just with my mum in the countryside of Melbourne,” he says. “Money was non-existent, and food was not great, so I started making things for myself. I wanted tasty food, so I’d constantly be out picking things, smelling things. It became an obsession.

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 “In summer, I’d spend days foraging native botanicals, flowers, and seasonal produce. I’d supply restaurants with Mirabell plums, strawberry eucalyptus, sea blight, samphire, seaweeds, all kinds of things. I had a lot of time to think about how I could utilize those ingredients and I’d go home and start tinkering around with them, whether in cooking or making drinks.”

Today, Scott’s tinkering happens on a larger scale. At various points, his garage has been packed with drying eucalyptus, jars of botanical extractions, and the occasional unwelcome spider colony. His fridge currently holds around 70 macerations and experiments, and the family car has been relegated to the roadside.

When his interest in flavor combinations grew beyond experimentation, his first stop wasn’t cocktails, but Scotch whisky. He drew up a business plan and sent his partner, Brioney Prier, to Scotland to meet with master distillers, but nothing stuck.

See also: Scotch Has Lost Its Way. Can It Come Back?

“We wanted to make whisky more fun and enjoyable,” he says. “But whisky is a long game. It takes a long time to make a small amount of money We were always going out and drinking cocktails anyway, so we asked, why aren’t we just doing cocktails?”

Scott’s journey eventually came full circle in Grasse, the perfume capital of southern France. There, he found Comte de Grasse, a self-described “liquor tech” company that was distilling spirits using techniques borrowed from fragrance extraction.

Prier, Goldenbird’s co-founder, recalls their first meeting with the team. “We didn’t want a cookie cutter product from a contract bottler,” she says. “We wanted something that really spoke to craftsmanship. When we met the team in Grasse it just hit the nail on the head.”

That team includes master distiller Marie-Anne Contamin, a woman with decades of experience in sensory development. When Scott first arrived with bags of foraged delicacies and 60 recipe concepts, she encountered ingredients she had never worked with before. “It was a really meeting of minds,” Prier says. The way Jarrod layers his recipes with flavor is exactly how perfumes are constructed.”

See also: The Most Exciting Whisky Right Now Isn’t Scottish – It’s English

Of all his original recipe concepts, Romance Apocalypse sits closest to Scott’s heart. The website describes it as a “sexy bouquet of French lavender, damask rose, and Egyptian jasmine combined with fruity acidic hints of strawberry eucalyptus”. It’s vibrant pink color, shimmering through the fragrance inspired bottle, would not look out of place on a perfume counter.

“I love floral drinks,” he says, “and I wanted to create something that was like getting slapped in the face by a bunch of flowers. Usually, when you get a floral drink, it only uses one flower, because they’re such intense flavors. Rose hits you straight away on the nose. Jasmine has more of a honey note. Then you’ve got lavender, which is earthy and floral.”

Scott worked on the balance drop by drop. It took 160 variations, and then a few more on top of that. The result is a drink that unfolds in layers, much like a fragrance. Even the color comes entirely from flower extracts.

By the end of development, Scott was so attuned to the recipe that he could detect even the slightest misalignment. One of the first batches from Comte de Grasse had used the wrong type of coconut water. Scott picked it up instantly. “I just knew it was wrong,” he says. “They had used a brand of coconut water that had 5.5 grams less sugar, and I just knew it didn’t taste right.”

See also: Upscale Parties Call for These Champagne Cocktail Recipes

Scott finalized a few recipes with Comte de Grasse, but Goldenbird was still a long way from launch. It still needed a website, and licenses to sell in markets with very different legal requirements. But when Scott came across Global Spirit Masters, he couldn’t wait. “We had finished the R&D and I just thought, why not?” he says.

The judges were intrigued. Goldenbird arrived with no public profile, no launch plan, yet the drinks stood out. Several of Scott’s entries picked up gold medals, including Romance Apocalypse, proving that his garage experiments could hold their own against leading mixologists.

Justification secured, Scott doubled down on his efforts to launch Goldenbird only to find that ready to drink cocktails take just as long to bring to market as Scotch whisky. It wasn’t just his modelling career or regulatory hurdles, but the arrival of Scott and Prier’s first baby that sent Goldenbird into hibernation. Now officially in launch phase, Goldenbird offers its four award-winning recipes with another two launching in April. Those six will be Goldenbird’s first permanent collection with seasonal variations to follow.

Looking ahead, Scott already has plans for the brand’s next chapter. “I’d like to see, years down the line, we will eventually have a flagship bar somewhere,” Scott says. “For now, we’ve been doing pop ups through Fashion Week, and we’ve had a lot of interest.”

Some of Goldenbird’s earliest customers are cocktail bars, which have been buying Scott’s concoctions in bulk to serve as a base for recipes on their menus. They take the pre-bottled mixtures, apply bar-appropriate tweaks, and serve. That, Scott says, is where more cocktail bars will go.

“I think a lot of bars now are using pre-batching,” he says. “You get a high-quality liquid with stability and consistency without the hassle of trying to teach someone how to get it right. It plays into a faster service, reduces staff costs… it’s a win, win for everyone. It’s not everywhere, but it’s going to be the way of the future.”

Scott’s claims ring true with at Tayēr + Elementary, a London bar that consistently finishes in the top ten of the World’s 50 Best Cocktail Bars. There, they have adopted pre-batching of non-perishable ingredients not just to speed up service or reduce costs, but because some of their recipes have become so complex, they’d be impossible to make to order.

A spokesperson for the bar told The World of Fine Spirits: “We batch because we use highly concentrated distillates, extracts and flavorings which when broken down often contain less than 1ml per individual serving (we measure to 0.25ml). It would be impractical and literally impossible to measure this in service.”

No matter where Goldenbird goes, it will remain a deeply personal pursuit for Scott, who has not only developed the recipes but designed the fragrance-inspired bottles. He’s not just the face of the brand, but the substance behind it.