As it celebrates its centennial, LVMH perfumery Acqua di Parma is reflecting on an Italian tradition—the art of handwriting.

The fragrance house has teamed with fellow Italian heritage brand Aurora on a collection of pens that reflect the Acqua di Parma codes in their manufacturing, materials and design. As handwriting is on the brink of going out of style, luxury houses have sought to revive the traditional communication form, saving and promoting their own heritage at the same time.

Writing history
Acqua di Parma was founded in 1916, just three years before Aurora’s establishment. According to the perfumer, Aurora was the first Italian fountain pen manufacturer, with a following today that consists largely of collectors and enthusiasts.

Aurora’s pens for Acqua di Parma come in fountain and ballpoint styles. The fountain pen has a 14-karat gold calligraphy nib and water-based ink, while the ball pen features oil-based ink.

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Sales of super-yachts rose 40% last year despite number of millionaires and ultra rich falling, according to wealth report

The global super rich continued to splash out on super-yachts and luxury goods last year, despite a decline in their overall wealth in the wake of financial market turmoil.

According to the latest wealth report from estate agents Knight Frank, published on Wednesday, sales of super-yachts – boats longer than 24 metres – soared 40% in 2015, with the rich roaring off to ever more far-flung destinations, such as the Antarctic and outposts in Asia, rather than their traditional ports of call in the Mediterranean and the Caribbean.

The number of ultra rich – people with $30m (£22m) or more in assets – fell 3% last year. There are now 187,500 with assets in excess of that benchmark, down from from 193,100 in 2014. This was the first decline since the financial crisis. Between them, they controlled $19.3tn in assets, down from $22tn the year before. This reflected the rollercoaster global stock markets, the slump in commodity prices and slowing economic growth in China and other countries.

The number of dollar millionaires around the globe also fell from 13.6 million in 2014 to 13.3 million last year. Together, they hold assets worth $66tn – more than the value of all global shares added together.

But the report believes that the decline in the number of millionaires is just a blip, and predicts that by 2025, there will be more than 18 million of them.

So-called investments of passion such as art, cars, stamps and jewellery remain popular among the super rich. Knight Frank’s art index rose by a muted 4% last year, but a number of records were set in the world’s auction houses.

Pablo Picasso’s Les Femmes d’Alger notched up a new record for a painting sold at auction after fetching more than $179m, while Reclining Nude by Amedeo Modigliani went under the hammer for $170m to a buyer from Shanghai.

Classic cars increased by 17% in value last year, while coins went up 13%. Knight Frank’s overall luxury investment index rose 7% in 2015. This compares with a 5% drop in the value of London’s leading share index, the FTSE 100, and a rise of just 1% forprime London residential property.

Andrew Shirley, the editor of the wealth report, said: “Although no classic car managed to beat the record set by Bonhams in 2014 when it auctioned a 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO Berlinetta for $38m, eight of the 25 cars ever to have sold for over $10m at auction went under the hammer in 2015.”

Wine and luxury watches both posted 5% increases. A Hong Kong-based billionaire set a record for a gem or piece of jewellery when he paid $48.4m for the Blue Moon, a rare fancy vivid blue diamond auctioned by Sotheby’s in Geneva in November. The day before, he paid $28.5m for a vivid pink diamond sold by Christie’s.

The value of investment-grade Bordeaux wines slumped as a result of a sharp fall in demand from China, but they have now started to recover, said Nick Martin of Wine Owners.

Even furniture values, which generally had a poor year, set a new auction record for a living maker when the Lockheed Lounge sofa by the Australian designer Marc Newson sold for £2.4m in April 2015.

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A combination of increased demand for high-end brands and low-cost tourism is expected to drive the global duty-free retail market until 2019, according to a new report by Technavio.

Due to high consumer demand and affordable travel rates, the duty-free retail sector is expected to reach approximately $98 billion in revenue by 2019. As such, Technavio’s “Global Duty-Free Retailing Market 2015-2019” examines market growth by revenue and tracks emerging trends for the sector to illustrate why having a duty-free strategy can be profitable for global luxury brands.

“The global duty-free retailing market has been growing significantly because of rising consumption by the growing middle class who are traveling abroad,” said Arushi Thakur, analyst at Technavio. “The fast growth in adoption of luxury goods among developing countries such as China and Brazil increased the global duty-free retailing market to $64.83 billion in 2014 from $60 billion in the previous year.

“Among all the countries, South Korea’s Incheon Airport reported a record sales of $2 billion in 2014,” she said. “The global duty-free retailing market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 8.57 percent for the period 2015-2019.”

(...)

The duty-free market has five distinctive retailers accounting for 49.7 percent of the total revenue. LVMH-owned DFS is the largest duty-free retailer, offering more than 700 of the world’s leading brands, and had a 13.1 percent revenue share of the industry in 2014.

Categories available at duty-free shops such as DFS include fashion accessories and hard luxury, fragrance and cosmetics, wine and spirits, tobacco and confectionery and fine foods. The fashion accessories and hard luxury category offers the most products, at 32.10 percent of total offerings, while perfume and cosmetics accounts for 29.21 percent of duty-free retail items.

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Legend : It’s a sweet ride around Hong Kong in one of The Peninsula’s fleet of Rolls-Royces

AND THAT IS WHY WE DO NOT RELY ENTIRELY ON BIG DATA

From #HBR, Ana Brant, March 2016.

You check into your $1,000-a-night luxury suite. Your bathroom is lovely, stocked with shampoo, body wash, lotions, soaps. Your towels are plush, plentiful, neatly folded. This is great. But where’s the hair spray? You have a meeting in an hour. You need hair spray.

You call the front desk. The front desk says, “We sell that in the gift shop, madame.”

That’s not good enough.

Why isn’t there hair spray in your bathroom?

It’s not there because a) it most likely wasn’t on the mystery shopper checklist from a ratings agency — such as AAA or Forbes Travel Guide – engaged by the hotel company to help it guarantee the consistency of its service, and b) the hotel has neither developed nor leveraged customer data at a level of granularity required to know that you are 1) a woman and 2) in town on business.

To do that, the hotel needs to know you on a much deeper level by leveraging data and turning that data into information it can use to deliver a customized experience. It can’t rely on a checklist.

Mystery shopper checklists are used not only in the hospitality industry, but also in automobile, restaurant, and retail businesses, among others. Businesses design standard processes to make sure they get good ratings by checking all the boxes on the agencies’ lists. These ratings are then used by company marketing departments to impress customers, thereby driving volume and revenue. These ratings cannot be ignored. Get a bad one, and your competition will use it to sell against you.

However, trying to provide luxury service by implementing standardized processes that will ensure compliance, with checklists designed by third parties that do not know your business as you do, will inevitably fail to address individual customer needs. These kinds of checklists address the fundamentals of good service — but meeting the requirements of the ratings agencies with standardized processes will inevitably disappoint the individual that you, as a luxury business, most need.

Catering to the individual is what defines luxury; in the luxury segment, it is the critical competitive differentiator. The challenge for any business seeking to deliver a luxury experience is to be knowledgeable enough to go beyond the standard, to have hair spray for the person who needs it whether or not it’s on a checklist.

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Ana Brant serves as director of global guest experience and innovation for the London-based Dorchester Collection, having previously served as the quality manager for The New York Palace and the area director of quality for The Beverly Hills Hotel and Hotel Bel-Air. Brant started her career with The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company. Brant’s public speaking engagements have included the Harvard University Graduate School, the Malcolm Baldrige Awards Recipient Conference, and the 2014 Cornell Hospitality Research Summit. She’s on twitter at @AnaMaritaBrant.

From Premium beauty news,  extract of the Research on Trends lead by Les Persiennes Consulting, by Nilufar Khalessi

After 35 years of isolation, Iran is making a comeback on the international stage. This little-known country, which already represents 29% of the beauty market in the Middle East, is often described as the ‘new eldorado’ for cosmetics brands. Nilufar Khalessi, the French-Persian Founder of trends and consulting agency Les Persiennes Consulting, has taken a look at this country for a first qualitative, forward-looking deciphering. She gave Premium Beauty News an overview of the study The New Faces Of Iran - Fashion, Beauty & Paradoxes, to be presented next May.

With a population of 80 million inhabitants, including 55% under 30, Iran is a growth-driving, dynamic market. The fact that international sanctions have been lifted and that the economic situation should therefore improve have made it even more attractive. But this country is not without its own paradoxes.

For a thorough understanding of unknown Persia’s trends and lifestyles, the study The New Faces Of Iran - Fashion, Beauty & Paradoxes first describes the historical, geographical, cultural, and social pillars that define the Persian civilization. As a tremendous cultural and historical cradle, the country that became an Islamic Republic after the 1979 Revolution, mainly defines itself according to its ancient origins. “It is a Muslim country, but people consider themselves Persians and Iranians above all. It is essential to understand this subtlety,” Nilufar Khalessi explains.

Despite an embargo that lasted for decades, the major cities of Iran have been experiencing much progress, driven by the dynamics of a 2.0, highly-connected, Western-oriented young generation. However, the choices made by these young people show they will not let foreign countries dictate their consumption habits, as they actually prefer national goods. “Young Iranians deliberately have not completely assimilated the Western culture, although they do know and master its codes, since they have integrated them. And we would make a mistake if we tried to force them into a mould,” Nilufar Khalessi adds.

Iranian women, a status apart
As they are extremely educated – so is most of the population in large cities - Iranian women enjoy an important part in society. They are very present in institutions and play a crucial role, whether in the family or society. “The status of women is different from what can be observed in many Arab countries. Even the way they wear their veils is more lax, as it does not completely frame their faces and allows for much femininity to be seen,” Nilufar Khalessi explains.

The study used portraits of women from Isfahan, Tehran, and Shiraz to shape the contours of a generation that has been playing with the paradox between their public lives, as they comply with the established Islamic laws, and their private lives, subverting these laws for more freedom, whether in terms of beauty or fashion. Women are deeply committed to this young generation’s active and creative development, in all artistic fields.

The face at the core of femininity
“Iranian women hardly go out without makeup on, because the relationship with aesthetics is strongly developed,” Nilufar Khalessi affirms. Therefore, it is essential for them to beautify their eyes, eyebrows, lips, and hair. “In the city, the veil does not completely frame women’s faces. It is a real distinguishing feature: half the hair is uncovered, so women work a lot on it, often dying it blonde, and they are not keen on naturalness”. Facial care focuses on “zero defect” choices to fight against pollution-related problems, acne, or oily skins. In addition, the study highlights the very strong relationship with plastic surgery, in particular rhinoplasty.

“They choose L’Oréal, Dior, Lancôme, and many other well-established brands for their daily consumption, although they also buy other products by interesting local brands to be studied,” Nilufar Khalessi concludes.

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Though the 66-year-old former Olympian won't be walking down any Victoria's Secret runways anytime soon, the transgender activist just became the newest face of MAC Cosmetics, reports CNN.

"She has come to represent courage, fearlessness, honesty and compassion - characteristics long-prized and celebrated by MAC," the company said in an official statement.

The makeup company released its first photo of Jenner in a tweet regarding the new launch.

"All Ages. All Races. All Sexes. #MACCaitlynJenner online in Apr," they wrote.

The lipstick that she is launching is called "Finally Free," which references her own struggle to come out and embrace her gender identity. It will be in stores on Apr. 7 and all of the proceeds will go to programs meant to support transgender communities. They will also benefit the MAC AIDS Fund Transgender Initiaitve

"Her beautiful transformation inspires all of us to live our best lives and to honor who we are. Differences are what make us interesting. Acceptance, warmth and understanding are what make us human," the company went on to say in the statement.  

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