Latest news with #extravagance
Daily Mail
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Margarita towers, caviar bumps and beachside luxury: Real Housewives of Sydney star Krissy Marsh hosts extravagant three-day birthday bash in Noosa
Real Housewives of Sydney star Krissy Marsh pulled all the stops for her husband Johnny over the weekend to ring in his 59th birthday. The reality star, 53, who has appeared in all three seasons of the series, shared a slew of pictures and videos of the extravagant three-day celebration, which included margarita towers, caviar bumps and Sydney's Eastern Suburbs elite. The festival-esque weekend kicked off with boho-themed drinks on Noosa Main Beach, which saw those lucky enough to be invited to the shindig in crochet, fur and linen as they partied the night away. Day two saw the family hire out the iconic Sails Restaurant for a lunch overlooking the beachfront, with guests dressed in all-white as they sipped on champagne and slurped on oysters. Krissy and the kids - Nicco, Billy and Milana - gave heartwarming speeches for the birthday boy, with Krissy taking centre stage behind the mic in a sleek, one-shouldered dress that elegantly fell to the floor and stuck to the all-white theme. From A-list scandals and red carpet mishaps to exclusive pictures and viral moments, subscribe to the DailyMail's new showbiz newsletter to stay in the loop. Real Housewives of Sydney star Krissy Marsh pulled all the stops for husband Johnny over the weekend to ring in his 59th birthday The reality star, 53, who has appeared on all three seasons of the series, shared a slew of pictures and videos of the extravagant three-day celebration, which included margarita towers, caviar bumps and Sydney's Eastern Suburbs elite Day three called for a recovery day, which saw the family invite their loved ones to their Noosa home to recharge on Bloody Mary cocktails and reminisce on the weekend bender. The at-home party was littered with personal touches, such as a cardboard cutout of the man of the hour stationed outside the front door and a DJ set played by his son Billy. Also in attendance were Real Housewives of Sydney stars Victoria Montano, Victoria Rees and Matty Samaei, and of course, the Marsh family's nearest and dearest - including Krissy's sisters. Speaking exclusively to Daily Mail, Krissy said of the glamorous birthday bash: 'Why do 60 when you can get in early and do 59?' If this is how the Marsh's do 59, we can't wait to see what they do next year! The opulent weekend comes after Krissy opened her jaw-dropping Eastern Suburbs home to Daily Mail Australia in March. The reality star and her husband nabbed the luxurious abode, which features six bedrooms, 2300 sqm grounds, and a $30million price tag, in 2022. 'I would like to think it's my forever home,' she said, despite not knowing what's around the corner. The at-home party was littered with personal touches, such as a cardboard cutout of the man of the hour stationed outside the front door and a DJ set played by his son Billy 'You never say never and you never say forever because you never know what tomorrow brings.' However, the mother-of-three's decision to make the big purchase spans beyond the house's lush amenities. 'I love the whole community,' she says, adding: 'I love the fact that we're the house that everyone drops into.' The star revealed she has an open invitation dinner every Tuesday night where some of Sydney's biggest (and slightly smaller) names drop in for a bite to eat, a chat and a Housewives watch party. As for some of her favourite things in the Double Bay home, Krissy lists her dogs, Bronte and Bondi, her family, her extensive art collection (think Slim Aarons and Dina Broadhurst) and her $30,000 chandelier.
Motor Trend
14-05-2025
- Automotive
- Motor Trend
2026 Mercedes-Maybach SL680 First Drive: Extravagant Comfort
What constitutes extravagance? Webster's defines it as 'Lacking restraint in spending money or using resources.' We're certainly in no position to challenge Head of Mercedes-Maybach, Daniel Lescow's description of the new Maybach SL680 as his brand's most extravagant offering. Priced around a quarter-million dollars and able to carry just two hyper-elite personalities and perhaps a picnic hamper, surely it shan't sell on practicality. Closing our first look at the SL680, we fretted that, like its Mercedes-AMG SL stablemates, the Maybach might struggle to deliver price- and brand-commensurate levels of ride comfort and that, despite being blanketed in wealth-signaling Maybach emblems, the two curated color ambiances announced at the time wouldn't offer the personalization required to trigger an oligarch's extravagance-splurge. Well, nine months later we can reassure the morbidly affluent that this Maybach should cosset their derrieres sufficiently and will indeed provide enough color variation to dramatically lower the likelihood of encountering a fellow plutocrat on the boulevard or valet court piloting an identical bauble. Comfort Promise Fulfilled Since our first introduction to the R232-generation SL circa 2022, Mercedes and AMG have contended that the seventh-gen car's sophisticated hydraulically interlinked, adaptively damped, steel-sprung suspension would offer sufficient 'bandwidth' to ride as comfortably or more so than previous generations while also leveling up the car's appetite for racetrack work. Heretofore, we've never found their comfort claims to ring true, as the cars' rides remained mostly sports-car firm. This Maybach, it would seem, finally broadens that bandwidth sufficiently to validate that claim. Comfort By the Numbers The Maybach suspension-tuning team domesticates these racy suspenders, providing the supple cosseting ride a Maybach customer likely expects, by softening everything. It reduces the front and rear spring rates by 25 percent (from 80 to 60 N/mm) and 22 percent (from 45 to 35 N/mm) respectively, by retuning the bushing rates, and by revising the adaptive damping valves so that they flow more fluid. This enables greater sensitivity to road inputs. Wheel camber is reduced somewhat, to reflect the SL680's less track-focused use case. And an exclusive 'Maybach Mode' setting is added to the suspension menu, which noticeably relaxes the throttle, steering feel, and suspension firmness even further beyond Comfort mode (which remains the default setting the car starts in). How It Feels We spent a few hours on hilly serpentine roads that link various tony resorts dotting the shoreline of Spain's party island, Ibiza, sampling the various modes. We spent most of the drive in Maybach mode and were pleased to find that AMG's Active Ride Control cross-linking system still maintained a very even keel, resisting virtually all dive, pitch, and roll. The less aggressive camber didn't noticeably degrade this SL's ability to negotiate mountain switchbacks at or near the limits of the tires' adhesion. The softer springs, and new Maybach mode damping curve—paired with the high-flow valve—traverse potholes and speed bumps with far less jarring impact, while still preventing the ride from becoming floaty. And if the above-mentioned gear seems to effectively carpet the road, the new bushing package gives it a thicker layer of underlayment. Traversing the same stretch of road in Comfort versus Maybach mode introduces just a touch more road feel—like the carpet nap just got slightly thinner. Sport mode swaps the carpet and pad for a commercial rubber-backed peel-and-stick feel. Interestingly, the car remained fun to send through the corners at high g-loading even in Maybach mode, despite the dulled steering feel. Reduced Responsiveness Drop the hammer in Maybach mode and it seems like the engine suffers turbo lag. Switch back to Sport mode and you feel AMG 63-level throttle response, while also sharpening the steering responsiveness. Another apparent benefit of Maybach mode's throttle programming is that when gently starting from a stop, we never felt any juddering from the wet-clutch launch device, as we've reported on in other SLs. Note that we also chose to leave the Maybach-designed driver-information screen up, featuring speed and tach readouts that resemble those of the stunning Maybach Vision 6 Concept's nacelles, though we resisted leaving the album-art option live on the center section, as it adds another dozen or so M-M logos to that area. Chris-Craft Burble The Maybach-exclusive exhaust, featuring fiberglass batting inside the muffler, strives for silence in Maybach and Comfort modes and comes admirably close, while Sport mode opens a valve to bypass that chamber while also broadcasting more synthetic sound through the cabin speakers (ensuring that Sport-mode sounds nearly the same, top up or down). That curated sound trades some AMG racecar emulation for something more akin to the inboard V-8 music of a classic wooden skiff. Improvements for Other SLs One 'hallelujah' debuting in the SL680 and extending to all SLs soon is the fitment of proper mechanical switches to operate the power-folding top. No more scorching a finger by sliding and holding a virtual button on a sunbaked infotainment screen like in other SLs. And to avoid confusion, separate buttons are clearly marked to raise and lower the standard Maybach-logo-adorned top. Now, if we could only impress upon Mercedes the wisdom of making this Comfort-mode suspension tuning setup available—without the Maybach mode damping curve—on a revived 'Mercedes-Benz SL' model. We feel certain that folks trading up from any of the earlier boulevardier SL generations would strongly prefer that setup to any of the AMG ones for comfort. Maybe an inline-six-powered SL450 could slip in comfortably under the AMG models, price- and performance-wise? Manufaktur to the Rescue When first presented, Maybach played up its 'chef's tasting menu' curated design concept, announcing only two Monogram Series offerings: Opalite White Magno (matte) or tinted-clearcoat Garnet Red Metallic bodywork set off with a black hood and top over a shocking Crystal White interior. Well, fear not, individualists. Mercedes-Maybach has approved a further 50 colors from its catalog of 1,000 durability-tested hues, making any of them available with a hood in the same color, in black, or in black with Maybach emblems dot-matrix printed all over it, Louis Vuitton handbag style. For now, however, white remains the only factory interior offering to be announced. As Fitzgerald quipped, 'The rich are different from you and I.' Apparently their denim is more colorfast. About that Logo Hood … The Maybach SL680 is the first car to utilize this new PixelPaint process, involving a high-precision print head with 1,000 nozzles, each capable of depositing 20-50-micron diameter paint droplets at a rate of more than 1,000 drops per second with no overspray or mist. Starting with an Obsidian Black hood and one coat of clear, Graphite Gray emblems are printed on, and then two coats of clear are applied and hand sanded until the logos can no longer be felt, before a fourth clear layer goes on. The European price for this hood option is 6,500 Euros. How Does the Maybach SL680 Measure Up? Even at this stratospheric price level, buyers have choices, most of which seem more exclusive, because no less-expensive versions share their bodywork. These include the Aston Martin DB12 V8 Volante ($269,000), the Maserati GranCabrio ($203,000 for gas or $206,700 for electric). Then there is the Bentley Continental GTC for those whose base-price budgets can stretch some $82-grand higher. Those cars mostly boast higher output, but nobody's racing them for pink slips, and those boutique brands don't necessarily enjoy the reliability reputation, brand heritage, or dealer network of Mercedes-Benz and Maybach. As mere proletarians, we cringe at the zillion M-M logos carpeting that optional hood, the standard convertible top, the grilles, the door panels, etc. Maybe that's why we're so hopeful Mercedes will grant us an 'affordable' M-M-free SL450 that rides like this.
Vogue
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Vogue
Inside the New Exhibition, 'Worth, Inventing Haute Couture,' at the Petit Palais in Paris
Worth It If L'Oréal gets all the credit for its famous 1973 hair color slogan, 'Because I'm worth it,' Worth gets credit, starting in the 1880s, for adding a label to his creations that featured his signature, much the way a painter would sign a painting. That it was simply 'Worth' versus his full name was deliberate, as he planned for his sons to carry on the business after his death. More Is More To look at Worth creations from the 1870s through 1900 is to notice tiny pleats of lace around the cuffs or décolleté, frothy bits of tulle encircling collars, dimensional fabric flowers, lashings of pearls and embroidered borders, and, in the case of 'Byzantine,' a thick ring of rabbit fur encircling a fully beaded gown that Countess Greffulhe wore to her daughter's wedding. The Zenobia costume for the Duchess of Chatsworth attending the Devonshire Ball in 1897 is the kind of showstopper that would make Alessandro Michele swoon. One senses Worth delighted in the extravagance proposed to clients and savoir faire made possible by his petites mains (still a term used in haute couture). But let's not forget, every trim added to what would have already been an exorbitant price. Transatlantic Clients While two all-important patrons, Princess Metternich and Empress Eugénie, attracted attention and contributed to his cachet, the provenance of dresses as donations to American and British institutions reveal how his clientele were often British and American, mainly from New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. The exhibition ends with projections of The Gilded Age series, in which the costumes took cues from Worth designs. Presidential Tariffs Long before Trump's ever-changing tariff threats, President McKinley raised duties on imports in 1890, which drastically impacted the cost of fashion coming from Europe. Kisiel pointed to a part of the exhibition explaining how one of the consequences was that Worth dresses would be copied in America at a fraction of the cost, and that Worth's sons came up with a solution to reduce the incidence by labeling dresses with their season—an antecedent to the industry's seasonal collections today. Rue de la Paix Today, we walk down shopping streets with all the familiar brand names, not pausing to consider when and how they came into being. From the start, the Worth headquarters was located at 7 rue de la Paix, the street that leads off the upper part of Place Vendome. Black and white photos from 1927 delightfully capture the people and activities across its eight stories, from the salons to the ateliers to the refectory and staff kitchen—even a photo studio. The exhibition also points out how Louis Vuitton, with its trunkmaking shop just around the corner, became an important collaborator. Not only is there a trunk that was used to ship a dress to America in 1883, but there are even sales receipts between the two businesses. Cartier, opening up at no. 13 rue de la Paix, was an obvious partner. A 1930 portrait of Andrée Joséphine Carron, the wife of Prince Mohamed Aga Khan III, shows her wearing a dress from Worth and jewels from Cartier. The Maison Paquin eventually moved into no. 3 and Jacques Doucet set up at no. 21 in 1908.
