Personal Luxuries
By Kate Betts
Winter 2004 Style & Design
Nobody understands modern luxury like designer Karl Lagerfeld. Not only
does he know how to live luxuriously, splitting his time between an 18th
century Paris apartment and a sumptuous house in Biarritz, France, but
he also designs for the multitasking luxurious life he leads, and his
creations are a reflection of his taste, right down to the black wool
turtleneck he recently designed for Swedish retailer H&M. These days,
luxury comes in so many forms, it's increasingly hard to define. It can
be as refined as a Ted Muehling crystal bowl or as comfortable as Virgin
Atlantic's upper-class cabin. Luxury can even manifest itself in the
practicality of a Swiss Army knife with a 128-MB flash drive. This
special issue of TIME is dedicated to the best luxury products of 2004,
and it includes some of the people who create them and the places to
experience them. Although the criteria are hardly scientific, many of
the selections represent personal expressions of style—from designer
Azzedine Alaďa's Paris hotel, 5 Rue de Moussy, which feels like a
private home, to the limited-edition fragrance Privé, a scent Giorgio
Armani created for himself. "This is not a test-marketed fragrance," he
says. "It's what I like." Jeweler David Yurman says real luxury jewelry
should feel like something you have always owned, more like a pair of
worn-in blue jeans than a show-off statement. Further proof that luxury
is not necessarily defined by high price tags and expensive materials
but by the personal expression of the design. —Kate Betts
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His life and death recalled in images
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