The Ninja-mobile

I met a friend for lunch recently, a woman well past the first flush of youth. The last time I saw her, she was still driving a "mommy-wagon" even though her kids had long-ago flown the nest. So when an all-black Mercedes E550 with dark tinted windows roared up to the restaurant patio and my friend slithered out of the driver's seat, I was astonished enough to mis-swallow my wine and cough for a full five minutes.
Over lunch she told me that this was her first Mercedes. Her husband, who tools around town in his beloved Aston Martin DB9, had suggested checking out Mercedes when she announced that she needed new wheels. "I loved the design of the car" she said, "but I just wasn't sure I'd feel comfortable driving something that snazzy. We started to leave the showroom and I saw someone else trying on the car and realized that I really wanted it so I ran back in and bought it on the spot."
Who can blame her? Mercedes hit the mark straight on with their new E series, particularly the $55,525 sporty-looking E550 coupe with it's 382 HP V8 that sprints from 0-60 MPH in a mere five seconds and a seven-speed adaptive automatic transmission which provides a ride as smooth as cream. A frequent complaint, that coupes feel cramped and visually inadequate, is blown away by the lavish use of glass in pillar-less windows and a fish bowl-sized panoramic sun roof. The rear seats lack a lot of leg room but they are honest-to-goodness real seats and comfortable enough to tote some friends along for a shopping expedition or even those grown-up kids when they come home to visit.
In addition to the racy design, a new high-tech safety feature called Attention Assist has been added to Mercedes usual array of engineering marvels. After twenty minutes of driving, more than seventy parameters will be continually monitored and evaluated in order to recognize a loss of driver attention, at which point a bell chimes and a coffee cup symbol with the message "Time for a rest?" appears on the dashboard.
"Now that you have the E550, what do you think? I asked. "I saw the model when it debuted and I must admit I was very taken with it myself."
"I feel ten years younger and very sexy." my friend replied with a grin, "Why should guys have all the fun?" and dressed head-to-toe in black to match her car, she zoomed off looking like a ninja on a mission. As for me, I'm waiting for the 2011 new E550 convertible... in flaming red, I think.

The Fabulous Padparadscha...

There was a time when the word sapphire was synonymous with the color blue because the only gems one saw in jewelry were a variation of that hue. In more recent times, we've become a lot more adventurous and use sapphires in just about every color imaginable so I assumed, since I've been covering fine jewelry and gems for such a long time, that I was familiar with all of them. Hubris!
The world of gem stones is vast and it wasn't until I read John Burdett's latest off-beat mystery (set in Bangkok as usual) that I ran across the incredibly colored padparadscha sapphire. Pads, as they are known to the cognoscenti, are transparent rocks whose color falls between the luscious pink of a lotus blossom and the vibrant orange of a tropical sunset. The true and rarest Pads exhibit delicate shades of both colors in the same stone and are the most expensive, running as high as $30,000 per carat.
Should you set off on a padparadscha hunt, don't be swayed by stones ranging in color from pale yellow to orange or pink. There's a lot of doctored stones about, many heat-treated to bring out their color and there's even a long-running argument among jewelers as to what really deserves the designation padparadscha. What you want is a Pad from a Sri Lankan mine with flashes of both pink and orange that looks like a candy as much as a gem.
Try checking out your friendly neighborhood Cartier shop since they did several pieces using padparadschas in a 2008 collection, such as the stunning 22.4 carat ring shown below. If wearing this beauty doesn't blow away your friends, nothing will... plus you'll have the evil pleasure of explaining what kind of gem you're wearing.
Photo: Katel Riou...Cartier 2008

The Diamond Vandal....

Sorry for the long lapse between posts but real life, in the fo

rm of trying to sell off an estate, has kept me very occupied. The whole process has only reinforced my belief that buying quality is a wise investment while anything less is just "stuff" which in the end has no value at all.

As any luxury diva should, I do have my pet diamonds. Among them is the fabled Wittelsbach Blue, the impeccably provenanced stone that resurfaced from obscurity at a Christies auction and sold for the highest price per carat ever achieved at auction.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I must admit that the Wittelsbach Blue exists in a price galaxy far, far away from mine own.

Nevertheless, I've taken a fond interest in it and when it was bought by billionaire diamond dealer Lawrence Graff, I assumed he was going to ultimately flog it off to some filthy rich guy in a burnoose sitting on a lake of sand-covered crude. Instead, the poor Wittelsbach has been vandalized by a nouveau riche jeweler who thought he had the right to mess with it.

The Wittelsbach Blue, as I related in my very first post (check it out for the whole history) was not only rare because of it's gray/blue color and it's great 35.52 carat size, but because of it's royal lineage. It was the most historically important diamond in the world. Still, Mr. Graff decided to "refurbish" it by cutting away the chips and "bruises" the stone had acquired over the centuries since it's discovery in the 1600's. In the process, he reduced the diamond to a tad over 31 carats, claiming to have also enhanced the clarity and brilliance. He then added his own name to those of Spain and Bavaria's royal families and worked out a deal to display the recut, renamed stone at the Smithsonian as a companion to that other great blue, the spooky Hope diamond.

According to a disgruntled museum expert on the gem's history, Mr Graff's shameful diamond is no longer the Wittelsbach...it is nothing but a big grayish blue stone...the Wittelsbach is gone forever. So what, my fellow luxury lovers, do you think? Should the great blue diamond have been left in it's historical form, chipped edges and all, or modernized? Post your comments and let's discuss it...

Photo shows the Wittelsbach Blue in it's Bavarian royal period.

Color and Shine...Oh My!

A few stunners...

I've always thought that no great jewelry house handled colored stones better than Van Cleef & Arpels and their newest jewelry collections prove the point. Both the one-of-a-kind California Reverie collection released last October (much of it already sold like this fabulous setting sun opal brooch) and the even newer Birds of Paradise collection will stop anyone in their tracks. Whimsical and witty, these are definitely conversation starters, as in "Wow! Where did you find those fantastic earrings? I love them!

Just about every kind of stone you can name and several that you probably won't think of has been used in these collections. Sapphires in blue and every unusual shade from pink to lavender to yellow, white diamonds, red spinels, emeralds, green garnets and of course gold in white, yellow and rose.

Prices? Don't bother to ask but if you're loaded...go buy yourself one of these beauties.

The Very Big, Very Green Mercedes....

The 2010 S400 Hybrid is the world's first production car with lithium-ion battery technology and as you'd expect from the bright boys in Stuttgart, it's a marvel of creative engineering.
Once you admit that rich guys crave big, luxurious wheels no matter how much they profess to care about the ecological health of our planet, the smart move is to give them what they want. Design a land yacht with low emissions and reasonably good gas mileage that's wrapped in soft leather and kitted out with every imaginable high-tech gewgaw and you'll have a car that makes your customer feel good while he's flaunting it.
The trickiest bit on the S400 is the engine, which shuts itself off below 9 MPH and quietly revs itself up again when you step on the gas, thereby saving the fuel that would be wasted while standing at red lights and such. That makes for fuel economy of 20% plus lower emissions over the standard S550 which averages 15/23 MPG as opposed to the S400's 19/26 MPG.
There is of course, a trade-off: a loss of power from the revised V-6 engine that pushes out 295 HP as opposed to the 382 HP V-8 of the S550 but there's also a bonus that covers the loss. No gas-guzzler tax, an entry price of $87,950 rather than the usual S-Class $91,600 and a $1,150 tax credit for going green. Not a bad deal at all.

The Evening Star....

Speaking of Christmas presents...not very long after knocking down the $240,000 per carat Annenberg Diamond, Christies announced the December 10th auction of The Evening Star, yet another humungous rock. Named after the owner's custom of wearing this 39-carat, D-color Golconda diamond to only the most important evening events and galas, The Evening Star, whose sale price is estimated at $3,600,000-$5,500,000 has collectors salivating with anticipation. It's a rare Type IIa diamond, as is the famous 530.20-carat Cullinan and the 105.60-carat Koh-i-noor, both of which belong to the British Crown Jewels. All of them were found in India's legendary Golconda mines and such rare Type IIa diamonds are known for their exceptional optical transparency.
The lady of The Evening Star often wore it as a pendant suspended from a 90-carat necklace of sixty-eight graduated pear-shaped diamonds which is also on the block at an estimated price of $400,000-$600,000. That's how it's shown here but as if that wasn't quite enough glitz, she completed her appearance as a walking chandelier by sporting a matching pair of Type IIa diamond ear pendants of 10.21 and 10.51 carats respectively. Those are estimated to sell at $1,700,000-$2,500,000.
The question that comes to mind is, now that she's selling off all that ice, what is she going to wear for an encore?
Images courtesy of Christies Images...