431> (433*(9

As winter descends and the “festive feels” (November – Thanksgiving; December – Christmas; January – Lunar New Year)

start to take up more than their fair share of mindspace, the luxury

industry comes into its own. This is when we reward ourselves for

the work we’ve done and everything we’ve achieved over the past 12

months, and fittingly our December pages are filled with beautiful

bags, tantalising timepieces and other designer objects of desire.

But, perhaps more importantly, this is also when we turn our

attention to the things that really matter most: friends, family and

connection. That’s something that dominated the thoughts of one of

the brightest young stars of Hollywood, Timothée Chalamet, as he

embarked on his latest film project in which he plays a disillusioned

cannibal (!) traversing America looking for … well, he doesn’t quite

know what. But in our interview with Chalamet, which starts on page

64, he speaks of how he identified with the sense of “tribelessness”

and feelings of isolation his character was going through.

Watch brands too are focused on connections: increasingly

reaching out to women, often for the first time. It is possible that

the world’s first wristwatch was made for a woman – Patek Philippe

and Breguet both have credible claims to this accolade – but men

have since dominated the market, and many brands have struggled

to stay connected with women. Our feature on page 78 looks at the

difficulties women face when considering the luxury watch space,

and how the next few years could provide a serious opportunity for

those brands that can crack the women's watch code.

Our other big interview this month – an exclusive for Asia – was

with Swatch Group’s CEO Nick Hayek Jnr, who has been promoting

the company’s new collaboration with Omega: the MoonSwatch.

Inspired by the Omega Speedmaster, which Buzz Aldrin wore on the

moon, it incorporates a brand new bioceramic material and once

again puts the Swatch penchant for disruption front and centre.

This is the brand that is credited with saving the industry, after all,

when in the 1990s it was feared that cheap Japanese quartz watches

would kill off mechanical watches altogether.

Don’t miss the feature on “wearable waste” either (page 70),

which explores how people – and therefore also some of the big

brands – are opting for leather that comes from anything but cows.

Gucci and Hermès are two of the bigger names that have already

experimented with “leather” made from mushrooms, apple skins,

discarded grapes from winemaking processes, and even waste

gases like methane.

That’s one way to connect to both the earth, and our shared

future on it.