You need only tune in for a few minutes of the Tour de France to understand that the event is all about speed. As you watch the world’s best cyclists powering up the French Alps and tearing through the streets of Paris, you’ll notice that there’s nothing superfluous on their racing bikes. If an item doesn’t make the bike lighter or faster, if it doesn’t provide the rider with any advantage, or if it can’t be designed in a streamlined way, it’s simply not on the bike. Not a single bike racing in the Tour de Fra…

In late June, Robb Report celebrated the opening of Bungalow One, a newly designed suite at the Fairmont Miramar Hotel and Bungalows in Santa Monica, Calif. The celebration coincided with the launch of Robb Report’s July issue and the July/August issue of Robb Report Home & Style, both of which featured editorial coverage of the new suite. The hotel, located on Santa Monica’s famous Ocean Avenue and across the street from the coastal city’s scenic bluffs, hosted some 120 guests—including representatives fr…

Ah, to savor the fruits of the best French vintners. To revel in the perfection poured from a bottle of Château Latour 1961, Domaine de la Romanée-Conti La Tache 1978, or Château Lafite 1959. If you should come into possession of one of these (or one of many other) rare, sought-after vintages, you know you’re in for a treat. There may be no greater indulgence than the languid appreciation of a lauded French vintage from decades past, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore the contemporary releases out of Bord…

Cheese is as central to French cultural pride as is the liquid bounty from the vineyards. With more than 1,000 varieties, French fromage crosses all socioeconomic divides, from broke park-bench lovers to high-life-loving degustation-menu gourmands. Part of the charm of real French cheese is the use of raw, unpasteurized milk (pasteurization carpet-bombs flavors, yielding an innocuous yet safe product). But the United States has banned any raw-milk cheese that hasn’t been aged at least 60 days, so to try those,…

Meet Cognac, the often-misunderstood monarch of after-dinner libations. At its core, Cognac is a region-specific brandy—a spirit made from the distillation of wine, which is then aged in oak barrels. But there’s much more to it than that. There are three categories into which a cognac can fall. A VS label, which stands for “Very Special,” designates a spirit that was aged for 2 years in French oak casks. A Very Superior Old Pale (VSOP) expression is aged for at least 4 years, while an Extra Old (XO) Cognac is …

A teacup. An old photograph. A clock, its workings exposed to create the feeling of time furiously ticking by, and a series of matchsticks used to tediously measure the minutes. Each of these objects was carefully collected by the Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk, who spent decades scouring Istanbul junk dealers and antique shops for the everyday items that would inspire a novel he was writing about lost love. 

In 2008 he finally published The Museum of Innocence, which tells the story of Kemal, a wealthy ma…

Last month, the Italian shipyard Wider Yachts launched the first boat in its Wider 32 line, which is only the second model since the brand’s founding in 2010. The success of its first model, the award-winning Wider 42, has helped build anticipation for the smaller Wider 32 and the company’s larger semicustom yachts that are currently under construction.

The Wider 32 is well suited to serve as a sport cruiser or a megayacht tender. Twin 260 hp Mercruiser engines power it to a cruise speed of 32 knots and a t…

The oversize instantaneous date display that adorns the dial of Parmigiani Fleurier’s Toric Resonance 3 (price upon request) is perhaps the new watch’s most eye-catching feature, and it also proved a major technical hurdle for the manufacture’s movement designers. Though Parmigiani has created large date displays in the past, the Toric Resonance 3 is the first of its timepieces to combine such a display with an instantaneous jump feature—a mechanism that immediately switches the date at the strike of midnight….

Deceptively chic, these functional designs conceal their purpose while elevating their style.

Roche Bobois’s Calisto sofa (from $8,070) conceals an electronic control panel in each of its armrests. The leather couch was created by the Italian architects Roberto Tapinassi and Maurizio Manzoni in collaboration with the French furniture retailer and provides a hidden USB charging port for cell phones and cameras along with electronic controls for the backrests and seats. The Calisto sofa first debuted in Europ…

Uni has long been called the foie gras of the sea, a supple delicacy for advanced palates. At first glance, however, the sea urchin isn’t much to look at. The exterior is reminiscent of those spiky balls that medieval soldiers attached to a chain and used to bludgeon their neighbors. Once it’s cracked open, however, the prize is revealed. The cheddar-hued meat, which looks like a tongue, is actually the gonads. It is quiveringly soft and tastes like, well, a luscious seawater panna cotta. In the United States,…