Tampering with success is risky business. While the goal of pushing the envelope is noble, it is also important to retain the DNA that made the original a winner in the first place. With the Custom Line 108 (which debuted last month at the Cannes Yachting Festival), Italian shipbuilder Custom Line proved it could walk that fine line with finesse.

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The Custom Line 108 is a reinvention of the highly popular Custom Line 100, which sold more than 14 units in just three years during …

Owning a private island fosters a certain fantasy. Whether the draw is anonymity, power, or being surrounded by turquoise waters, the perks of getting away from it all can be coupled with challenges. Many islands are quite difficult to reach and can prove impossible to develop.

While the 26-acre Pumpkin Key is remote, it is easy to access. Past owners have installed water and power lines from nearby Key Largo, just 10 minutes east by boat. The three-bedroom, 5,000-square-foot main home; two neighboring care…

Members of the exclusive Bighorn Golf Club in Palm Desert, Calif., now have a new citadel for their show cars to dwell with the Vault at Bighorn, which opens today. The new 24,000-square-foot automotive amenity is not only an exquisite enclave for housing cherished classics, concepts, or supercars, but also an inner sanctum for socializing.

Set behind circular bank-vault doors (and guarded by a security system that includes fingerprint scanners, 360-degree HD cameras, and 4K monitors) is a pillared, museum-…

Originally published in the October 2015 issue of Robb Report Collection as “Perfect Catch”

Bob Baffert, the Triple Crown–winning trainer of American Pharoah, grew up on a ranch in Nogales, Ariz., where watching televised baseball was more or less dictated by the family’s livestock. “Half the time our TV was out because some cow had knocked down the antenna,” Baffert says. Though the sometime baseball fan was not a Yankees follower in particular, the accomplishments of the legendary Babe Ruth fascinated him…

The spellbinding sway of a tassel is at once mesmerizing and energizing. A fashion and jewelry mainstay that dates back centuries, tassels featured prominently on the garments of Europe’s aristocracy during the Middle Ages and on ornate jewelry from the Victorian era. On flapper fashion during the 1920s, tassels anchored long strands of faux pearls and glass beads (called sautoirs) designed to swing and rock in time with the wearer’s quick-footed dance steps. Today, tassels shimmy to the forefro…

Construction begins this month on a pair of striking towers along the Fort Lauderdale waterfront. The first all-residential project by the lauded hospitality brand Auberge Resorts Collection, the new Auberge Beach Residences & Spa Fort Lauderdale comprises 171 condos priced from $1.5 million. In a lobby connecting both towers, Fernando Botero’s bronze La Maternidad sits before soaring windows with her back to the turquoise ocean views beyond.

The towers are shaped to maximize the residences’ views of th…

Since its inception in 1957, Canada Goose has focused on the practical, producing a steady stream of jackets, gloves, and mittens for the most extreme conditions (the brand’s Expedition Parka is standard issue for the scientists at Antarctica’s McMurdo Station). In October, the Toronto-based company—which proudly makes all of its items in Canada—chose to spotlight style, teaming up with the Canadian rapper Drake and his lifestyle brand October’s Very Own (OVO) to release the fourth Canada Goose and OVO collabo…

The site of two PGA golf courses—including the Stadium Course, known as the best in Spain—PGA Catalunya Resort is an ideal place for any golfer to call home. Purchase one of these contemporary villas and spend the days perfecting your game or lounging in your private pool, all while taking advantage of the resort’s amenities, which include babysitting, laundry services, and chauffeured car rentals.  

 Originally published in the October 2015 issue of Robb Report Collection as “Mega Marts”

Mega Marts

From Mexico City to Copenhagen, New York City to Istanbul, these are glory days for the food hall. Working with top architectural firms, cities are transforming grand historic spaces, or creating striking new ones, to house a snapshot of the city’s food scene—and more. “There is a difference between a market and a store,” says Salomón Sacal, a developer of Mexico City’s Mercado Roma. “At a market, people walk, beco…

Seen in the film Casino Royale, James Bond’s 54-foot yacht Soufrière is now for sale—the ideal toy for someone with the secret agent’s sensibilities and fine sense of adventure. Handmade specifically for the movie in 2005 by British boatbuilder Spirit Yachts, the classically styled craft carried 007 and Vesper Lynd (played by Daniel Craig and Eva Green) on a romantic odyssey in Venice and became the first sailing yacht to navigate up the Grand Canal in 300 years.

Dressed with a mahogany topside and a teak d…