The 88th Academy Awards ceremony—which takes place February 28—grants an occasion for the Hollywood elite to celebrate the film industry’s biggest night. Before, during, and after the awards telecast, fetes both talked about and clandestine take over Tinseltown, with all the glitter, glam, and glitz of the silver screen. But behind every Oscars celebration is one of Hollywood’s leading party planners who transforms an event space into an award-worthy extravaganza. And orchestrating …

In the 1960s and 1970s, the golden age of the chronograph, the complication was found on only the most exceptional timepieces. Today, chronographs are ubiquitous—and rightly so. Aside from the date, a chronograph—translated literally as “time writer”—is considered the most useful feature on a watch because it allows wearers to measure elapsed time. Powered by movements featuring a coulisse lever or the more technically challenging column wheel, chronographs are universally belo…

The future is here, and it looks slick. The new McLaren 570GT—the third model in the new Sports Series family—promises to usher in a new era in the supercars saga. The stylish car features an extended spoiler, dihedral doors (which swing up and out), and sporty interiors. A 3.8-liter twin-turbo V-8 M838TE engine powers 562 hp and 443 ft lbs of torque. The supercar can reach an impressive speed of 62 mph in just 3.4 seconds, and a top speed of 204 mph. A 7-speed seamless-shift transmission can be set to Normal,…

Examples of Ferrari’s 250 GT series—cars that were designed for the road and for racing—won the Tour de France endurance competition nine consecutive times from 1956 through 1964. The Italian marque is paying homage to that success with the name of the new Ferrari F12tdf (auto.ferrari.com), a limited-edition, track-ready variant of the F12 Berlinetta. 

The F12tdf is powered by the same naturally aspirated 6.3-liter V-12 engine as the Berlinetta, but the engine has been tuned to produce an additiona…

For her contemporary jewelry designs, Hedy Martinelli embraces the look of historical armor.

Hedy Martinelli knew exactly what to do with the 13th-century soldier’s armor she uncovered while browsing the Paris flea markets in the late 1970s: She bought it and promptly repurposed its mesh of interwoven metal rings as jewelry. 

Today the 80-year-old jewelry designer, along with her two daughters, brings the appearance of medieval mail armor to modern, highly stylized pieces with diamonds and gemst…

From the truffle-laden north to the anchovy-steeped south, Italy is a paradise for food lovers. And Massimo Bottura, the country’s leading culinary talent and the owner of the Michelin three-star Osteria Francescana in Modena, may know it better than anyone. When Robb Report asked him to name his top 10 restaurants in Italy, he delivered a gourmand’s guide to the country and its regional cuisines, from a new pizzeria in Sicily (opened in July by another Michelin-decorated chef) …

The nearly flawless, colorless diamond unearthed from a mine in Angola is the largest to ever come from the southwestern African nation and the 27th-largest diamond ever recorded.

Measuring about 7 centimeters long (about 2.75 inches) and weighing a little more than 404 carats (about 2.8 ounces), the diamond is classified as a Type IIa, a category of clarity that includes less than one percent of the world’s diamonds. Australian-based Lucapa Diamond Company’s Lulo Diamond Project excavated the gem in th…

The English poet John Keats coined a term, “negative capability,” that aptly applies to the peculiarly Italian brand of genius we celebrate from cover to cover in this month’s special issue. This capacity for “being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason” perfectly encapsulates the Italian gift for accepting and embracing contradictory ideas and impulses—and nowhere is this national penchant for paradox more readily apparent than in the competing Italian affin…

BMW’s M brand is big business. In 2015, the German automaker saw a 40-percent increase worldwide in sales of M-badged vehicles over the previous year, with the biggest demand by far here in the United States.

It is no surprise, then, that the Bavarians are scrambling to offer high-performance versions of vehicles that heretofore did not wear the mighty letter. The latest of these is the BMW X4 M40i (starting at $57,800), a member of what BMW calls its “M Performance” lineup, which bridges the gap betwee…

Ready to ply the world’s waters with panache, McMullen & Wing’s 164-foot Y/N 1016 expedition motor yacht is sailing through its sea trials. The commissioned cruiser is the largest yacht built to date by the New Zealand boatbuilder and the second in the company’s Diamond series—designed by Gregory C. Marshall Naval Architect—which debuted with the award-winning, 147-foot yacht Big Fish in 2010. With the latter having already logged over 100,000 nautical miles (including voyages to Antarctica), McMullen &amp…