Luxury

French clothing company APC has come out with new jeans that are either innovative or ridiculous depending on your point of view. The “Butler Worn Out” series are weathered, not by the traditional sandpaper method but rather by humans wearing them. This unconventional and time consuming method produces the desirable marks and soft feel of old jeans. To anyone considering these buying these (probably really expensive) pants, I have a suggestion: try a used clothing shop, lots of human pre-worn jeans there.

[via Hypebeast]

Techcrunch reports that electric car manufacturer Tesla Motors is going to supply lithium ion batteries to Mercedes Benz. Mercades is using these components to build electric only versions of it’s A and B class vehicles, along with smart cars as soon as 2010. This is a big stamp of approval for Tesla’s sustainable technology. It’s also great to see the upstart company bringing collaboration to an industry that isn’t known for it.

[via TechCrunch]

With all the news of skyrocketing food and gas prices, it’s interesting to note that the art market is still going strong. A Monet waterlily painting– Le Bassin aux Nymphéas - just claimed a world record price for the artist at auction. It went for an astounding £40.1m (almost $80m). Technology is enabling the global super rich to keep this high end market afloat.

The Guardian reports:

But perhaps the most important reason for the art market’s continued top-end strength is its globalisation, as Jussi Pylkkänen, president of Christie’s Europe points out. When the art market crashed in 1990-92, the world was a very different place. Now Russians have fortunes to spend, and China is opening up. The internet means that auction houses are accessible from anywhere. No longer are they the exclusive province of a small club of people. Pylkkänen says that top-end buyers have increased threefold over the past five years; this is largely due to the increased geographical reach of his auctions.

The Guardian: Monet Avoids The Crunch

The world’s first rotating skyscraper is going up in Dubai. Construction begins this month on the $700m “Dynamic Tower“. Architect David Fisher has designed a one of a kind structure that contains 80 apartments which can rotate 360 degrees independent of each other. The building will also be energy positive. Using wind and solar power, it will generate more electricity than it uses. Construction is scheduled to be completed by 2010.

[via BBC News]

A few yeas ago, we reported about the nascent field of man made diamonds. It seems that the process has been perfected, and lab created diamonds will now be coming to market. The pioneer in the industry, Apollo Diamond has set up a diamond warehouse that’s set to start churning out diamonds soon. The lab diamonds are of the highest quality, and are indistinguishable from “real” diamonds.

Besides being worn for fashion there are a host of technological uses for diamonds. Now that they can be easily created in a lab, scientists believe this will usher in a “diamond age” where the material will become a ubiquitous electronic component.

Smithsonian Magazine reports:

With a cheap, ready supply of diamonds, engineers hope to make everything from higher-powered lasers to more durable power grids. They foresee razor-thin computers, wristwatch-size cellphones and digital recording devices that would let you hold thousands of movies in the palm of your hand. “People associate the word diamond with something singular, a stone or a gem,” says Jim Davidson, an electrical engineering professor at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee. “But the real utility is going to be the fact that you can deposit diamond as a layer, making possible mass production and having implications for every technology in electronics.”

Smithsonian Magazine: “Diamonds On Demand”

[via Boing Boing]

Man made

London’s young and restless are experts at finding the after-hours post-pub party. Now they have another way to stay out even later—change time zones.

Whisky Mist, a new club at the Hilton’s Zeta bar, now affords the latest in luxury: private jets for partygoers. They’ve tapped the Private Jet Club to whisk the wealthier among them back in time to New York or Rio to keep their nights going.

The Private Jet Club is ideal for those who crave exclusivity but can’t quite afford it. They specialize in jetpooling, which is just like carpooling. It allows you to join a booked charter or share yours with other members. The service is a mere fraction of the price (£10k to New York versus around £120k). Another nice perk is the drop in carbon emissions.

The new luxury consumer craves an experience—a golden tan over a gold necklace. Services like this one make luxury travel (slightly) more attainable for the less-moneyed masses. Still, for the most of us it’s likely to be a staycation this year.

Via Urban Junkies London

“Adopting” the fruits of another mans labor is in. Following the idea from the vineyard adoption WineShare, and Nudo the olive oil sharing concept, now you can have your very own premium Maine lobster trap and everything it catches for a year. For just under $3000, your trap will be set and hauled up time and time again – which you can monitor online. As the lobsters are caught you have the option to overnight them (shipping is included in the fee) in batches of four or more to yourself, or anybody else you that you really, really like. They also include clams, mussels and some locally produced desserts, plus information of who caught what, when and where.

Catch A Piece Of Maine

[via springwise]

In the second commercial deployment of Microsoft’s Surface technology (AT&T stores were first), The Rio Casino in Las Vegas is debuting Surface enabled tables in its “iBar ultralounge”. Patrons will be able to interact with the touch screen tables for a variety of purposes. A program called Flirt lets them video chat and exchange messages with others in the bar, and they can order drinks for themselves or friends across the room. Time killing games and an area map/guide are also included. Looks potentially useful, but I wonder how long till these $10,000.00 machines break down from spilled drinks? See the table in action here (warning: really corny promotional video).

[via Cnet]

CityCenter is a planned 18 million square foot “environmentally sustainable urban community” set to open in Las Vegas at the end of 2009. The complex will include three hotels, two casinos, a retail and entertainment district and a $40 million public fine art program.

The team creating CityCenter has tapped a crew of all star green architects and hundreds of sustainability consultants to make sure any and every possible green option is used. The project is aiming for LEED certification, and will be larger than all current LEED certified buildings combined.

Inhabitat reports:

CityCenter is making some pretty big efforts to tout itself as a model of sustainability. Green building practices like recycling construction waste, using eco-friendly materials, boosting natural lighting, and incorporating an onsite co-generation power plant are just a few of the ways that the project is earning its eco-credentials. Materials from the imploded Boardwalk Hotel (cleared for the site of CityCenter) are being recycled into the project, crushed to be recycled into material going into the project, and bathroom fixtures are being shipped to other countries wrapped in the old drapes and carpeting from the original hotel to be used again.

Inhabitat: Las Vegas CityCenter Set to Green Sin City