All posts filed under: Critiques

LUXURY PRODUCTS AND EXPERIENCES WE LOVE

Luxury Legends: Can Rodeo Drive Measure Up to the Hype?

Published by Pamela Thomas-Graham

Rodeo Drive. The very words make the heartbeat of any devoted luxury shopper of a certain age accelerate. Long before Net-a-Porter there was Rodeo Drive: a magical boulevard with a median strip lined with palm trees and flagship boutiques for every designer and fine jewelry brand worth knowing about. Birthplace of so many iconic movie scenes about shopping: Clueless, Pretty Woman, Sex and the City – The Movie. The stuff of dreams. Fast forward to today, when retail is “dead,” everyone shops online, and direct-to-consumer is the way to get rich quick if you’re a purveyor of luxury goods. Is Rodeo Drive still relevant? Is it still fun? Or has the party moved on?

How to Take a Luxury Insider Holiday-Shopping Trip

Published by Pamela Thomas-Graham

If you haven’t already, it’s time to start your holiday shopping. What’s that, you say? Not feeling it this year? We’ve got just the remedy for those who need to find wonderful holiday gifts but have no desire to hit the mall, the avenue or the Internet. Why not do your holiday shopping in Italy this year? In case you think starting your holiday shopping in October is a nutty idea, let’s look at some facts. According to the National Retail Federation, in 2016 U.S. consumers reported that they began shopping for the holiday season at the following times: 41.4% during the month of November; 12.2% before September, 6.5% in September and 21.9% in October. See? Some people may already be done!

The Luxury of a Stunning New Ballet by Lauren Lovette

Published by Pamela Thomas-Graham

Have you ever had the opportunity to talk with an artist who is on a rapid upward trajectory creatively? To hear the person speak about their work with a critical eye, and in so doing, experience firsthand their vision, drive and determination? Have you met someone still in the early stages of their career who has the ineffable “X factor” that makes you certain that they’ll be one of the people shaping their chosen field for years to come? If you have, then you know what a thrilling luxury this is. It’s as if you’ve been granted a glimpse into the future – and it looks really bright.

The Luxury of an Autumn Vegan Feast at Millennium

Published by Pamela Thomas-Graham

Steak or salad? Or to be more precise, steakhouse or vegetable-forward? Which provides the most luxurious experience? Sure, in the past, steakhouses were the ne plus ultra of fine dining – martinis, jumbo shrimp cocktail, a huge hunk of charred beef, and creamed spinach. That was what you ate if you were in the global power elite, circa 1980. But what about now? With so many vegan, vegetarian and vegetables-first gourmet fine dining establishments having opened up shop in so many of the world’s glittering cities, here at Dandelion Chandelier, we decided to go on a quest to answer this pressing question. Our first field report was from Restaurant Nix in Greenwich Village. It’s the only vegetarian restaurant in the US with a Michelin star, so we thought that would be a good place to start. And it was.

In Luxury Travel, Mystery is the New Transparency

Published by Pamela Thomas-Graham

In recent conversations, a new trend has become clear to us here at Dandelion Chandelier: for luxury travel experiences, word of mouth is the new social media. Analog is the new digital. Silence is the new shouting. How do we know this? Because some of the best luxury properties in the world have exited social media completely. We recently interviewed a devotee of ultra-luxury destination health and wellness retreat Vana in Dehradun, India. It’s a unique and highly exclusive spa for the jet set (frequent guests call themselves “Vanavasis,”) and it’s not well known amongst the hoi polloi. Hearing about its many wonders made us keen to visit: the property’s website is filled with images of a dreamy tropical paradise where serenity might actually be within reach. Eager to share our discovery, we published our post and then set to work on our usual social media promotion for the post. A curious thing happened on the way to social media, though. We went looking for the Instagram handle for the Vana retreat, and we couldn’t …