Author: Jonas

Dresscode during Nuclear week

Kim Jong ll in pantusuit

After a week that best could be describe as Nuclear week. When North Korea decided to test nuclear warheads worth more than their annual GDP. This hostile activity has also contributed to a number of posts in newspapers everywhere on the disturbed mind of Kim-Jong II.

Monocle, naturally, sensed what was coming. Hence they featured him in the Style leaders section in the June issue.

In a nation devoted to grandeur and spectacle, to parades of immaculate marching soldiers, and immense displays of synchronised gymnastic, Nort Korean Dictator, Kim Jong Il, is the worst-dressed man in the whole country. His generals sport smart olive uniforms with characteristically broad-topped caps. His civilian aides dress in elegantly old fashioned dark suits. But whatever the occasion – the launching of a long-range rocket, the inaguration of the Supreme People’s Assembly – the man they call the “Dear Leader” inists on wearing what can best be described as a Stalinist pantsuit

The washlet and man bags

Japanese bag

As Tyler digs into our favorite nation – Japan (if you didn’t know this your home work starts with buying issues 9 through 11 of you know what) – in this week’s Fast Lane column, he finds five great ways of bringing a bit more of Japan Inc. to the rest of the developing world, i.e. North America. The high notes for us this week was point three and five.

3. Clever collaborations
Japanese consumers love a clever tie-up between established brands and smart creative talent. Good examples are retailer Beams doing a customised Subaru in hot orange and chocolate brown, or bagmaker Porter doing a “man bag” exclusively for ANA.

5. Bathroom culture
The Washlet (the automated, all- spraying, all-blow-drying, all-sound cancelling, all-deodorising toilet) is finally making inroads into new markets, but the world needs to embrace this concept faster. If it’s standard practice to wash your hands after going to bathroom, shouldn’t it also be part of the routine to wash the parts of your body that performed the function? Japan’s become so addicted that they’ll even feature on the two national carriers’ 787s when they eventually take to the skies.

How to travel

Business class

  • “Never check your luggage; 99 per cent of the time I don’t check in bags regardless of how long I’m travelling for.”
  • “I sleep as much as possible when I travel.”
  • “If it’s a long-haul, 80 per cent of the time I go for a run or do something active once I land.”
  • “I try to eat in moderation when I fly.”
  • “I usually try for a window seat, as far forward on the plane as I can get. I think if you do it properly – i.e. first or business class – there’s nothing traumatic about flying 250 days of the year.”

Tyler Brûlé, Blue Wings, 2009

Brûlé Airways – The terminal

The terminal

To start off this installment it seemed fitting to follow the process that every traveller normally goes through, from departure to landing. Hence, starting off with an attack on the so often sub-par standards of terminals worldwide. We often shrugg when touching down in the spectacle that is Heathrow Airport in London or departing from the tragedy of De Gaulle in Paris.

For inspiration we turned to some of the best aviation hubs around the world. Terminals are potential time savers when done properly but to be honest often they are toxic time wasters. Since our passengers are en route to Hong-Kong, Milan or Frankfurt at any given day and like all Business travellers run on a tight schedule. The terminal therefore needs to address the issues of infrastructure and design, the two most important aspects for any likeminded business traveller.

Infrastructure wise the primary inspiration comes from Tokyo’s own Haneda airport:

Tokyo’s Haneda Airport wouldn’t win any architectural prizes but boy, does it work. It’s a shallow airport, so you can get to check-in fast. Many airports try to funnel their passengers through one security area, but Haneda has six or seven, which means you can get from kerbside and past security in 90 seconds. It’s the fourth-busiest airport in the world, but it’s primarily a domestic airport, and doesn’t have a massive duty-free area. Instead there’s an amazing grocery store. You can even pre-order your groceries and pick them up after you land.

If you combine that with the Scandinavian architectual high note that is Copenhagen Airport, described as:

It’s just so exquisite, so uniquely Nordic, there’s no mistaking you’re in Copenhagen. The floors are teak throughout, and the signage is excellent: dark navy background with yellow text. There are washrooms every 20 metres, so you never have to worry about schlepping down the hall to find the loo.

Brülé Airways is combining a well-designed infrasctructure with fantastic Scandinavian design details wrapping it all up in the service mindset and attention to details of Japanese retailers to create a unique terminal experience.

Better people: Alain de Botton


There is one person that we love to turn to in order to find essential insights on life and society in general, that is of course the best-selling author Alain de Botton.

Mr. de Botton has for a long time been a prominent figure in the family around Tyler. Because of that and his impeccable tast in decoration, writing and, of course, life he will be a regular installment in this publication. I’m sure all of our readers are well aware of Mr. de Botton’s lengthy CV but for those of you who are not, let us paint a picture of this exquisite man.

Born on hills of Switzerland, he soon moved to London with his family (including a father that has been generous enough to share his fortune and potentially making the lives of the de Botton family very livable) but it was after graduating from Cambridge he started writing about the small things in life.

As a 23 year old (“while pretending to do a PhD”) he was ready to take on the topic of love, with his first book Essays in Love. The Independent gave it a reasonably fair review: (Mr de Botton has) taken philosophy back to its simplest, most important purpose: helping us live our lives.

With that in the bag he delivers thoughtful truths on a regular basis about topics such as life, architecture, status and travel. In short, the small things in life.

If you need more evidence, dear readers, that he’s almost somewhat of an equal to Tyler, his weekend pleasures includes doing emotional audits of airports and taking courses in luggage handling technique. That my friends is a true Tyler man. As such he has valuable recommendations for a better life:

Pick up any newspaper or magazine, open the TV, and you’ll be bombarded with suggestions of how to have a successful life. Some of these suggestions are deeply unhelpful to our own projects and priorities – and we should take care.

Listen to the advise of Mr. de Botton, we always do.

Mr. de Botton, welcome. It will be a pleasure working with you.

Introducing: Brûlé Airways

Airplane en route to Hong-Kong

At a conference panel in Münich earlier this year the panelists including Meister Brûlé recieved the question ”If you would start a new venture, what would it be?” We will spare you the ideas from the other Hobo-Joes on the panel. TB’s answer? Starting a new European airline company.

We immediately felt compelled to pick up our Blackberries and call Lufthansa’s customer service asking how we could transfer our Miles & More points to this new aviation paradise. What would it look like? Would it serve the same excellent vegetable consommé as the Marc Newson designed Qantas business class? Could it really outshine ANA’s inflight nightwear?

Out of gitty excitement and since we can hardly wait for this venture to get of the ground we decided to start a series which explores potential ideas on what Brûlé Airways would be like. The first instalment in this series will be out soon.

Private aviation: HondaJet

HondaJet

As the second of our two high notes from last years aviation tradeshow, EBACE, comes HondaJet (HA-420). This is an aircraft with exquisite finish and a manga inspired design, clearly representing the attention to detail that always defines Japanese products. After almost 10 years of preparation it made an astonishing debut a year earlier (with over 100 orders placed in the first three days) and was certainly in the spotlight at last years fair.

Michimasa Fujino, the CEO of Honda Aircraft makes a slightly confused impression but manage to find a few key pieces that could sell the HondaJet to just the right customers:

We’re always looking for the next innovation within transportation and mobility. Coming from motorcycles it’s natural for us to go into the air. European countries are also best fit for this kind of aircraft, since Europeans are more environmentally conscious. This is a low noise, low emission and high fuel efficiency aircraft which should be attractive for european customers.

Mr Brûlé explains why we are seeing an emergence of a stronger and larger private aviation market:

As the premium airline experience becomes less attractive and more aircrafts come to market around the one million euro price range the worlds biggest carriers will continue to lose their top passengers as they opt to go private.

Will HondaJet be their first choice? It’s definitely an option to seriously consider when your searching for a fast and easy transportation to get to your favourite cottage in the alps or a weekend at The Pellicano Hotel in Tuscany.

Private aviation: Pilatus PC-12

PC-12

As we are packing our Porter bags for one of the highlights of this season, the annual aviation tradeshow EBACE in Geneva, it seems appropriate to take a closer look on the private aviation market. We will be looking into two of the high notes from last year’s show. First out is Pilatus Aircraft’s PC-12.

The PC-12 might be associated with the rough image of Australias flying doctors but this latest model, with a cockpit interior designed with the tasteful qualities of BMW and a price mark just shy of three million euros is described perfectly by Tyler:

The PC-12 is to private aviation what the Range Rover is to manicured graveled highways in the Hamptons – luxurious but with the butch credentials of an aircraft used by the RCMP and the Australian flying doctors.

If that wasn’t enough of an argument. Listen to the 100th buyer of a PC-12:

I thought I needed the speed of a jet. But flying the PC-12 down to our home in Florida, with 5 or 6 of our friends, we would all have more room, we’d spend a lot less money getting there, and we’d arrive only minutes later than the jet. That’s because the jet has to stop for fuel, and we don’t, since the PC-12 delivers far more range.

This surely makes the PC-12 a strong contender for our next aviation purchase.