Luxury and Style

… because some guys don’t know how to wear their cars.

A few days back, I met with a dear friend of mine, Aleš Mička, the chief designer and owner of Touch­Brand­ing in the bar Los v Oslu.

Years back, he did an awe­some job on the end titles of my short­film Moni­tio and designed the web­page. He opened my eyes to graphic design and typog­ra­phy, and a meet­ing with him is always a very intense dis­cus­sion. You have to watch your argu­ments, because if you don’t, he will rip you apart and you will look like an idiot. He’s a design-​​freak with brains in over­drive mode.

After cov­er­ing ipods, iphone, com­put­ers, hook­ers, graphic design, girls, how to past 30, girls and again girls, I shared my recent raise of enthu­si­asm of TOP GEAR. And from the rear spoiler of the lat­est Lam­borgh­ini Mur­cielago SV we came onto the  topic of Luxury.

What is Lux­ury? How do you define it? How can you find it?

And most impor­tantly, what Lux­ury prob­a­bly ISN’T…

I shared the story, when about a month ago,  I went on a cof­fee with my neme­sis friend Vít Karas. We sat out­side at cafe Lam­borgh­ini. I was a lovely sum­mer day, but it weren’t the short skirts of the girls, that got our atten­tion, but the cars that drove by. Within an hour I saw an Aston Mar­tin DB-​​9 a Porche 911 GT2 and a Fer­rari 350 bee­ing parked almost next to each other on the other side of the road. What an amaz­ing sight! Tech­ni­cal inge­nu­ity paired with curvy seduc­tion made of metal. I stopped pay­ing atten­tion to the con­ver­sa­tion, not that the noise of the roar­ing ital­ian horses would have allowed it anyway…

The ini­tial joy faded away though, as soon as the own­ers got out of the cars. One by one they looked around, if really every­one on the street is pay­ing atten­tion to them. And when they sat next to us on a table, their behav­ior and speech were a vul­gar mess of the very ordi­nary men. I admit, that the abil­ity to earn enough to afford such cars gave the own­ers some credit of the suc­cess they have in their life. How­ever, the louder they became, the more unin­ter­est­ing those men were to me. Because every idiot can buy such a car. But not every­one can han­dle that fact, that he has enough power and money to do so. They obvi­ously didn’, because what was lack­ing there was style.

It is like watch­ing an amaz­ing girl in a club danc­ing. There are those, who dance for the eyes of men. And then there are those who dance because they really, really enjoy it. They would still pump the rhythm, even when nobody would be there. I tend to think that the lat­ter girls are much more inter­est­ing than the former.

Expen­sive cars are often dri­ven quite pow­er­full peo­ple, man­agers, Google own­ers, ad agency CEO’s. So far so good.

But there seem to be a world out there, nobody speaks about in pub­lic. The world of the dark desires of those gen­tle­men, the one you only hear about. And indeed, there surely is not a rare sup­ply of those sto­ries - One of Aleš’s friend seems to work as a waiter in some sort of high-​​class estab­lish­ment, a cas­tle, where some of those top-​​level sharks meet … to get their asses whipped by chicks in leather suits called Dominatrixes.

I am sure, you all have heard one or two of those sto­ries. About dark, secret places, where the world seems to be upside down. Where your bad-​​ass prick of a boss gets shouted and spit in his face. Where he has to bow and fol­low com­mands. Some of us may have glimpsed into this kind of world watch­ing Eyes Wide Shut. I believe that it is out there. There are just too many hints that these things exist, as I know about another story told me by Anthony Dweyer from Pic­ture­house some years back. This guy actu­ally knows a girl who is a Dom­i­na­trix. And guess who’s ass she is kicking?

I won­der, why those power-​​driven ambi­tious guys have to retreat in a secret envi­ron­ment, where they have to sub­mit them­selves to a higher power. It may be, that they are under high stress the whole day, and they need to recharge, by let­ting some­one tell them exactly what to do from time to time. I must say, that when I am hon­est to myself, it seems, that there is a sadist and a masochist in my per­sona as well. There is some­thing wicked in the ulti­mate sub­mis­sion towards another human being, as it is in hav­ing the ulti­mate power over someone.

Rich­ness does not mean lux­ury for me. Lux­ury is “sans” the fea­ture crap. It is unplugged. It is the less is more prin­ci­ple. It is the con­trary of black rap­pers bow­ing under the weight of their golden neck­laces and noser­ings. It is the oppoisite of Russ­ian mod­els in Paris, who wear every­thing what Prada has pro­duced that year at once …

Con­fi­dence is lux­ury. Believe in your­self. If you do, you sel­dom have to show off your car col­lec­tion. You do not need to prove, that you can buy expen­sive clothes. You do not talk much about what you have accom­plished, because peo­ple talk about your actions already. The Eng­lish gen­tle­man of the Vic­to­rian era. The man, who almost destroyes the engine of his DB-​​9 on the week­end race­track, and yet allows a Golf GT over­take him, as he stops at the cross­ing to let an old lady pass.

Sim­plic­ity is lux­ury. The joy of the pure and simple.

The prob­lem is, that there is always some­body above you. And there always will be. Some­one with more money, more power, more women, cars, nobel prices, oskars, whatever…

I am not say­ing no to ambi­tions, but when it comes down to the bare metal of life, it is not your savings-​​account or your small talk that counts, but what you do. In this very moment.

So, lux­ury is liv­ing. Now.

Carpe fuckin’ Diem.

…

Sorry, I have to go, my Dom­i­na­trix for­bids me to type more…