Tailor made.

Lapo Elkann with a customized Ferrari California 

Last weekend Financial Times "how to spend it" magazine had an interview of Fiat heir and "world best-dressed man" contender Lapo Elkann, about the Ferrari's Tailor Made service.
Lapo put a scarlet Rubinacci suit with silk lining depicting HMS Victory for the interview, a combination of the the classic ferrari color with a british theme lining in honor of the interviewer.
Lapo currently use a customized non politically correct Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT8 with green camouflage paint job as his daily driver.


I remind as there might be some who need reminding that Jeep is owned by Chrysler and 53,5% of Chrysler is now owned by Fiat Group, Fiat owns Ferrari,Maserati,Alfa Romeo and Lancia. Fiat Group is owned by Exor, and Exor's majority shareholders are the three Elkann siblings: eludes brother John(chairman of Fiat),Lapo and their sister Ginevra.

They are, of course, the grandchildren of Gianni Agnelli, Italy's greatest industrialist and style icon, who died aged 81 in 2003. The more reserved John was selected to be his heir and, as well as running Fiat, he is the chairman and CEO of Exor. The extrovert Lapo, 34, has instead tended to set his extremely active mind to the product design side of things.

Fluent in four languages he was born in New York and grew up between Italy, Brazil, France and London before returning back in the US.He joined the family business in 2003, he oversaw Fiat brand promotion at a very hard time for the company. Lapo and his team helped to refresh the brands image with some cool clothing and accessories designs using the vintage Fiat logo, he and his brand promotion team were instrumental in capitalizing on Fiat's past reinventing the 500, cinquecento in italian, recently made available a Gucci-labelled special edition.

After his "accident" in 2005, Lapo stepped out of the automotive world and set up a lifestyle and clothing company called Italia Independent together with an advertising and communications agency, Independent Ideas, which works with some world famous italian brands like Borsalino and Smeg.

But when you're a member of a family with cars in blood like the Agnellis, it's no surprise to learn that as well as he continue to run the Independent brands through LA Holding, he is again spending part of his time at the Fiat Group, working and consulting for Fiat's crown jewel Ferrari.

The brand new Ferrari Centro Stile, run by Flavio Manzoni, is also the nerve center for Lapo's "Tailor Made" service.After passing through an anteroom with table, chairs and model cars, there's a Ferrari version of an haute couture studio. This is where the marque's "Tailor Made" concept take shape, providing service for whom a standard Ferrari isn't quite exclusive enough, enabling them to customize it into something unique.

The place is pleasingly untidy, in the best creative sort of way,  with swatch books, paint samples, hides and components littering tables. You can tell something's different here because the materials in the swatch books belongs to a host of venerable fashion houses and the "mood boards" on the wall show combinations of metals, colors and finishes that are never seen on "ordinary" cars, there is for example, copper mesh for seats and velvet for head linings.
  
He devote seven days a month to Tailor Made, it's clear from his enthusiasm that it is his favorite area of work. Lapo is a fan of customized cars, since his first car a Fiat Punto HGT which as he wanted to be different from the outset, painted in a matte titanium grey and gave it a blue leather interior with baby-blue stitching. He owned since his first about 20 cars not a single one of them has been standard-looking.

Anything he work with he want to make it look better and more beautiful. The point of the Tailor Made service is to guide a client through what is an unlimited range of possibilities, which will enable him or her to realize their dram. Today, customization is the key to real luxury, there is now more opportunity to customize than ever before, the music you have on your iPad,iPod or iPhone, the lighting effects in your kitchen, the essences and perfumes that give your house the feel you want it to have. Customization is not a joke or a philosophy or a psychology, it is a reality. If you put yourself in the environment that suits you, then you're going to have a better life, it's as simple as that.

However, Tailor Made, is not just about allowing Ferrari buyers with more money than taste to turn their super cars into gaudy, rolling representations of their own lack of style. It is about making them understand what works and what doesn't, and protecting one of the most valuable brand names in the world.

The Ferrari of someone's dream might cost 200,000, it might cost 6million. Tailor Made service show them what can be achieved with a particular budget, for example if we speak about white, we can speak about 100 variations of white, if we speak about matte paint, it can go in 10 different directions. Upholstery can be cashmere, moquette, stingray, woven, metal or suede; there's a Borrani wire wheels option, usually associated with vintage cars, options that go from cutting edge to a jet fighter, from heritage to race, but what it is not about is doing things that are foolish.

The Ferrari brand is probably the most powerful italian brand in the world, and the Tailor Made staff has to be very careful not to damage it's heritage.

Carbon fibre is one of the favorite materials to work with in the Tailor Made service, of course is a material that you'll find in the parts bins of most high-end car makers these days. But Lapo can claim to have been at the vanguard of its use in the luxury industry, with Italia Independent being the first to market carbon-fibre eyewear. He was partly inspired by the boat that he and his brother inherited from their grandfather, the staggering, 93ft Stealth sloop, which Gianni Agnelli commissioned To German Frers in 1997 and in which not only the hull but the bed, kitchen, interior fittings and even the lavatories are made from carbon.A yacht that Lapo calls "the Ferrari Enzo of the seas"

The inspiration of the Tailor Made service comes also from the street, traveling, books, people as past car designers like Jean Bugatti and Pininfarina, also some collections like Ralph Lauren's fabled one is a source of ideas as well as the clothing.

In the studio there are two examples of customization, a matte white and black 599 GTB with denim interior and a California painted in matte "Scottish" blue with lapis lazuli Cavallino badges, "sugar came" blue interior with denim inserts and contrasting baby blue exhaust pipes.
There is also a third at the independently run Carrozzeria Zanasi, the specialist in coachworks that operates alongside Ferrari since the 1960s and still works ion on some of the marque's most important projects like the 400 Enzo super cars which were painted by Zanasi.
The customized car Montezemolo doesn't approve of it's a 458 Italia with brown brown tinted windows.

Luxury today is having the opportunity to make something that is yours, and yours alone.

Lapo's customized Grand Cherokee @Hotel Principi di Piemonte, Turin

Customized 599 GTB

image source: olycom, financial times