2023 Was Rolls-Royce’s Creatively Ambitious Year Of Bespoke Commissions
Almost a dozen bespoke collections were produced to honour everything ranging between celestial events to family legacies.
2023 was a unique year for Rolls-Royce. The luxury carmaker produced some highly unique and bespoke commissions throughout the year. Utilising intricate craft techniques as well as rare and beautiful materials, the marquee achieved a host of ‘firsts’ comprising the likes of hand-perforated leather seats, celestial animation-incorporated Starlight Headliners, a Bespoke scent among many others. The brand drew inspirations ranging between celestial events to family legacies. Mentioned below are some of Rolls-Royce’s most unique commissions from 2023.
Rose Blossom Phantom
The tranquility of the summer garden was the inspiration behind this one-of-one Phantom Extended. The Gallery and the coach doors are embedded with embroidered artworks featuring four species of butterflies flitting amongst the marque’s very own Phantom rose that blooms in the courtyard of the Home of Rolls-Royce. The same can be found on the Starlight Headliner which took over 200 hours to complete.
Phantom Syntopia
Rolls-Royce claims this to be the most complex Bespoke commission ever undertaken. Created in collaboration with Dutch fashion designer and Haute Couturière Iris van Herpen, the Syntopia explores the beauty of fluid motion in solid materials in its ‘Weaving Water’ theme. The ‘Weaving Water’ Starlight Headliner alone took almost 700 hours to produce, featuring a three-dimensional effect made from a single sheet of leather overlaid on woven ‘liquid metal’ fabric.
Black Badge Ghost Ekleipsis Collection
The idea behind the Ekleipsis Collection was to capture and replicate the interplay of light and darkness as the Moon obscures the Sun during a total solar eclipse. The Starlight Headliner includes an animated sequence representing the corona around the Moon’s silhouette for precisely seven minutes and 31 seconds – the longest possible duration of a total solar eclipse. Additionally, the front fascia on the dashboard features 1,846 laser-etched ‘stars’ in a symbolic timeline of a total eclipse.
Black Badge Cullinan Blue Shadow
Kármán Line – the invisible boundary line located 62 miles above the Earth’s surface to mark the end of our atmosphere and the beginning of outer space, was taken as the inspiration behind the Cullinan Blue Shadow commission. The Starlight headliner on this depicts the moon’s surface via an embroidery featuring 250,000 individual stitches in five different thread colours, surrounded by hand-placed 1,183 twinkling fibre-optic ‘stars’. For the very first time, the leather seats feature artistic perforations that mimic the patterns of clouds swirling over the continents as seen from space.
Ghost Champagne Rose
This special commission honors the client – @ChampagneRose’s digital persona by creating a single-tone colour across the exterior and interior. Rolls-Royce’s Bespoke Collective developed numerous formulations of the ‘Champagne Rose’ hue, specific to each material’s surface characteristics to aid the eye in perceiving it all as a single colour.
Manchester Ghost
For the unaware, Manchester holds a special place in the history of Rolls-Royce as the founders, Charles Rolls and Henry Royce, first met in the city’s Midland Hotel in 1094 and agreed to build ‘the best car in the world’. To honour the commencing milestone, Rolls-Royce made this one-of-one Ghost with illuminated fascia featureing 10,000 laser-etched dots that depicts an aerial view of Manchester, with the largest dot showing the location of the Midland Hotel. Manchester Bee – the city’s emblem for 150 years finds a place in this Bespoke Ghost’s coachline motif and seat inserts.
Ghost Amber Roads
A 12-unit-only collection of Bespoke Rolls-Royce Ghosts was commissioned to commemorate the historic ‘Amber Roads’ trade routes used for over 3,500 years for the transport of Amber. These routes are depicted on the Starlight Headliner and the illuminated front fascia panel and the central rotary dial gets embellished with a piece of polished amber.
Black Badge Wraith Black Arrow Private Collection
The Private Collection, a 12–model limited-production series, was created to mark the end of production of Wraith. The front fascia receives a unique artwork depicting Wraith’s V12 engine, engraved on a single sheet of black-coated aluminium. The rest of the car’s design celebrates the land speed record set by Captain George Eyston on 16 September 1938 on Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats. Hence, the doors mimics the Salt Flats’ cracked surface via 320 lasered Marquetry pieces and the stars of the Starlight Headliner depict the Milky Way and the constellations precisely as they would have appeared on the night of the record.
The Pearl Cullinan
The Pearl Cullinan was commissioned as a birthday gift for the owner from his family. The recipient’s passion for pearls had to be reflected on the Rolls-Royce SUV, entailing the Pearl Cullinan featuring some of the most elaborate use of mother-of-pearl ever seen in a Rolls-Royce motor car. The Picnic Tables for the rear seats feature a spectacular circular pattern made from 1,351 separate pieces of mother-of-pearl, all laid out by hand. The fascia motif illustrates the Arabic symbol for ‘father’ in stainless steel and the Starlight Headliner reflects the sky as it appeared at the owner’s birthplace on the night he was born.
Phantom Cinque Terre
A special one-of-one Phantom to celebrate the unique landscape and heritage of Italy’s Cinque Terre region. Rolls-Royce Bespoke embeds an imagined amalgamation of elements from the five Ligurian cliffside villages, sketched digitally, then airbrushed by hand. The map of Italy gets inlaid on the Starlight Headliner with five prominent ‘stars’ marking the locations of the villages. A delicate grape-branch embroidery appears on the rear doors with the grape motif further being replicated on the on the rear picnic tables, as well as the coachline.
Black Badge Cullinan Lucid Nights
Rolls-Royce created three exclusive Cullinan commissions inspired by the scenery, atmosphere and dynamism of Korea’s Seoul Metropolitan City at night. The bold exterior colors – Lime Green, Indy Red and Tucana Purple are reminiscent of the neon-lit streets of Seoul.
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