Wednesday 4th March 2015

Rolls-Royce - Geneva 2015

Rolls somehow makes a silk-lined Phantom seem like it's not trying too hard

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Among the flashing lights and blaring soundtracks of the Geneva show there's one almost-guaranteed oasis of calm: the Rolls-Royce stand. This is the place you can go for a cup of tea, loose leaf and poured from a pot naturally. Or potentially something a bit stronger as the day wears on. You can also admire the fact that Rolls-Royce employees seem to spend about three times as much on their suits as anyone else...

There are even nice cars to look at, too. And although Rolls hasn't done anything as vulgar as bring an all-new model to the show - we'll have to wait a while to see the forthcoming SUV - there was a spectacular Phantom with its cabin lined almost entirely with embroidered silk.

As close as we got to that silk interior...

The Serenity isn't the most practical vehicle - you certainly wouldn't want use it to transport a stag party to a kebab shop - but it does serve as proof that, if you've got the budget, Rolls's Bespoke team will build you pretty much anything.

And not just any old silk, either. The Serenity's unspun silk thread was sourced from Suzhou in China and then hand-dyed, was flown to Britain (in first class, we hope) and then weaved in Essex into just 10 metres of fabric. This was then painted with a technique - and we're not making this up - known as 'unconscious painting' which - the official release tells us - relies on the artist painting the same form again and again, "the purpose of this repetition is the imbue the artist with an innate understanding of these natural forms until their balance and nature is understood without thought."

We really can't improve on that...

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[arkenphel]

I really like Rollers and all, but "unconscious painting" definition above is something I understand to mean "Making the slave do it repeatedly until he can do it in his sleep", right?