By Cheryl Tay
SENATUS had the opportunity to speak to Alex Innes, bespoke designer with Rolls-Royce Motorcars during Women's Fashion Week 2011 Singapore and the interview kicks off our Masters of Luxury series.
The Bespoke operation is one of the trademarks that set Rolls-Royce apart from other automotive manufacturers. A bespoke Rolls-Royce car is not bought; it is commissioned.
Clients get hand-crafted automobiles tailored to their own personal style in more than just the design and development of automotive parts – personal lifestyle is catered to too, with additions such as the Bespoke picnic set.
At Women’s Fashion Week, Alex Innes, a designer in the Rolls-Royce Bespoke team, shares with SENATUS the workings behind the process of acquiring a one-of-a-kind luxury car.
Congratulations on the 100th anniversary of the Spirit of Ecstasy.
Thank you. A collection of 100 cars was actually produced to celebrate the centenary of figure that adorns all Rolls-Royce cars, the Spirit of Ecstasy.
A hundred years ago, Claude Johnson – who is known as the hyphen in between “Rolls” and “Royce”, because there was Henry Royce and Charles Rolls who were the two gentlemen who met to form the company, and Claude Johnson was the managing director – commissioned a figurine for the car.
Around 1911, there were a lot of cars running around without any figurines on the front of them then, so people started to put their own ones on, much to his dismay. So he asked a sculptor friend of his, Charles Sykes, to produce one for him. There is a slight love story to it, in that the lady was Eleanor Thornton who happened to be his mistress, so she posed for him and he then made the sculpture of the figurine which has been on the car ever since.
In celebration of that fact, we’ve commissioned a collection of one hundred cars that are total one-off Bespoke models that we will never reproduce again. They were all sold almost immediately.
Could you show us which parts of the car have been bespoke?
First of all, the exterior colour, which is Ethereal White, from our limited palette of three or four colours. Another thing which is quite synonymous with Bespoke and the Rolls-Royce of modern times is the coach lines on the side of the car. Here you can see that it also includes a monogram of the Spirit of Ecstasy in side profile which is a nice touch. Another thing to stress is that this is all painted by hand; there is one gentleman in Goodwood who paints the whole line by hand, making it quite a unique feature.
Something else unique about this car is the instrument dials, which are actually engine-turned spun dials, very different from what we usually do. They are produced by hand, so they’re one-off. Also the clock is a centenary model and has a silver inlay on it and a hallmark. For this particular car we used Indian rosewood, and the script on the caps of the wheels is engraved so you can feel it as you run your finger over it. The wheel has a polished finish, which helps to differentiate it more significantly.
It’s just very subtle nuances that set the car apart and make it that extra bit special.
Rolls-Royce Motorcars was the Official Luxury Automobile sponsor for Women's Fashion Week 2011 Singapore held at Marina Bay Sands.
You’ve also produced a paint exclusively for Michael Fux, who wanted his Drophead Coupé to be candy-apple red?
Yes, absolutely. We say that we can produce about 44,000 different paint colours, but in reality it’s actually a lot more than that because we will produce a paint colour-matched to anything you so desire. So be it matching to your lipstick, which believe it or not, has actually happened in the past, for both the interior and the exterior.
Colour is an extremely important medium of expression, something that’s very personal to people. Our cars are relatively large, so when you change the colour on the exterior you make an extremely bold statement, especially with something that’s maybe more avant-garde or interesting than the usual offering.
How do you work together with a client to come up with what they really want for a bespoke car?
It varies really, we like to think that, similar to our cars, no two customers are the same. We try to work under the tagline of the Bespoke, which is “the only limit is the customer’s imagination”, so it’s very hard to quantify just what we’re capable of. What we generally base it all on is the dialogue with the customer, so we offer, at Rolls-Royce, the unique opportunity for them to sit with us – the design team – and we have an unfiltered dialogue directly to try and capture their aspirations.
It’s important to emphasize that these clients aren’t used to working with sets of options; if they ask for something that they so desire, we’re there to facilitate it for them. When they buy houses, they commission architects to build them the house of their dreams, and it’s exactly the same with a car. They expect to be able to request and impress upon the car their own mediums of expression. This is what we’re constantly striving to achieve.
So to draw back to your question, it’s talking directly to the client, be it at Goodwood, their residences around the world or at their offices, and it’s something that I’ve been lucky enough to do in the past. It’s again a service that is, I think, almost totally unique to Rolls-Royce.
How did you come to work on the Bespoke Team?
I was very lucky in the sense of timing, really. I graduated in the year when they were potentially looking for someone to join the team, and I applied and through the various processes and interviews and portfolio reviews, and then was lucky enough to be offered the position. And I think that it’s only now when I’ve come to work with the team that I realize how precious that opportunity was.
And the Bespoke team is expanding now, too?
Yes, we are, significantly so. Bespoke is now one of the core attributes of the brand, and we’ve come to realize that high net-worth individuals wish to personalize their cars and tailor them toward their own use, and we’re investing heavily to support that.
We just announced that we’re spending ten million pounds on our production facility in Goodwood, to expand the surface finish area as well as the Bespoke programme.
Have you always wanted to work in automotive design?
Yeah, it took me a very long to time to realize that you could combine the two; cars were always a passion for me and I had a very keen interest in cars from an early age. But I saw design as a career and I was very much drawn to it. It was an early art teacher who had quite a profound influence on me, who made me realize that you could combine the two – that you could really be a designer of cars and that these jobs did exist.
And that was the real turning point then, and it still took me until I got my first paycheck to realize this is a career, that you could actually design cars for a living.
