There are no surprises on the list, but luxury travellers’ travel preferences and perceptions have evolved.

Related story: High tea at the Pendray Inn and Tea House

Luxury travel is about creating unique and unforgettable experiences during a vacation.

After months of lockdown, Gen Z and Millennials intend to holiday close to home this year. For those seeking luxury, it’s about high-quality experiences with loved ones, even if it means travelling far.

Luxury travellers now prefer slow travel and extended vacations that combine work and leisure. Many people travel with their laptops to work remotely.

By choosing to travel more slowly, individuals can immerse themselves more deeply in local cultures and engage in more experiences that allow them to explore and truly appreciate their destination. They seek unconventional vacation experiences beyond typical resorts.

We are now seeing a significant demand for wellness travel and immersive retreats. Travellers are ensuring that their vacation plans include time for well-being and that they care for themselves.

Virtuoso, a global network of luxury travel advisors, surveyed its clients and found that five European countries are the top destinations for luxury travel. These countries are Italy, Greece, France, England, and Spain. 

Paris was ranked the top luxury travel city, followed by Rome, Barcelona, Florence, and London.

Italy took the top spot with families, followed by Hawaii, Costa Rica, France, and the United States.

As for honeymoon destinations, Italy was first, followed by Greece, Bali, French Polynesia, and Maldives.

Luxury travellers’ book during the shoulder season to avoid crowds and seek exclusivity and privacy.

In the coming weeks, I will share more luxury travel news on the less-known destinations.

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Interestingly, there is a new luxury travel trend of ultra-rich Asians visiting Mexico, so I will soon visit this fabulous country to learn more.

Speaking with my fellow travel advisors, here is my list of top luxury travel destinations with unforgettable landscapes, scrumptious gastronomic experiences, inspiring culture, and immersive history. 

I have visited most of these top luxury travel destinations listed below and they should be on your list as you begin planning your next vacation.

Amalfi Coast, Italy – A stunning coastline in southern Italy with colorful fishing villages, rugged cliffs, and luxury resorts.

Bali, Indonesia – A beautiful island with stunning landscapes, rich culture, and luxury resorts.

Dubai – Beautiful beaches, world-class attractions, and where the past comes alive.

Related story: Quiet luxury fashions of the ultra-rich

Maldives – A tropical paradise with pristine beaches, crystal-clear waters, and luxurious overwater villas.

Paris, France – Known as the “City of Love,” Paris is a popular destination for luxury travelers who enjoy fine dining, shopping, and art.

Santorini, Greece – An idyllic island in the Aegean Sea with white-washed houses, blue domed churches, and breathtaking views.

Seychelles – A group of islands in the Indian Ocean known for their pristine beaches, crystal-clear waters, and luxurious resorts.

Swiss Alps – A world-renowned destination for winter sports enthusiasts and luxury travelers seeking natural beauty, privacy, and relaxation.

Tokyo, Japan – A vibrant city that offers a unique blend of traditional culture and modern technology, with some of the world’s finest restaurants, shopping, and luxury hotels.

New York City, USA – A global center of culture, entertainment, and luxury, with some of the world’s best hotels, restaurants, and shopping.

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Today, Chen is busy designing custom wedding and special occasion dresses, inspired by all the beautiful things around us, from her Gastown location. 

Above photo: Four custom bridal designs by Theresa Chen. | Fortune Hill Photography

Her interest in fashion was sparked in London, UK while working in retail as a young student She enrolled in Lasalle College, Montreal and in 2010,she was one of 25 finalists for the Telio design competition for fashion students from across Canada. She hasn’t looked back since.

Success in the fashion industry requires a lot of talent and, perhaps even more importantly, a good deal of perseverance. Theresa Chen sees the beauty in each of her clients and wants to create custom dresses that allow them to discover their own beauty.

For the past ten years, Chen has been driven by her passion to design beautiful, chic wedding and party dresses for women of all ages. She attracts the majority of her clients through personal referrals and she wouldn’t want it any other way. Her quality handcrafted designs cannot be rushed.

The spirit of old Paris’ elegant custom dressmakers is alive and well. You will find it in the heart of fashion designer Theresa Chen.

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With guests dressed all in white, the evening evokes the glamour and elegance of French high society. Attendees celebrate in style, knowing that they are part of something truly magical and very exclusive. The location of the dinner party is not announced until late afternoon on the day of the event at which time thousands of white-clad diners converge on the venue.

In keeping with Diner en Blanc’s exclusive image, the location is never repeated. In previous years, the event was held at Canada Place, David Lam and Creekside Parks and Concord Plaza. Last year, Diner en Blanc Vancouver took place on the Great Lawn of the VanDusen Botanical Gardens and featured a 28-foot replica of the Eiffel Tower. Images from the event spread like wildfire on social media for several days afterwards. 

The etiquette for the evening requires that you must be elegantly dressed in any shade of white from head to toe – no colours permitted. Bring a small white table and chairs along with tablecloths, napkins, china, cutlery and white candles to light your table. Plus, your three-course meal and, of course, champagne to toast the evening. For a more luxurious evening, there is an option of pre-ordering a catered meal on site and reserved seating.

While the Vancouver event is in its 8th year, the very first Diner en Blanc was held in Paris during the summer of 1988. The organizer, François Pasquier, asked his guests to wear white so they could be spotted easily and to assemble at Bois de Boulogne to share a gourmet meal with friends. They celebrated until midnight and left no trace behind. 

Since then, the exclusive dining event has spread to 70 cities in more than 35 countries across Europe, Asia, Canada and the USA. Diner en Blanc has proven to have global appeal. 

If you haven’t attended this iconic event before, don’t let this year’s Diner en Blanc Vancouver pass you by. Dust off your best white outfit, bring a bottle of bubbly and connect with friends in style at a summer dinner party you won’t soon forget.

Registration for Diner en Blanc Vancouver 2019 is now open for members, sponsored guests and a waiting list. Find more info here. 

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In front of the main entrance, brightly blazing white lights spelled out the signature “VFW”. To hordes of fashionistas, influencers and others ‘in the know’, this signified that local and international designers had descended on the city to showcase their talent over seven fabulous days.

Bright Lights & White Tents

The large white tents, which created the perfect backdrop for the fashion collections, provided a unique energy and excitement to the local community and we hope that this will be VFW’s new home.

Vancouver Fashion Week Spring Summer 2019 Collections

Monday evening was Vancouver Fashion Week’s Opening Gala which featured single ensembles by over 20 designers as well as two designer collections. Phuong My’s stylish collection of women’s evening wear kicked off VFW’s first year at its new location.

Phuong My

Vietnamese-born My, a graduate of the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, launched her label in 2013, catering to stylish Asian women, including many celebrities.

Her collection at VFW featured luxury materials and shaped gowns of the sort that would be found on the red carpet in Asia and the Middle East.

Having exhibited her designs in New York, San Francisco, Tokyo, Singapore, Perth and Dubai, she now has 30 retail locations in 20 countries stretching from France and Italy to Dubai and Southeast Asia. With her international credentials and global reach, this up-and-coming style superstar was just the right designer to launch Vancouver Fashion Week’s new downtown location.

Above Photos: Phuong My | Simon Lau

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Like many fashion trends, rose gold first appeared on the European runways. In 2012, designers like Roberto Cavalli and Jimmy Choo offered rose gold pieces which have evolved into the metallic looks that we all see today.

Pop culture also played a significant part in this color phenomenon. The release of Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel in 2014, with its luxurious pink interiors, captivated audiences worldwide and reinforced the burgeoning trend.

Next was the introduction of the Apple iPhone 6S in September of 2015 which came in four metallic hues. The rose gold version exploded on the mass market. Millennials everywhere wanted a rose gold phone and 40% of pre-sales were for the rose gold model. As a result of its apparent popularity, in 2016 the color became the Pantone Color of the Year under the signature name of Rose Quartz. Today, you can still purchase a rose gold iPhone 7 at the Apple store.

Millennials of both genders have been in love with this unique pink shade – also referred to as Millennial Pink. A truly gender-neutral colour, actresses in all pink gowns and actors in head-to-toe pink suits are now part of the red-carpet scene in Hollywood.

Instagram feeds are a testament to the ubiquity of rose gold. The color can be found everywhere on the popular app, from posts on beauty, fashion and jewelry to images featuring home décor, wedding cakes and bridal couture.

Though the Pantone Color of the Year for 2018 is lilac, my European luxury fashion designer colleagues tell me that rose gold continues to be their number one seller especially for jewelry and accessories. In Europe, consumer researchers report that women perceive rose gold as feminine and elegant with a superior value. In Italy, rose gold kitchens are now all the rage.

Walking the fashionable streets of London, Paris and Milan this summer, you will inevitably find rose gold on the well-dressed set. From the runways of Europe to the Instagram feeds of celebrities and influencers, rose gold is still the color to beat. We haven’t tired of it yet. On the contrary, we can’t seem to get enough.

Now, where is my Swiss watch?

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Like the New Year, spring is a time of rebirth and renewal and, in the world of high fashion, the return to captivating glamour is the revival we’ve been waiting for. As one of the top fashion trends for spring 2018, this polished elegant look will resonate with both the new and the old money crowd.

Fashion designers no longer market trends. As consumers now desire clothes that reflect their personal style, designers tend to offer up various looks from which their customers can choose. However, there are some dominant themes running through the Spring 2018 collections. Though they are by no means homogenous, the runways of New York, London, Paris and Milan do give us a sense of direction this spring.

Starting last fall, several fashion designers began eschewing expensive casual attire such as sneakers and sweat suits, offering chic elegant pieces instead. This spring, the trend continued and it seems the fashion pendulum is swinging back to a more polished wardrobe.

In my book, glamour never truly went out of style. But there are several looks from the spring runway collections that point to women dressing up – rather than dressing down – to feel fabulous as we enter spring 2018.

Top Spring Fashion Trends 2018

Disco 2.0

For those who miss the psychedelic haze of the sex-driven club scene of the 70’s and the strobe-lit crystal balls spinning to the soundtrack of Saturday Night Fever, you’ll be pleased to know that disco is back. Mini dresses and catsuits covered with sequins were all the rage with Spanish designer Paco Rabanne. Inspired by the Paris club scene, the Rabane look is perfect for partying and dancing all night long in style.

Busting Out

Some call it the Kardashian effect. Designers continue to present plunging necklines, including sexy waist deep v-necks and low cut square necks, for women of all sizes. New to the mix this spring is the bustier which Alexander McQueen’s collection offered with decorative colored stitching, ruffles and feathers. Still revealing, while celebrating the sensuality of the female form, the bustier provides sex appeal to those who perhaps aren’t quite ready to try a bodycon dress with a deep v-neck.

Glamorous Sheer

When it comes to long skirts, make it sheer. Using tulle and net, Christian Dior and Dries van Noten made transparent, light and airy dressing the dramatic look of the season. Multi-layered or worn waist high, this revealing fabric ensures a glamorous entrance to your next party.

Stylewise, it’s time to break out your heels and dress up! The casual attire of seasons past has undergone a metamorphosis and now awe-inspiring glamour and glitter is what spring fashion is all about.

Above photo: Anna Bella

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With a weight of 287.42 carats, the Tiffany Diamond is one of the largest yellow diamonds ever discovered. Unearthed in South Africa in 1877, Charles Lewis Tiffany purchased the stone a year later for US$18,000 and sent it to Paris where it was cut into a cushion shaped 128.54 carat diamond with 82 facets measuring slightly over the width of a $2 Canadian coin.

The finished product, which was the centrepiece for Tiffany & Co.’s exhibit at the Chicago World’s Columbian Exhibition in 1893, is memorizing. It emits a scintillating pure yellow light like that of an early morning sun and is currently mounted on an astonishing platinum necklace with an additional 120 carats of white diamonds.

The necklace on display in Vancouver is not the one found on Audrey Hepburn in the movie publicity photos from 1961. The diamond was remounted into the current necklace for Tiffany’s 175th Anniversary in 2012. Though it has known several mounts in its lifetime, the diamond has rarely been worn. Throughout its entire history, the only woman other than Hepburn to have worn the Tiffany Diamond was Mrs. Sheldon Whitehouse at the 1957 Tiffany Ball in Newport.

As the diamond represents Tiffany & Co.’s legendary brand, it will never be sold. But in 1972 Tiffany did place a cheeky advertisement in the New York Times offering it for sale for $5 million – about $25.8 million today – for 24 hours. No one took them up on the offer.

For many years, the Tiffany Diamond has welcome visitors to the company’s New York flagship store on 5^th Ave in Manhattan. It has been displayed at the Smithsonian Natural Museum in Washington, D.C. and toured Europe and Asia. But this is the icon’s first visit to Canada. Christmas shoppers are invited to view this astonishing diamond which is located in it’s own display case on the ground floor of Tiffany & Co. Vancouver until the end of the year. So movie buffs, history lovers, and bling connoisseurs, hurry down to Burrard Street for this dazzling stone’s Canadian debut.

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Currently on display at the Legion of Honor – Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco are more than 40 Impressionist paintings and pastels, including major artworks by Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edouard Manet, Mary Cassatt, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Alongside these exquisite examples of Impressionist art are a collection of 40 remarkable period hats. The exhibition, with its combination of artistic representations and the objects they represent, provides a unique glimpse into the millinery trade which so captivated Degas and his colleagues.

The exhibit focuses on both the historical and social context of the Parisian millinery trade and the avant-garde art of Degas and the Impressionists. Degas, best known for his portraits of ballet dancers at the Paris Opera, captured the art of millinery in no less than 27 works, illustrating hats, their creators and the men and women who wore them.

The pinnacle of the millinery trade in Paris, which was then considered the fashion capital of the world, occurred between 1875 to 1914 during which time around 1,000 milliners, many women, created stunning millinery confections for everyone from the high-born to the humble of origin.

As his studio was near both the grand department stores and a network of competing independent millinery shops in the fashion district of rue de la Paix, Degas had access to the ins and outs of the millinery trade. His visits to nearby shops inspired him to create works like the pastel At the Milliner’s from the Musee d’Orsay.

In Degas’ largest painting on the subject, The Millinery Shop, a seated woman surrounded by six hats reflects on the latest fashions for spring and summer. The hats dominate the composition and show the viewer the range of materials – ribbons, flowers, feathers – and colors – cream, aqua, orange, green – used in fashionable hats.

On display in the same hall is a lavishly embellished contemporaneous woman’s bonnet which could have been taken directly from Degas’ painting.

Life in the French capital was filled with aristocratic men and women wearing colorful hats adorned with flowers and ribbons. This drove an artificial flower trade which employed an estimated 24,000 flower-makers who worked in Paris to create botanically accurate flowers such as silk roses, leaves and ferns.

Plumed and feathered hats were also popular and are included in the exhibition. An ostrich feather-adorned design by Jeanne Lanvin, who’s couture house began as a millinery workshop, and another, decorated with an African Starling with outstretched wings, highlight the flourishing international trade in luxury materials such as feathers that the Parisian millinery industry helped to support.

The world of millinery shops is delightfully portrayed by artist James Tissot who takes the viewer into a boutique with The Shop Girl, part of a series of large canvases featuring la femme a Paris. The painting offers the viewer a perspective of a 19^th century customer about to exit a bustling millinery shop with her purchases through a door held by a shop girl which opens onto a busy street full of men and women in hats.

For the emerging middle class of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, your hat was a measure of your wealth. In Paris, hats were not only worn on Sundays – if you went outdoors you wore a hat – and your chapeau acted as an indicator of your social status. For women, as both creators and consumers of these lovely accessories, the social changes occurring during the time period can be traced in their hats.

During his career, Degas demonstrated an acute awareness of the particular role a hat played for men in social standing. Included in the exhibition are many fine examples of men’s hats. Though generally more subdued in their materials and designs than women’s hats, they were an essential part of the masculine wardrobe.

Bowlers carried working-class associations but also indicated bohemian status for artists and intellectuals as illustrated in Degas’s Portrait of Zacharian. Top hats in the 1870’s were generally worn by the middle and upper classes but were considered formalwear by the 1890s.

Degas and his fellow Impressionists saw milliners as artists in their own right and their works explore the daily minutiae of the millinery industry and reveal glimpses of the complex social world of fashionable turn-of-the-century Paris. By tracing the journey of these extraordinary high-fashion hats from creation to use, viewers of the fascinating exhibition gain insight into the lives of the milliners and of their clients.

Degas, Impressionism and the Millinery Trade

June 21 – September 24, 2017

Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Legion of Honor

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With its rebel history and its distinctly Parisian je ne sais quoi, it’s no surprise that the beret is making a comeback, appearing in the runway collections of Yves Saint Laurent, Isabel Marant, and Dior. Current incarnations of this stylish staple include brightly colored versions in textured wools and others in black leather studded with colored stones. Models with their hair up wore the look best though leaving hair long and loose is a stylish option too.

This age-old icon of French fashion originated in the Pyrenees about 400 years ago. Berets were first worn by rural peasants and then by soldiers in the 18^th and 19^th centuries before becoming a worldwide symbol of French chic.

Propelling the humble beret to its current luxury status is Laulhére, France’s oldest and last remaining beret manufacturer which just opened a boutique on Paris rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore near the shops of luxury designers such as Hermes and YSL.

Laulhére began manufacturing berets 170 years ago and still uses the same century-old machinery to knit the luscious merino wool used for the hats which it then steams, forms and colors. This process takes nearly two days to complete but, despite the labour intensive technique, Laulhére now sells over 200,000 berets a year with a prices ranging from US$75 for a basic model to nearly US$1200 for a leather hat decorated with stones and crystals. Their main clientele are now international tourists looking to take home a piece of archetypal French luxury.

Back in the mid 80’s, there were over 20 beret manufacturers in the Pyrénées region but by they were all driven out of business by Chinese and Indian factories producing lower cost products. The workers at Laulhére  are passionate about preserving this French tradition and proudly offer their clientele quality Made in France berets.

During your next trip to Paris, pay a visit Laulhére to acquire one of their beautiful berets. Not only will you look totally chic and absolutely au courant, you will also be helping keep the production of a quintessentially French fashion icon rooted in home soil.”

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