Innholdsfortegnelse for January/February 2023 i Maxim

They are perhaps the world’s most elite and feared fighting force. The U.S. Navy SEALs have taken down everyone from Manuel Noriega to Osama bin Laden, and a hell of a lot of bad actors in between. And now they’re engaged in a joint mission with another of the world’s renowned military contractors—Officine Panerai—to take down the experiential luxury watch market. Perhaps this is exactly what Giovanni Panerai had in mind when he opened a small watch repair shop on the Ponte alle Grazie in Florence in 1860, looking dapper as he conducted the only watchmaking classes in town on his way to winning contract after contract from the Italian Royal Navy. Ultimately, he designed iconic cushion-shaped timepieces from the original Radiomir, through Luminors and Egizianos to where we are…

The road to success is paved with failure… for some. Others, like Brittany Burke, seem born to hit it big from the jump. The Detroit native’s mother, whose own journey culminated in spokesmodel work for Ford, had clearly seen something special in her daughter before she secretly submitted photos to Chicago’s venerated Select Model Management. Burke was signed by the agency the day she made an in-person appearance. That early success was not a happy chance, but a harbinger. Burke would soon find herself among a crowd of hopefuls all arduously vying to land a New York Fashion Week booking with Calvin Klein. “I remember running around from place to place, casting to casting,” she recalls. “I was exhausted and passed out on the bed when I arrived home. But…

Anyone who grew up in the 1990s remembers Pamela Anderson on the hit show, Baywatch, running down the beach in slow motion in her red one-piece bathing suit. Fans went to bed dreaming of that image all night long, minus the one piece. Since adding producer, actor, model, centerfold and author to her resume, she now has a new memoir, Love, Pamela, tracing her trajectory from rural Canadian girl to era-defining sex symbol. “It feels like some kind of miracle-to be retracing the painful steps of my youth. I repainted scenes in detail if it were my childhood or at the Playboy mansion. Just one girl’s messy life. A celebration—of imperfections,” she wrote in an Instagram post about her memoir, which also contains some original poetry. “The book is an…

There’s something nearly out-of-body driving a Ferrari in these hills. Sublime even. Any time spent behind the wheel of one of their finest mid-engine supercars is a momentous occasion of course, but now, here—this feels even more transcendent. It’s almost as if this Ferrari 296 GTS (Gran Turismo Spider) was engineered and designed… no, imagined to live in these specific winding roads carved above Maranello, famously home to the Ferrari factory. It’s like experiencing Jiro Ono slicing you fatty tuna fresh from a stall in the Tsukiji Fish Market. Or Gieves & Hawkes tailoring a bespoke Savile Row suit for you, and wearing it to London’s Animal Ball. It’s all about purpose and place. Usually when epicures speak of terroir in these parts they’re waxing poetic about the local Lambrusco…

The very last bike the great Barry Sheene rode to victory was recently auctioned by Bonhams in the UK, his 2001 FWD Manx Norton 500cc Racing Motorcycle ‘FW02’, which was specially prepared for the two-time World Champion and took him to first place in the Lennox Cup motorcycle event at the 2002 Goodwood Revival Meeting. If ever there were a case of two icons working together in perfect harmony, this was it. This 2001 FWD Manx Norton was a customized version of the latest of Norton’s first racing machines built in Birmingham, England in 1927. When Cycle World got their hands on a couple to test in 1962 they found that, “Before the day was out, we had acquired a pretty good idea as to why the Nortons win, and…

“For me, the Riva Aquarama is simply one of the most beautiful things I own. It will never go out of style because it is a work of art created by a genius. Like the works that remain over time and in our memory, it amazes me every time because it proves that man’s craftsmanship can produce stunning masterpieces that, in turn, forge the aesthetic soul of those who admire them.” The speaker is Alberto Galassi, CEO of Ferretti Group, which now owns iconic Italian boatbuilder Riva; he is also the son-in-law of Ferretti stakeholder Piero Ferrari—who himself calls the Aquarama “a paragon of style, elegant details and high-quality construction.” “Owning an Aquarama is more than a membership club—it’s almost a religious thing,” he marvels. “When you meet other owners…

“HE EXPLORED THE REALMS BETWEEN THE ABSURD AND THE SUBLIME” While legendary French photographer Guy Bourdin is best known for his take on surrealism, “his influences were very diverse,” as his son Samuel Bourdin told Interview magazine. “From pop culture to high art, American comic books from the ’50s and ’60s, hyperrealist painters, classic filmmakers like Erich von Stroheim, horror movies, Pre-Raphaelite painters, classical music, James Brown.” His attitude towards life, Samuel noted, is best summed up in his dictum, “Better to live five minutes of happiness rather than an entire life in a conventional way.” And better to shock than appease. Born in France in 1928, Bourdin, who died in 1991, has had work exhibited in and collected by some of the most prestigious museums in the world, including…

In a remote clearing in Swedish Lapland near the Arctic Circle, nine Michelin-starred chefs are racing around to various fire pits and makeshift prep stations, plating rustic-looking delicacies for diners perched on stools carved from tree trunks. What’s remarkable is not only the isolated majesty of the location, but the way the men and women—gastronomic celebrities in their own right—work together on each course, an all-hands-on-deck approach necessitated by the lack of electricity and kitchen equipment. The cooking utensils and methods run the gamut from rough hewn to downright medieval, as the chefs from Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Iceland successfully execute a nine-course tasting menu that’s been almost a year in the making. For the two-night-only, $700 per person pop-up, dubbed Stars du Nord, everything was sourced and foraged…

The name Walton carries the same recognition as those of Rockefeller or Ford, and the impact of the Walton family on the communities they serve, and the nation and even the world, as a whole, easily puts them in the same hallowed league—and beyond. Even if you ignore the more than 10,000 Walmart stores globally, the millions of people they employ, the countless manufacturers they sustain, their truly enormous wealth, and equally impressive philanthropy, you still can’t ignore the fundamental ways in which Samuel Walton and his family have changed people’s lives around the globe. And it all began in Bentonville, Arkansas. Sam Walton, who would go on to become the richest man in America, was born in Kingfisher, Oklahoma on March 29th, 1918. He was a smart and talented…

“It was a very challenging project to pull off because nobody has done it before,” declares Sebastian Schoepe, President and CEO of RSG Group North America. “[RSG Group founder] Rainer Schaller and I traveled all over Europe, to Asia, we researched clubs in the United States and toured all the premium concepts that we could find. And nothing like this exists anywhere in the world.” While the words may sound like marketing speak, when referencing RSG Group’s latest members-only fitness cathedral, Heimat, it is difficult to be hyperbolic. To call their sparkling new endeavor near the corner of La Brea and Santa Monica in Los Angeles a “health club” seems woefully reductive. For RSG, Heimat, which owns global fitness brands like Gold’s Gym, it is a critical chess move. Although…

The spirits world was stupefied last summer when an anonymous buyer from Asia paid around $19 million for an incredibly rare cask of Ardbeg single malt distilled in 1975. The nearly-50-year-old whisky is the oldest liquid the cult Islay brand has ever released; but the price of the lone cask is more than double what Ardbeg’s owner, the Glenmorangie Co., paid for the entire distillery including all its stock in 1997, as the Financial Times pointed out. It also smashed the previous record for a single cask by several million dollars. Do the math though and the buyer is actually getting a pretty good deal. With bottles of 50-year-old single malts from distilleries of similar repute routinely fetching around $50,000—or even more if they are in bespoke decanters such as…

The demand for hard assets as a haven from stock market volatility continues to define the appetite for real estate among the ultra-high-net-worth cohort. But not just any acquisition will do for discerning asset bankers as we venture into 2023. Trophy properties have come a long way from Richard Branson’s Necker Island. A new wave of tycoons is riding on real estate worthy of the digital age. A truly palatial penthouse atop the new Central Park Tower, New York’s tallest condo at 1,550 feet, is set to become the nation’s most expensive home as it hits the market for $250 million. Down south, Citadel kingpin Ken Griffin set a new record for a Miami home purchase with his $109 million scoop of a four-acre Coconut Grove compound. And Aspen’s Willoughby…