Bugatti launches new Lifestyle Collection

“Bugatti not only stands for benchmark technology and breath-taking performance, but also for art, design and a sophisticated lifestyle,” says Dr. Wolfgang Schreiber, President of Bugatti Automobiles. “This new lifestyle collection represents the DNA of our brand, and creates the opportunity to transport the aura and myth of this automotive icon into other aspects of life beyond the automobile. Through the growth of our retail network in the future we will be able to even more increase the worldwide visibility of our brand and its values ‘Art, Forme, Technique’.”

Bugatti’s new lifestyle collection will feature two main lines dedicated predominantly to men, which will be focused on in the launch phase: The Ettore Bugatti line and Extreme Performance line. In addition to these two lines there will be a Tailor Made / Bespoke programme, which will be available exclusively to Bugatti customers. The collection will concentrate on clothing and accessories in its starting phase to be complemented by design ‘objets’ at a later stage.

"The Bugatti Lifestyle Collection represents the first authentic expression of luxury lifestyle in an automotive brand,” explains Massimiliano Ferrari, Managing Director of Bugatti International and in charge of Brand Lifestyle. “It builds on the brand’s deep-rooted heritage and the remarkable vision of its founder. The brand today is a combination of its Italian roots in art and creativity, French passion for luxury and German engineering. The same winning alchemy will now be extended to include accessories, clothing and design articles."

Bugatti will start in its major markets with exclusive single-brand boutiques, flagship stores and shop-in-shops in the finest department stores, all centered around a striking new retail concept. The retail project also involves prestigious partners, including premium brands in the luxury sector such as Parmigiani Fleurier Swiss watches and Lalique.

The Milan launch event will be followed in October by the opening of a Bugatti showroom in the city, which will become the reference point for this lifestyle project. The first single-brand boutiques are expected to open in Hong Kong and Beijing in 2014, with up to 35 exclusive mono brand boutiques to follow in major international fashion and luxury hot spots over the following five years.

To celebrate the artistic roots of the brand, Bugatti has chosen the Academia di Brera in Milan as the stage for its launch event. This was the place where Carlo and Rembrandt Bugatti, father and brother of company founder Ettore, studied art and laid the foundations for their careers as a designer and artist.

The Collection Lines – all three lines strictly follow Bugatti’s design DNA and style “In our collection the brand's heritage melds with a contemporary vision of the word ‘style’,” describes Massimiliano Ferrari. “We wanted it to show Ettore Bugatti's philosophy as well as his technical and creative genius, manifested in two lines with a highly striking identity expressing extraordinary luxury and advanced technology. Each and every dress style, from sophisticated outerwear to leisure, is linked by the fil rouge – or better the “fil bleu”, honoring Bugatti’s historical color – of dynamic, extrovert, original luxury to create a lifestyle of rare beauty.”

Ettore Bugatti monogram line “EB”. Elegance, craftsmanship and outstanding design are the hallmarks of the Ettore Bugatti line, featuring the distinctive EB monogram (for Ettore Bugatti). The EB Collection was created to express Ettore Bugatti’s self-confident personality and way of living as well as the heritage of his iconic creations in terms of design codes and materials.

The EB pieces impress with their clean, sartorial lines and intensely sophisticated textiles. The largely Italian creative team worked with passion and great craftsmanship and managed to distill Bugatti’s main design cues and transfer them into fashion design: jacket linings and the lower outlines of collars echo the form of Bugatti’s car radiator grills. They took inspiration from historic Bugatti car models, such as the Royale or the Atlantic with its distinctive Center Line, and created dynamic forms expressed as a stripe on the back of cashmere knitwear and inside shirt collars.

Symbols of the brand such as the famous Dancing Elephant, drawn by Ettore's younger brother and world-class sculptor Rembrandt, make their return in the form of brooches to be flaunted or worn below the collar, as a perfect accessory for the self-confident personality.

The EB line and its flamboyant character is completed by more formal outfits, crafted with the best Italian tailoring expertise and materials, as well as with a Luxury Leisure capsule collection.

Extreme Performance Macaron line. The Extreme Performance line bears the Bugatti logo, the so-called Macaron, and adds a stunning and extreme range to the world of leisure wear, featuring exclusive technical and high performing fabrics, stretch materials with graphics and reflective tape. The nine layers of the tinted, exposed carbon fibre body, another strength of Bugatti engineering, are a key element in the design of these fashion pieces, together with the aerodynamic lines and cutting-edge materials used in modern Bugatti cars. This line talks about Bugatti’s expertise in using innovative materials, developing advanced technologies, power and excellence.

Each piece of this line is limited to 431 units, commemorating the land speed record time achieved by the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport in 2010 and thus making it the world’s fastest production sports car.

Both the EB and the Extreme Performance lines are very distinctive in their individual characters and yet complementary in bringing together the brand’s dual spirit of performance and elegance.

Tailor Made / Bespoke. The Tailor Made / Bespoke programme is dedicated to, and available for, Bugatti owners exclusively. All items will be made on request and by appointment only, featuring supreme, contemporary formalism and the best possible fabrics and precious materials in order to satisfy a very selective and exclusive club of international owners.

All three collections bear the distinctive “Fabriqué en Italie” logo and are strictly “Limited Edition”. They were designed to meet the taste of a highly sophisticated personality, who loves luxury and performance and is a leader in his field. Customers can choose from a selection of suits, outerwear and accessories, enhanced by a lavish tie collection and a series of bags with unique characteristics, their shapes drawn from the design of the customers’ cars and translated into the line of the garments.

The blue color, which is the brand's signature code, is a key feature of this first collection.

Although the collection launches mainly as a men’s collection, the designers created one piece for women: a very exclusive blue crocodile skin bag, the shape of it inspired by the unique horseshoe of the Bugatti’s front grille, another characteristic symbol of both classic and modern Bugatti cars.