L’VOYAGE promises an exclusive luxury experience for crypto-affluents

Aditus, the world’s no. 1 luxury access platform for crypto-affluents, has signed an exclusive partnership with bespoke private jet chartering company L’VOYAGE to accept payment in cryptocurrencies.

L’VOYAGE is a Hong Kong-based company with a long heritage in serving discerning corporate travellers and jet-setters. Part of a specialist business aviation group founded in 1999, L’VOYAGE offers unrivalled access to aircraft options and landing destinations, coupled with highly personalised hospitality. In April, the company officially launched its ultra-exclusive travel curation services under the L’VOYAGE Travel brand in response to growing demand across China.

Unlock a whole new spectrum of luxury with cryptocurrencies, courtesy of Aditus

L’VOYAGE is notably the first Wyvern approved broker in Asia, making its safety intelligence of the highest accredited standards within the region. Renowned for their ultra-exclusive travel experiences, from champagne served in chauffeured vehicles that brings clients to the plane to food sourced from Michelin-starred eateries, L’VOYAGE provides all-encompassing luxury experience accessible to HNWI and the ultra-affluent. As part of their lifestyle program, L’Voyage also offers amazing travel experiences and access to some of the worlds’ most prestigious events.

As part of this partnership, Aditus Pay will be adopted as the exclusive crypto payment gateway for L’VOYAGE to allow users to make payment in cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum or Litecoin. Aditus will also be working closely with L’VOYAGE to help them tap into this burgeoning community of new wealth and provide a convenient and seamless cryptocurrency payment experience.

Personalise your luxury travel experiences with exclusive services from L’VOYAGE

Remarking on the partnership, Aditus CEO and co-founder Julian Peh said: “We are thrilled to be associated with L’VOYAGE. Their services are renowned and unparalleled across the region, and Aditus takes pride in being the exclusive crypto payment service provider to allow a new market of crypto-affluents to access this lifestyle.”

“The timing is right for our partnership with Aditus and I see a lot of opportunity ahead for our clients,” said Director of Lifestyle Services L’VOYAGE, John B Sutherland. “We are already starting to get enquiries about paying for unique lifestyle and private jet experiences by cryptocurrencies and the demand will only grow in the future.”

For more information:
www.aditus.net
www.lvoyage.aero

About Aditus
Aditus was created to be the world’s first luxury access platform bridging luxury merchants and crypto-affluents on a revolutionary decentralised network.

About L’VOYAGE
L’VOYAGE is a private jet chartering company which aims to bring a new dimension of air travel, adding a personal touch to your private journey. L’VOYAGE was also named “Best Charter Broker” by members of the Asian Business Aviation Association in 2017 at the Icons of Aviation Awards.

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SYDNEY (Reuters) – Crowds thronged the Sydney Opera House and shores of the city’s sparkling harbor on Tuesday to catch a glimpse of Prince Harry and his wife Meghan during their first public appearances in Australia since the announcement they were expecting a child.

Kensington Palace said on Monday the Duke and Duchess of Sussex were expecting their first baby in the northern spring. The child will be seventh in line to the British throne and Queen Elizabeth’s eighth great-grandchild.

The royal couple started their official tour of Australia on Tuesday and were ferried across the harbor to greet cheering crowds packed in front of the Opera House, which was opened by Harry’s grandmother almost nearly 45 years ago.

“I want to see the royal couple. They are young, a breath of fresh air for the royal family and Australians love them,” said Marvin Lester, who has attended every royal visit to Australia since 1954.

“There’s a lot of feeling for a republic here in Australia but I admire having a royal family,” he said.

Australia, a constitutional monarchy whose head of state is the British monarch, voted in 1999 against becoming a republic.

Support for a republic is hovering around 50 percent according to a January poll, a level largely unchanged in recent years, and there is little appetite to put the issue back on the agenda during Elizabeth’s reign.

Governor-General Sir Peter Cosgrove, the queen’s representative in Australia, presented the couple with their first baby gifts, a stuffed kangaroo and a tiny pair of fleece-lined Ugg boots.

The visit to Australia is their first overseas tour since Harry, 34, married the U.S. television star Meghan Markle in May. The trip will also take the couple to New Zealand and the South Pacific islands of Tonga and Fiji.

The royal couple met some native Australian wildlife during a visit to Taronga Zoo in Sydney early on Tuesday, where zookeepers described the 3,500 animals there as “excited to meet them”.

Thousands of people gathered across the harbor at the Opera House, where the couple later shook hands and embraced members of the public.

Australian Prime Minster Scott Morrison was among the first world leaders to congratulate them on the news of Meghan’s pregnancy.

“We are looking forward to celebrating that good news while they are enjoying their stay here in Australia,” Morrison told a news conference in Canberra.

It is the second tour of Australia by the younger generation of royals after Prince William, Kate, and their eldest son, George, visited in 2014.

Their trip coincides with the Invictus Games to be held in Sydney from Oct. 20-27. The games founded by Harry are an international paralympic-style event for military personnel wounded in action.

Morrison, a constitutional monarchist, took over as prime minister in August after a party-room revolt ousted Malcolm Turnbull, a former chairman of the Australian Republican Movement.

Provenance is a common key factor in the auction scene. Here at Luxuo, we covered auction stories for Prince’s estate, watch auction in homage to Walter Lange and of course, James Bond’s Rolex. The result of these auctions is often groundbreaking. At times, fetching a price way higher than a similar asset without a story to sell. This coming Geneva auction in November, Phillips will be selling the original Audemars Piquet Royal Oak Offshore watch, owned by Emmanuel Gueit, the designer who designed it in the first place.

25 Years: Audemars Piquet Royal Oak Offshore 1993 Edition

Taking it back to the early 1990s, Emmanuel Gueit was a young watch designer at 22, tasked with a special project to update Audemars Piguet’s Royal Oak watch. The final product – Royal Oak Offshore – set in a large 42mm octagon-shaped case and Tappissierie dial in classic blue, was revolutionary at its 1993 release. The Royal Oak Offshore was the first of its kind to finish with a matching stainless steel bracelet. While these style of watches are much common today, the idea of an expensive, oversized, stainless steel watch with a mechanical movement was a foreign concept to grasp in the 1990s.

“Create something young men would want to wear” – Emmanuel Gueit

Gueit recounts to Phillips, “I was young, and I didn’t really care about taking risks with the watch”. Despite that, it is apparent that Emmanuel Gueit’s 1993 edition of the Royal Oak Offshore has arguably set the course for the Swiss watch industry, reminding us that we are all rebel with a cause.

Taking back to provenance – in this instance is the watch’s notable owner. The original Offshore watch has since been the personal watch of the Emmanuel Gueit, the man who designed it. What takes it further is the visible fact that Gueit has actually worn it around instead of keeping it deep in the vault of the Gueit estate. On its 25th anniversary, the iconic watch will be going under the hammer to honour one of the brand’s most historically important models while re-introducing the new edition to brand lovers.

At SIHH 2018, a re-edition of the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore debuted to highlight the significance of all the offshore models produced over the years. The 2018 edition shares many similarities to the original version, drawing a deep symbolic connection that Audemars Piguet hopes others can identify with.

Certainly none will be more important than Gueit’s personal watch. Historically speaking, this is the reference that launched Audemars Piguet into the modern era, and no model can match Number 39 it in terms of provenance. The estimate of this icon of a watch is $41,000 – $81,000.

Visit Phillips for more information on the auction. 

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Back in the ’90s, Reebok created some seriously futuristic shoes with its signature “split cushioning” design innovation. By removing part of the midsole, the sneaker brand crafted shoes that were lighter—and weirder—than the standard offerings in the market.

Though it looked radical at the time, these days all you have to do is cast your eyes downward in a roomful of sneaker or fashion fans to find a pair of kicks carrying the design torch. (Think: Balenciaga Speed Trainers, if you’re looking for an easily identifiable example.) And, of course, Reebok itself is keeping the look going with models like the stripped-down Sock Run.r, or its bulkier cousin, the Run.r 96.

MICHAEL QUIET

SHOP REEBOK

Now, the brand has a new—and affordable!—riff on the split aesthetic hitting shelves: the Sole Fury, a $90 performance sneaker with a whole lot of attitude. The new design drops on November 8, and to get excitement levels up, Reebok tapped a few young creatives to star in a new campaign called #SplitFrom (as in “split from the pack”).

One of those young creatives is Marcus Hyde, a photographer who went from working odd jobs at his local junkyard in Virginia to shooting everyone from Chance the Rapper to Ariana Grande. (He’s also, no big deal, Kim Kardashian’s go-to lensman.)

Courtesy

“I think that Reebok is ahead of the curve by realizing the benefits of working with influential creatives like photographers and stylists that aren’t typically noticed by large brands,” says Hyde. “With this campaign, I got to be myself. I’m not doing what other photographers do, and Reebok embraced my style. They’re not asking me to change or shoot in a particular way. They’re allowing me to have the creative control and let me do my own thing, which most brands would never allow.”

Courtesy

Hyde, for his part, doesn’t do this kind of work a lot—and that is exactly why he was a perfect fit. “I’m not a typical photographer that brands want to work with,” he says, “which is I guess the definition of #SplitFrom. To #SplitFrom means being true to yourself and eventually at some point you’ll get recognized for what you do. Don’t be a follower or bandwagon-er. Split from the crowd and do your own thing, and people will take notice.”

Watch out for the Sole Fury on Reebok.com and at Champs Sports on November 8.

You guys remember that time Bobby Boucher showed up at halftime and the Mud Dogs won the Bourbon Bowl?

Yeah, so does Adidas. That’s why in honor of the 20th anniversary of The Waterboy—Adam Sandler’s 1998 film in which waterboy Bobby Boucher leaves the sideline and becomes a college football legend—the brand will launch a capsule collection in SCLSU Mud Dogs blue and orange for Sandler superfans and hype-addicts alike to fight over.

Kelton Woodburn

On October 19, Mud Dogs fans will have a chance to grab a Bobby Boucher replica jersey and Coach Klein’s varsity jacket, as well as Mud Dog-branded hats and, of course, water bottles. The capsule will be available a day early—on October 18—at an event at Sneaker Politics consortium in Baton Rouge.

For those of you not down on the bayou, act fast—the capsule will only be available on adidas.com for a limited time (and likely won’t last long).

YOGYAKARTA, Indonesia (Reuters) – Shinta Ratri, the matron of an Indonesian Islamic boarding school, corrects the pronunciation of a group of fellow Muslims as they chant the phrase “only one God” in Arabic and prepare to pray together.

Nothing unusual in that, except that these worshippers, gathered in a cramped residential neighborhood of the city of Yogyakarta, are all transgender women in the world’s largest Muslim-majority country where hostility against them has surged, forcing many underground.

Rights activists say hardline Islamist groups are fast eroding the country’s long-standing reputation for tolerance of minorities like the “waria” – a portmanteau of the Indonesian words for “woman” and “man” – as the trans community is locally known.

Ratri, 56, and her students and friends witnessed this intimidation first hand in 2016, when vigilante Islamists mobbed the Pesantren Waria Al-Fatah school and forced it to shut down.

Yuni Shara, 51, described how a group of “aggressive” men in white robes and skull caps descended on the school after Friday prayers.

“I felt angry that my freedom, especially my freedom of religion, was being violated,” said Shara, who lives at the school. “… Even the state can’t fully guarantee our safety from these groups,” she added as she took off her wig and make-up before joining the others in prayer.

POCKETS OF OPPOSITION

The school, set up in 2008, was empty for months after the raid but people have gradually begun to return to what is now widely considered a safe space for the waria community.

But while the school is accepted by its immediate neighbors, opposition remains.

“We believe it is our duty as Muslims to prevent this kind of LGBT behavior and forbid it,” said Umar Said, a senior cleric with the hardline Islamic People’s Forum which forcibly shut down the school two years ago.

While FUI does not “go looking for” waria, the group remains committed to preventing them from promoting their rights. Being transgender is a disease that can be cured through prayer, he said.

Historically, waria and other gender-fluid communities have been an accepted part of Indonesian society. The Bugis ethnic group on Sulawesi island for instance traditionally recognizes five genders, including one that is said to “transcend”, or combine, the female and male.

Homosexuality is not regulated by law in Indonesia, except in the ultra-conservative province of Aceh where same-sex relations are banned. But parliament is considering revamping the national criminal code to impose restrictions on consensual sex outside marriage – a move that activists say could be used to target the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) community.

“AT PEACE WITH GOD”

Even without legal barriers, many in the LGBT community face ostracism from their families and communities, discrimination in looking for work and, in some cases, violence and humiliation.

Many waria, banished from their homes, end up as sex workers, including some who have slowly started to gather again at Ratri’s boarding school to pray.

For Ustad Arif Nuh Safri, a preacher at the Yogyakarta boarding school, embracing the waria is part of his duty.

During a Koran study session, Safri encourages his congregation to ask candid questions about their sexuality and how it affects their relationship with God.

“As long as we can connect with each other on a human level, we can accept each other the way we are,” Safri said, adding he believes most Indonesians are as “open-minded” as him.

Ratri, dressed in a purple head scarf and bright red eye-shadow and lipstick, says it is this openness that allows the otherwise shunned waria to “make peace with God”.

“As waria, we are already under huge psychological stress,” she said. “Here we can believe we are not sinners for being trans.”