AWC new’s

Didn’t think you’d ever end up window shopping for beef tenderloin? Get ready for a rethink, especially if you are on Queen Street in Woollahra, Sydney, Australia.

In the well-established suburb, tree-lined streets offer a perfect enclave for cafes and boutiques, and for that most unlikely of things, a supremely cool butcher shop. Victor Churchill is the first, and so far the only, butcher shop established by Vic and Anthony Puharich, the father and son duo behind Vic’s Premium Quality Meat, the leading meat supplier to some of the finest restaurants in Australia, China and Singapore.

A butcher shop – Churchill’s Butchery -has operated in the space since 1876, so it was an appropriate location for what the Puharichs envisioned as a European-inspired designer shop of meaty delights.

To realize their vision, they engaged Sydney-based Dreamtime Australia Design whose many restaurant, bar and resort projects around the world combine traditional and modern elements in a deliciously layered and multi-textured way. This was Dreamtime’s first retail project but too juicy to pass, says Dreamtime director, Michael McCann

The store boasts so many unique, custom-designed and exclusive features that the only way to absorb it all is a real-life visit. The features provoke, intrigue and amuse the customer – starting with the façade with its double-glazed, refrigerated vitrine for viewing the ever-changing array of hanging meat and poultry, plus selections displayed on custom-made copper and glass shelving.

Inside, butchers work at timber butcher’s blocks on a “stage” behind floor-to-ceiling glass while specialty cuts of meat and carcasses, hung from a custom-designed cog gear and metal chain rack, slowly pass by. The backdrop for all this is a Himalayan rock salt brick wall that infuses the hanging meat with flavor and sterilizes the air. In a humorous nod to a recent Louis Vuitton window display, multiple video cameras are trained onto the daily special inside a glass dome on a pedestal.

Victor Churchill is definitely on the leading edge of redefining the meat shop category. We are all for a future without a single sprig of plastic parsley!

Hermes International SCA, the French maker of Birkin handbags, unveiled a real-size model of a 38-meter-wide yacht on Tuesday. This is Hermes first time making it’s way into the luxury vessel business.

Hermes teamed up on the project with Monaco-based ship- builder Wall to create an immaculate yacht. The model of the vessel, whose width is almost two-thirds of its 58 meter (190 foot) length, was presented in Ancona, Italy.

Nicknamed WHY 58×38, the yacht features a 25-meter interior swimming pool, three decks and a 36-meter “beach” along the back, which will also be the ship’s widest part. Solar panels covering the roof and sides of the vessel will help save at least 200 tons of diesel fuel a year, Hermes said.

“Space is the biggest luxury at sea, and I believe that the next big thing will be taking the time to appreciate that,” Pierre-Alexis Dumas, the artistic director of Hermes, said in the press release. The Dumas family is the majority owner of Hermes.

It will be the first yacht for Hermes, better known for its $4,000 Birkin handbags and printed silk scarves. The company previously helped design a luxury helicopter and a collection of smart cars, a company spokeswoman said.