Why The Rolls-Royce ‘Syntopia’ Phantom Is The Wildest Custom Rolls Yet
The most ambitious Phantom ever features “liquid metal” fabric and a bespoke fragrance released from the headrests.
What Rolls-Royce CEO Torsten Muller Otvos calls the “most ambitious, singular and highly bespoke Phantom” is quite possibly the most fashionable custom car ever created.
Renowned Dutch fashion designer Iris van Herpen collaborated with the storied British marque on a one-of-a-kind Phantom Extended dubbed “Syntopia.”
Crafted over a four-year period for a private collector, the coach car’s name comes from van Herpen’s celebrated 2018 collection, which plays with “biomimicry principles” by channeling patterns and shapes found in nature.
“For this special collaboration I was inspired by the concept of ‘Weaving Water’ and transformed the sense of being in movement into an immersive experience of fluidity inside the Phantom,” van Herpen said in a statement.
“I wanted this to become a state-of-the-art experience being overwhelmed by the forces of nature. The powerful movement of the Phantom is woven into the shifting three-dimensional waves inside the car to embody the ingenuity of nature.”
Rolls-Royce began by overlaying its darkest solid-black paint with a mirror-like pigment to create a one-off Liquid Noir shade, which shows purple, blue, magenta and gold undertones in sunlight. The pigment’s application process alone required over 3,000 hours of testing and validation to get right.
The pigment was also carefully redistributed on the hood to create the Weaving Water symbol—an exterior foreshadowing of the theme that characterizes the interior.
Behind the suicide doors is the Weaving Water Starlight headliner. A single piece of leather selected from 1,000 hides features precise cuts, revealing a “liquid metal” nylon fabric used in van Herpen’s collection.
Her and her team also hand-applied 162 glass organza petals, while Rolls-Royce staffers hand-installed 187 of the 995 fiberoptic star lights. This most technically challenging version of the signature Rolls-Royce headliner required another 700 hours of work.
A further 85 petals grace the Gallery, which runs the length of the Phantom’s dashboard. On the picnic tables and the passenger panel, the same Weaving Water motif from the hood was created through a painstaking process involving the mixing of black paint with glass particles and a special clear coat application.
The front seats are trimmed in gray leather, while the rear seats received a silk-blend fabric. All are quilted with the Weaving Water pattern through a special tufting technique derived from fine furniture making.
For the project, Rolls-Royce also created its first bespoke scent, featuring a core cedarwood aromatic that’s informed by notes of Iris, Patagonian rose, mild lemon and hints of leather. The fragrance is released through a mechanism in the headrests.
No prices have been revealed, but Rolls-Royce says the Phantom Syntopia will enter the anonymous client’s collection in May.
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