History was made in March 2016 when Rolls-Royce Motor Cars presented Black Badge; a permanent bespoke family of motor cars that respond to the taste patterns of the marque’s most daring and disruptive clients.In Nigeria, only very few belong to distinguished club of Rolls Royce owners.
And for the few super rich that has the precious limousine in their garages across the globe that, since its introduction, the Black Badge has become the most commanding presence on the super-luxury landscape and has done much to attract a new generation of Rolls-Royce customers in the nouvre rich club. The time is now right to delve further into its extraordinary allure.
“Black Badge began as an alter-ego of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars but has grown to define an attitude that exists among a new breed of entrepreneurs. These remarkable people are confident, assertive and willfully disruptive. The film is a tribute to their philosophy and the ongoing success of this truly transformative expression of luxury.” Said Torsten Müller-Ötvös, chief executive officer, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars.
In this spirit, the marque called upon a collective of globally recognized creatives to express the soul of Black Badge. At the centre of the work is bionic performance artist and art director Viktoria Modesta, celebrated for her innovative and futuristic approach and famed for her fearless performances at the paralympic games closing ceremony, Art Basel, and fashion weeks worldwide.
Modesta says, “There are many parallels between the Black Badge philosophy and my work, chiefly maximizing your potential and becoming a hyper version of yourself. I really wanted to capture the Black Badge attitude and fierce spirit, by embodying that through body art, it felt totally wild. Pushing the boundaries to the extreme we explored the allure of a darker, bolder expression, a place where your senses are heightened, where you are the bravest and most free’’.
Key to expressing Modesta’s character through the prism of Black Badge was an international team of tech and fashion designers. Anouk Wipprecht, the ‘FashionTech’ pioneer collaborated with Rolls-Royce to build items that apply Wipprecht’s hallmark aesthetic of fashion design, engineering, science and user experience to the pieces.
Among the extraordinary items created for this performance art piece was a prosthetic limb wrought from Black Badge carbon fibre that the designer created in collaboration with Joe DiPrima at ArcAttack, the Alternative Limb Project and the Rolls-Royce Bespoke Collective of craftspeople, designers and engineers.
A Tesla coil is incorporated into the heel and activates under pressure to create a ‘Jacob’s Ladder’ effect, illuminating the glass area of the limb with a continuous train of large sparks on demand.
It is the first wearable ‘Jacob’s Ladder’ of its kind. The coloured area of the prosthetic is finished in the marque’s hallmark Black paint and detailed with a 3D printed and electroplated Rolls-Royce grille motif.
Wipprecht says, “Like the Black Badge motor cars we are expressing, Viktoria is not scared of anything. Creating my aesthetic overlay in collaboration with the Rolls-Royce Bespoke Collective merged technology and fashion in a way that truly captured the spirit of Black Badge’’.
According to a statement from Rolls Royce, “Viktoria as an embodiment of power symbolised through the electricity of the prosthetic. She can shift time and space, shape worlds and push them in any direction she deems fit. Modesta’s subversive style worked so well with Rolls-Royce Black Badge. I’m pleased to say that we’ve created something really unique’’.
MIKE OCHONMA
