Editor’s Letter: Inside Robb Report’s Success Issue
There may be no idea more animating to modern life than that of success, the theme (for the second year running) of our October issue. As a society, we debate and dissect it constantly—how it’s defined, who gets to enjoy it, the best ways to achieve it, and, of course, whether we’ve actually been thinking about it all wrong this whole time and should just retreat into the woods and make doe eyes at wildlife instead.
Perhaps that’s because the concept itself is so malleable, so personal, so able to expand and contract and nimbly fill the contours of any idea: Success can be as small as making a perfect omelet or as large and consequential as curing a disease. Come to think of it, that’s probably why we spend so much energy arguing about it. Stock tickers and scoreboards aside, success is most often in the eye of the beholder.
More from Robb Report
Menswear Maestro Mark Cho on 10 a.m. Cigars, Collecting Watches, and Dressing for 'Casual Mode'
Gordon Ramsay on His First Real Mentor, Managing an Empire, and the Key to Success
Mercedes-Benz's CEO on the Electric G-Wagen and the Marque's 'Once-in-a-Century Transformation'
There are exceptions, of course, and none more unquestionable than Gordon Ramsay. For those who mainly know him as the confrontational and brashly entertaining host of such television programs as Hell’s Kitchen and MasterChef, the person that emerges from writer Alex French’s excellent interview will be a surprise: thoughtful, nurturing, highly considered, and deeply committed to both family and philanthropy. But having been forged in the crucible of the world’s best and most high-pressure kitchens from the time he was a teenager, and with a global empire spanning restaurants, entertainment, publishing, and more, it’s no wonder that he’s massively competitive—and, true to form, bitingly funny—but, as French points out, no one backs their way into moguldom on that (or indeed any) scale. Still imposing at 57, he’s currently readying his most ambitious project yet: a multi-eatery experience, including a culinary school and London’s highest restaurant, that together command the prime real estate atop 22 Bishopsgate, the city’s towering commercial skyscraper. “The knives are out,” he tells French. I won’t be betting against him.
It’s that type of drive that runs through the masters of the universe featured in “Quitting Time?”, Christina Binkley’s investigation into why a number of high achievers are retiring the very idea of retiring, choosing instead to work well into their golden years—whether their families (and potential successors) want them to or not. The short and easy version is that power and perks are hard to give up, but what really resonated with me was the unbridled passion: We’re constantly encouraged to follow our bliss, after all, so for those lucky and driven enough to find it in their work, why would they want to give up one of the most rewarding aspects of their lives?
Elsewhere, we have Mercedes-Benz Group CEO Ola Källenius expertly drifting a prototype of the new electric G-Wagen across a frozen lake while explaining the nuances of running one of the world’s most consequential luxury brands at a time when the entire idea of the automobile—which the German marque can claim to have invented in the first place—is undergoing seismic change (“Cool as Ice”). Or read The Answers with Mark Cho, the dapper entrepreneur behind the Armoury, a men’s haberdasher with multiple locations in New York and Hong Kong, including in the latter’s Pedder Arcade. The next time you’re in town, do as I plan to and join him for a cigar in the Armoury Study, the brand’s stylish collaboration with Davidoff. And certainly don’t miss Robb Report features editor Julie Belcove’s studio visit with George Rouy as he finishes the final paintings for a two-part exhibition, The Bleed, that will mark his solo debut with mega gallery Hauser & Wirth, making the 30-year-old Brit the youngest artist on its roster—well deserved given the virtuosity of his abstract figuration, humming with anxiety and angst, which seems to luminesce off the canvas.
On that subject, something that jumped out at me as we put this issue together was the way in which so many successful people, over-indexing for both appetite and perfectionism as they tend to do, seem to become numb to the sensation, to discard what’s only just been achieved in favor of whatever comes next. To which I say, take a beat. Stop and admire that perfect omelet, and let this issue remind you that success should be celebrated—it’s why you do what you do, after all.
Enjoy the issue.
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