Once again Blancpain is hanging out at the Cannes (32nd annual) International Boat Show. This time to officially release their previously announced Blancpain 500 Fathoms timepiece. In addition, they will release a special limited edition version of the Blancpain 500 Fathoms watch in celebration of the event. The limited edition of 50 pieces watch features a specially engraved caseback. I really love the 500 Fathoms' rotor. Not only do you get a propeller shape, but you also get hand perlage polish on it, and a different style of polish on the bottom that is meant to look like bubbles. The Caliber 1315 movement is extremely accurate and the watch itself is 1000 meters water resistant. The case is 48mm wide and in titanium.

I don't think that the dial of the limited edition is any different than the standard model. That is OK, as I have been a fan of the new dial look for a while. The torpedo hands and lots of lume are an interesting choice for the luxury brand. The titanium make up of the watch will make for a light and strong timepiece, but I am concerned about the case's ability to get scratches. The rotating diver's bezel has a sapphire crystal over it. Prices will likely be around $15,000. The International Boat Show in Cannes will be open September 9-14, 2009.

Ariel Adams publishes the luxury watch review site aBlogtoRead.com.

There seems to be something about the Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano that induces those with more money than sense to customize them in ever more ridiculous ways. Last month we wrote about Fiat scion Lapo Elkann's 599 with a custom denim interior. Now a desert camouflage version has been spotted on the famed Croisette in Cannes. Our first guess would be that this automotive confection hails from the UAE, where overkill exotics flourish in the desert heat and oil revenues. However it also calls to mind avant-garde Japanese Bathing Ape designer Nigo's camo Mercedes 300SL Gullwing - another aesthetic travesty, but fully in keeping with his modus operandi. Which doesn't mean you should try it at home.

A new company called Columbus International based in Cannes is offering luxury tours of France via various different Ducati motorcycles including the latest Streetfighter, Monster S2R 1000, Hypermotard 1100 and Supersport 848. Among the various programs on offer combining other luxury travel elements are a Gourmet Tour (eating at starred Michelin restaurants), a High Octane Tour (driving a F1 car on the racetrack), Offshore Ride Tour (luxury yachting, barracuda fishing) and Nature Tour (natural parks, private yacht, restaurants). Special winter packages allow you to ride your bike in the morning and ski in the afternoon. Tour package prices range from €5,696 to €11,696.

[via Motorbiker.org]

The world's largest open yacht, the gorgeous Overmarine Mangusta 165 (above), has surfaced for sale from the Rodriguez Group via global online luxury marketplace JamesList for about $40 million. The 165-ft. superyacht can hit a top speed of 33 knots with its twin MTU 16V 4000 M93 engines producing 4556 hp. The craft breaks the open yacht record previously held by Rodriguez Group with the Mangusta 130'. The interior of the yacht, first shown at the Salon Nautique in Cannes, features five staterooms and is finished in a luxurious, elegant combination of neutral fabrics and dark woodwork. The 165's interior includes an expansive main salon with cocktail tables, a long bar, and a surfeit of seating. Two pop-up, back-to-back flat-screen televisions face the main salon and the adjacent dining room. The craft's aft deck covers a garage that contains tenders and toys and opens hydraulically at the push of a button.

Special-edition premium retro hatchbacks seem to be all the rage at AIDS fundraisers these days. Every year Mini teams up with a different designer for a one-off vehicle donated to the LifeBall event. Diesel lent a hand one year, but this year the Italian jeanswear house has teamed up with Fiat and the Cinema Against AIDS Gala to produce the one-of-a-kind 500C you see here. Like the fixed-roof Diesel edition Fiat 500, this special example features a unique metallic green paintjob, a denim-upholstered interior and plenty of Diesel logos, but upgrades with a cloth folding roof and a 100-horsepower engine in the place of the 75hp unit on the regularly available fixed-roof version. Just one example of the special-edition Fiat 500C by Diesel will be made, joining big names like Sharon Stone, Harvey Weinstein, Annie Lennox and former U.S. President Bill Clinton in helping the American Foundation for AIDS Research break last year's record $7 million raised at the gala held in conjunction with the Cannes Film Festival later this month.

Jeweler Chopard launched its latest fragrance, Cascade, this week in conjunction with the Cannes Film Festival. The event at Cannes' Eden Roc Hotel also included an haute jewelry collection specifically for the event. The new scent is an oriental with notes of Belle de Nuit, pink pepper, grapefruit, mandarin and orchid. It will launch in July (although a bottle has just popped up on eBay already). Over at perfume blog, Now Smell This, they are currently debating the merits of the bottle which features a design that looks a bit like a 1980s-style rhinestone earring has been draped over the top.

The Cannes event featured beautiful women and beautiful jewels, check out a few in the gallery below.

The Cannes Film Festival in a couple weeks will bring the silver screen's best to the French Riviera which makes me wonder where do all the fancy stars stay while in town? Offering both elegance and luxury it isn't surprising that the Majestic Barrière on Avenue La Croisette is a favorite among the Hollywood crowd. Recently emerging from a winter of renovations, the Majestic Barrière is sporting a new lobby area and freshly decorated rooms which each face the sea. The deluxe hotels also allows guests to stay within walking distance of the Palais des Festivals. This exclusive resort is sure to be a paparazzi hotspot beginning May 13th when the film festival is kicked off.

Sad but true: the recession has hit the upcoming Cannes Film Festival in the South of France next month, an international symbol of glamorous excess. Cutbacks are being made everywhere, from ritzy parties to the type of food being served, the AFP tells us. For starters, Vanity Fair has canceled its annual star-studded party, the social highlight of the festival, while the VIP nightclub Jimmy'z lost two key sponsors, Fendi and Swarovski, and Louis Vuitton said it would skip AmFar's big-ticket AIDS charity fundraiser.

"We're experiencing an unprecedented world crisis and it's also affecting the Riviera and Cannes," says Michel Chevillon, head of Cannes' hotel association. "Companies are sending fewer people, for shorter periods." 70% of the area's hotels have frozen their room rates compared to last year, and many are taking bookings for less than the full 12-day period, something normally unheard of at festival time, Chevillon tells the AFP.

Overall attendance at the festival is expected to be down for the first time in decades. "People are afraid it will hurt their image to be seen in a place associated with wealth," Cannes deputy mayor David Lissnard tells the AFP. Yacht charters are also suffering, as brokers struggle to find clients in Cannes' port, where all 60 berths for megayachts were booked up in anticipation. "There's a lot less demand this year for yacht rentals and a lot of pressure on prices," says broker Valerie Ruiz, who rents out yachts up to 200-ft. for the festival.

The Wealth Bulletin has compiled a new list of the World's Top Ten Most Expensive Hotel Rooms, and the first and second both cost over $30,000 per night. And despite glum economic prospects, demand for these costly suites is as strong as ever, with waiting lists stretching from now until the end of December. Also worth noting is the appearance of Dubai (the Burj Al Arab's Royal Suite, above) and Moscow hotels on the list, which would have been unheard of just a couple years ago. Here are the Top 10:

1. Ty Warner Penthouse, Four Seasons, New York; $34,000 per night
2. Royal Penthouse Suite, President Wilson Hotel, Geneva; $33,000 per night
3. The Presidential Suite, Hotel Cala di Volpe, Costa Smeralda, Italy; $21,000 per night
4. Royal Suite, Burj Al Arab, Dubai; $18,000 per night
5. Royal Armleder Suite, Le Richemond, Geneva; $17,500 per night
6. The Ritz-Carlton Suite, The Ritz-Carlton, Moscow; $16,500 per night
7. The Royal Suite, Four Seasons George V, Paris; $16,000 per night
8. The Imperial Suite, Park Hyatt-Vendôme, Paris; $15,500 per night
9. Brook Penthouse, Claridges, London; $10,000 per night
10. Penthouse Suite, Hotel Martinez, Cannes; $9,300 per night

Financial whiz turned "lifestyle designer" Richard Nilsson apparently felt that plain old luxury had lost its luster, so he decided to focus on "extreme luxury." When he was running a business empire Nilsson was only able to take one week off per year, so for his first project he came up with the "Résidence Supérieur" concept as an ultimate retreat where vacationing moguls and movie stars could pack as much luxury and privacy into their vacation as possible, cost be damned.

The first RS is the Villa Oxygene in Cannes on the French Riviera. In addition to ultra-luxe surroundings, it includes exotic sports cars, a private jet and helicopter, yacht, butler, chef, bodyguards and basically anything else you could wish for. Desperate Housewives star Eva Longoria recently shot an ice cream commercial there, and Nilsson is now planning other equally outrageous outposts. See the gallery for pix.

Givenchy dresses have been worn by notably sophisticated ladies for decades, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and the Duchess of Windsor are among the memorable women who've made Givenchy the fashion legend it is today. Recently joining the list is the always stunning and stylish Natalie Portman who had heads turning when she showed up at a Cannes soiree in this elegant and refreshing Givenchy gown. Easily the best dress seen all week, I think she blew it with the shoes but c'est la vie! If you have any high class events coming up, browse the Givenchy 2008 Collection, it features some fabulous designs that will have people dying to know who "dressed" you!

Last week's star studded charity auction and dinner event at Cannes, raked in a whopping $10 million for amfAR, a leading AIDS research organization. Founded in 1985, amfAR is dedicated to ending the global AIDS epidemic through continued innovative research. Tickets to attend the bash went for $5,000 a person and accounted for a good portion of the evenings earnings. Celebrities in attendance included Madonna who donated her purse complete with it's contents to the evenings auction...it went for a staggering $1.5 million! It's nice to see people coming together with such a successful outcome, $10 million is quite an accomplishment for one evening!

Brad Pitt obviously knows when he's on to a good thing. We're not referring to Angelina Jolie in fact, but rather Tom Ford. Wearing head to toe Tom made Pitt one of the most stylish stars at last year's Cannes Film Festival - actually, make that any year - so it's no surprise he's back this season sporting more of the designer's dapper duds.

Last week Pitt wore a classic made-to-measure Ford black two piece notch lapel wool suit with a white shirt and solid black silk jacquard tie to the Kung Fu Panda premiere. And on Tuesday he upped the ante with an ultra-elegant made-to-measure black mohair blend single breasted peak lapel tuxedo, black silk moiré bowtie, and 18K white gold and diamond shirt studs and cufflinks from Ford's menswear collection to the Changeling premiere. That's what we call stealing the show.

Gwyneth Paltrow has been named the new face of Italian luxury goods brand Tod's in the wake of a short film she made for them which just debuted at Cannes. The ad campaign, shot by Mario Testino in Capri aboard dashing Tod's CEO Diego Della Valle's yacht, portrays "the uber luxurious, outdoors-y life of a beautiful Italian aristocrat from the heady days of the jet-set era," Vogue UK reports.

"Italian style is very sexy, very womanly and what I love is that it seems to have so many different inspirations," Paltrow told the mag. She replaces Sienna Miller, who starred in Tod's ads last year. The Cannes short, which was directed by Dennis Hopper, a longtime friend of Della Valle's, portrayed a day in the life of Gwyneth with her favorite Tod's bag. We have long been fans of Tod's classic driving mocs, probably the most comfortable shoes in the world.

Usually the stories from the Cannes Film Festival involve mischievous celebs up to no good, not one of the world's largest yachts. But the luxury vessel, the Lady Moura, ran aground on Saturday after hitting submerged rocky outcrop near the port. Two local hotel-owned beaches were briefly closed due to the potential of fuel leaks. The 354-yacht was pulled off the hazard by a tugboat. Two large holes were given a patch job and then the boat headed to Gibraltar for repairs. The yacht belongs to Saudi billionaire Nasser Al-Rashid, who is said to have paid more than 200 million dollars for the yacht and luckily has enough cash to restore his baby back into tip top shape.

Lady Moura, named after one of Nasser Al-Rashid's ex-wives, has a helicopter on board. For pics of the accident, which show Lady Moura slightly listing, check out Yachtspotter.com.

[picture via Monaco Eye]