In August we reported that the Lusso Collection portfolio of multi-million dollar residences in the world's most desirable vacation spots was launching a new membership program. Now the company, whose properties - worth an average of $4 million each - are located in luxe spots such as Cabo San Lucas, Aspen, Miami, Hawaii and the Bahamas, has acquired a $5 million villa in Tuscany, its first European estate.

Located on the outskirts of picturesque Cortona, La Ripa (above) is a 500-year-old, 4,000-sq.-ft. fully-restored stone farmhouse with five bedroom suites, stone fireplaces, terracotta floors and brick archways. The estate's 27 landscaped acres include a privately situated swimming pool, lush gardens and olive and cypress groves. With 31 luxury properties in 17 destinations currently in its portfolio, the company plans to have 39 luxury residences in 21 destinations by year's end, with London and Paris coming next.

[via Affluent Page]

A few months back The Classicist wrote about the illustrious history of Officine Panerai, the watchmaker founded in Florence in 1860 and former supplier to the Royal Italian Navy. That history lives on in the form of Panerai's 1950 models, based on vintage designs but incorporating modern technological advancements. For the first time, Panerai is now offering one of the most elegant models, its Luminor 1950 Tourbillon GMT (above), in titanium, making it an extremely precious timepiece indeed. The watch features a six day power reserve; vertically rotating tourbillon; crystal window on the reverse revealing the movement; and an alligator strap with a titanium clasp. Only 150 of these watches are being produced at a price of $122,000.

From Turin to Genoa, Venice to Naples and more, four- and five-star hotels, resorts and restaurants dot the Italian landscape offered through THI Collection. They provide traditional Italian style, art and history with innovative and modern strokes along with exclusive, personalized spa services. One of their restaurants, the Principe Cerami in Taormina, was recently awarded the coveted Michelin Star in the 2008 Guide. Specialty packages available include individual cooking lessons with a chef in Turin, gourmet weekends in Genoa or Sicily, and exquisite chocolate tastings...yum! Check out the gallery for a taste of what THI has to offer...

It's a good time to go shopping in Milan, Italy. Not only did Tom Ford open a store over the summer but Via Montenapoleone is now home to the biggest Giorgio Armani boutique in the world. The new store is in the Palazzo Taverna the historic home of Milanese poet Carlo Porta.

Sfilate gives us a peek inside Armani's new domain. The store is over 21,000 square feet and has three floors. The ground floor houses accessories and clothing for women, Giorgio Armani Privé fragrances and Crema Nera and Skin Minerals skincare products. Armani Casa objects have been designed exclusively for the store and will only be sold in this location.

The first floor is the men's emporium featuring clothing and accessories with special spaces reserve for the Classic Giorgio Armani and Made to Measure lines. The second floor is devoted to evening wear and accessories for women and luxury goods including Giorgio Armani Privé precious jewels and Giorgio Armani Borgo 21 watches. The store is done up in sleek black lacquer and dove gray fabric. The post on Sfilate has a few pictures which show small racks of clothing dramtically placed against pale backdrops surrounded by black.

One of the investors in Billionaire, the famed club for the megarich on Sardinia's swank Emerald Coast, says the club should be shuttered because of the current economic climate. Billionaire, a favored haunt of tycoons who come to frolic with the likes of Dolce & Gabbana, Kate Moss and Sean Combs, is controlled by rakish Formula 1 mogul Flavio Briatore (above), but Italian entrepreneur and politician Daniela Santanchè has a 10% stake.

Santanchè says that the ultra-exclusive club, where methuselahs of Cristal go for $50,000 a pop, is an offensive relic of a more wasteful age, the London Guardian reports. "With people struggling to get by, Billionaire should be consigned to history," Santanchè says. "I myself have put my Aston Martin in the garage and get around in a Fiat 500."

"Daniela has been in the sun too long," Briatore, who has dated the likes of Naomi Campbell and Heidi Klum, fired back. "What she's saying is absurd. If luxury is suddenly a problem let's close Bulgari and Cartier, or even all the discos, restaurants and the whole of the Emerald Coast." That may not be necessary, in any case. The New York Times recently reported that the hotspot has lost a lot of its exclusivity lately and that some recent visitors aren't even millionaires, let alone billionaires.

If summer holidays have kept you out of the city, you may have a treat waiting for you upon arrival in New York: the pietre dure (Italian for "hard stones") exhibit at the Met. The museum's second floor galleries are filled with ornately designed furniture, vases, and various objêts d'art all featuring hand-carved pietre dure that could take artisans years to complete for just one piece. As highly valued now as then, one recently auctioned example of pietre dure was sold for $36.7 million in 2004.

The exhibit will run until September 21. If your travels won't take you down 5th Avenue by then, see the gallery for stunning examples of this painstakingly rendered art.

Cittadini, founded 18 years ago, specializes in high-end, luxury linens. Made in the region of Florence, Italy, the styles are detailed and feature much embroidery. You can order custom bed or table linens, as well as towels. Select from 10 flange styles, 50 towel colors, 100 sateen colors, and 200 embroideries (0 up charges). If you're in the NYC or Long Island area, there's a showroom on Fifth Avenue (by appointment) and a boutique in Manhasset. For more info and prices, contact the company.

For years, shots of George Clooney at play on the shores of Lake Como have sparked interest in the Italian vacation destination. Now the TImes Online reports that the Clooney effect has spread to nearby Lake Maggiore, which is the largest of the Italian lakes and is 20 minutes from Lake Como. Although Lake Como is the more prestigious address, villas there can be as much as 50 percent more, making Lake Maggiore seem like quite the deal for your Italian villa. Lake Maggiore has many beautiful homes, some built as summer houses by the French aristocracy.

Want in? For €1.5 million euros you can pick up a restored farmhouse with Lake Maggiore views. This home and other Lake Maggiore properties are listed through Knight Frank.

Italian prosecco is in the process of re-branding itself as the "softer, lighter" bubbly, not to mention cheaper. Production has already increased thirty-fold over the past four decades, with plans for greater distribution particularly to emerging wine markets like China, where marketing drives the majority of sales, relegating prosecco to champagne wannabe status. Hence Italy's support of reserving the name prosecco for wine produced only within the region, a formerly Slovenian area that's been growing grapes since the 1500s, to up the exclusivity factor. Oh, and then there was that little Paris Hilton promo. Italian winemakers disparaged the pairing (she was, after all, promoting an Austrian-crafted sparkling wine in a can), but Paris certainly knows a thing or two about aspirational status.

In our Classicist column about Veuve Clicquot's collaboration with Riva Yachts the other day we fell to musing about Dolce Vita style on the Riviera. Of course, nothing exemplifies seaside sprezzatura quite like Campari, the classic Italian aperitif. The bold red spirit with the sexy ads starring Salma Hayek (above) has been around since 1860, but that doesn't mean they've run out of things to do with it. Campari and soda is the classic combo - and one of our seasonal staples - but the company has come up with several spiffy new cocktails for summer. See the gallery for recipes, including a couple that can be made in large quantities for parties.

A while back we told you about Itlay's poshest places to stay; now we'll tell you about the poshest way to get to them - Red Travel Italia has upgraded their Ferrari tours we first mentioned last year. At the wheel of the Ferrari of your choice - their new models include the 430 Scuderia F1, 599 GTB Fiorano F1, F430 Spider, and 612 Scaglietti F1 - you can tour regions such as Tuscany, Umbria and Lazio, and cities such as Milan, Rome, Florence and Naples, with five-star stops along the way. Itineraries ranging from one to eight days are custom-tailored for a "subtle blend of art, gastronomy, fashion, architecture, and spectacular scenery." And now an assistant in an Alfa-Romeo will follow at a discreet distance to attend to your every need and make sure you don't get lost en route. Visit www.red-travel.com and see the gallery for more.

[Via UrbanDaddy]

Fashion designer Donatella Versace took a timely inspiration for her latest fashion show. The woman who once said she wanted to dress Hillary Clinton in more feminine outfits and less pantsuits has turned her attention to Barack Obama. Versace dedicated her Spring-Summer 2009 collection presented Saturday evening to Obama. Of course she had some fashion tips for the Presidential candidate as well, she urged him to shed the tie and "jazz up the shirt." Her collection was certainly short on ties and long on jazzy colors, offering suit jackets with double lapels or no lapels at all, slim shiny trousers and shirts in summery pastel shades of pale blue, lemon yellow and lavender.

[Thanks, Lana]

Renowned French champagne house Veuve Clicquot has teamed up with luxury Italian motoryacht maker Riva to produce an amazing new Grande Dame Cruise Collection of coolers and accessories for discerning yachtsmen. It's nothing short of a match made in style heaven of two very chic European marques. The top offering from the collaboration is an $80,000 made-to-order cruising trunk that resembles a small boat in itself and harks back to the golden age of traveling in style which we reminisced about recently. For something done on such a grand scale it's rather refined, a luxurious design without resorting to odious "bling" to attract those with more money than sense.

The trunk comes packed with four bottles (1988) and two magnums (1998) of Clicquot's coveted La Grande Dame champagne, six Riedel crystal champagne flutes and elegant table settings for six people. A smaller limited edition Cruiser Bag comes with a single bottle of Grande Dame and two flutes for more intimate occasions, and a matching ice bucket is crafted with marine flair to spare. All pieces feature the same lacquer work, mahogany inlay, chrome detailing and leather trim found on Riva's beautiful boats.

Riva, which dates from the 1800s, is an icon of the Italian Riviera's Dolce Vita style. The company first captured the attention of movie stars and the international jet set in the '50s. Its classic wooden craft, which inspired the Cruise Collection, have been owned by the likes of Brigitte Bardot, Richard Burton, Sophia Loren, Aristotle Onassis and Prince Ranier of Monaco. Their yachts, including more modern designs, can be seen at the chic European seaside resorts where the bon ton gather, and they have their own line of elegant nautical-inspired clothing as well.

Regular Luxist readers will already be familiar with the luxurious, oversized books put out by German publisher teNeues. Not all of their top-drawer coffee table titles are the size of actual coffee tables, however. The travel sized "Cool Hotels" series has all the appeal of the deluxe editions with the added bonus that you can actually take them with you on your journey. They've just released three new additions to the stable in time for summer: Cool Hotels Italy, Cool Hotels Spain, and Cool Hotels Spa & Wellness. At $24.95 apiece, they're considerably less expensive as well. Pictured on the cover of the Italy edition above is the incredibly chic Byblos Art Hotel Villa Amista in Verona, run by the Byblos fashion empire. See the gallery for more stylish vacation spots.

We admit we've never been troubled by the dilemma of choosing between Scotch and wine - we just have both. Usually not in the same glass, however; until a bottle of Longrow Gaja Barolo showed up. The 7-year-old single malt from Springbank, one of Scotland's most renowned distilling dynasties, is matured in bourbon casks for five years then finished for a year-and-a-half in Barolo wine casks from Angelo Gaja's famed vineyard in Piemonte, founded in 1859.

Trying this experiment with a heavily peated Campbeltown malt like Longrow might seem counterintuitive, but in fact the smokiness keeps the spirit from being overpowered by the grape. The confluence of flavors is nothing short of symphonic, plus at 111.6-proof it packs all the authentic muscle of a cask strength bottling. Definitely one the very best single malts we've tasted since the last time we were actually in Scotland.

[via Men.Style]