High-end automotive brand Rolls-Royce Motor Cars has said the artisans that work on bespoke commissions for its customers had to “push their boundaries further than ever before” in 2023. Report by Leatherbiz.

Dutch fashion designer Iris van Herpen worked with the company’s artisans on one project and Rolls-Royce has called it the most technically complex bespoke commission its team has ever undertaken.

Ms van Herpen worked with the company on a commission for one of its Phantom saloon cars, with ‘weaving water’ as the theme. Artisans incorporated elements of this theme into many parts of the car’s interior and exterior, including the bonnet and the front passenger panel.

The design also demanded ‘weaving water’ elements in the ‘Starlight Headliner’, the name Rolls-Royce gives to the ceiling in the rear passenger compartment, which uses fibre optics to represent the night sky.

For this special project, Iris van Herpen said she wanted to “explore the beauty of fluid motion in solid materials”. Applying this to the Starlight Headliner took almost 700 hours of work. This involved overlaying a woven “liquid metal fabric” onto a single hide. Ms van Herpen’s team then applied 162 glass organza petals to it.