Official: Rolls-Royce Phantom Serenity

Rolls-Royce puts the ultimate glitz on the word “pearlescent” at Geneva Motor Show 2015 for the priceless dazzling lustre of the one-off Rolls-Royce Phantom Serenity’s exterior – its bespoke Mother of Pearl finish its most expensive one-off paint ever developed.
It has been added in a three-stage pearl effect and hand-polished for 12 hours by the craftspeople at the Home of Rolls-Royce at Goodwood to deliver this shimmering presence. They promised the Rolls-Royce Serenity would salute the regal glory of silk. It sounds simple, the results are stunning, and the processes involved simply mind-blowing.

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Outside, hinting at what is to come, a delicate two-colour coachline with three-colour blossom motif echoes the interior that awaits. The coachline that adorns Serenity’s exterior has been applied by the squirrel-hair brush of the Rolls-Royce Motor Cars coachline expert, Mark Court.
For the Rolls-Royce Phantom Serenity the marque’s Bespoke Design team took inspiration from the opulent interiors of Rolls-Royces that have conveyed Kings and Queens, Emperors and Empresses and world leaders. Then they added contemporary interpretations of furniture design combined with Japanese Royal robe motifs.
Cherica Haye and Michelle Lusby, both Textile Arts graduates from the Royal College of Art and Plymouth University respectively, joined Rolls-Royce’s Bespoke Design department to help realise the direction of the core motif for this magnificent one-off Phantom.

For a totally one-off bolt of silk for Serenity, the Bespoke team looked to Suzhou, China, renowned for its creation of imperial embroidery, to source the unspun silk thread and have it hand-dyed by the Chinese craftspeople who have been creating beautiful silks for centuries.
It was then taken to one of Britain’s oldest mills, in Essex, to be hand-woven into just 10 metres of the fabric to clothe the interior of Serenity – in a process that took two hours per metre of fabric. The numerous colours of silk thread were painstakingly blended into the highest quality warp with 140 threads per centimetre for the lustrous Smoke Green colour of the underlying silk fabric.
The plain Smoke Green silk was transferred to London where the blossom motif designed by Haye and Lusby – a uniquely modern take on centuries-old silk Chinoiserie – began to flourish across the fabric as British and Chinese craftspeople embroidered their vision of copper-coloured branches and white petals.
The final touch was the detailed petal-by-petal hand-painting of crimson blossoms directly on to the silk. The resulting panels and swatches that have formed the centrepiece of Serenity would take up to 600 hours of work per panel.
The rear occupants’ elevated and powerful seating position is accentuated with valances made from rare Smoked Cherrywood, the seats in the front of the car clothed in Arctic White leather. Smoked Cherrywood continues in the cabin, for the Serenity’s door cappings, dash fascia and rear centre console, but further embellished by the highly skilled application of bamboo cross-banding.

In addition, the blossom motif from the silk is recreated through the finest marquetry on the rear door cappings through the use of Mother of Pearl, which is laser-cut and hand-applied, petal by petal into the wood. This theme is continued in the driver’s compartment with Mother of Pearl applied to the face of Bespoke Serenity’s clock and the driver’s instrument dials.
This Mother of Pearl face is etched with concentric circles redolent of the raked gravel seen in Japanese gardens, and inlaid with hand-applied rubies which echo the colour of the hand-painted flowers in the silk lining. Continuing the theme of ultimate luxury, the luggage compartment of Serenity is lined in Arctic White leather with an Arctic White carpet. As a final touch, two parasols featuring the Serenity motif are held by Bespoke leather loops incorporated into the boot lid.