In March 2016, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars presented Black Badge; a permanent Bespoke family of motor cars that respond to the taste patterns of the marque’s most daring and disruptive clients. Since its introduction, Black Badge has become the most commanding presence on the super-luxury landscape and has done much to attract a new generation of Rolls-Royce customers to the marque.
Black Badge began as an alter-ego of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars but has grown to define an attitude that exists among a new breed of entrepreneurs. These remarkable people are confident, assertive and wilfully disruptive. They respond to the notion of reimagined rules. This film is a tribute to their philosophy and the ongoing success of this truly transformative expression of luxury.”
Torsten Müller-Ötvös, Chief Executive Officer, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars.
In this spirit, the marque called upon a collective of globally recognised creatives to express the soul of Black Badge. At the centre of the work is bionic performance artist and art director Viktoria Modesta, celebrated for her innovative and futuristic approach and famed for her fearless performances at the Paralympic Games Closing Ceremony, Art Basel, and Fashion Weeks worldwide.
Key to expressing Modesta’s character through the prism of Black Badge was an international team of tech and fashion designers. Anouk Wipprecht, the ‘FashionTech’ pioneer collaborated with Rolls-Royce to build items that apply Wipprecht’s hallmark aesthetic of fashion design, engineering, science and user experience to the pieces.
Among the extraordinary items created for this performance art piece was a prosthetic limb wrought from Black Badge carbon fibre that the designer created in collaboration with Joe DiPrima at ArcAttack, the Alternative Limb Project and the Rolls-Royce Bespoke Collective of craftspeople, designers and engineers. A Tesla coil is incorporated into the heel and activates under pressure to create a ‘Jacob’s Ladder’ effect, illuminating the glass area of the limb with a continuous train of large sparks on demand. It is the first wearable ‘Jacob's Ladder’ of its kind. The coloured area of the prosthetic is finished in the marque’s hallmark Black paint and detailed with a 3D printed and electroplated Rolls-Royce grille motif.
Wipprecht, alongside Modesta and the Bespoke Collective also tailored a Black Badge carbon fibre bodice to the bionic artist. The artist’s silhouette was digitised using a high-resolution body scan while the bodice itself was created using a SLS powder-based 3D printing technique to form the extra-lightweight wearable before it was veneered with carbon fibre.
