The ultimate status symbol for the mobile age

The trappings of success have traditionally included the serious watch, the fast car, and the jet-set lifestyle. But what does it say about you when you pull from your It bag a scratched-up PDA or a plastic-covered phone with a lifespan of less than a year? In this digital age, when instant communication is unavoidable and information is power, what status symbol really signals you’ve arrived?

I found out recently, in (appropriately enough) the capital of luxury, Paris. There, I met a new breed of VIP who, in addition to his grand-complication watch, artisanal pen and impeccably cut suit, flashed an object both familiar and beautiful in its ultimate incarnation, as if your best friend had gotten a makeover and emerged looking like a movie star.

I’m talking about the opulent cell phones crafted by Vertu, which is the first name in luxury mobile phones.

Vertu, which means “a love of or taste for fine objects of art,” is actually a British company headquartered in Hampshire, England. But the City of Light was the launching pad for its first phone, the Signature, 10 years ago, and so it is again for the Signature collection, Version 2.0.

“From a styling perspective and the overall approach, the Signature is the very elegant, sophisticated chairman’s phone,” says Frank Nuovo, Vertu’s founder and chief designer. “It’s our flagship product.”

Ten years ago Nuovo was sketching in his West Los Angeles home when he had a bolt of inspiration. At that point he wasn’t just any designer but, as head of design for Nokia, the world’s leading mobile phone designer. According to Vertu legend, Nuovo took in the meticulous detailing of his handmade Swiss watch, vintage car and finely crafted pen and thought, “Why should my phone be any different?”

“I wanted to take phones to the same level of quality and there was no way to do that in a mass-market company,” Nuovo says. “So I thought, where do I want to go personally? I want to make a Ferrari.”

Nuovo had been creating plastic phones for Nokia that were covered in a metal film and called “premium.” “They weren’t really luxury, they were very high-end, mass-market products,” he admits. “But I thought if a plastic phone that’s designed to be sold for US$600 to $700 is actually selling in Hong Kong for $3,000 to $4,000, certainly if you were to make an authentic luxury product you could do quite well.”

He took his idea to his bosses at Nokia and they believed in it to the point of providing support and funding. Vertu was born in 1998, owned by Nokia but run independently. At this point you would say the rest is history, but it took Vertu four years of intensive research and creative sourcing before it could launch its first prototype in 2002. After all, nobody had made a solid-gold phone with a scratchproof sapphire face and ceramic keypad before.

“In the new Signature you see the core DNA and it’s still selling today, 10 years from the time it was first conceived,” Nuovo says with pride.

We’re in the Petit Palais, right across the Grand Palais where Paris Fashion Week is held. Ordinarily this palace with frescoed ceilings houses Paris’s Museum of Fine Arts; tonight it displays an exhibit of a different kind. In one glass case stand the three new Signature models — long bars of white gold, yellow gold and stainless steel polished to a mirror-like sheen. In another are the V-shaped ruby bearings that nestle under the phone keys — these gems are what provide the Signature keyboard its solid, satisfying click. Sitting central to the room are two of the master craftsmen who make each Signature phone by hand. Armed with jeweler’s loups and a watchmaker’s precision tools, one artisan builds each phone from scratch — an effort of such painstaking devotion that as a final touch he etches his name on the back of the case, just as an artist would sign his painting.

“There are 250 components in each phone and it takes a day to assemble them by hand,” says Hutch Hutchison, Vertu’s head of concept, creation and design, who tests the finished products by dropping them, tumbling them, even running cars over them. “The most used feature is the contacts: we have 2,000 available and it’s going up four to eight gigs. We’re not playing by the rules. If our phones were cars, they’d be Bentleys and Porsches.”

One of the evening’s special treats is a mini-concert by composer Dario Marianelli, who scored the Oscar-winning soundtrack to the movie Atonement. Conducting the London Symphony Orchestra with solos performed by flautist Andrea Griminelli, it is Marianelli who composes all of Vertu’s ring tones like The Sandpiper, another of the Signature’s exclusive features.

But while our ears are cocked to the classical strains of Marianelli, our eyes scan the Palais doors for Michelle Yeoh, Vertu’s celebrity ambassador. She finally arrives hand in hand with her husband, Jean Todt, president of Ferrari Asia Pacific/West Europe and a fellow Vertu fan. Clad in a flowing Roberto Cavalli that shows off her martial-arts-honed physique, Yeoh is the epitome of the carefree style that only the richest and most famous have. Could Vertu — the most James Bond-ish of gadget brands — have chosen her because she was a Bond girl?

“The reason we chose Michelle is twofold,” says Alberto Torres, Vertu’s president. “On the one hand she likes our products and has been using them for a while, and she really embodies the values of the brand because she’s such strong achiever. Our customers are people who are successful, but they’re also motivated and driven. They work hard, play hard, and they’re looking for the best. And Michelle is someone who’s not only a beautiful woman and very successful actor, but also has tremendous history of achievement, from ballet to martial arts, with quite an international following, so it felt right.”

The list of celebrities who have jumped on the Vertu bandwagon in the past three years reads like a who’s who: Donald Trump, Mariah Carey (who uses Vertu’s red Ascent Ti), Teri Hatcher (like Yeoh, she loves the pink Constellation), supermodels Elle Macpherson and Natalia Vodianova, too many Formula One racers and sports figures to mention, and Jay-Z, who was jonesing for a Racetrack Legend phone. These limited-edition phones have famous racetracks etched onto their backs, like Indianapolis, Monza and Monaco. Jay-Z wanted the Monaco in yellow, which was so popular it was virtually sold out. Vertu staff had to conduct a worldwide search to procure the very last one for the rapper, but they managed.

Which brings us to another exclusive feature enjoyed by Vertu clients, the Concierge. Each phone has a special button that patches you directly to this service, kind of like summoning a genie to grant your every wish. Need a Learjet to fly you to a dream getaway on the French Riviera? How about a Ferrari F430 Berlinetta to tool around in once you’re there? Customers have used Vertu Concierge for everything from ordering flowers in Singapore to booking a yacht in St. Tropez. Emerson Yao, managing director of Lucerne, Vertu’s distributor in the Philippines, requested almost-impossible-to-find tickets to the badminton finals at the recently concluded Beijing Olympics. He pressed his Ascent Ti’s magic button and got his tickets, all right; the price he had to pay for them is another story.

“Our customers are generally accustomed to the finer things in life and want something truly special,” says Torres. “They feel they have a great watch, car or handbag, then have this plastic phone that doesn’t really fit their lifestyle. So they want something that feels ‘luxury’ and exclusive.”

For Vertu, as for all luxury companies, Asia is an enormously important frontier. “People aren’t afraid to purchase luxury goods, and it’s a huge market,” observes Giles Rees, Vertu’s director for Asia-Pacific, whose region already accounts for 40 percent of Vertu’s sales. He’s also found, however, that the Asian consumer willing to pay luxury prices expects perfection in return.

“The Asian customer is much more demanding in terms of quality and finish,” says Rees. “If you put a product in a shop window, a European would happily buy it but not an Asian. It has to be absolutely pristine and come in its box. A tiny, tiny little scratch is rejected.”

Rees thinks Filipinos, in particular, are exceptional in their mobile needs. “People in the Philippines change their phones every four to five months!” he exclaims. “It’s quite extraordinary. Our product clearly has to last, so because we’re Nokia-owned we take the latest Nokia technology and build on that. This Signature collection is bang up to date.”

Rees says Vertu would like to replicate its success in countries like Hong Kong in the Philippines, eventually. “In Manila we’re working with our partner Lucerne at the moment and they’re supporting us very well, but I would like to see a Vertu branded store in Manila like in Paris and Singapore.”

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Vertu is available at Lucerne boutiques in Glorietta 4 and Shangri-La Plaza Mall.