What Rolls-Royce's Black Badge really means

What is interesting about Black Badge, as opposed to studying the countless colour and trim options which bespoke departments of luxury marques offer, is that it is borne of the customer’s wish entirely to subvert the brand. It is as if Apple were asked by clients to create beautiful fountain pens and ink wells for them, to complement their laptops, and happily agreed.

The interest is in how Rolls-Royce has responded to that desire, and is paving the way for other luxury marques to follow suit. The Black Badge series has been tearing up the traditional codes of luxury for several years now – veneer out, charred wood in; shine out, matt in; leather out, technical fibres in – but has done so by listening to individual client requests rather than developing new products after extensive market research and focus groups. In doing so, Rolls-Royce has thrown out the business-model rule book. Of course, when your sales volumes are so low, this works. Mazda, for example, would have been hard pressed to style the MX-5 round each of its million customers worldwide.

But, for Rolls-Royce, it has resulted in some startling styling cues. Black Badge cars have become strong reflections of the world of art, fashion and yachts, where ultra-high net worth individuals often float, because client requests are based on their perceptions of luxury. Thus you’ll see echoes of fashion designers such as Balenciaga, Alexander McQueen and John Varvatos mixing with cues from pioneering sailing yachts inside Phantoms, Ghosts, Dawns and Wraiths. Three yachts in particular are name-checked by Rolls-Royce for their game-changing attitude to the use of wood that has inspired the car maker: Maltese Falcon (88m), Black Pearl (106.7m) and Sailing Yacht A (142.8m) which “combined the form of a heritage sailing craft with execution in technical fibres”, according to Rolls-Royce.

Another particularly significant influence comes from the ancient Japanese art of shou sugih ban, which involves charring wood, originally to preserve it, but nowadays to add a blackened aesthetic. Neatly for Rolls-Royce, the practice brings together the natural world, authentic materials and a rebel attitude.

The most prevalent theme in Black Badge is a bold flash of colour on the noir canvas. And so Forge Yellow, Mandarin, Tailored Purple and Cobalto Blue were born. Recent materials commissioned for Black Badge are woven stainless steel, meteorite, precious metals (rose gold, titanium and ruthenium) for speaker frets and nameplates, woven leather, pearlescent leather (it subtly changes colour when viewed from different angles) and brushed aluminium and copper veneer facias.

The pinnacle, thus far, in Black Badge specification (at least, that which the company is willing to discuss), is surely laboratory-grown black diamonds. These stones are grown from carbon in controlled conditions to render perfect gems that are the exact dimensions required to place them strategically in the cars. They are, of course, darkened, to fit the Black Badge vibe, before being fitted.

The marque’s CEO, Torsten Muller-Otvos, is keen to point out that “Black Badge is not a sub brand. It is an attitude.” When the brand talks about its clients, it talks about “the firebrand archetype” and “the outliers, the visionaries and iconoclasts” who have a “contrarian spirit”. It recognises they come from “new industries and geographies” and that their successes are “defined on their own terms”. That’s intriguing; few other marques have spent so much time and effort in understanding their customers – where they’ve come from and where they’re going to. Notice that Rolls-Royce doesn’t lavish its clients with plaudits and simpering praise – it recognises some of them are demanding and tricky, but this is the genius of it. The brand doesn’t sympathise or patronise; it empathises. And corporate empathy, as we know in this era, is the absolute key to profitability.

The future of Black Badge, it transpires, is bright.