Big spenders go Christmas crackers

THE only white Ireland’s super rich care about this Christmas seems to be white gold.

With watches costing €160,000, home entertainment systems at €140,000 and Christmas trees with decorations at €13,000, the rich have the world at their feet this Yuletide.

Among the hotspots for luxury shopping is Weir & Sons jewellers on Grafton Street, Dublin, where Geneva-made Patek Philippe watches starting at €10,000 are flying off the shelves.

“These watches are regarded as the best in the world,” said Weir & Sons managing director David Andrews.

The exclusive jeweller declined to reveal sales figures other than to say they were healthy — yet only one buyer this Christmas will get his or her hands on what could possibly be Ireland’s most expensive watch.

Made from 18-carat white gold, the watch-to-die-for at Weir & Son’s is the Patek Philippe Celestial for €160,000.

“The one here is one of the last ones (ever made) — we’ve got a buyer on the way, but we’ve been told that if we were to hold on to it for five years then we would get multiples of its [current] price,” Mr Andrews said.

For the ultimate in pricey popular culture, though, Weir & Sons is selling an Omega James Bond watch from €1,410 to tie-in with the success of the Casino Royale film with new Bond Daniel Craig.

“It’s the in-watch at the moment,” the jeweller said.

Just around the corner in Johnson’s Court jeweller Paul Sheeran is selling a pair of exclusive Stephen Webster ear-rings at €12,040.

Down the road, at Brown Thomas, this year’s hot celebrity handbag of the season is the €1,020 Jimmy Choo Mahala bag — as carried by Beyoncé, Gwyneth Palthrow, Kate Hudson, Keira Knightly, Eva Mendez and Kylie Minogue.

Over in Donnybrook, Dublin 4, the Bang & Olufsen audio-visual electronics shop is reputedly the busiest of the Danish electronics company’s 1,600 shops worldwide.

Here, the affluent D4 set are paying €85,000 to get home cinema kits installed in time for the big Christmas Day movie on RTÉ1.

For that price, they will get a 60-inch plasma television, a drop-down screen with projector and a remote control to draw their curtains and dim the lights as the film begins.

“When you buy Bang & Olufsen, you don’t just buy technical capability, you buy into the Scandinavian style,” said company spokeswoman Georgina Caraher.

“They are timeless pieces and the type of product people come to — and when they’re converted they stay with it.”

Among the must-have gifts at Bang & Olufsen is the Serena mobile phone — the classiest on the market with a circular dial resembling the old Telecom Éireann bell phones.

For the €1,300 price-tag you also get voice-recognition, top sound quality and an automatic phone-book that updates itself by “talking” to your home phone.

Yet even the D4 crowd’s love-affair with Bang & Olufsen is eclipsed by the audio-visual system currently being installed in one mansion by Dublin-based In-Home Entertainment.

For a cool €140,000, the buyer is having 14 huge televisions installed along with a hi-fi system wired to 16 rooms with top-notch Bowers & Wilkins speakers.

And for good measure the buyer is also installing a bar to shame the famous horseshoe-shaped one at Dublin’s exclusive Shelbourne Hotel.

“We’ve a dedicated team working round-the-clock to get this job finished in time for Christmas,” said In-Home Entertainment boss Clem Prendergast.

“The buyer’s done all the research and knows what he wants — and he wants it all.

“In every room, we are putting in top-of-the-range touch-screen controls on the walls for managing the television and the music.”

Yet even this €140,000 audio-visual system will be outdone by the set-up being installed by the company next year.

For one of Ireland’s richest families is having €500,000 worth of televisions, hi-fis and other electronic wizardry installed.

This Yuletide the nation’s rich are also paying big money to have their homes professionally decked out with Christmas trees, baubles and festive decorations.

For €3,000 to €5,000, French interior designer Laurent Billiet’s Dublin firm La Maison Chic will deck out homes to rival a Christmas scene from a Charles Dickens’ story.

“Our clients are professionals who do a lot of entertaining over Christmas like informal gatherings for business partners so it makes sense to do something special,” said Monsieur Billiet.

“It’s also cheaper for them: if they took time off to do it they’d lose a day’s pay, which for a professional couple is more than we charge for a full service.”

The firm has 30 bookings for its Christmas decor service, mainly in Dublin but also as far afield as Limerick, Galway and Donegal, with room for 10 to 15 more fittings if demanded.

La Chic Maison’s clients number lawyers and doctors, yet even their spending is outshone by one Wicklow client, who is spending €13,000 to deck out their home this Christmas.

“This is unusual as we are importing a live 11ft Christmas tree (with its roots intact) from England — there’s a shop in London specialising in them.

“On the tree, we’re putting French Daum opaque crystal ornaments in the shape of cherubs. They’d need about 40 to 50 for a tree and they cost €100 apiece.

“The clients also want a lot of jasmine flowers, which are out-of-season and have to be imported.”

Monsieur Billiet’s clients need not worry about pine needles in the carpet, come January 6. His service to clients includes a vigorous tidy-up.