The fantastical vision of journeying into the stars and exploring beyond our own Solar System is one that has long inspired humanity’s most driven minds, with many of us likely having once dreamed of growing up to become astronauts – and some having even gone so far as to turn those dreams into their own reality, both up there among the heavens & right here on Earth as members of the esteemed scientific community dedicated to advancing technologies to improve our species’ understanding of outer space. Much closer to home, Rolls-Royce has now proudly presented the Cullinan Cosmos as an exclusively one-of-one commission celebrating that very fascination shared by a family with their four-year-old son, brought to vibrant life while featuring an enthralling constellation of Bespoke details.
The commissioning client shared, “We wanted to create something our family would remember forever: a Rolls-Royce that captures the essence of the cosmos and shows that no dream is out of reach.”
Its exterior comes painted in shimmering Arabescato Pearl, bringing to mind moonlight’s gently lustrous glow across a midnight sky. A hand-painted Charles Blue twin coachline complements this evocatively sensuous finish, while the Illuminated Spirit of Ecstasy shines the way forward like a distant star glowing on the horizon.
Moving inside, the Cullinan Cosmos’ interior embodies a calmly meditative environment, reflecting deep space’s stillness and wonder, trimmed in Charles Blue & Grace White leather with Grace White contrast stitching and piping to match. Piano White veneers provide a crisply technical edge that recalls the high-gloss surfaces of satellite casings. Meanwhile, a unique Star Cluster motif was also created by the commissioning clients in close partnership with Rolls-Royce’s designers, rendered as an artwork painted by hand on the front passenger fascia & Bespoke embroidered into the headrests and door panels.
However, the Cullinan Cosmos’ key crowning hallmark is undoubtedly its fully hand-painted Starlight Headliner, the first one ever created by Rolls-Royce for one of its vehicles. This was painstakingly developed over 160 hours, before being entirely freehand painted by one of Goodwood’s in-house artists, to depict the Milky Way as an exquisitely celestial representation of the stars and cosmic mist seen in the sky every night, while being colour-graded to ideally match this Cullinan’s Bespoke interior palette.
The artist applied over 20 successive layers of acrylic paint to create the luminous cloud formations, utilizing a range of brushes to impart both depth & dimension. A most unexpected tool was used to achieve the mist effect itself, in the form of a makeup brush enabling the lightest pigment layer to gracefully dry upon contact.
Finely pointed brushes were also combined with a specific speckling technique to form the shimmering field of painted ‘stars’, imparting an organically stellar quality to the resulting final composition. Once the Starlight Headliner’s painting was finished and sealed, only then were the fiber-optic perforations punched & positioned individually by hand to complement the artwork’s mesmerizing contours.
Commissioned via the Private Office Dubai – one of several such Offices created to bring the Rolls-Royce Bespoke Collective’s full capabilities closer to its most visionary global clients – the Cullinan Cosmos was handed over to its commissioning family just in time for a special celebration, and now stands ready to make every one of their future journeys truly feel like a voyage into the stars.
