Rolls-Royce Phantom Cherry Blossom Has 250,000 Stitches In The Headliner And Sculptural 3D Embroidery

Japan’s sakura cherry blossom season is in full swing (or full bloom, I should say), and to celebrate one Japanese Rolls-Royce client commissioned a custom Phantom Extended designed around the country’s national flower. Simply called the Phantom Cherry Blossom, it is inspired by “the fleeting beauty of the sakura blooms” — the flowers only last for about a week. For centuries people in Japan have participated in the Hanami tradition, where family and friends gather for picnics or parties to view the flowers, and the client wanted their Rolls-Royce to capture their formative Hanami memories and act as a family heirloom that can be passed down through generations. The idea was first generated three years ago, and Rolls-Royce’s designers traveled to Japan to meet with the customer and really experience the sakura culture.

On the outside the Phantom Cherry Blossom doesn’t look that special, at least as un-special as a Phantom can. It’s finished in Crystal over Arctic White paint, with a hand-painted black coachline that features a small cherry blossom on the front fender. Thankfully, the client went with the Phantom’s optional disc wheels, and all of the chrome exterior trim is intact.

Rolls-Royce hasn’t actually said the name of the color, but every possible interior surface is covered in a light pink leather that perfectly evokes the cherry blossoms. The main event is a large cherry bough embroidered into the Starlight Headliner, and thanks to advanced techniques Rolls-Royce’s craftsmen were able to create an effect of fallen cherry blossoms throughout the cabin — in all, the Phantom Cherry Blossom’s interior took over six months to design and develop.

The headliner alone is made up of more than 250,000 stitches and took three weeks to embroider, and Rolls-Royce used an offset tatami stitch inspired by ancient Japanese weaving that adds more dimension to the embroidery. One Rolls-Royce artisan aligned 11 individually embroidered frame sections to create the seamless tree graphic with its intertwined branches, and each white flower was made from individual satin-stitch petals that capture light at different angles. The fiber-optic lights in the headliner were carefully placed to accent the flowers and branches.

Rolls-Royce has employed many wild embroidery techniques on previous Bespoke creations, but the Phantom Cherry Blossom uses one the company hadn’t done before: three-dimensional sculptural embroidery. To create what looks like fallen cherry blossom petals, Rolls’ artists came up with a new technique where a self-supporting structure is created by layering thread on top of itself. The petals are then shaped and sculpted by hand and stitched into place, in areas like the door panels and headliner. It looks truly spectacular, especially when light hits them and shadows are created.

This Phantom is equipped with the Privacy Suite partition between the front and rear passenger compartments, which is a must-have option that opens up more customization possibilities — in this case, more of the petals are found on the suite’s surround, which also has its own clock facing the rear passengers. (You get awesome powered curtains, too.) The umbrellas hidden in the Phantom’s doors also have a falling petal motif on the inner lining, though Rolls-Royce didn’t release any photos of that.

Rolls-Royce