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Dilusso officially launched in October of 2015, but their Instagram activity began long before that, as Chakour and Kinney worked for nine months to gather a following and build brand partnerships. In the process, they brought on board a leading lifestyle blogger. Ghorbani, who founded the PaneraiCentral blog as a resource for Panerai enthusiasts out of his own enthusiasm for the brand, has since garnered a major following, namely over 300,000 Instagram followers as of the publication of this article. PaneraiCentral became Dilusso's first curator and Ghorbani became a cofounder. "T he next step was bringing on other curators that are recognizable in the social media space," said Ghorbani, "I've been in it since pretty much the inception of Instagram, I have forged a lot of relationships with all of these different brand ambassadors." One such relationship was with WhatUsMenLike, who runs a luxury lifestyle Instagram page that exceeds even PaneraiCentral, with 365,000 followers. He became Dilusso's second curator. Their job as curators is to put together a collection of luxury items tailored to the interests, style, and preferences of the client. They choose from a portfolio of brands available to Dilusso and/or brands which the curator has access to or a relationship with. There is no inventory, items are purchased specifically for each box and consultation is live. That means the client speaks directly to the curator and has access to the founders of the company as well. Even if you haven't committed to buying a box, if you look on the Dilusso website, you will find that you can actually chat with the founders and ask about the process. Overall, the entire process takes three full weeks. Dilusso embraces social media, but rejects the cold disconnect normally associated with technology and commerce. The founders emphasize experience because Dilusso is a highly interpersonal process. A client must communicate and form a relationship with the curator and the founders so that the outcome actually represents them. In turn, the founders and curators must have good relationships with the brands with which they work so they can make their clients happy. In that way, there are very few degrees of separation between everyone. More than that, Dilusso also personally hand delivers in North America, closing the circle and demonstrating their devotion to customer satisfaction. This has been missing from the luxury market as of late. "Unfortunately, things have fallen short on the retail side VUE ON LIFESTYLE V U E N J . C O M 60

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