Rare Shades 7 transforms New York into a celebration of Porsche colour and design

When 000 Magazine co-founder Alex Palevsky first tabled the idea of an event to celebrate Porsche’s historic and ongoing embrace of unusual paint colours, he could scarcely have imagined that, eight years later, the concept would be in its seventh iteration and rolling out for the first time in the heart of New York City. But on a warm spring afternoon in Queens last Saturday, the 000 team unveiled another technicoloured dreamscape of Porsche’s past and present, allowing fans of the brand and devotees of design to share a unique and unforgettable afternoon on the banks of the East River.

Always positioned as an event that would travel, Rare Shades debuted in 2018 at the Canepa Motorsport Museum near Monterey, California and subsequent shows have been held at a variety of different venues around the US and Canada. These range from the Porsche Experience Center Atlanta and Champion Motorsport in Miami to the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto and Skywalker Ranch near San Francisco – which is not open to the public.

Rare Shades 7 showed equal ambition in its venue, taking over the Wildflower Studios on 19^th Avenue in Queens, a space created by Robert De Niro, Raphael De Niro and property developer Adam Gordon. Billed as ‘a tool for storytellers’, this sprawling complex offered an extraordinary opportunity for 000 to create an exhibition that championed colour and form in a vast, gallery-like environment, giving each car room to breathe and to complement and contrast with the next. 

Highlights of Rare Shades 7 included the premiere of ‘Birch Green’, a film produced for 000 Films by Porsche colours expert Justin Roeser, as well as an exhibit entitled ‘Absence of Color,’ at the centre of which was a 930-generation 911 Turbo Slantnose – a car not seen in public for 35 years. Paint colours on display, appearing on a wide variety of Porsche models from early air-cooled cars to the latest motorsport-derived GT products, ran close to a three-digit number and included more than 20 different blues, 16 greens and no fewer than nine variations of pink or purple. Among these were extreme rarities such as Urbanbamboo Chromaflair, the soft mid-Seventies violet known as Moonstone in English or Flieder (Lilac) in its native German, and Jadegreen, a colour that first appeared in the 1973 IROC race series on a 911 Carrera RSR being driven by legendary American racing driver A.J. Foyt.

“People’s interest in colour around Porsche goes back to the earliest 356s,” says 000’s co-founder and Editor-in-Chief Pete Stout. “And it probably hit its apogee in terms of the standard colour palette available to customers in the late 1960 or early 1970s. There were these massive lists of standard and optional colours that closely followed a lot of the social upheaval and artistic experimentation of that time. It was a really fascinating period, and it produced a lot of cars that really stand out today. Standard offerings became quite conservative for a while after that, but Porsche’s Paint-to-Sample programme offered an opportunity for buyers to differentiate their cars once again and tune in to what spoke to them when they were kids – or what speaks to them now.”

Guests of Rare Shades 7 were also given direct insight into a collaboration between 000 Magazine, Porsche Exclusive Manufaktur, resulting in another Sonderwunsch vehicle curated by 000. This process has been offered on the 718 Spyder, 911 Turbo S and most recently the 718 Spyder RS. Two such cars, one finished in Darkseablue and the other in contrasting White, were on display at Rare Shades 7 alongside examples of earlier 718 Spyder cars in Brewstergreen and Albertblue. 

The event proved to be as memorable and as popular as its remarkable location suggested it might, with guests travelling from across the US and Europe to attend. Of particular note was the age range of the audience, with an unusually young crowd of passionate Porsche fans and curious, design-oriented first-timers in attendance – proof that colour is the conduit Palevsky had always envisaged; a joyful, inclusive medium and a conversation starter.

“One of my favourite aspects of Rare Shades is that it levels the playing field when it comes to conversations,” continues Stout. “No-one owns something as subjective as colour. So the reactions of a newcomer to Porsche are every bit as interesting, and valuable, as those of longtime Porsche enthusiasts. There’s something new for everyone – the newcomer finds a way into the conversation, while the veteran gets to consider familiar forms in a new way.”

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Images: Larry Chen, Courtesy of 000 Magazine