Drifting dreamily through the 1500 rooms of the Winter Palace, that is now the Hermitage Museum, and being spellbound by every jewelled object created by the House of Fabergé collected in the Shuvalov Palace by Fabergé Museum, makes me wonder. In a world where, in ideology we champion democracy over absolute monarchy, and in design we favour minimalism over opulence, it is romantic to fantasise a place in history where time flowed slower and things took longer to accomplish because we were not addicted to the instantaneity of everything and things were not mass produced to such an extent. Alas, we want our “liberté, fraternité, egalité”!