Jony Ive's Christmas Tree Has No Ornaments

Apple design honcho Jony Ive has applied the brand's sleek, minimalist aesthetic to the concept of Christmas, replacing the traditionally flamboyant tree at Claridge's Hotel in London with an understated, monochrome installation.

Each year, a different designer festoons the legendary hotel with seasonal decorations, at the center of which stands a 25-foot tree. Burberry's was made of gold and silver umbrellas; McQueen's branches were studded with crystals and emeralds and hung with white, gold and silver eggs; Lanvin played with marionettes and Galliano's art deco tree incorporated snow leopards, dragon flies and parrots.

This year, however, Ive, working with fellow designer Marc Newsom, has put no decorations at all on the giant tree. Nearby, a grotto features a row of 13-foot light boxes, each glowing with black and white photographic images of snow-covered silver birch trees, set on a pure white floor.

Up above, visitors to the hotel see a canopy of dark green pine, as a white light creates a cycle of bright daylight, fading into night and back again. A single three-foot snow-covered tree is also growing in the forest, symbolic of the future.

Ive said in a statement, "There are few things more pure and beautiful than nature, so that was our starting point, layering various iterations of organic forms with technology."