28 M_Cover.qxp:COVER - Mitchells | Richards

Previous page,
clockwise from
top left: Bottega
Veneta for the St.
Regis in Rome;
Dolce & Gabbana
Gold restaurant
in Milan;
the bar at Gold
Below, left:
Cavalli Club,
Florence
Right: Ralph
Lauren’s Ralph’s
restaurant, Paris
n the 1970s fashion designers were
satisfied to have their names
scrawled on the back pockets of
your jeans. Over the ensuing
decade, they discovered a way to
put their stamp on everything from
fragrance, sunglasses and leather
goods to furniture and bedding.
Now they want you to experience
their own lavish lifestyles by enveloping
you in their signature luxury hotel suites
and posh dining rooms.
The trend escalated this past year when
nearly a dozen new hotels were autographed
by top designers—from Giorgio
Armani’s sleek, ambitious Armani Hotel
Dubai and Bulgari’s bucolic Balinese
retreat, to Missoni’s stylish Scottish hideaway
and Christian Lacroix’s French
boulangerie-turned-bed and breakfast.
It’s not only the newest way to propagate
their names: designers insist the
evanescent hotel or dining experience
acts as a kind of “live-in portfolio” of their
work.
Giorgio Armani features custom-made
furniture and decorative objects from his
Armani/Casa home collection in his
namesake hotels, the second of which is
scheduled to open in Milan early next
year. “I wanted to see how the collection
would look when applied to real spaces,”
says the designer, who adds that the idea
gives hotel guests an opportunity to sam-
119
ple the furnishings in a living situation
before investing in them for their own
homes. Recognizable designer fabrics and
furnishings also encourage guests to
form an emotional connection
with the hotel—and
DESIGNER FABRICS
AND FURNISHINGS
ENCOURAGE GUESTS TO
FORM AN EMOTIONAL
CONNECTION WITH THE
HOTEL—AND THE BRAND.
the brand.
And while hotels
offer the opportunity
to live like
Armani or Versace
for days or even
weeks, restaurants
can offer the same
“lifestyle experience” in a
matter of hours. Take Ralph
Lauren, whose fashion forays
range from the highbrow sartorial chic of
London’s Savile Row to the Rocky
Mountain highs of Colorado. Inside
Ralph’s, located in the designer’s Paris
store, Lauren brings his idealized world to
life. The chic eatery is infused with his
signature British-Americana stamp, from
the vintage leather seating and equestrian-themed
artwork right down to the
menu, which includes beef raised on
Lauren’s own RRL Ranch. “The story of
the menu is like the classic film An
American in Paris,” says Lauren. “The
food is genuinely American, but set in a
mood that is genuinely international.”
In a more flashy setting, design duo
Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana
imbued their Milanese restaurant Gold
with a mix of exotic materials—pink and
gray arabesque-patterned marble, high
gloss steel, gold leather—that they consider
to be architectural equivalents of
their clothing.
While today’s designers
would like you to believe they
invented the haute hospitality
trend, that honor actually
goes to Pierre Cardin, who
bought the fashionable
French bistro Maxims in 1981
and has subsequently turned it
into an international brand. “I suspect
if you look hard enough you could
find Pierre Cardin’s name on a screwdriver,”
jokes American designer Todd
Oldham, whose own foray into the hospitality
game started in 1999 with the opening
of The Hotel and its adjoining Wish
restaurant in Miami, and continued this
year with the christening of 20 new suites.
Oldham is now in negotiations to design
a hotel in Chicago.
“It’s very smart of developers to find
tastemakers from other [creative] areas
who can enhance the hotel experience,”
says Oldham, who believes fashion
designers are naturally more sensitive to
aesthetics, form and function than typical
hotel designers. “Because we tend to
focus on making you look good, we can
also make you look good in a room.”