Departures Middle East Summer 2019

SUMMER 2019 

Sights, 

Sojourns & Styles 

FROM SOUTH AFRICA TO SWEDEN

TIME, A HERMÈS OBJECT. 

Arceau L’heure de la lune 

Time flies to the moon

Haute Joaillerie, place Vendôme since 1906 

The Dubai Mall - Mall of the Emirates - The Galleria Al Maryah Island 800-VAN-CLEEF (800-826-25333) 

Riyadh: Centria Mall +966 11461 5055 - Kingdom Tower +966 11 211 1317 - Jeddah: Al Tahlia +966 12 284 1481 

www.vancleefarpels.com

Perlée Collection 

Rose gold, yellow gold 

and diamond rings and bracelets.

jaresortshotels.com 

/Manafaru 

@JAManafaru_Maldives

Some experiences 

LEAVE YOU RICHER 

Cast away all stress and crinkle your toes in the sands of a tropical island haven where 

the Real You can rejuvenate. Discover Maldives culture with a cooking class, traditional 

massage or local village encounter. Or simply hide away in secluded luxury on an 

uninhabited island. 

Explore the layers of island life. Soar above the scenery by seaplane and make landfall 

on a pristine beach. Step underground for a decadent tasting experience amidst lava 

stone and dive under water to meet colourful sea life. Swim, spa, play and indulge as 

you muse over the magic of JA Manafaru. 

For bookings and more information, please visit jaresortshotels.com or call +960 6500 456 

or email reservations.manafaru@jaresorts.com

lia 

www.adler.ch

12 DEPARTURES SUMMER 2019 

Features 

66 

Outside the Box 

Known for his bold, complex 

designs, Pritzker Prize-winning 

architect Thom Mayne finally 

builds a home for himself. 

By Ted Loos 

Photographs by 

Spencer Lowell 

72 

It’s Always Sunny 

in San Miguel 

A longtime mecca for creative 

spirits from around the world, 

Mexico’s most charming 

colonial town is still as 

relevant as ever. 

By Maura Egan 

Photographs by Lindsay 

Lauckner Gundlock 

80 

Grand Hotel 

In the Scottish Highlands, 

art-world visionaries Iwan and 

Manuela Wirth have applied 

their Midas touch to 

a revitalised hotel. 

By Alix Browne 

Photographs by Simon Watson 

84 

Savouring the Season 

Off Sweden’s southeastern 

coast, the ethereal, rugged 

charms of Gotland are 

impossible to resist. 

By Adam Sachs 

Photographs by Felix Odell 

p 84 

A view of the Parroquia 

de San Miguel Arcángel 

from the Rosewood hotel 

in San Miguel de Allende 

LINDSAY LAUCKNER GUNDLOCK

14 DEPARTURES SUMMER 2019 

p 28 Inside the 

lavish Casa Macorís 

in Santo Domingo 

Departments 

p 24 

Ceramic vases by 

Marrakech-based Belgian 

designer LRNCE 

Travel 

21 

Johannesburg Reframed 

Celebrating the long-heralded revival 

of Maboneng, the South African 

metropolis’s now-vibrant arts district. 

24 

Shop the Casbah 

A fresh raft of designers and artisans 

are imbuing Marrakech with a new 

modernist spirit. 

28 

The Dominican Republic 

Dresses Up 

Brimming with a fresh wave of creative 

energy, Santo Domingo may be the 

Caribbean’s hottest capital of cool. 

36 

Restoration Period 

The London hotel scene reaches new 

heights with a recent cache of new and 

new-look hostelries. 

On the Cover 

PHOTOGRAPH BY 

SPENCER LOWELL 

Style 

16 From the Editor / 19 Departures Digital 

41 

Heavenly Creatures 

Dutch artist Ruth van Beek’s colourful 

collages perfectly complement the 

jewels of the season. 

44 

Yours, Truly 

Customisation programmes let you 

have a hand in creating your most 

coveted pieces. 

48 

The Colour Connoisseur’s 

Guide 

Experts reveal where to go to adorn 

your home in a chorus of colours. 

50 

Pop Goes the Easel 

After half a century at the vanguard of 

Italian design, Gaetano Pesce’s savantlike 

sense of colour still shines through. 

52 

Doing It Right 

Eco-conscious and sustainable 

fashion pieces that make the world 

a better place. 

Culture 

56 

Mexico Modern 

An ambitious US furniture marque 

takes inspiration from midcentury 

Mexican icons to stunning effect. 

p 52 

Fashion with a 

heart: belt bag 

by ethically 

conscious 

brand Cuyana, 

cuyana.com 

Keep in touch We welcome your comments and recommendations, which we may edit for clarity 

and space. Contact us at letters@departures-international.com. The key All prices are in British 

pounds, euros or American dollars unless otherwise specified. Hotel is a member of Fine Hotels 

& Resorts ˜ Establishment is either cash only or does not accept American Express cards. Online 

extras at departures-international.com 

Follow us @DeparturesInt 

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: © LRNCE, © CASAS DEL XVI, © CUYANA

CALIBER RM 07-01 

LIMITED EDITION JADE

From the Editor 

“ 

The Spanish-language version 

of departures-international.com 

will be your on-trend 

and constantly updated hub 

„ 

16 DEPARTURES 

IT IS ALWAYS A THRILL to reveal 

something new and exciting that we have 

conjured up – and so, concurrent with the 

debut of this edition of the magazine, it 

also gives me great pleasure to announce 

the launch of the Spanish-language 

version of our companion website, 

departures-international.com/es. 

This has been a labour of love for 

our team – a bespoke portal where the 

three pillars of our English-language 

site (Travel, Food and Life & Style) are 

now curated expressly for our Spanishspeaking 

audience. Whether it is a 

guide to Mexico City’s art scene or an 

update from the wilds of Uruguay, the 

Spanish-language version of departuresinternational.com 

will be your on-trend 

and constantly updated hub for the latest 

openings, reviews and insider tips across 

the Spanish-speaking world. 

To herald its arrival, we have a few 

relevant and topical complementary 

articles in this summer edition of 

our print magazine. We travel to 

the charming Mexican town of 

San Miguel de Allende – where a host 

of long-awaited hotel openings are 

bolstering an evergreen charm that has 

been luring artists for nearly a century – 

and to Santo Domingo, where a recent 

wave of creative and entrepreneural 

efforts that have transformed it into 

arguably the coolest capital in the 

Caribbean. We also profile a pair of 

creatives reviving midcentury Mexican 

furnishings with exceptional aplomb. 

We invite you to bookmark departuresinternational.com 

and hope that you’ll 

return to it for our uncompromising 

editorial integrity and up-to-the-minute 

timeliness over and over again.

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18 DEPARTURES 

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SUMMER 2019 DEPARTURES 

19

TRAVEL 

Painter and impresario 

Jonathan Freemantle in 

the gallery space at 

MK & Artist 

Johannesburg Reframed The South African city’s 

central arts district, Maboneng, is shining a light 

on the creativity of the country as a whole. 

by Ben Ryder Howe. Photographs by David De Vleeschauwer 

CULTURE TRIP DEPARTURES 

21

DEPARTURES TRAVEL CULTURE TRIP 

22 

From left: Ponte City tower in downtown Johannesburg is now a popular movie 

backdrop; a Maboneng habitué; bottom: street art in Maboneng 

URBAN BLIGHT DOESN’T have any 

beneficiaries – except skateboarders 

and graffiti artists. Bheki Dube 

grew up a skateboarding kid in 

Johannesburg in the 2000s, as the 

sprawling city, one of the largest 

and richest in Africa, underwent 

a staggering free fall into anarchy, 

violence and population flight. 

“The city was a blank canvas,” 

said Dube, who at the time lived in 

downtown Johannesburg, where 

hijacked skyscrapers, abandoned 

hotels and artist-run squatter 

colonies proliferated while South 

Africa chaotically transitioned 

from apartheid rule. “You could go 

anywhere you wanted, if you were 

brave enough.” 

Today, while still facing significant 

social challenges, Johannesburg has 

given birth to one of the most robust 

arts scenes in Africa, owing greatly to 

the near-apocalypse of its inner core. 

The centre of the decade-long revival 

is Maboneng, a now-thriving district 

of galleries, restaurants and shops 

that is drawing an international crowd 

looking to experience the country’s 

contemporary culture. “Maboneng is 

where Brooklyn hip meets authentic 

Africa,” Mark Lakin, cofounder of 

Epic Road, a bespoke travel company 

specialising in Africa, told me. “It’s an 

example of a rising black middle class 

amid grassroots arts and innovation.” 

Roughly ten square blocks, 

Maboneng comprises an old industrial 

area next to a pothole-filled road 

leading directly to Johannesburg’s 

legendary gold mines. Its name, a 

Sesotho word meaning “place of 

light”, says more about the aspirations 

of its inhabitants than the actual 

setting: highway overpasses and 

hulking warehouses loom over the 

cafes along Fox Street, the principal 

thoroughfare. 

“It was a ghost street when I arrived 

in 2009,” said Marcus Neustetter, 

codirector of the Trinity Session, 

which produces public art. “Over a 

quick period we saw a change.” It 

started with the opening of Arts on 

Main, a complex of brick industrial 

buildings converted into art spaces 

and shops. William Kentridge, one

of South Africa’s most famous artists, 

held a show there in 2009 and soon 

opened a nearby studio. The studios 

of Magnum photographer Mikhael 

Subotzky and conceptual artist Kim 

Lieberman are now there too. 

Franchises and other massmarket 

encroachments have been 

kept out of Maboneng, and the tolls 

of delinquency and age have been 

sedulously maintained, conjuring the 

grit of 1980s Tribeca. Painter Jonathan 

Freemantle, co-developer of the 

Cosmopolitan, a gallery and shopping 

venue in a Victorian landmark that 

once housed a brothel for miners, 

describes the Maboneng vibe as 

“just enough chaos”. Freemantle has 

turned the Cosmopolitan into “an 

active creative space” centred on 

music, culture and nightlife, with a 

sculpture garden by Patrick Watson, 

one of South Africa’s most celebrated 

landscape designers, amid the peeling 

paint and crumbling walls of derelict 

apartment buildings. 

Across the street from the garden, 

I met Mlungisi Kongisa, a soft-spoken 

39-year-old printmaker. I hadn’t 

come to Johannesburg to buy art, and 

Kongisa, whose inviting gallery, MK 

& Artist, is filled with original prints 

by the likes of Kentridge and David 

Koloane, the elder statesman of South 

African painters, wasn’t going to hardsell 

me. I had my eye on an etching by 

Cameroonian surrealist Joël Mpah 

Dooh, but the day was ending and I 

needed to think it over. 

Maboneng after dark is not for 

everyone. Visitors are advised to seek 

the guidance of a local like Dube, 

who founded and operates Curiocity, 

a provider of accommodation and 

private tours of public art and other 

landmarks. Dube likes to say that two 

HOTELS 

Fine Hotels & Resorts 

properties include the 

Houghton Hotel 

( thehoughton.com) and 

Four Seasons Hotel The 

Westcliff, Johannesburg 

( fourseasons.com). 

Johannesburg Handbook 

GUIDES 

Dlala Nje (dlalanje. 

org) leads tours of lessvisited 

areas, like Ponte 

City tower, which was 

hijacked by gangs in the 

1990s and today is used 

as a performance space. 

Curiocity (curiocity.africa) 

provides private tours 

of landmarks and public 

art exhibits. 

A sculpture by Amalie von Maltitz in the garden of the Cosmopolitan 

decades ago, a visit by an international 

celebrity such as Ava DuVernay or 

Oprah Winfrey – both of whom 

recently made well-publicised stops at 

the studio of painter Nelson Makamo 

– would have been inconceivable. But 

you still have to know where to go. 

The next day I returned to MK & 

Artist. Since Maboneng is only ten 

years old and built on something as 

mercurial as art, there is an anxiety 

about its existence, as if it could vanish 

at any moment or be turned into a 

kind of cultural zoo. After deciding 

to buy the etching, I had lunch at 

Canteen, a cafe in Arts on Main that 

serves elevated versions of South 

RESTAURANTS 

Few restaurants pay 

attention to the aromatics 

of fine dining as closely as 

Grei, a new addition to the 

ultra-exclusive, 53-suite 

Saxon Hotel (saxon. 

co.za). Canteen ( fb.com/ 

canteenmaboneng) offers 

hearty fare and a welcoming 

courtyard. 

African dishes, such as biltong and 

springbok carpaccio, in a courtyard 

shaded by olive trees. It was barely 

afternoon, but a party was underway 

on the roof, where legs dangled off 

a fire escape and a DJ played the 

Mankunku Quartet. Below, families 

with strollers dined on peri-peri 

chicken livers, and outside, a Tesla 

tried to wend its way through a street 

fair with merchants selling a variety 

of goods, from medicinal plants to 

seemingly ubiquitous T-shirts saying 

iwasshotinjoburg. Someone was 

adding a new mural to the layers of 

graffiti on the walls of Fox Street. It 

was just enough chaos. 

GALLERIES 

MK & Artist (+27 71 411 

7788), a collaborative studio, 

sells etchings, linocuts, 

woodcuts, monotypes 

and other prints. The 

David Krut Workshop 

(davidkrutprojects.com), 

one of the original tenants 

of Arts on Main, has a 

bookstore as well as a 

gallery space. 

DEPARTURES 

23

DEPARTURES TRAVEL MARKET WATCH 

24 

Shop the Casbah 

Be yond Berber rugs and baskets: 

these design, craft and fashion 

stores are defining Marrakech’s 

new modernist aesthetic. 

Riad Jardin Secret 

The city has no shortage of 

stylish riads, but this six-room 

hotel, tucked behind an unmarked 

doorway in the Bab Doukkala 

area, stands apart for its playful 

atmosphere and carefully curated 

boutique. Created by Parisian 

fashion couple Cyrielle Astaing 

and Julien Phomveha, the 20thcentury 

home is all detailed 

mosaic tiling, lattice woodwork 

and splashy textiles. This textured 

aesthetic extends to their shop, 

where they carry high-design 

versions of traditional crafts like 

kilim pillows and tadelakt clay pots. 

riadjardinsecret.com 

The Moroccans 

Seed oil derived from the prickly 

pear cactus, oud-infused argan oil 

and black soap made from crushed 

olives are among the organic 

products at this spot, next to the 

Jardin Majorelle on Rue Yves Saint 

Laurent. The store, which supplies 

Riad Jardin Secret and Aman 

A light installation by 

artist Francis 

Upritchard hangs in 

El Fenn Boutique 

Resorts, stocks its beauty line 

along with home accessories and 

jewellery from regional designers, 

including Scandi-Moroccan fashion 

brand Bougroug, which mixes 

Norwegian minimalism with local 

craftsmanship. themoroccans.ma 

El Fenn Boutique 

The interiors of the hotel El Fenn are 

an Instagrammer’s dream, and its restaurant/ 

shop allows visitors to replicate the look. 

Items found throughout the hotel – including 

the handwoven kilim throws on the daybeds 

– are for sale alongside clothing, jewellery 

and accessories sourced from the region. 

The kitsch-free store offers only the most 

exquisite Moroccan crafts: quality caftans, 

colourful bread baskets, geometric Fez 

pottery. El Fenn’s co-owner, Vanessa 

Branson (sister of Richard and founder of 

the Marrakech Biennale), also adorns the 

walls with rotating works from international 

artists. el-fenn.com 

LRNCE 

Belgian designer Laurence 

Leenaert’s line of modern textiles, 

ceramics and clothing is a 

welcome change from the city’s 

usual wares. Her studio, in an 

industrial area in the city’s 

northwest, carries rugs, pitchers, 

kimonos, sandals and more – all 

with a sense of whimsy that calls 

to mind Picasso’s ceramics, Miró’s 

line drawings, and local tribal 

patterns. Handcrafted in North 

Africa, the pieces recently launched 

at Maison et Objet Paris, and will 

soon be available in a new 

medina outpost. lrnce.com 

LRNCE’s Ruwa carpets are hand-knotted 

in the Atlas Mountains; left: limited-edition 

Qalb vases from LRNCE 

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: KASIA GATKOWSKA; © LRNCE (2)

DEPARTURES TRAVEL MARKET WATCH 

26 

Riad Yima 

Pop Art photographer and 

designer Hassan Hajjaj 

runs this vibrant gallery/ 

shop/cafe – awash in 

colour and packed with 

eclectic goods – 

in a refurbished home in 

the medina. Everything 

inside is for sale, including 

babouche slippers, 

upcycled Coca-Cola-crate 

benches and Hajjaj’s own 

street portraits of 

Moroccan fashionistas 

(he’s known as the Andy 

Warhol of Marrakech). 

Despite the 

overstimulating decor, it’s 

still less frantic than 

walking through the 

souks. riadyima.com 

La Famille 

Offering some of the 

best views in the city 

(and a welcome 

respite from the souks 

and sun), this leafy 

rooftop restaurant 

specialises in vegetarian 

dishes like aubergineand-mint 

hummus, 

grilled-fennel tagliatelle 

and homemade cakes. 

A boutique selling 

crafts, homewares and 

jewellery recently 

opened at the stylish 

spot. Also for sale are 

the intricate ceramics 

and glassware used in 

the restaurant. 

+212 5243 85295 

Lalla 

As one of the most 

in-demand personal 

shoppers in Marrakech, 

with clients that include 

Sarah Jessica Parker and 

Gwyneth Paltrow, Laetitia 

Trouillet can skillfully 

navigate the city’s souks. 

Her itinerary may include 

her own space, Lalla, 

which is filled with 

handbags, home 

accessories and vintage 

wares in styles you won’t 

see elsewhere. For 

souvenirs, check out 

the pouches fashioned 

from vintage Moroccan 

fabric and handmade 

accessories for the hair. 

lalla.fr 

Marrakshi Life 

The pieces at fashion photographer Randall Bachner’s clothing store are handwoven and 

tailored in the adjacent atelier, where artisans use traditional Moroccan techniques to create 

decidedly contemporary yet relaxed looks. The intentionally oversized tailoring on everything 

from soft blazers to boxy jumpsuits means everything is unisex. This season, the five- year-old 

brand introduced a patchwork of recycled pieces as part of its commitment to zero waste. 

marrakshilife.com 

Max & Jan 

This airy, whitewashed 

space has everything from 

sleek leather bags to bold 

jewellery, but regulars go 

for the contemporary 

clothing by Belgian 

owners Maximilian Scharl 

and Jan Pauwels. It’s a 

combination of urban 

streetwear and traditional 

Moroccan elegance: 

colourful prints on 

billowing harem trousers, 

flowy tunics, jumpsuits 

made with interesting 

fabrics. The recently 

opened rooftop 

restaurant, which serves 

updated local staples, 

overlooks the bustling 

medina. maxandjan.com 

From top: 

photographer 

Hassan Hajjaj’s 

tearoom-cum-shop 

Riad Yima; the 

industrial interior of 

Max & Jan 

FROM TOP: HASSAN HAJJAJ; MARC VAN VAEK

Eric - Life Saver 

Courchevel • Baden-Baden • Paris • Vence - Côte d’Azur • St Barths • Cap d’Antibes • Antigua - West Indies • London • São Paulo

28 DEPARTURES TRAVEL DISPATCH 

Casa Macorís, one of the 

colonial houses to rent 

at Casas del XVI, a hotel 

in Santo Domingo 

The Dominican Republic Dresses Up 

Santo Domingo’s most stylish and creative power 

players are turning the historic Zona Colonial 

into a new Caribbean hot spot. by Jacqueline Gifford 

ON A STIFLINGLY HOT September 

afternoon in the Dominican Republic 

– humidity hovering at, oh, 99.9 

percent – I found myself on my way 

to get a pair of espadrilles in Santo 

Domingo’s Zona Colonial. 

Ricardo Fernandez, the Spanishborn 

owner of La Alpargatería 

(laalpargateria.com.do), a company 

selling handcrafted shoes, was 

walking me from his first boutique, 

set on the tiny Calle Salome Ureña, 

to his newer atelier on the wider Calle 

Las Mercedes. The original is a lowkey 

affair, with a few rows for display 

and a courtyard out back where thick 

vines cover decaying stone walls. 

Think part Brooklyn, part New 

Orleans, with a dash of downtown LA. 

The atelier, however, is a more 

polished shop in an early-20thcentury 

building, its façade painted 

an electric blue. There, you can 

pick from among the endless fabric 

swatches – cheerful florals, bold 

stripes and plaids – and walk out with 

a pair of espadrilles for under $50. 

There are many boutiques like La 

Alpargatería in this utterly charming, 

centuries-old part of Santo Domingo 

© CASAS DEL XVI

30 

DEPARTURES TRAVEL DISPATCH 

– which is having a bit of a moment. 

Government money is sprucing up 

the streets. Artists are settling here. 

Interiors guru Carlos Mota, a world 

traveller who has put down roots 

in the Dominican Republic, bought 

an apartment in the Zona two years 

ago and recently decorated the new 

branch of Mesón de Bari (302 Calle 

Hostos), a cafe beloved by well-heeled 

locals. He calls the town “a hidden 

treasure, an undiscovered Cartagena. 

You walk around and you find layers.” 

I’ve been covering the Caribbean 

for years, yet Santo Domingo – the 

capital of the Dominican Republic 

and home to some 2.6 million people 

– was entirely new to me. Which is 

somewhat of a surprise, given that 

it’s a four-hour flight from New York 

and the oldest European city in the 

Americas, established in 1496 by 

Bartholomeo Columbus (yes, brother 

of Christopher). 

“Most people don’t think of 

visiting Caribbean cities, but from 

Santo Domingo’s 

Zona Colonial 

dates back to 

the 16th century 

a style standpoint, Santo Domingo 

is brimming with boutiques,” said 

Andria Mitsakos, founder of lifestyle 

brand Wanderlista, who produces 

furniture here. Like Mota, Mitsakos 

is an inveterate traveller. She recently 

gave up her Manhattan apartment to 

live a more nomadic lifestyle, renting 

in Athens and the Zona, where she’ll 

spend weeks at a time designing rattan 

From left: Mamey Galería shows 

contemporary Dominican artists; variations 

on the espadrille at La Alpargatería 

furniture and scouting crafts. “The 

architecture is inspiring,” she told me. 

Hundreds of 16th-century Spanish 

colonial buildings still stand here, 

now reimagined as contemporary 

shops, galleries, even hotels. 

Interior designer Patricia Reid, 

longtime Zona resident and friend of 

the late Oscar de la Renta, has seen 

this area go in and out of fashion. 

(Most business still takes place in the 

modern city centre.) “One hundred 

years ago, this was the ‘in’ place to 

live,” explained Reid, who designed 

Julio Iglesias’s homes in Punta Cana 

and Marbella, Spain. “It’s coming 

back. I don’t want it to be a museum. I 

want it to be a living city.” 

Reid is a master at mixing found 

objects from Bali and Morocco 

with mahogany furniture made in 

the Dominican Republic and then 

layering in her own paintings and 

drawings of nature. You can get a feel 

for her eclectic, colourful work at 

Casas del XVI (casasdelxvi.net), which 

consists of six colonial-era mansions 

in the Zona with features like open-air 

courtyards and pools. In the coming 

years, more houses – which, with their 

brick archways, terracotta floors and 

wood-beamed ceilings, can take up 

to a year to renovate – will be added, 

so that the hotel will feel like a sort of 

mini village. The star attraction right 

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: VICTOR STONEM; © LA ALPARGATERÍA; VICTOR STONEM

32 DEPARTURES TRAVEL DISPATCH 

From top: pineapple-shaped planters and vases made by 

Ysabela Molini under her Casa Alfarera brand; a new outpost 

of Mesón de Bari, a cafe serving traditional Dominican food 

that was designed by decorator Carlos Mota 

now is the two-bedroom, exclusive-use 

Casa del Diseñador, a former home of 

de la Renta (other houses can be rented 

by the room). 

One morning, over cups of rich, 

tar-thick Dominican coffee at the 

Casa Macorís, one of the houses in 

the Casas del XVI collection, I chatted 

with Amelia Vicini, whose family is 

responsible for the project as well as 

numerous other properties in the Zona. 

Beside economic investment, she 

credited the area’s resurgence to the 

young diaspora moving back: people 

like Carolina Contreras, an influencer 

and founder of Miss Rizos, a blog 

and salon that encourages women to 

embrace their curls. 

With her statement glasses and 

natural hair, Parsons-educated Natalia 

Ortega, who grew up in Santo Domingo 

and returned after college, may be the 

most emblematic of this new creative 

set. She works with Dominican and 

Haitian artists to weave beautiful 

straw hats for her line Los Tejedores 

(lostejedores.com), started with her 

boyfriend, Ricardo Ariel Toribio. 

Ortega now moves between studios, 

meeting clients in person and selling 

her pieces online. 

Santo Domingo is nothing if not 

social: after speaking with one artist, 

they’d connect me to another, and 

so on. Through Mota, I met fashion 

‘‘The Zona Colonial 

is a hidden treasure, an 

undiscovered Cartagena. 

You walk around 

and you find layers” 

designer Oriett Domenech (oriett 

domenech.com), who has dressed Kylie 

Jenner. At her atelier in the city centre, I 

fell hard for one of her hand-cut, bodyhugging 

shift dresses – made entirely 

out of cork. And through Domenech’s 

husband, investor Miguel Angel 

Gonzalez, I ran into Vanessa Gaviria, 

whose SBG restaurant group owns the 

Mediterranean-influenced La Cassina 

(fb.com/lacassinasantodomingo). 

Power-lunching may be a thing of the 

past in New York, but it’s alive and 

well at this low-lit, formal spot in the 

neighbourhood of Evaristo Morales. 

But this current wave of artists 

is mainly based in the Zona. There, 

you’ll find Ysabela Molini, creator of 

Casa Alfarera (casaalfarera.com) and 

a brilliant ceramist who sources all 

her clay on the island (no easy feat) 

and makes massive pineapple-shaped 

urns as well as delicate sconces, 

plates and vases. And Alejandro 

Ruiz and Eddy Guzmán, the owner 

and curator, respectively, of Mamey 

Galería (mamey.co), which combines 

a cafe, bookshop and cinema with 

two galleries showcasing historical 

and contemporary works by 

Dominican artists. 

At times, I felt like the Zona was 

one big roving street party. When 

the heat had subsided, I set out 

early on a Friday evening, passing 

through the Parque Colón, to see the 

soaring Cathedral of Our Lady of the 

Annunciation, which dates back to 

1512. Children were chasing balloons; 

men gathered to play dominoes. After 

dinner, I circled back to the Parque, 

now alive with music. 

FROM TOP: KARLA READ; HAROLD LAMBERTUS

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OUT 

IN 

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Hotels offering a complimentary 

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The Landmark Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong 

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Mandarin Oriental, Munich 

Mandarin Oriental, New York 

Mandarin Oriental, Prague 

Mandarin Oriental Pudong, Shanghai 

Mandarin Oriental, Taipei 

Mandarin Oriental, Washington DC 

Hotels offering a complimentary 

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Mandarin Oriental, Barcelona 

Mandarin Oriental Wangfujing, Beijing 

Mandarin Oriental, Boston 

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Mandarin Oriental Jumeira, Dubai 

Mandarin Oriental, Geneva 

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36 DEPARTURES TRAVEL CHECKING IN 

Restoration Period 

The ever-expanding London hotel 

scene has added a sparkling lineup of 

new and newly redone properties all 

across the city. by Ben Ryder Howe 

“THE HISTRIONIC ART is the London art par excellence,” 

travel writer Jan Morris once wrote. The city is a non-stop 

spectacle of pageantry and performance, where, according 

to Morris, “the greasepaint is always on”. Nowhere is this 

currently more evident than in the sheer multitude and 

ambition of new and reborn London hotels. 

Take, for example, one of these properties, The Stratford 

(manhattanloftgardens.com) at Manhattan Loft Gardens, a 

42-storey, double-cantilevered tower. Harry Handelsman, 

the 69-year-old developer behind the project, wants to shift 

the city’s centre of gravity towards Stratford, a previously 

grim part of London best known as the site of the 2012 

Summer Olympics. It’s a tall order, but Handelsman, 

who with André Balazs brought the high life to sleepy 

Marylebone with the Chiltern Firehouse, is confident that 

Manhattan Loft Gardens will serve as a beacon to the young 

and chic. It’s certainly big enough: designed by Skidmore, 

Owings & Merrill, the team behind the Burj Khalifa and 

One World Trade Center, the 146-room obelisk (there are 

also 248 rental lofts) hovers on the eastern flank of the 

metropolis, far enough to be only dimly visible from the 

city centre, a radical statement of confidence in the power 

of the city to limitlessly expand. 

While Manhattan Loft Gardens aims to dazzle 

with spectacle and size, the Belmond Cadogan Hotel 

Left: a junior suite at 

the impeccably restored 

Belmond Cadogan Hotel 

in Chelsea; below: the 

terrace of the Mandarin 

Oriental Hyde Park’s 

Royal Suite 

( belmond.com) seeks to impress 

with stateliness and exclusivity. 

Situated on a Chelsea corner readymade 

for a foggy, gaslit scene from 

a Henry James book jacket, the 54- 

room Queen Anne–style town house 

has been operating as a hotel under 

various owners since 1887 (it was 

the scene of Oscar Wilde’s arrest for 

indecency in 1895) and now becomes 

Belmond’s first London property. 

Belmond likes its hotels to feel as if 

they have been in place forever, which 

the Cadogan certainly. The pièce de 

résistance is Cadogan Place Gardens, a 

proper English garden (members-only 

but open to hotel guests) shaded by 

mulberry and plane trees and featuring 

a pair of macadam tennis courts. 

FROM TOP: © BELMOND CADOGAN HOTEL; © MANDARIN ORIENTAL HYDE PARK, LONDON

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DEPARTURES TRAVEL CHECKING IN 

38 

The former Camden Town Hall 

Annexe, in King’s Cross, a Brutalist 

slab that once housed a radical leftist 

city council, is aesthetically the 

antithesis of a Chelsea town house but 

in its way just as pure an expression 

of London’s character. Three years 

ago, the run-down hulk, on the verge 

of demolition, was acquired by the 

Standard. As a construction manager 

showing me the rooms said, “Nothing 

should be boring in a Standard,” which 

would be almost impossible inside the 

aquarium-like, 266-room property, 

with its convex windows and bulbous 

concrete façade. Almost everything in 

the Standard, London (standardhotels. 

com) had to be specifically designed 

for the undulating, curvilinear space. 

There are inspired touches such as 

the additional matte-black floors 

planted fez-like atop the original 

beige structure, an external elevator 

that conjures a vertically ascending 

miniature red London bus, and an 

inventive adaptation of the hotel’s 

windowless central rooms, which 

have been geared towards DJs and 

other nocturnal types. 

The Standard is a hotel to gawk 

at, but for sheer number of camerapointing 

tourists blocking sidewalks, 

it’s hard to beat the Mandarin Oriental 

Hyde Park, London ( mandarin 

oriental.com), an opulent landmark in 

London’s glitziest shopping district. 

A fire last summer briefly derailed 

the most extensive renovations in the 

building’s 130-year history, leaving 

only its public spaces open (including 

Dinner by Heston Blumenthal, the 

Michelin two-star restaurant). The 

hotel fully reopened this spring 

and features all-new guest rooms and suites, as well 

as two penthouses ornamented with chandeliers and 

other lighting referencing the British crown jewels. (The 

penthouses also come fortified with bulletproof windows 

and sleeping quarters for bodyguards.) 

For pure glamour, the Connaught ( the-connaught. 

co.uk) is a hotel so opulent you might want to arrive in a 

tuxedo (or, as a guest standing next to me at check-in did, 

a bathrobe). Charles de Gaulle’s favourite hotel in London 

(he installed himself on the first floor during the Blitz), 

the Connaught recently added the Mews, a town house 

offering high-touch hotel service in a private residence. 

Furnished with artwork from the Gagosian Gallery (Louise 

Bourgeois, Marc Newson) as well as a grand piano, the 

Mews stands just a block away from the Connaught, to 

which it connects via a private corridor. You will likely be 

tempted, however, to come and go through the Mews’s 

carriage house entrance on Adams Row. Fulfill your fantasy 

by wearing one of the Burberry trenches in the closet or 

dipping into a Moynat leather jewellery trunk filled with 

vintage treasures. After all, as Morris wrote, echoing the 

city’s most famous scribe, “London is a stage!” 

Clockwise from top 

left: a membersonly 

garden, open to 

Belmond Cadogan 

Hotel’s guests, that 

includes a pair of 

macadam tennis 

courts; one of 146 

rooms within the 

Stratford; the Mews, 

a private town 

house addition at 

the Connaught, 

features art from 

Gagosian Gallery 

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: © BELMOND CADOGAN HOTEL; ED REEVE; © THE CONNAUGHT

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JEWELLERY PHOTOGRAPHS BY JON ERVIN 

Graff ruby and 

diamond earrings, 

graff.com 

STYLE 

Heavenly Creatures Precious stones of all hefts 

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OBJECTS OF DESIRE DEPARTURES 

41

DEPARTURES STYLE OBJECTS OF DESIRE 

Left: Van Cleef & Arpels 

white and red gold, ruby, 

sapphire and diamond 

earrings, vancleef 

arpels.com; above: Chopard 

rose gold, pink sapphire and 

ruby earrings, chopard.com

Tiffany & Co platinum 

and pink sapphire 

earrings from the 2019 

Four Seasons of Tiffany 

collection, tiffany.com 

DEPARTURES 

43

DEPARTURES STYLE PERSONALISATION 

44 

Yours, Truly From designer denim to status trainers, 

made-to-order programmes let you have a hand in 

customising your most coveted pieces. by Hayley Phelan. 

Photographs by Richie Talboy. Styled by Jenny Hartman 

1 

3 

1 John Hardy custom 

gold necklace with 

opals, diamonds, 

sapphires, topaz and 

mother-of-pearl 

AFTER 80 YEARS of making understated 

handbags, leather-goods brand Valextra – 

known for eschewing logos and branding – 

has launched #NoLogoMyLogo, a bespoke 

programme that invites customers to design 

their very own handbag. After clients choose 

the shape, size and colour, and then submit 

their initials, a team of graphic designers 

creates a one-of-a-kind pattern based on 

those specifications. 

“Typically logos are about the brand,” said 

Sara Ferrero, CEO of Valextra. “But that’s not 

what we’re about. This is a celebration of the 

customer and their own unique personal taste, 

rather than a celebration of us as a company.” 

High-end fashion has long been about 

having the right designer bag or the “It” 

shoe, but these days true luxury is about 

making something yours and displaying 

your individual aesthetic. Louis Vuitton 

recently launched a line of menswear that 

allows clients to put their mark (monograms, 

patches) on everything from trainers to jean 

jackets. Meanwhile, Brunello Cucinelli 

debuted a made-to-measure suiting 

programme this past autumn, and Gucci has 

2 

2 Valextra leather-andonyx 

“NoLogoMyLogo” 

monogram bag; Brioni 

made-to-measure 

wool coat 

3. Brunello Cucinelli 

made-to-measure wool 

suit; Prada made-tomeasure 

shirt; 

Valentino men’s trainer 

with monogram patch

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DEPARTURES STYLE PERSONALISATION 

46 

6 

4 Marco Bicego adjustable 

yellow-gold necklace; 

Blazé Milano made-toorder 

silk blazer 

5 Louis Vuitton men’s 

“Now Yours” customisable 

denim jacket 

6 Pomellato adjustable 

white-diamond bracelet, 

linked to adjustable 

rose-gold bracelet with 

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bracelet 

7 Lanvin made-to-measure 

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steel Santos de Cartier 

watch with interchangeable 

straps 

7 

4 5 

recently expanded its unisex DIY programme 

to include cardigans with varsity-style 

letters. At Tiffany & Co, customers can have 

everything from monograms to handwritten 

doodles engraved on a wide array of 

products as part of its Make It My Tiffany 

personalisation programme. 

“You could say it’s evidence of our 

increasingly individualistic society,” said 

Fflur Roberts, head of global luxury goods 

at research firm Euromonitor. “Customers 

want to make their own statement.” 

Take insider-favourite women’s suiting 

label Blazé Milano. While the company now 

sells ready-made blazers, its made-to-order 

programme, which allows clients to pick 

from 14 different button types, six linings, 

and countless colours and fabrics, remains 

the cornerstone of its business. Allowing 

individuals to partake in the crafting of 

something doesn’t just result in a beautiful 

item – it can also provide an opportunity 

for self-reflection. “I think being part of that 

process can be quite a profound experience 

for people,” said Beth Bugdaycay, cofounder 

of Foundrae, a cult jewellery label known 

for its medallion-shaped charms and cigarband 

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48 DEPARTURES STYLE BRIGHT IDEAS 

The Colour Connoisseur’s Guide 

The experts weigh in on where to find everything 

from ombré glass furniture to red bath fixtures to 

give your home a new kaleidoscopic look. 

by Joe Harper. Illustrations by Jordan Andrew Carter 

ACCENT FURNITURE 

Decorator Amy Lau loves works by the 

Latvian-born, Amsterdam-based furniture 

designer Germans Ermičs. “His furniture adds 

an interesting, bespoke touch that makes a 

room so distinctive and memorable,” she says. 

One of her favourite pieces is his 2017 Ombré 

Glass Chair, a boxy seat that fades from one 

colour to the next across just four planes 

of glass – a medium he uses for most of his 

designs, which include tables, consoles and 

shelving. “Alchemy of colour is the cornerstone 

of his work,” says Lau. germansermics.com 

HARDWARE 

Fashion designer Lisa Perry 

also has a talent for decorating 

interiors, as is evident in her 

new book Lisa Perry: Fashion, 

Homes, Design (Assouline). 

To create bold spaces akin to 

her 1960s-inspired clothing, 

Perry says she adds pops 

of colour to all-white rooms. 

One way to achieve this is 

with doorknobs, and Perry 

suggests Bonnemazou Cambus, 

a French brand that brings 

unexpected shapes to handles 

in bright hues. “Hardware is 

not always a place where 

creativity can shine, but their 

pieces make a statement, 

and the colour choices 

are electric,” says Perry. 

bonnemazou-cambus.fr 

UPHOLSTERY 

Danielle Fennoy of Revamp 

Interior Design in New 

York doesn’t like how most 

upholstered furniture only 

comes in understated shades 

like beige or grey, so to make 

her pieces unique, she often 

reupholsters everything. 

She prefers Romo’s Black 

Edition Herbaria Collection 

(romo.com) for its organic 

patterns in bright colours; 

Maharam (maharam.com) for 

a retro look, typified by the 

Millerstripe wool by Alexander 

Girard, which was designed in 

1973; and Dedar (dedar.com) 

for the unexpected. “Dedar’s 

colours are richer, deeper and 

more complex than those I’ve 

seen elsewhere,” says Fennoy. 

ART 

“Gary Petersen’s Constructivist paintings are 

transfixing,” says famed decorator Jamie Drake. 

He discovered Petersen at the New York gallery 

McKenzie Fine Art, which represents a roster 

of abstract artists who aren’t shy about using 

colour. “His pieces have a rhythm of overlapping 

geometries that is upbeat and energetic. They 

create a true focal point, with a Jazz Age spirit,” 

says Drake. mckenziefineart.com

MURALS 

Designer Richard 

McGeehan often 

commissions 

Brooklyn artist Matt 

Austin, whose work 

ranges from detailed 

landscapes to abstract 

geometries; they take 

about two weeks 

to execute. “Go to him 

for the unexpected 

and the amazing,” 

McGeehan says. 

mattaustinstudio.com 

TEXTILES 

Fawn Galli’s first book, Magical 

Rooms (Rizzoli), is a study 

in opulent colour. She found 

inspiration for the spaces 

featured in the book from her 

travels to places like Oaxaca, 

Mexico, where she sources 

textiles from Los Baúles de Juana 

Cata (+52 951 501 0552), which 

works with local artisans who 

use natural dyes. When in Tokyo, 

she likes Morita (morita-antiques. 

com), which sells woodblockprinted 

furoshiki wrapping cloths 

and embroidered sashiko fabric. 

“It’s one of my favourite places 

for vintage kimonos and wall 

hangings,” says Galli. 

BATH FIXTURES 

Rather than sticking to traditional 

finishes like nickel and brass, 

designer Nicole Fuller suggests 

adding whimsy by choosing 

from the colourful selection 

of faucets and handles from 

Fantini. The Italian brand’s Nice 

Collection features translucent 

acrylic knobs with bases offered 

in six different hues. For an 

even brighter look, the rounded 

spouts and cross handles of 

the I Balocchi series can be 

finished in a fire-engine red. 

fantiniusa.com 

WALLPAPER 

Celerie Kemble, of the family-run Kemble Interiors, 

says wallpaper easily brings colour to a room. “My go-to 

is Schumacher,” says Kemble, whose own collection 

for the brand includes lively motifs like the striped 

Creeping Fern. “I love adding their Romeo marbleised 

paper to bookcases. It’s both wild and scholarly at the 

same time.” fschumacher.com 

CARPETS 

“We can easily forget the luxury 

of a beautiful carpet under bare 

feet,” says designer and hotelier 

Kit Kemp. She often collaborates 

with Christopher Farr to make pieces 

like Egg & Dart – a geometric 

jute-and-wool rug featuring blue, 

orange, green, yellow and red 

dots throughout – which she used 

inside the Meadow suite at her 

Crosby Street Hotel in New York. 

christopherfarr.com 

TILES 

Mission Tile West, which has 

showrooms throughout the Los 

Angeles area, offers machinecut 

tiles that are painted by hand. 

Designer Peter Dunham, who chose 

the brand’s eight-by-15-centimetre 

offerings in the Tahiti colour for a 

1905 house in Santa Monica, says 

he likes the automation aspect 

for providing tight grout lines, but 

the hand-painted element for its 

dazzling hues. missiontilewest.com 

LIGHTING 

“I love colourful 

lampshades, and Bhon 

Bhon makes the most 

beautiful ones,” says 

New York designer 

Miles Redd. Based in 

Queens, Bhon Bhon 

handcrafts custom 

shades using everything 

from painted linens 

to pierced leather. 

Its pieces have been 

featured in the homes of 

Gloria Vanderbilt, Sting 

and Madonna, to name 

a few. Redd suggests 

trying a pink shade: 

“It will glow like a glass 

of brandy held up to 

firelight.” bhonbhon.com 

DEPARTURES 

49

DEPARTURES STYLE VISUAL STIMULATION 

50 

Pop Goes 

More than 50 years into his career, the radical nonno of 

Italian design is still using colour to defy convention. 

by Karin Nelson. Photographs by Stefan Ruiz 

Above: designer Gaetano 

Pesce in his Brooklyn studio 

with his Up chair for B&B 

Italia; right: Pesce recently 

reproduced his 1984 Pratt 

Chair in new colours for the 

gallery Salon 94 Design, 

salon94design.com 

the Easel 

WHEN GAETANO PESCE was nine, 

he punched his teacher for being 

stupid. Improper as the act was, 

it was also fortuitous. He was 

expelled and then enrolled in the 

only other school in Padua, Italy, an 

all-girls institution. “I was the only 

boy, and I learnt a lot about how to 

think and act,” says the architect and 

designer. Two decades later, in 1969, 

he produced his now iconic Up chair 

for B&B Italia, a bulbous seat shaped 

like an ancient fertility goddess. With 

its spherical ottoman attached like a 

ball and chain, the chair symbolised 

the oppression of women by men. 

It was the first industrial-design 

object to express such a political 

point of view – and 50 years on, it’s as 

relevant as ever. 

But then Pesce, who turns 80 in 

November, has always been a designer 

for our times. His work, which runs 

the gamut from bouncy resin vases 

to an office building covered with 

flowerpots, is fluid, imperfect, wildly 

innovative and, most markedly, 

colourful. “Colour is vital. When I 

CHAIR: COURTESY GAETANO PESCE/SALON 94 DESIGN

LAMP: COURTESY GAETANO PESCE/SALON 94 DESIGN 

Pesce’s one-of-a-kind 2018 Medusa table 

(right) and 2016 resin-and-steel Rug lamp 

(above) for Salon 94 Design 

started using it, my colleagues were 

dressed like priests, which I never 

understood,” says Pesce, referring 

to a time when both the culture and 

aesthetics of design took their lead 

more from staid architecture than 

from art. Even when his pieces are 

laden with social commentary, they 

are joyful. Which is why, along with 

Kaws, Jeffrey Deitch and Laure 

Heriard Dubreuil, who installed a 

cabinet he designed – shaped like 

a smiley face and painted candyfloss 

pink – in her New York fashion 

boutique The Webster, his biggest 

fans are children. “Art is not drama,” 

says Pesce, seated in his bendy 357 

Feltri chair for Cassina, which Raf 

Simons reupholstered with American 

quilts for last year’s Design Miami. 

“Art is life, and in a moment when 

our world is a little depressing, it’s 

important to make something positive 

and pleasurable.” 

To celebrate the Up chair’s 

anniversary, Pesce staged an 8m 

version of it in Milan’s Piazza del 

Duomo this April as part of the city’s 

Design Week. And earlier this year, 

he presented new and old works at 

Galerie Nathalie Obadia in Brussels. 

Pesce, who’s been based in New York 

since 1980, still goes to his Brooklyn 

studio every day. He’s busy creating 

new pieces and playing around 

with innovative materials, such 

as a translucent resin he recently 

used to recast his 1984 Pratt chairs, 

making them even more vivid. In the 

autumn, he’ll show new work at the 

Manhattan gallery Salon 94 Design, 

and, as part of the city’s Performa 19 

Biennial, he will present a resin rug, 

pieces of which viewers can carve 

out and take home. “Art is done for 

others to enjoy.” 

Right: Pesce in his 

studio working 

on La Perdita della 

Manualità (The 

Loss of Dexterity), 

a deflated hand 

sculpture about the 

decline of handwork 

DEPARTURES 

51

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56 DEPARTURES CULTURE GREAT SOURCES 

Mexico Modern 

A burgeoning furniture brand 

is reviving a host of near-forgotten 

midcentury maestros. by Pilar Viladas 

WHEN AMANDA and Sebastian Reant began their furniture 

company, Luteca, in Dobbs Ferry, New York, in 2015, they 

were at the forefront of a revival of interest in modernist 

and contemporary Mexican architecture and design. 

Amanda, who is British, and Sebastian, who is French, 

each had careers in management and marketing (she in 

the home furnishings world, he in the entertainment and 

digital fields), but they shared a passion for design, and a 

2014 trip to Mexico was a revelation. 

While the design world grows increasingly familiar with 

the storied midcentury icons from northern Europe, the 

Reants discovered an untapped Mexican reservoir that 

was fresh and exciting. “We think Mexican design has 

something universal,” Sebastian says; it encompasses “pre- 

Columbian culture, Spanish colonial culture and 20th- 

Inside the 

Mexico City 

showroom 

century modernism.” This eclectic 

mix has made the style popular with 

big-name interior designers like 

Martyn Lawrence Bullard, Shawn 

Henderson, and Commune Design, 

the LA firm that used Luteca’s San 

Miguelito counter stools in recent 

projects. 

Luteca’s first collection focused on 

furniture by Pedro Ramírez Vázquez, 

the architect who codesigned 

Mexico City’s National Museum 

of Anthropology and its Museum 

of Modern Art, among other noted 

structures of the 1960s. In 2017, 

Luteca reissued pieces by Michael van 

Beuren, the American-born, Bauhauseducated 

designer who moved to 

Mexico in 1936. These include the 

Alacrán chaise, designed with Klaus 

Grabe, which was a winner in MoMA’s 

Organic Design in Home Furnishings 

competition in 1941, and the Woven 

PIA RIVEROLA

FROM TOP: ARCHIVES OF AMERICAN ART, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, ESTHER MCCOY PAPERS; © LUTECA; PIA RIVEROLA 

Credenza, a 1940 design in wood with 

palm-cord doors. 

Luteca’s roster of contemporary 

collaborators includes Jorge Arturo 

Ibarra (who is also the company’s 

design director), Sami Hayek, the 

French-Mexican Studio Martes and 

the duo of Rodrigo Berrondo and 

Pablo Igartúa. In one way or another, 

they all draw on Mexico’s 20thcentury 

design history or its native 

materials to produce furniture that 

evokes tradition in a new way. 

For its latest release, Luteca 

returned to the 20th century, with 

two pieces by Clara Porset, another 

key figure in Mexico’s modernist 

history: a sculptural wood-and-glass 

coffee table that Amanda calls “so 

modern it could have been designed 

yesterday” and Porset’s take on the 

classic Mexican butaque chair, with 

its sinuously curved wood frame. 

“Porset offered us an opportunity to 

highlight a female designer who was 

doing amazing things in the mid- 

20th century that are still admired 

today,” she says. 

Born in Cuba in 1895 and educated 

in both the US and France, Porset 

fled Cuba for Mexico as a political 

exile in 1935. She was soon working 

with prominent architects like 

Luis Barragán and Mario Pani on 

everything from high-end residences 

and restaurants to housing projects, 

and her design for a steel-tube chair 

was included in the catalogue of 

MoMA’s International Competition 

for Low-Cost Furniture Design in 

1950. Her interiors and furniture were 

known for integrating her modernist 

education with a genuine interest in 

Mexican traditions. Porset owed the 

latter in part to her travels throughout 

the country with her husband, Xavier 

Guerrero, a well-known muralist 

and activist. But as humanistic as 

her approach was, Porset’s aesthetic 

had no room for frills; as she said in 

a 1931 lecture, “We are in a position 

to perceive and appreciate an austere 

beauty stripped of all ornament.” 

Porset’s brief return to Cuba after 

the 1959 revolution to work with 

the Castro regime alienated many 

of her peers. But in her later years 

in Mexico, Porset resumed her long 

career teaching industrial design at 

the National Autonomous University 

of Mexico (UNAM); her work was 

recognised in Mexican museum 

exhibitions, and she received various 

awards before her death in 1981. 

Porset was not the only 20thcentury 

designer who was fascinated 

by the butaque; it was also interpreted 

by William Spratling, who is best 

known for his work in silver, and 

by van Beuren, whose own, more 

reductive version is also now being 

made by Luteca. Porset, however, 

was keen on maximising the chair’s 

ergonomic potential, as well as 

respecting its vernacular roots. Later 

this year, Luteca will introduce 

another well-known Porset design, 

the Totonaca chair, inspired by a 

sculpture dating to the fifth or sixth 

century BC. Luteca worked with 

UNAM, which houses the designer’s 

archive, to develop the technical 

drawings for all these pieces. 

Another Mexico-based project, 

Luteca’s Txt.ure line, was developed 

by Regina Pozo in collaboration with 

the last remaining group of native 

artisans still weaving tule (a marsh 

plant similar to a cattail) – a craft that 

dates back to the Mayans. Together, 

they’re working on a series of seating. 

Luteca produces its furniture in 

the US but has added a factory in 

Mexico to meet the demand for 

From top: designer 

Clara Porset (right); 

a Porset coffee table 

by Luteca 

projects there, like Jon Brent Design’s 

Four Seasons Resort Los Cabos and 

Cherem Arquitectos’ 1 Hotel Cabo. 

Last year Luteca opened a showroom 

in Mexico City. 

And now the company has just 

opened its first US showroom, in 

New York City, giving it an outlet to 

broadcast its message to even greater 

numbers of designers. “We’re trying 

to reach a global audience,” Amanda 

says. “But Mexican design is still 

influenced by local cultures and 

traditions. It’s very personal.” 

DEPARTURES 

57

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O 

U 

T 

S 

I 

D 

E 

T 

E 

B 

X 

H 

O 

The award-winning architect 

Thom Mayne – known for his daringly 

complex buildings around the world – 

ÿ nally designs one for himself. 

by Ted Loos. Photographs by Spencer Lowell. 

Styled by Michael Reynolds 

66

Thom Mayne clad his Los Angeles 

home in an aluminium screen 

that adds to the camouflage look 

67

Cheviot Hills, in west 

Los Angeles, looks 

like so many old 

neighbourhoods in 

the city: perfectly 

manicured lawns, 

wide pavements, and 

comfortable uppermiddle-class 

houses 

68 

in a wide array of architectural styles, including Tudor 

Revival, Mediterranean Revival and modern Craftsman. 

But then there’s Thom Mayne’s house – a modernist box 

of metal and glass surrounded by greenery and fronted 

by a pool, largely invisible from the street. It’s the most 

personal expression to date from the iconoclastic architect, 

who built the house for himself and his wife of 37 years, 

Blythe Alison-Mayne. 

Mayne, a tall and gangly 75-year-old, is almost 

incapable of doing unprovocative work. He won 

architecture’s highest honour, the Pritzker Prize, in 2005, 

and his LA-based firm, Morphosis, is known for designing 

thoughtfully muscular buildings like Manhattan’s 41 

Cooper Square, which houses Cooper Union’s humanities 

and engineering schools and has a sloping, riven metal 

façade, and the Bloomberg Center at Cornell Tech, on 

New York City’s Roosevelt Island, which is topped by 

a dramatic canopy full of solar panels. His upcoming 

projects span the globe, from a research building in Seoul 

to the US embassy in Beirut. 

“Most people who see our work don’t think domestic 

architecture,” says Mayne. “Building a home puts you in 

a completely different mindset: from the macro level to 

intimate detail.” Case in point: his living room cantilevers 

over the pool and has a partially see-through floor that 

reveals the water below. The glass walls fronting the pool 

open completely, so guests can dive right in from the 

living room. “And people do,” says Alison-Mayne, who 

was a financial manager at her husband’s firm for years. 

The house is Mayne’s first domestic project in a quartercentury, 

and was completed in late 2017 on a site that used 

to hold the home of the sci-fi writer Ray Bradbury. Mayne 

says the house was explicitly influenced by the Case Study 

Houses (1945-66), modern icons with the California vibe

In the living room, Mayne 

displays mixed-media art he’s 

completed over the past seven 

years. The floor lamp is from 

Artemide; opposite: Mayne with 

his wife, Blythe Alison-Mayne 

69

“It goes back to the 

way we live: constant 

communication,” 

Alison-Mayne says. 

“There’s no man 

cave, no place where 

people go to escape” 

70 

of spare lines and indoor-outdoor living, but this 

wasn’t going to be an academic exercise. “When we 

started, we said, ‘This is not Thom Mayne. This is not 

Morphosis. This is our house,’ ” the architect says. 

Partly clad in metal with large, semi-perforated 

circle shapes – imagine hole-punched hanging chads 

– the home is one complex puzzle. The main house is 

only 130 square metres above ground, but an adjacent 

guest one adds another 74. It feels bigger perhaps 

because the houses’ parts overlap and bleed into each 

other – the architectural equivalent of a jazz musician 

on a riff. While the design stresses privacy in some 

ways, there are a lot of open elements that aren’t 

conventional. Mayne wanted to prove something, too. 

“Thinking of the group I’m compared with, the Coop 

Himmelb(l)aus, the Frank Gehrys, the Zaha Hadids” 

– he means the Big Architectural Statement types – “I 

wanted to instead make architecture secondary to the 

landscape. It should just about disappear.” He adds, 

“It’s the thing I’m most happy about. It proves I can do 

something softer.” 

Softer, maybe, but not safe. “Everything’s off by a 

degree and a half,” says Mayne, standing in the mainfloor 

hallway and gesturing at the slightly-off angle of 

the white walls. “It gives you a dynamism.” Luckily, 

Morphosis had a shop to fabricate all the custom parts. 

The living room has a skinny vertical section cut out of 

one wall, facing the entrance, the better to see who’s 

coming to the door, says Alison-Mayne with a smile. 

The main staircase has a portion that seems impassable 

to all but tiny children, since another volume juts into 

its space; you have to walk around that volume, but as 

you do, you discover two new vistas: up to the left, an 

office, and up to the right, the loftlike master bedroom. 

Perhaps the most striking feature is the dining area’s 

faceted ceiling, made of intricately fitted panels, which 

curves up to form the back of the headboard in the master 

bedroom, whose half-walls overlook the first floor. It’s 

a twist on the old modern architecture adage, “Form 

follows function.” 

Instead of building up, Mayne dug down – 

construction crews excavated some 450 truckloads 

of dirt. But he only built on one-fifth of the allowable

The stairway to the master bedroom; Alison-Mayne’s office includes a desk chair from Fritz Hansen and a stool from Design Within Reach; 

opposite, from above: The property features a 17m-long pool with chaises longues from Royal Botania; Mayne capped a structural steel 

beam with Douglas fir to blend with the surroundings 

volume. By starting low, he was able to play with levels (the 

house has eight elevation points) and insulate from prying 

eyes. The perimeter hedge includes what Mayne calls “a 

007 moment”: the driveway gate is part of the green wall, 

so a portion moves aside when it opens. Thanks to the 

design, the normally private couple can spend a lot of time 

outside. Mayne wanted to emphasise that the outdoor 

entertaining space was part of the house, so he extended 

a beam out from the structure and then down towards 

the far side of the pool, but there’s a gap midway before 

continuing to the ground. “That’s a language I’ve been 

working with my whole career,” says Mayne. “Fragments, 

the unfinished, works in progress.” 

That kind of unconventional, disruptive thinking has 

marked his CV since founding Morphosis in 1972. Mayne 

spent much of his early career as an uncompromising, 

largely academic architect – he was a founding faculty 

member at the LA architecture school SCI-Arc – and 

his firm faced many lean years. But in the 1990s, with 

projects like the brilliantly fragmented Diamond Ranch 

High School in 2000, his work started to get noticed, 

and today Morphosis is one of the most sought-after 

architecture shops. 

But it was the small, 1930s bungalow in Santa Monica 

where the Maynes raised their two sons – not his previous 

signature projects – that inspired the size and feel of this 

hideaway. Their former home was famously quirky: the 

shower, for example, was in the middle of the living room. 

The stall was opaque, but “it was challenging to figure out 

privacy,” says Alison-Mayne. 

And when their adult sons, now both well over six feet 

tall, came to visit, it became clear that the family had long 

outgrown the house. “One of my sons said to me, ‘You know 

you’re married to an architect, right?’ ” Hence the new house 

and its “hotel wing”, a completely separate space with two 

bedrooms, a bathroom, and a small living room. No guest is 

encouraged to stay too long, by design: “The closets are so 

small you can’t move in,” she adds. 

But guests can certainly feel at home in this very openplan 

living space. “It goes back to the way we live: constant 

communication,” Alison-Mayne says. “There’s no man cave, 

no place where people go to escape.” She does, however, like 

to retreat to her bedroom-bathroom area that opens to the 

outdoors. The bed looks across the tops of palm trees to the 

shower. Next to the tub is a curved bench that Mayne sits on 

to chat with her when she has her nightly bath. The angles 

all ensure that the couple can’t be seen from the street or 

elsewhere in the house. 

Because he is a perfectionist, Mayne is still “struggling 

with everything that’s wrong” with the house, he says with 

a sheepish smile. He knows Chez Mayne is tailored for 

his family, but it’s also on-brand for Morphosis. “As the 

world gets thinner and simpler,” he says, “I’m interested in 

architecture’s role in countering that.” 

71


A view of the Parroquia de San 

Miguel Arcángel from the grounds 

of the Rosewood hotel; opposite: 

the shop Evoke the Spirit

It’s Always Sunny in 

SAN MIGUEL 

Some residents call it an energy vortex – others credit the light and architecture. 

There’s just something about San Miguel de Allende that continues to draw creative 

visionaries from around the world to Mexico’s most enchanting colonial town. 

by Maura Egan | Photographs by Lindsay Lauckner Gundlock

ou need to go behind the 

closed doors, peek inside 

the courtyards in San Miguel 

de Allende,” said Bertha 

González Nieves, a highpowered 

Mexican business 

Y 

woman. “Here, everything 

goes back deep.” González 

was sitting in the courtyard 

of the cavernous Casa 

Dragones, once the 18th-century stables of Los Dragones, 

an elite cavalry that helped lead Mexico to independence. 

Although González shuttles between Mexico City and 

Manhattan, she calls San Miguel de Allende the spiritual 

home of the brand. 

“There’s an energy here – this is where the revolution 

started,” González said. “It’s also the centre of the 

country. And the light! It’s the reason why artists and 

photographers fall in love with this place.” A picturesque 

hill town about 250 kilometres northwest of Mexico 

City, San Miguel de Allende started luring international 

visitors in the 1930s, when 27-year-old Chicago painter 

Stirling Dickinson came through and was immediately 

enchanted. He would go on to establish the El Centro 

Cultural Ignacio Ramírez (also known as Bellas Artes) in a 

former convent and recruit hundreds 

of young American veterans to study 

there under the GI Bill. (González 

advised me to explore the buildings’ 

cloisters to see an unfinished but 

dramatic mural by David Alfaro 

Siqueiros, a contemporary of Diego 

Rivera, who taught many of the 

GIs.) In the postwar years, artists 

and retirees alike were drawn to the 

city; today nearly 10 percent of the 

population is from the US. 

It’s been referred to as the Florence 

of Mexico, and you can see why. The 

main square is unexpectedly European: 

the Parroquia de San Miguel Arcángel, a 

giant pink sandstone cathedral with neo- 

Gothic spires, is one of many churches 

in town. There are manicured parks 

with sculpted laurel trees and fountains, 

and the most treacherous cobblestoned 

streets you’ll ever navigate. And as with 

its Italian counterpart, those streets 

are thronged by an endless procession 

of tourists. 


Left: the entrance of Casa 

Dragones; opposite: the 

pool at L’Ôtel at Dôce 18 

Concept House

“This is where the revolution started,” 

González said. “It’s also the centre of 

the country. And the light! It’s the 

reason why artists and photographers 

fall in love with this place” 

All kinds of tourists: athleisureclad 

seniors basking in the year-round 

perfect weather; college students 

taking pottery and weaving workshops 

at venerable cultural institutions like 

Bellas Artes and the Instituto Allende; 

and Mexican wedding parties from 

Monterrey and Guadalajara posing 

for family photos in the stately Parque 

Benito Juárez. 

“I never really had a desire to 

visit, because I had heard it was full 

of tourists,” said Laura Kirar, an 

artist and designer who moved 

from Brooklyn to Yucatán in 2017 

to restore an old hacienda with 

her husband, Richard Frazier. She 

started visiting San Miguel for 

business and to escape Yucatán’s 

summer heat and was soon 

enthralled. 

“The creative community here 

is strong, and it isn’t just painters 

and musicians,” Kirar told me. 

She works with Mexican artisans 

across the region to make her sisaland-henequen 

woven bags and 

copper objects, which she sells at 

Dôce 18 Concept House, a stylish 

retail complex in the historic centre. “The entrepreneurial 

spirit seems to be thriving here,” she said. “It’s a place of 

connectors and doers.” 

For the most part, the Americans and Europeans 

who’ve settled in San Miguel aren’t just snowbirds 

here for the weather. Whether it’s designers and 

decorators working with regional craftsmen to make 

their wares, hiring local chefs to cook in restaurants 

serving new riffs on traditional Mexican cuisine, or 

volunteering (there are nearly 100 charities in the area), 

the expats who’ve settled in the area tend to be actively 

engaged with the community. On Halloween night, 

DEPARTURES 

75

76 DEPARTURES

Right: chef Donnie Masterton at 

The Restaurant; below: a beef rib 

taco at Jacinto 1930; opposite: 

a guest room at Hotel Amparo 

I watched the older American expat couples (who seemed 

as excited for the holiday as the Mexican children) hand 

out treats to swarms of kids. 

“You have to remember that San Miguel’s expat 

community originated from that first group of 

people who came down here to study the arts,” 

said Jeffry Weisman, who bought a place here 

in 2011 with his husband and business partner, Andrew 

Fisher. The San Francisco-based designers, known for their 

opulent interiors, had always loved Mexico but assumed 

they would buy near the beach. “But then my sister came 

down here for a bridge tournament and told us we’d fall 

in love with it,” recalled Weisman. Once they discovered 

a former tannery for sale, they traded in their Sonoma 

Valley ranch for San Miguel de Allende. The façade of their 

property looks simple enough, but after you pass through 

the wooden doors, it’s an architectural extravaganza. 

They’ve added stone terraces, statement chandeliers and 

hulking stone fireplaces. All of the rooms look out onto 

a lush garden that leads to a pool with a guest casita and 

100-year-old jacaranda trees, which were what clinched it 

for Weisman. But it was also the weather. “It’s 75 and clear 

most of the year,” he said. “I love the old-world scale too. 

None of the buildings are taller than two storeys, and it’s 

still cobblestoned streets.” 

It’s proven to be an ideal place to work. With so 

many family factories and craftsmen in the region, the 

designers can produce many of their pieces there. Fisher, 

who is also a painter and sculptor, has a loftlike studio 

in town and spends nearly all his time in San Miguel. 

The pair recently finished work on Casa Blanca 7, an 

intimate new hotel just off the main plaza, where they added 

SAN MIGUEL ESSENTIALS 

Hotels 

The town’s classic hotels include BELMOND CASA 

DE SIERRA NEVADA ( belmond.com) spread out 

across six historic mansions, with a hidden pool and 

a cooking school; and ROSEWOOD SAN MIGUEL DE 

ALLENDE ( rosewoodhotels.com), which includes 

67 rooms done in classical hacienda style, three pools 

and a popular rooftop lounge. There is also a slew 

of newer boutique properties, such as HOTEL CASA 

BLANCA 7 (casablanca7.com), a renovated 300-yearold 

residence with Fatima 7, Donnie Masterton’s 

Mediterranean-inspired restaurant; HOTEL AMPARO 

(hotelamparo.com), which features five eclectic guest 

rooms as well as a coffee joint; and L’ÔTEL AT DÔCE 

18 CONCEPT HOUSE (l-otelgroup.com), a ten-room 

boutique hotel with a rooftop pool. 

Restaurants 

EL PEGASO ( Corregidora 6) serves hearty dishes 

like chiles en nogada stuffed with meat and 

raisins and a fragrant chicken soup. JACINTO 1930 

(jacinto1930.mx) serves modern Mexican dishes ; try 

LA PARADA ( laparadasma.com) for delicious ceviche. 

Donnie Masterton’s THE RESTAURANT (therestaurant 

sanmiguel.com) offers fresh global comfort food. 

Shops 

DÔCE 18 CONCEPT HOUSE (doce-18.com) sells 

wares from all over Mexico. For hand-dyed textiles 

and pottery, check out EVOKE THE SPIRIT (evoke 

thespirit.com). FÁBRICA LA AURORA (fabricala 

aurora.com) is a former factory filled with galleries 

and shops, including gems like Cantadora, for antiques, 

and Galería Noyola Fernández. Head to TAO STUDIO 

GALLERY (taostudio.net) for high-end furnishings 

by Mexican artisans. 

DEPARTURES 

77

“There’s a true community 

that is actively engaged 

with the local culture” 


Moroccan 

flourishes to a 

classic colonial 

design. 

“It’s pennies 

on the dollar 

to make things 

here,” said 

Taylor Goodall, a Houston-based lawyer and the coowner 

with his wife Mariana of Hotel Amparo, which 

opened this January. Though they shipped in midcentury 

pieces from abroad, they’ve furnished much of the fiveroom 

guesthouse with textiles from Oaxaca, handcarved 

poster beds and papier-mâché objects. It’s an enviable 

mix, and I found myself wanting to know the provenance 

of every piece. “We want guests to feel like they’re staying 

at their coolest friend’s house,” said Goodall, who plans 

to open a shop in the lobby to sell commissioned pieces 

from local artisans. 

There is a lot of creative cross-pollination going on in 

San Miguel de Allende. Dôce 18 Concept House houses 

a floral studio, a clothing boutique, a ceramics kiosk, a 

macaroon stall, several galleries amd a small independent 

hotel. One afternoon González took me to visit. 

The complex was busy with international visitors but 

also young couples from Mexico City who’d come for the 

weekend. After a coffee, we headed next door to the very 

popular Jacinto 1930 restaurant, where enjoyed oystermushroom 

tacos. 

For more casual fare, Dôce 18 has a food hall in the back 

of the building where Donnie Masterton, an LA native, 

has opened a taco stand as well as a grass-fed-burger 

joint. In 2008, Masterton, San Miguel’s de facto culinary 

ambassador, came to the city and opened what would 

become a hugely popular outpost of haute cuisine called 

The Restaurant. He had moved down to Mexico a few 

years before to take a break from kitchens, having cooked 

professionally since he was 15. He fell in love with San 

Miguel de Allende and realised there was an opportunity 

to open a restaurant focused on local ingredients. He’s 

been deeply involved in the town’s burgeoning farm-totable 

movement and is building a small eco-ranch just 

outside town to grow produce and raise livestock, which 

will supply his restaurants. “From a business perspective, 

there are fewer hoops to jump through than in the States,” 

Masterton told me. “It’s way more 

fun to do it down here.” He has just 

opened Fatima 7, a Middle Eastern 

restaurant in Casa Blanca 7, the 

boutique hotel that Weisman and 

Fisher designed. 

On Thursdays The Restaurant 

holds burger night, a tradition that 

started during the recession and still 

brings in the crowds. However, on 

most evenings the place serves as a 

local social hub. The night I stopped 

by, I met a DJ from Dallas, a Pilates 

instructor from San Francisco, and 

a reunion group for one of the two 

San Miguel Burning Man camps, and 

I even bumped into Kirar again. I 

asked all of them why San Miguel was 

so popular. A few in the Burning Man 

group told me about the town having 

an energy vortex or an “acupressure 

point”. Kirar admitted she didn’t 

want to sound all woo-woo, but she 

agreed. “There is something special 

here that makes me breathe deeper 

and smile wider.”

A showroom in the Tao 

Studio Gallery; opposite, 

from top: a cobblestoned 

street; a musician walks 

past the Church of 

Immaculate Conception in 

the historic centre 

DEPARTURES 

79

GRAND HOTEL 

By taking over the beloved Fife Arms, art-world power players 

Iwan and Manuela Wirth have added another gem to their cultural empire 

and given a jolt of energy to the Scottish Highlands. 

by ALIX BROWNE | Photographs by SIMON WATSON 

80

LAST NOVEMBER, just a few weeks before The Fife Arms, 

a Victorian-era hotel in the Scottish Highlands, officially 

opened its doors, Iwan and Manuela Wirth invited the 

village of Braemar in for a preview. The Wirths, avid art 

collectors and the Swiss power couple behind the Hauser 

& Wirth gallery empire, purchased The Fife Arms in 

2014, and the extensive renovation they undertook had 

for the past few years deprived Braemar of its very centre 

of gravity. 

That night, however, the Wirths took a small but 

raucous step toward making it up to everyone: a trio 

of local bagpipe troops in full Scottish regalia marched 

through the village streets and faced off ceremoniously 

at the hotel’s front door. Inside, the many hearths were 

stoked and the tables laid with trays of oysters, cured meats 

and smoked fish. The village choir performed on The 

Fife’s grand stairway, opening its set with a rendition of 

“California Dreamin’”, while a ceilidh brought gentlemen 

in kilts and young girls in miniskirts to the dance floor 

with classic folk numbers like “Dashing White Sergeant” 

and “Strip the Willow”. The hotel lounge, reborn as the 

Flying Stag, was awash in the good cheer of people who 

have at long last been reunited in the place they love, 

only to discover that this place is far better than they 

remembered it to be. The evening, which coincided with 

Saint Andrew’s Day, one of Scotland’s biggest holidays, 

culminated in a display of fireworks. 

“The Fife was always a place for parties, but it’s never 

seen a party quite like that!” exclaimed Alison MacIntosh, 

whose husband had played the grand piano in the reception 

room, accompanied for a bit by her daughter on the 

oboe. MacIntosh had stopped by the hotel to drop off a 

handwritten note of thanks. “My sister had her wedding 

reception here. I celebrated my twenty-first 

birthday here,” she continued. “It was the most 

important building in the village, and we could 

see it was going down – it was shabby, it was 

cheap. I am so happy to see it brought back to 

life.” 

Opposite page: At long 

last Scottish locals have 

been reunited with 

their beloved gathering 

spot, only to discover 

it is far better than 

they remembered 

The Fife Arms was built in the mid-19th century as a 

first-class hotel, to capitalise on the newfound popularity 

the Highlands experienced after über-tastemakers Queen 

Victoria and her husband, Prince Albert, made nearby 

Balmoral Castle their holiday home in 1852. Situated 

within the Cairngorms, Britain’s largest national park, 

the area is known for its spectacular fishing, stag and 

grouse-hunting, hiking, and the Braemar Gathering, a 

venerable competition in which all manner of heavy 

items, including a 6m-long, 60kg tree trunk known as 

the Braemar caber, are tossed, thrown or put. Held on the 

first Saturday in September, the Gathering is faithfully 

attended by Queen Elizabeth every year from precisely 3 

pm to 4 pm. 

“Everyone has a romantic relationship with Scotland,” 

said Iwan Wirth, an enthusiastic fly fisherman who has 

been coming to Scotland for decades. “But the Swiss love it 

because it looks like our Alpine valleys – Engadine without 

the motorways, the hydro plants, the development. It’s sort 

of Switzerland before the First World War.” Eventually 

the romance of camping out in traditional fishing lodges 

(cramped, stinky) on their visits wore thin, and the Wirths 

began looking for a place to call their own, big enough to 

accommodate their four grown children, assorted dogs, 

works of art, and the many contemporary artists who 

compose not only the Hauser & Wirth gallery roster but 

also their close circle of friends. Before long they found 

themselves the owners of such a house – as well as a 90- 

room hotel that had seen much better days. 

“It was crying for help,” Iwan recalled, contrasting 

The Fife’s stately presence in a culturally rich, picturepostcard 

village setting against its unsightly modern 

additions, its warrens of sad, carved-up spaces, its 

leaky roof and its demotion from a storied, first-rate 

establishment to a cheap stopover catering to the lower 

end of the bus-tourism industry. “Manuela and I take 

these long hikes every day whenever we are here, and that 

is when we basically discuss everything from the children 

to personal issues and the business,” he said. One day, the 

couple trekked up to the Braemar weather station, and by 

the time they returned home, they had made a decision. 

The Wirths like to say that they know nothing about 

running a hotel, and that in purchasing The Fife they 

were motivated by instinct, enthusiasm and no small 

amount of ignorance, but the couple had in fact already 

made successful forays into the hospitality business. They 

have established themselves in the traditional 

art-world capitals (Zurich, London, New 

York), and in 2014 they opened Hauser & 

Wirth Somerset on an 18th-century farm in 

the English countryside, incorporating a 

guesthouse, a restaurant and an arts centre 

81

into their robust cultural programme. They followed it up 

two years later with Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles, which 

boasts more than 9,000 square metres of exhibition 

space, and Manuela, a bustling, art-filled restaurant. This 

past December, they opened their latest outpost, in St 

Moritz. “Art is at the heart of everything we do – not just 

the work but the process, the thinking,” said Iwan, who 

added that Hauser & Wirth aims to reimagine the gallerygoing 

experience as an opportunity to build community. 

“With Somerset we created a new model. The Kunsthalle 

Zurich has 9,000 visitors a year. Somerset has that in 

three weekends.” 

The artists who had been guests at the Wirths’ house 

in Scotland were among the first to sign on for this latest 

venture, and they created site-specific projects while The 

Fife was still under renovation. These were not, Iwan 

noted, commissions per se. “We invited them all for 

the Gathering and then sorted out who does what,” he 

explained. The walls of The Fife’s Clunie Dining Room 

were hand-painted by Argentine artist Guillermo Kuitca 

(the installation took him three months, which he spent 

toiling alone through the winter, with little daylight and 

no heat); the Chinese artist Zhang Enli took on the ceiling 

in the Drawing Room, painting a massive watercolour 

inspired by ancient Scottish quartz; and after some 

consideration Bharti Kher, who splits her time between 

India and the UK, decided to take on the spa. “It doesn’t 

even need a gallery here,” Iwan said. “The art is embedded 

in everything.” 

While there is no dedicated exhibition space on the 

grounds, art is indeed the fabric of The Fife, and one 

could be forgiven for failing to notice the Picasso in the 

drawing room, the Lucian Freud in the reception, or the 

Gerhard Richter in the dining room, integrated as they 

are with the hotel’s sumptuous Victorian interiors. The 

decor of The Fife Arms is so spot-on that if Manuela, 

whose regular tartan-inflected wardrobe complements her 

tousled, flame-coloured locks, had told me that she has 

Scottish ancestry and that the carved wooden chairs and 

fringed upholstery all came from the attic of her family 

estate, I would have been more than inclined to believe 

her. While much of the contemporary art does in fact come 

from the Wirths’ personal collection, The Fife’s period 

furnishings and artworks, including a drawing of a stag 

by Queen Victoria herself, were meticulously sourced by 

designer Russell Sage and his team, who, under the Wirths’ 

direction, saw to it that every single detail 

had a story to tell. When the hotel’s manager 

extraordinaire, Federica Bertolini, inquired 

about how I had slept, I learnt that the 

mattresses were from Glencraft, a company 

that has made them for four generations 

of the royal family. The Fife has its own 

proprietary tartan and tweed, used for its 

bespoke staff uniforms as well as the custom 

Opposite, clockwise from 

top left: the main hall 

lobby; the Victoriana 

suites, such as the Prince 

Albert, are named for 

noble visitors to the 

region; hunting trophies 

decorate The Fife Arms’ 

Brae Wing corridor; the 

bathroom in the 

King Edward VII suite 

interiors of its fleet of Land Rovers, and it even has its own 

registered coat of arms, featuring an image of a flying stag. 

Its motto: “To the Summit”. 

Post-renovation, The Fife boasts only 46 guest rooms, 

each unique, ranging from Royal Suites named for 

noble visitors to the region (I was assigned the Duke of 

Fife) to more modestly sized but exquisitely appointed 

accommodations inspired by the works of Scottish poets 

and scientists. One of the Wirths’ favourites is the David 

Douglas room, named for the Scottish botanist who 

brought the Douglas fir to Britain from North America 

in the 1820s. “This room was a problem,” Iwan admitted. 

“The windows are small and they are on the courtyard, but 

Russell got his hands on it, and now you feel as though you 

are in a forest.” Engraved in the headboard are the words of 

the Edinburgh-based artist and poet Alec Finlay: “To learn 

about the pine, hold the cone in your hand.” 

“What’s the difference between a hotel and a place you 

love and want to stay in and never leave?” Iwan asked, 

knowing that we only have to look around us to find the 

answer. The Fife Arms is a genuinely enchanting place, 

but, he continued, “It’s only magic if you don’t know the 

trick. And we reveal a little bit of the trick – the enormous 

challenge of the restoration here – so people understand. We 

want to encourage them to pay attention to architecture and 

to history and heritage, encourage them to look after it.” 

Then again, magic just might have something to do 

with it. As we walked through the hotel the day after 

the welcoming party, we encountered an unexpected 

visitor. She introduced herself as Maggi Burk and told the 

Wirths that she had been summoned there that morning 

(apparently, though, no one had called her). As she dangled 

a large, tear-shaped bloodstone from her hand, she 

informed the Wirths that The Fife sits on a crossing of ley 

lines, mythical and invisible paths of energy. Churches, 

cathedrals and ancient monuments tend to be situated 

along them, which some believe accounts for the exaltation 

they often stir up. “In the past people were more in touch 

with the energy of a place, more sensitive to the context,” 

Burk said. “So they knew more intuitively where to build 

things.” 

The Wirths looked at each other in disbelief. “We also 

have a ley-line crossing at our property in Somerset,” 

Manuela replied. “It’s quite remarkable,” Iwan said. And 

yet you get the sense that no matter where they find 

themselves – in Los Angeles, or Somerset, or, yes, here in 

Braemar – the Wirths ultimately create their 

own magic. “I am a very grounded person,” 

Iwan insisted. “Ley lines go back to the 

Druids, but it’s an alternative science, not a 

proven science.” In that regard, I ventured, 

it sounds quite a lot like something I know 

he and Manuela believe in without a doubt. 

“Yes,” Iwan concurred. “It sounds like art.” 

thefifearms.com 

83

Savouring 

the Season 

Wild strawberries and cardamom buns, 

weathered windmills and rocky beaches – 

the rugged yet sophisticated 

island of Gotland is an ode to the joys 

of Swedish summer. 

by Adam Sachs. Photographs by Felix Odell 

84

A fishing village 

on Fårö, an island 

just off Gotland 

85


Maurice told me to go to Rute 

Stenugnsbageri, a summer-only 

bakery at the far northern end of 

Gotland, where the Baltic island is 

simultaneously rocky and lush and mostly just empty. 

Pulling off the two-lane main road, I followed 

the even narrower route past dairy farms and open 

fields until I found it: an old stone blacksmith’s 

shed retrofitted with a wood-fired bread oven and 

surrounded by happy Swedes at picnic tables 

kibitzing over their fika, the national coffeesnack 

ritual cherished by all. Free-range Swedish 

children frolicked in an orderly manner through 

a stone maze. The air itself was intoxicating: 

fragrant waves of cardamom and saffron, 

butter, cinnamon and rye. Someone was ably 

pulling shots on an outdoor espresso machine. 

A young boy followed his mother towards a glassroofed 

pavilion with open doors and comfortable 

chairs and a large stone hearth. 

Kardemummabullar are beloved Swedish sweet 

buns that can often taste more of cardboard than 

cardamom. These, however, were pungent, gooey 

and perfect. Just about everything was perfect. At 

night, the bakers tossed pizzas with dough made 

from local grains in the same stone oven. I’d happily 

have taken all my meals there and stayed until the 

extended night of winter descended and chased the 

summer Swedes back to the mainland, taking the 

good pastries with them. 

It was all sort of too dreamy to be believed. Not 

credible in the sense that remote islands of rusticity 

do not typically harbour chill outposts of casually 

impeccable style and good espresso. And where 

the bakeries are photoshoot-ready, something of 

the dreamy, untamed charm of the place has too 

often been spoilt in the process. In this way, Gotland 

defies the maths of the holiday isle. It’s a gentle, 

soul-becalming place of pretty somewhereness and

From far left: a guest 

room at Fabriken 

Furillen hotel; a 

peaceful view of the 

Baltic; ceramics at 

the Skulpturfabriken 

shop; grilled quail 

at Krakas Krog 

lazy summer-haze nowhereness. It really does defy 

expectations, if not belief. Except that, having been on 

the island for some time, and having thus acclimatised 

to the ways that Gotland dependably dazzles, and 

how it regularly leaves you gesticulating into the wind 

through the window of your rented Volvo wagon as 

it sails past a flock of uninterested shaggy sheep or a 

wild pony loitering by the edge of some impossibly 

sparkly beach, while ordering your children in the 

back seat to “Look at how beautiful this all is!” – in 

this way we’d been conditioned to believe. 

By the time we met Maurice Dekkers – parttime 

Gotlander, journalist, filmmaker, crusading 

chocolatier (more on that later) and friend of a friend 

– my kids were inured to the spectacle of my shouting 

compliments at sheep. This is why we’d come: to pilot 

the Volvo in circles around the island – at roughly 160 

kilometres long by 50 across at its widest, the island 

is Sweden’s biggest, but not so big that you can’t get 

around it in a long day’s drive; to swim in the bracing 

Baltic; to inhale the loveliness of its wild-lavenderscented 

air; to admire the sedge-thatched stone houses 

and ailing old windmills; and to mangle the musical 

names of the sleepy hamlets as we passed their striking 

church spires – the farm towns of Fröjel and Sproge, 

Hemse, När, Boge, and the moonscape of Furillen, an 

island in the far north. In Holmhällar, we had the wide 

sand beach nearly to ourselves. South of Västergarn, we 

parked on a patch of grass by the coastal highway and 

took our shoes off by the shallow water’s edge. Wading 

in, we jumped from rock to rock, which had been 

scattered like stepping stones under a domed blue sky, 

empty but for streaks of cotton-candyish cirrus clouds. 

“It’s difficult to explain the feeling of this place 

exactly,” Maurice said when we’d met on the deck 

at Ljugarns Strandcafé & Restaurang. Still wet from 

an ocean dip, we were trying to put our fingers on 

something emotionally self-evident: it’s nice here. But 

describing precisely how it was nice was hard. “There 

is something about the way the light is hitting the sea 

and changing constantly,” Maurice observed. “There is 

DEPARTURES 

87

88

a feeling that you are not part any more of the rest of 

the world.” I liked that. 

At the next table, a pair of Italian truffle dogs 

nuzzled their lunching owners. “Gotland truffles are 

very good, you know,” Maurice said, mentioning a 

friend in the neighbourhood, Ragnar Olofsson, who 

hunted the elusive delicacy professionally. These 

lagotti romagnoli seemed to have acclimatised to 

island life. Grey and curly, they looked like small, 

dozing sheep. 

“I love Amsterdam,” Maurice said of the city where 

he lives and works as a filmmaker and the founder of 

Tony’s Chocolonely, a chocolate producer committed 

to excising slavery from a traditionally troubled and 

exploitative business. “But when I arrive here I feel 

everything. When I am here the rest of the world 

doesn’t exist any more.” 

We met through the Danish chef René Redzepi. 

Maurice had made a documentary, Ants on a Shrimp, 

about Redzepi’s restaurant, Noma. Now he and his 

wife, filmmaker and producing partner Benthe Forrer, 

are focusing their entrepreneurial and story telling 

energies on building something in Gotland with an eye 

to protecting what’s special there. In addition to a house 

in Ljugarn, the couple recently bought a house in Fårö, 

a satellite island just off the northeastern tip of Gotland, 

that they plan to renovate, and another in Visby. 

V 

isby is Gotland’s main town. It has a 

well-preserved, walled medieval fortress 

– and from the 1100s to the 1300s it was 

a seat of Hanseatic League trading power. It’s now 

home to an annual medieval festival and what passes 

for the seasonal tourist crush. In Visby, you’ll find the 

ramparts and museums with their Stone Age relics, 

crowded ice-cream shops and cobblestoned alleys 

lined with tiny, colourful wooden houses. But for all 

of pretty Visby’s Unesco-protected appeal, the real 

wonders of Gotland were to be found in its quieter 

places, where signs of humans and their doings were 

fewer and farther between. 

It’s hard to do nothing. The world conspires to 

restore diligence. Thoughts, texts, stray bits of news 

from the world outside interrupt, unbidden. We’re selftrained 

as travellers to hurry up and check things off 

Gotland 

Guide 

STAY 

Fabriken Furillen 

(furillen.com; open 

from July through 

mid August) is a 

former limestone 

factory turned 

design-hotel oasis. 

Stelor ( stelor.se) 

features several 

stylish rooms in an 

1820s farmhouse. 

EAT 

Bakfickan 

(bakfickanvisby.se) 

is a cosy spot for 

seafood like smoked 

shrimp and fish soup. 

Krakas Krog (krakas. 

se) offers modern 

Swedish cuisine in a 

gorgeous country 

setting. Lergrav Fisk 

& Café (lergrav.com) 

is a classic fish 

smokehouse with 

baskets of shrimp 

and smoked eel. Lilla 

Bjers (lillabjers.se) is 

a lovely farmhouse 

restaurant. Ljugarns 

Strandcafé & 

Restaurang (strand 

cafe.se) serves up 

seafood and 

mini-golf in a 

beachside setting. 

At Rot (restaurang 

rot.se), chef Luqaz 

Ottosson prepares 

remarkable farm-totable 

feasts inside a 

From top: Akantus, a shop in Visby; 

onions fresh from the garden 

glass-blowing 

studio. Rute 

Stenugnsbageri 

(rutestenugnsbageri. 

se) is the Swedish 

bakery of your 

dreams. 

SHOP 

Akantus (akantus 

visby.se) has a nice 

mix of antiques and 

crafts in Visby. 

Formverket 

(formverket.se) is a 

design boutique 

from local Barbro 

Tryberg Boberg. 

Scarlett Gallery X 

Gotland (thescarlett 

gallery.com) is a 

pop-up founded by a 

group of English and 

Swedish creatives. 

Skulpturfabriken 

(skulpturfabriken.se), 

a concrete factory 

and shop selling 

tableware, has been 

around since 1995. 

DEPARTURES 

89

Here was Bergman’s pure distillation of the elements 

he’d been seeking: “We found a stony shore facing 

infinity.” Later, he reported of the pine trees he’d come 

to know: “They sort of become friends. I’ve become 

very good friends with the rabbits as well.” 

I’d been there only a week but I felt, at least, on 

speaking terms with the trees and the shore and 

the rock formations, and I would have liked to have 

gotto know the aloof sheep and those freshly baked 

cardamom buns better. 


A pastoral scene on Gotland 

our lists even if what a place really asks for, to know it 

best, is simply to be quietly within it. 

Fårö is such a place – rugged, windswept and wild. 

In 1960, the great Swedish director Ingmar Bergman 

arrived in Fårö, more or less by chance, to scout a 

scene he’d hoped to shoot elsewhere. Smitten, he 

stayed. In thrall to the landscape, the people, the 

solitude of an island twice removed from the rest of 

the nation, he made Fårö his permanent home. 

After crossing the Fårö strait – eight minutes by car 

ferry – you drive north towards the Bergman Center, 

a museum and cultural centre that opened in 2013. An 

oversized board with chesspieces on the lawn awaits 

impromptu reenactments of the game between Death 

and Max von Sydow’s medieval knight in The Seventh 

Seal. In the lobby, there’s an oddly affecting triptych of 

photographs showing the auteur buying a newspaper 

from a local kiosk. On this tiny island, the photos 

attest, is a citizen, dignified but normal in all ways, 

performing an utterly pedestrian act. Bergman lived 

among the locals as a neighbour and friend. 

“I spent an entire winter on Fårö just with my 

dachshund,” Bergman once told an interviewer. “It’s 

almost uncanny how nature can be engulfing, how you 

become friends with the trees on the seashore.” 

The beauty is stark and all-encompassing. The 

treeless, alvar-covered limestone leads to haunting 

sea stacks at the beach at Langhammars. Dark, 

woolly sheep graze meadows that are marked by 

low, crumbling stone walls. The swimming beach at 

Sudersand, with its wide tracts of velvety sand and 

cheesy little waterside yoga offerings and thatchedroof 

snack shacks, has an end-of-the-world vibe. 

Gotland’s flag, flapping proudly on poles everywhere, 

shows a magnificently horned ram with a yellow cross 

against an endless field of bright Swedish blue. The 

blues on enchanted Fårö feel moodier. A melancholic, 

sometimes eerie calm and beauty pervades the place. 

W 

ildflowers crowd the roads in Gotland. 

Near Fröjel, I turned off the highway at an 

old barn that houses the Scarlett Gallery, 

a pop-up. Anthony Hill, an English photographer 

and one of the gallery’s founders, had been coming 

to Gotland for a while with his Swedish wife when 

the idea came to him to open a spot for the summer. 

He showed us prints by Swedish illustrators like 

Annelie Carlström and a cardboard sculpture by the 

Montreal artist Laurence Vallières. Next door, we 

met Barbro Tryberg Boberg, who’s lived on the island 

for several decades and has written a small, handy, 

illustrated guidebook. She also designed a picture 

book on the movie houses of Gotland. For an island, 

it has a surprising number of cinemas, including some 

in barns. One of Boberg’s designs is a tea towel with 

a cheerful pattern of ships and buoys interspersed 

with a maritime weather report transcribed from 

the radio. “They announce the maritime report 

four times every day on the radio in this monotone 

way,” she said. “To me, it’s like poetry, these words.” 

The poetry of the tides. A book on small-town 

cinemas in a language I don’t speak. Pretty pictures in 

an empty barn. I felt myself settling into the slow, sunbaked 

pace of the place. 

On our last night on the island, we had dinner at 

Krakas Krog, an elegant little restaurant in the village of 

Kräklingbo. The young chef, Joel Aronsson, I’d met years 

ago at Fäviken in central Sweden and again, weirdly, 

when he’d come to cook with the chef Magnus Nilsson 

at my house in Brooklyn. It was both nice and strange 

to see a familiar face so far from home. Joel’s cooking is 

worth travelling for: whole roasted cauliflower with a 

sauce made of butter and a seaweed that tastes distinctly 

of truffles. Last winter, while the restaurant was closed, 

he found the truffle-scented seaweed in the cold waters 

off the Lofoten Islands in Norway. 

Sometime between the lamb’s liver with grilled 

beets and the dessert of local yogurt topped with twin 

granitas made of blue Gotlandic dewberry and green 

meadowsweet, my son had had enough. Wrapped in 

a wool blanket, he fell asleep in a hammock. But the 

sun itself, mellow and honeyed, wasn’t quite ready to 

give up yet on another blessedly uneventful Swedish 

summer day.

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