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“A GOOD HOTEL,” declares André Balazs, “has what I call
content –a layering of events and amusements that leaves you with a feeling of
fullness and satisfaction.” With the recent opening of Miami’s Standard and New York City’s Hotel QT, Balazs is now the owner of eight
“good” hotels in the U.S.–all eventful and amusing enough to have made the
strikingly handsome hotelier one of the few recognizable figures in the
hospitality industry. But don’t be misled by his immaculate turnout, his
movie-star smile or even his movie-star consort (Uma Thurman, as you no doubt
know): Balazs has style and
substance. In the contemporary hotel scene, which is fat with
architect-touting pseudo auteurs, he is the real deal–someone who may well be on
his way to becoming a worth American successor to his hero, the ur-hotelier,
César Ritz.
Today one of the remarkable
features of the Balazs empire is its range. Among the eight hotels are three
deluxe properties (the Mercer in
Manhattan’s SoHo; West Hollywood’s notorious, fabulously funky Chateau Marmont; and Miami Beach’s
gorgeous Raleigh), plus three Standards (in Hollywood, L.A. and Miami
Beach) so packed with cheeky, hip incident they make other modern chain hotels
look like municipal libraries; one laid-back vacation pad (Sunset Beach, on New York’s Shelter
Island); and the QT–the first of a fun,
no-frills, youth-centric brand that Balazs probably wishes he’d never jokingly
referred to as the “Sub-Standard.”
Despite their disparity, the
hotels share a hospitable, inclusive spirit, balanced on a solid foundation of
good service that is recognizably Balazsian. That’s an astonishing feat when you
consider how different they can be. There’s the Standard, Downtown L.A., with such
space-age amenities as scarlet rooftop poolside pods with vibrating water beds,
and $99 rooms featuring a decorative giant black rubber foot and phone buttons
marked “Heaven,” “Hell” and “Alibi.” But there is also the Raleigh, with its Esther Williams pool
outlined in black scrolls and curlicues and its glamorous interiors channeling
Porfirio Rubirosa, with wicker-framed chaises and rattan thrones, terrazzo
floors and cream linen duvets. It may look astonishing, but when you learn about
the hotelier’s design philosophy, it is not so surprising. At the Raleigh, pulchritude plays second fiddle
to a pleasant, open attitude. Enter the palm-bedecked Deco lobby, and you feel
instantly welcome when you’re greeted graciously by Manijé, the hotel’s
“cultural attaché,” instead of being ignored by a would-be actor. A Persian
émigré and an art collector with a fascinating history, Manijé radiates style
and warmth. She tends orchids in the lush gardens out back; here, too, in the
sandy garden behind the pool deck with a view of the Atlantic, she throws
enviable parties for hotel guests that feature tropical fruits and musicians
from Mali. And she has more inside scoop than any other Collins Avenue
concierge. Sure, the staff members are beautiful (Matthew McConaughey’s
doppelgänger, for one, works here), but they’re also friendly and efficient. As
for the guests, as at Balazs’s two other luxury hotels, the Raleigh attracts beautiful people, but
they’re not there just to pose for photo shoots. They’re splashing in the famous
pool, flopping on king-size mattress loungers, giggling on wicker couches in the
outdoor dining room; they’ve even brought their kids. The Raleigh heralds a South Beach era that’s
less self-conscious and more art-conscious (the Art Basel crowd stays here). And
the place is just fun.
This is Balazs’s philosophy
at work. “Design is program: how a place holds you and moves you. Service is an
integral part of that experience,” he affirms over Earl Grey tea in the lounge
area of the Mercer’s lobby. He is
slighter than he appears in photos, but just as glossy and dapper, and he speaks
conspiratorially, in long sentences, with an accent more European than
American–a legacy of his Hungarian parents, who raised him in Boston. That he’s
been recognizable for years has to do with his former marriage to Katie Ford,
head of the model agency, with whom he has two daughters, Alessandra, fifteen,
and Isabel, eleven. Alessandra was a baby when Balazs bought his first hotel,
the Chateau Marmont;, out of sheer
love for the building, thus shelving his early ambitions to write and sculpt.
Hotels were a marked departure from his previous enterprise, Biomatrix Inc., the
successful biotech company he founded with his scientist father. He quickly
discovered he had an intuitive, even somewhat radical, feel for hotels, which he
developed into an approach that is quite different from the currently ubiquitous
interior-decorator school of hotel keeping.
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The way the Mercer looks–low wenge furniture and
muted palette of milk-chocolate textured linens and lavender leather–has a lot
to do with Christian Liaigre, who did the decor eight years ago, but, claims
Balazs, waving at the lobby: “We could have a different set of furniture in
here, and the hotel would still work the same. It’s a similar feeling to the
Chateau. It’s a big house, informal.” Curiously, although Chateau Marmont; is a faux Loire
castle in subtropical gardens, and the Mercer is a former fur warehouse a block
from Broadway, he’s right.
As we all do these days,
Balazs laments a “slickness and a sameness” in the modern travel experience.
“Increasingly, one of the hallmarks of luxury is uniqueness,” he pronounces.
“But what makes unique good?” The answer: meaningful details. A brief
examination of the Mercer lobby proves
his point. The loose-leaf tea, boiling hot, tastes of fresh bergamot and comes
in a Japanese iron pot with the pleasing heft of a small dumbbell. On one set of
couches two men discuss business, their laptops open. They are laughing. Another
contains a mother with two kids and a dog, who just checked in and were greeted
like long-lost relations. Among the volumes on the wall of books are a Vanessa
Beecroft monograph; a copy of the 1534 Luther Bible, Motorcycle Mama; La Divina Commedia; and Naomi for
Mandela.
Everyone glows in the diffused late-afternoon sunlight, augmented by
strategically placed lamps. It is homey– but not like anyone’s home.
For Balazs, hotel creation is
an intellectual-sensual exercise, rather like film production, yet he sees the
result more as sculpture. “You experience it in the round; it’s interactive,” he
explains. “You take yourself up and out and through places. It is also a
narrative. You imagine a series of stories; then you bring those stories to
life.” Instead of decorators and design periods, Balazs talks about
“experiences” and “spaces.” Once the story is found, the production is cast. “In
the Raleigh we did the design
in-house, but usually we bring in several different designers to add spice to
the soup,” says Balazs. One frequent collaborator is Hollywood art director
Shawn Hausman.
As well as helping create a
new era for South Beach with the Raleigh and the Standard with its fun-house spa, a
hybrid of hammam, Kurhaus, mud bath and ancient Roman thermae, Balazs has lately branched out in yet another direction. His new pair
of ground-up SoHo buildings don’t just feel like home, they are
home.
Both One Kenmare Square (designed
by architect Richard Gluckman; all units are sold) and 40 Mercer (by Jean Nouvel; units are
available for sale this month) started as hotels but took left turns after 9/11.
Balazs says it has been rewarding to apply the “same obsession with detail” that
prevails in his hotels to residential spaces and to construct from scratch the
“good bones” that he usually discovers in old buildings. He is also looking to
extend his small empire to London, though “it’s a little early to speak about
it.”
However many Balazs buildings
emerge over the years, you can be sure the scale of operations will remain
human. “I think discerning people, intellectually curious people, are always
looking for what’s good–for the real,” he says. “Small places have, by
definition, a monopoly on realness– there’s an authenticity. Soul is another way
to put it. You just know it when it’s there.”
When you stay in an
André
Balazs hotel, you know.
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