|
Hotel California – The Standard, André Balazs's newest
hotel, is designed to lure the young and restless by marrying chic with cheap,
and past with future
By Matt Tyrnauer
The sign on Sunset Boulevard reads THE
Standard, which is the first
indication that André
Balazs's new, West Hollywood hotel is anything but. “It's meant to be
a new twist, a entirely different take, on the idea of an inexpensive hotel – a
category that has suffered greatly from lack of innovation,” says the
42-year-old Balazs, who is also the proprietor of the legendary Chateau Marmont (200 years due east of
the Standard on the Sunset Strip)
and the stylish Mercer hotel in New
York City, which is around the corner from the SoHo Models, Inc. “I've
found in looking at hotels over the years that the way we live changes about
every decade.” Balazs continues, “and this is an attempt to address the
already existing sophistication of a younger group of people who are not
traveling with he budget of a luxury traveler, but are every bit as
sophisticated.” In other words, Balazs hopes the Standard will become a cheap-chic mecca
for the ever expanding Prada-Gucci tribe, the style conscious Gen-Xers and
baby-boomers who worship at the Carrara marble altar of jet-age modernity, an
aesthetic the Standard offers in
near-lethal doses.
“The intention was to push the boundaries of what hotel design is, and recognize
that there are new tastes and new expectations,” says Balazs, who worked closely
with production designer Shawn Hausman on the plans for the Barbarella –
meets – Charles Eames – meets – Sheikh Abdullah's 707 look of the 140-room
hotel.
“I'd call the look of the place ‘timeless modern,’” says Hausman, who also
helped refurbish the Chateau
Marmont interiors. “You know, taking things from the 50s, 60s, and 70s
– Arco lamps, Ligne Roset chairs, and new pieces – then combining them to add up
to 2000.”
|
 |
“But the Standard is not meant to be
a retro incarnation of a hotel,” Balazs is quick to add. “It is meant to
be forward-looking.” From the white shag carpet (floor and ceiling) in the
lobby's “cocoon/conversation pit” to the large vitrine behind the front which
houses a slumbering nude woman (she is alive and she is allowed to take breaks,
“for obvious reasons,” says Balazs), there is no dearth of creativity in the
design scheme. Among the more significant examples of millennial hotel
innovation: a disc jockey's booth built into the front desk, a performance
artist – gardener who “mows” the electric-blue AstroTurf surrounding the
rectangular pool, a screening room in the lobby, and a tattoo parlor and
barbershop.
Up in the pared-down rooms (which range from $95 to $200 a night), guests will
find inflatable sofas (maids carry air pumps on their carts), Eames surfboard
tables, Andy Warhol flower-print draperies (Balazs licensed the print from the
Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts), Ultrasuede floor pillows, and such
crucial mini-bar amenities as cols sake, patchouli and ylang-ylang candles,
Vaseline, and Saint-John's-wort soft drinks. For business travelers the
rooms are wired with T1 Internet hookups. Even low-tech fixtures have been
revised – Balazs refitted the thermostats with only four settings: BLOW, HARD,
HARDER, and STOP. “I really wanted the place to have a sort of sexiness,”
he says, flashing a sheepish grin.
In the brief period since its opening, the West Hollywood Standard has become a hit, and there
are plans to open branch operations in New York and Chicago, each with its own
distinct style. (Investors in the L.A. venture include Leonardo DiCaprio,
Cameron Diaz, Benicio Del Toro, and the smashing Pumpkins' D'arcy Wretzky and
James Iha.)
The greater scheme, Balazs says, is to “redefine what people have come to expect
in a hotel...up the aesthetic stakes s that we can deliver something that's really
high-quality, that will eventually be so, well, so standard people know what to
expect from it.”
|
