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Sequestered on a quiet island in
Biscayne Bay, sheltered from the riot of Collins Avenue, the
Standard, Miami proves there's life beyond South Beach. The first
spa hotel from André Balazs is a cunning throwback to Miami's golden
age—and this season's hottest debut. Tom Austin takes the
waters
Fifty years ago, a chunk of prime
waterfront on Belle Isle, just off the western shore of South
Beach, was occupied by a two-story motor court called the
Monterey Motel. Mr. and Mrs. Regular Joe would drive down with
the kids on their annual winter pilgrimage, park their big
American dream machine directly in front of the room, and gaze
out through jalousie windows upon a sea of automotive flesh—a
prelude to the blue serenity of Biscayne Bay. In the early
1960's, the Monterey was sold; the new owners added a
three-story lobby-and-spa building, grassed over the concrete,
and rechristened the property the Lido Spa Hotel.
For the next four decades, the Lido
endured as a bastion of Catskills culture, a time-warp of
handicrafts, chair-aerobics classes, and circle dances in the
pool to the tune of "Hava Nagila." In the blank expanse of their
evenings, widows took the air, chuckled at variety revues, and
whirled gamely about the dance floor with elderly male host
dancers. (These were the same ladies who, in the early days of
South Beach, rocked on the porches of decrepit Art Deco hotels,
chirping in the manner of distracted blackbirds at all the young
people who were about to drive them out of their homes.) Two
years ago, the Lido shuddered to a close, marking an end to the
era when the old were actually welcomed in the vicinity of South
Beach. The place stayed exactly the same until the end, making
no concessions to the whims of fashion or taste; in the process,
it had become the only truly unique hotel in Miami.
This little marzipan village—Miami as
it used to be—was seemingly tailor-made for hotelier
André Balazs,
an archaeologist of ambience. Balazs is betting that his tribe
of acolytes, the nomads of fashion who once craved noise
(particularly the social riot-zone of South Beach), will now pay
for quiet, the modern world's ultimate luxury. And so, on
peaceful Belle Isle, within the hallowed grounds of the old
Lido, he has unleashed his first spa hotel. The
Standard, Miami
riffs on the glories of the Lido's past with the inevitable
dollop of irony: the future, to Balazs, is a hipster-holism
theme park that juggles the spiritual and the pagan.
Balazs has always been adept at
envisioning the next curl of the culture. His 1990 acquisition
of L.A.'s Chateau Marmont spoke to a contemporary yearning for
grace and old Hollywood glamour. The elegant minimalism of New
York's Mercer hotel, opened in 1997, anticipated the monied
march of SoHo. In 1998, the first Standard hotel, in West
Hollywood, made the ballyhooed "cheap chic" trend actually
cheap, with room rates starting at $95 a night. The hotel was
wrought from a 1962 Sunset Strip institution called the
Thunderbird Motel, a downtrodden joint that had become a
last-chance retirement home; Balazs's team infused the place
with pure Pop, in the form of blue Astroturf pool decks and
Warhol flower-print curtains. Four years later, a second outpost
arrived, in downtown Los Angeles, which was then virgin terrain
for design hotels, as Belle Isle is now. The Standard Downtown
took over the former Superior Oil headquarters, a 1956 landmark
that Balazs filled with Verner Panton furniture and weekly
bacchanals.
South Beach is presently riding its
third wave of hype and glory as a resort town, and Balazs,
having missed the first two epochs, has been digging in for the
Era of Serious Money. His first move was to buy and renovate the
Raleigh, L. Murray Dixon's 1940 Art Deco masterpiece on Collins
Avenue. The Raleigh is Miami's version of the
Chateau Marmont,
and its Old Florida pageantry will be linked to the Standard's
forward-thinking gestalt by a shuttle service. As with Sunset
Boulevard, Miami Beach may yet become Balazsland.
The new Standard is rooted in the
genius of the late architect Morris Lapidus, that visionary of
excess—and accidental post-modernist—who defined Atomic Age
opulence 51 years ago with the Fontainebleau. Lapidus also put
his trademark baroque spin on the façade of the Lido, a
confection of gold grille panels and tiny sea-foam–green ceramic
tiles with the good name of the hotel writ large in jaunty
yellow neon. Because the building is a protected icon, the Lido
lettering remains intact, though the neon has been removed; the
customary upside-down STANDARD sign is tucked discreetly above
it on the roof.
Ironically, Lapidus wound up spending
his last bitter days a few hundred feet away, in a 1961 building
of his own design. At 97, living among his Lucite chairs,
cowhide bar, and Pegasus sculptures, within earshot of the
social director's endless announcements over the Lido P.A.
("Attention Lido Spa! It's time for the Aqua Follies!"), Lapidus
was still railing about the nerve of Miami's vulgarians. Sadly,
one of his last clients was a local Fuddruckers—yet another part
of the chain juggernaut that has been transforming South Beach
into Anywhere, U.S.A.
The Standard, in its own twisted fashion,
actually honors the unhinged history of mid-century Miami Beach.
Balazs retained the lobby's white-marble walls, terrazzo floors,
and stainless-steel elevators, then added a row of Hans Wegner
rocking chairs, as a camp homage to the widows of an earlier
era. A decidedly personal vision reigns in the public areas,
with the usual Modernist suspects—Aalto tea trolleys, vintage
Danish furniture, Arne Jacobsen sconces from an old SAS hotel in
Stockholm—counterpointed by riskier propositions such as beanbag
coffee tables and a Hans Hopfer denim sectional sofa that
sprawls out like an errant amoeba. Just off the lobby is the
hotel library, where Robert Pirsig's bible of hippie-dippiedom,
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, sits alongside
Sex, Ecology, and Spirituality and The History of the Devil
and the Idea of Evil. A sliding door emblazoned with a retro
sunburst pattern leads to a lounge done up with Olewanscher easy
chairs, walls covered with woven goat's wool, and a bar topped
with polished Douglas fir. The entire package recalls a 1960's
hippie mogul's house in California. In the bathrooms,
rectangular sinks, diagonal strips of mirrors, and painted pine
jump ahead to a 1970 Playboy After Dark effect.
Alongside a bank of epic windows is
the airy in-house restaurant, supervised by Eric Ripert of New
York's Le Bernardin, with a menu leaning toward fresh fish
seasoned with herbs from the Standard's own gardens. The dining
room, lined with slanted pine planks, looks like an overinflated
Swedish sauna; a deep-blue, glazed-brick accent wall is pure
Scandinavian summer.
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In fact, despite all the whimsy and
let's-lasso-the-zeitgeist in-jokes, the entire hotel was
actually inspired by the simple and somber lodges of the
Stockholm archipelago. Guest rooms evoke Swedish cottages with
their whitewashed walls of sandblasted plywood and floors
adorned with bright blue macramé rugs. Cotton tea cozies cover
wall-mounted televisions, picnic baskets serve as bedside
tables, and bathrooms are Shaker-plain but comfortable.
Scandinavian decorative conceits are
not the usual Florida thing, but this is, after all, a spa
hotel, and they work well with the Standard's inner-journey
ambitions. The Esalen-like Standard Center for Integral Living
provides naturopathic counseling, guided fasts and cleanses,
even relationship workshops. Guest rooms are serviced by rolling
Apothecarts bearing herbal teas and aromatherapy footbaths. Of
course, the life of appetite being a Balazs trademark, mini-bars
are also stocked with homeopathic DrinkEase hangover medication
and Standard-brand condoms.
Every inch of the Standard plays with
sin and redemption, excess and denial, in settings that
alternately smack of Roman decadence and monastic purity. Next
to a classic cedar sauna where guests can slap themselves silly
with soapy birch branches, private nooks are set aside for
"self-exploration and indulgence." The Turkish hammam has heated
marble seats and a somewhat less traditional subwoofer mounted
in the corner. Across the hall is a scrub room with enormous
overhead hoses, the same kind used by butchers.
Many of the treatments are things
guests do for themselves or each other: the high-pressure hoses,
for instance, or—for those staying in the ground-level "Wet"
rooms—a healing soak in an outdoor bathtub encircled by
way-too-transparent curtains. A guest can also drop $165 on a
Standard Spanking" (a cellulite-fighting massage) or $360 per
couple for a K.I.S.S. scrub, a massage, and a Chinese "sex
tonic." Yet for the most part, the Standard is keeping things
cheap and easy.
The heart of the hotel is the pool and
hydrotherapy area, an ode to communal bathing as social
sacrament. The outdoor aquacade encompasses a plunge pool, a hot
tub, and a 12-foot-tall, three-inch-wide column of falling
water. DJ-spun music plays through underwater speakers in the
chlorine-free Sound Pool. In the clothing-optional mud baths,
guests can slather one another with "golden body mud." Arbors of
sea-grape trees, night-blooming jasmine, and Moroccan palms are
intended to create "pockets of contemplation." Scattered about
the lawn are more convivial arenas, such as a set of immense,
pie-shaped wicker lounges flanking a small fire pit. Just off the
courtyard is a Tyrolean-style wishing well, a kitsch holdover
from the Lido days. Back then it bore a perky little sign: HOME
TO THE ADVENTURES IN BEAUTY.
Balazs, who began his career in the
nightclub business, understands that the alchemy of chic is a
delicate matter—and never more so than now, as corporations
co-opt everything from punk imagery to the trappings of
mysticism. With even pedestrian chain hotels installing hammams
in an attempt to appear hip, the Standard's
hydrotherapy-meets-holism concept is no longer so novel. Not
long ago, when the vocabulary of the daring hadn't devolved into
a barrage of visual clichés—when every trendy establishment
around the globe didn't look exactly the same—it was far easier
to make a mark. "Think of what Spiegel accomplished by hiring
Verner Panton," Balazs says. "Now, every groovy designer doing
some musician's house steals from Panton. Everything is known
everywhere."
This co-opting of cool is especially
prevalent in South Beach, where even the Lapidus-designed
Ritz-Carlton has a drag-queen DJ spinning house music in—what
else?—the Lapidus Lounge. Only here would the Hyatt brand,
seeking an illusion of boutique edge, downplay its involvement
in the new Victor Hotel and hire P. Diddy and a troop of
penguins for the grand opening. In the golden age of Miami
Beach, half-baked hucksters built larger and more outlandish
hotels each year. Now, big money pretends to be small.
In post-Delano South Beach, trying to
out-Starck Philippe Starck is a futile effort. Balazs has
managed to carve out his own carefully modulated turf, even
among countless boutique-hotel competitors and pretenders. The
Raleigh's atmosphere is more palatable for people of a certain
age than, say, that of the Shore Club, and Balazs has hosted
some intelligent parties at the hotel. On the other hand, the
Raleigh's Sunday Soirées—poolside bashes around a vast tribal
bonfire—cross the line to resemble overlit nightclubs. For
fashion designer Catherine Malandrino, who was dismayed by the
silicone, hormones, and escalating Euro-lounge music one recent
afternoon at the Raleigh, a moment has passed. "I've been coming
here for eight years. Back then it was an undiscovered
jewel—quiet, shabby, and crooked," she sighs. "Maybe it's time
to look for the next secret place."
Balazs insists that the Standard, Miami
will be the opposite of "everything Collins Avenue has
become."Then again, the Standard has applied for a 5 A.M. liquor
license—and in Miami, everyone, everywhere, wants some kind of
party. A lounge and outdoor restaurant now occupy the Standard's
wooden dock, set to become yet another stomping ground for the
young and wayward, though the hotel is not permitted to play
music after dark. Given the constrictions of being the only
commercial enterprise in a residential area, the Standard is
bound to face some complaints from the neighbors. Few people on
Belle Isle will be thrilled to live next door to any kind of
late-night scene, no matter how tasteful.
In the end, to last as long as the
Lido, the Standard only needs to stay out of its own way and
embrace Biscayne Bay, a lulling expanse of pure beauty that
makes natives fall in love with Miami all over again. Balazs
insists he is resolved to keep the party small and quiet. "This
little neighborhood of cottages, with the sounds of birds and
children playing, is like nothing else in America," he says,
sipping a glass of wine as night falls and the skyline of
downtown Miami glimmers across the bay. "It's lost in time,
unbelievably charming. The vibe doesn't need music: the idea is
to turn down the volume, not step into it."
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