These hotels are now bonafide lifestyle brands – offering everything from immersive online shopping and skincare to at-home interiors services and homeware
Isabella Craddock
From in-house boutiques selling just what you want to be wearing, to skincare products, homeware and even interior design services, these hotels are more than a place to bed down, but lifestyle brands in their own right…
Any luxury traveller knows that a hotel is so much more than a place to rest your head. It’s a place to live out your design fantasies – be it a grand Italian palazzo on the shores of Lake Como, a tropical modernist resort in the jungle, or an aristocratic Scottish Highlands retreat – and temporarily step into another world, and with it, another character.
Recognising guests’ growing desire for total immersion and bringing a piece back home, more and more hotel brands are evolving into 360-degree offerings. Remember that Four Seasons bed? You can now buy the mattress. That distinctive fragrance or room scent? It’s in the lobby shop. Hotel brands are shifting, and these glamorous global properties are at the forefront.
Sense of Lake
For Italian glamour
It’s hard to imagine a more sumptuous spot than Lake Como’s Grand Hotel Tremezzo and Passalacqua – the latter, officially The World’s Best Hotel. A slice of this inimitable Italian summer lifestyle is now available to take away, with the launch of a new online lifestyle boutique, Sense of the Lake. Split across nine shippable sections, the collection has been created by owner Valentina De Santis and her mother in collaboration with 30 Italian designers such as Brics Milano, F.R.S For Restless Sleepers (famed for their silk pyjamas and robes), interiors house Bottega Conticelli, eyewear artisans L.G.R and independent, Rome-based brand Chez Dédé. The lineup was chosen to celebrate the best in Italian craftsmanship and tradition while highlighting the unique beauty of the De Santis’ Como hotels. Coming soon: a stunning new swim and resort collection with Emilia Wickstead.
senseoflake.com
Palm Heights
For colourful pieces and silk pyjamas
Fashion’s favourite tropical boutique hotel, Palm Heights Grand Cayman, is a staple on jet setters’ Instagram feeds, home to 52 suites facing the white sands of Seven Mile Beach, a collection of 20th- century furniture, including pieces from Marcel Breuer and Ettore Sottsass and a new concept store named Dolores. Showcasing Caribbean diaspora designers, guests can shop Diotima web crochet dresses, Isa Boulder ruched bikinis, Port Tanger oversize sunglasses, and more – a particular favourite is the silk pieces – scarves embossed, vintage terrycloth pieces and pattered pyjamas – perfect for snapping photos on the beach and by the palm-fringed pool. The hotel literature to connect with its guests, offering a 2,000-strong library of books and magazines, available to purchase and take home. palmheights.store
Aman interiors + essentials
For Japandi design and quiet luxury
Aman is the ‘if you know, you know’, of hotel brands, and its interiors arm, skincare range and loungewear collection are just the same. With such a strong following from the world’s elite (or ‘Aman Junkies’, as they call them), the brand launched Aman Interiors this year, transforming guests’ homes into mini Aman hotels with an edit of furniture pieces straight from its exquisite properties. What’s more, Aman has also transitioned into an immersive lifestyle brand with Aman Essentials – a range of deliciously smelling products which instantly transport you to an Aman Spa – and a range of accessories like towelling cotton beach bags, cashmere caps and pashminas, yoga mags, yoga gear and more. You don’t have to check into an Aman hotel and can purchase online, with global shipping.
shop.aman.com
Soho House
For homeware and skincare
Known for its cool members’ clubs, in-the-know social scene and design-led hotels, Soho House is indeed a household name, and with so many influential and stylish members admiring its famous interiors and products, it made sense for the brand to dabble in lifestyle offerings. Soho Home is now a huge success, bringing that coveted Soho House feel to your house (Meghan Markle even has its Country House range). Items include scented candles and coffee table books through to boucle armchairs and coffee tables. The brand also extends into Soho Skin, a range of skincare products designed to address the effects of modern living on the skin. Spanning cleansers, serums, moisturisers, and even a travel-sized hangover cure, the range is formulated with high-quality ingredients and packaged with a sleek and minimalist design. Soho House members can purchase Soho Skin products at a discount. sohohome.com, sohoskin.com
Firmdale hotels
For charming British heritage designs
Whimsical, homely and a kaleidoscope of pattern and colour is how one would describe Firmdale Hotels’ signature aesthetic, the boutique luxury brand with eight properties – largely townhouse and mews hideaways – in London and New York City. Offering this signature vibe for your own home, founder and creative director Kit Kemp has her own shoppable brand – available on the Firmdale website and a digital rabbit warren spanning dining and entertainment, bath and body, toys, sleeping accessories, homeware mannequins, rugs, stationary, gifts and more. But what truly makes the service special is the bespoke furniture, made to order, offering a unique opportunity to quite literally transform your home into London’s Charlotte Street Hotel, or NYC’s The Whitby.
firmdalehotels.com/shop-kit-kemp
The Fife Arms
For countryside chic
The Fife Arms is the ultimate Scottish countryside retreat – a historic public house turned boutique art hotel and a gallery with fantastical, exquisitely charming rooms. And not just any art – but art from famed Swiss gallerists Hauser & Wirth (the hotel is operated by their hospitality arm, Artfarm). Set in the lovely town of Braemar, the home of the Highland Games, and with a restaurant in nearby Ballater, a hit with the British royals when visiting Balmoral, staying at The Fife Arms immerses you in a glamourous Highlands fantasy. There’s a wonderful boutique in the lobby, which has now expanded online – and enthusiasts can deck themselves out in The Fife Arms’ signature blue and green tartan and take home Albamhor heather bath products (stocked in each of its eclectic rooms) and hip flasks, through to hampers, dog accessories and more – all encapsulating a dreamy Highlands lifestyle.
shop.thefifearms.com
This article originally appeared in the Spring/Summer 2024 issue of Near+Far
