3 of the best

fashion hotels

What’s a designer to do when next season’s collection is done and dusted? Create a hotel that people are just as keen to be seen in

words by Sophy Grimshaw

Sixty Hotel – Riccione, Italy

The Sixty Group is best known for Miss Sixty jeans, as modelled by Italian actress Asia Argento. For a weekend break on the Adriatic, Asia wannabes can head to Sixty Hotel in Riccione (south of Bologna). The on-site boutique sells limited-edition bags, shoes and sunglasses exclusive to the hotel, so you could just pitch up with an empty suitcase and kit yourself out on arrival. The building’s distinctive Swiss cheese-like façade isn’t the only unusual feature; Sixty also has web-cam communication between rooms so you can contact a friend on another floor – or flirt with that good looking stranger you spotted in the lobby, if their cam is switched on too. We hope you won’t need to be evacuated via the emergency staircase, but if you are, take a second to appreciate the work displayed there by 30 young artists championed by the hotel.

Sixty Hotel
via Milano 54, Riccione, +39 0541 697 851
www.sixtyhotel.com

Hôtel du Petit Moulin – Paris

Within a 17th-century building in the Marais district – in a former bakery still emblazoned with ‘Boulangerie’ – you’ll now find the four-star Hôtel du Petit Moulin. Designer Christian Lacroix is the creative force behind the interiors, and he has left his lavishly stylish mark on every surface. Each of the 17 rooms is unique, and in most there’s a contrast between colourful mixed media on the bedroom walls (from graffiti-like scribble to a starry sky) and furnishings and linens that are a stark, blankcanvas white. If the heart-shaped mirrors in the bathrooms don’t sound, in theory, like the height of good taste, they are so beautifully wrought as to be far and away on the cool side of kitsch. It’s a refreshing change from the chocolate-and-cream minimalism of too-serious boutique hotels. Going designer should always be this much fun.

Hôtel du Petit Moulin
29/31 rue du Poitou, +33 (0)1 4274 1010
www.paris-hotel-petitmoulin.com

Casa Camper – Barcelona

Camper shoes tend to be simple, stylish, functional and about value for money. Ditto the hotel, and as with the cleanly designed Camper stores, there’s a lack of visual clutter here. The people behind the hotel include architect Fernando Amat, who manages Barcelona’s cult homeware store Vinçon. Located at a bustling intersection, the hotel has 25 suites, each with a bedroom and a living area in red and white colour schemes respectively. Bathrooms get good natural light from the courtyard garden and are fitted with eco-friendly showers, which use solar-heated water. Borrow a bicycle from reception to explore Barcelona – you’ll find them suspended in mid-air