Australian Vogue | March 1989

HOTEL AS THEATER

Marion Von Adlerstein Stays at New York's Newest Hostelery, So Starck it Underwhelms

By Marion Von Alderstein

The Royalton opened without fanfare last October off Fifth Avenue in midtown Manhattan. As spare in decor and subdued in colour as a Japanese boutique, it is the hotel of the moment. Even New Yorkers are impressed when you say you're staying there. It's the sort of place they call "hot".

It is the latest enterprise of Steve Rubell and , entrepreneurs who gave us Studio 54, the Palladium and Morgans hotel. Its interior is the work of Philippe Starck, the designer's designer, who's turned his hand to fixing up such diverse premises as a showroom for Yohji Yamamoto, President Mitterrand's bedroom at the ElysÈes palace and Café Costes, the late night Les Halles gathering place of les chébrans (the plugged-in) in Paris. When Café Costes opened in 1984, there was much ado about Starck's three-legged chairs and well of running water in the men's room. Both features have crossed the Atlantic to The Royalton.

Its style fits no period in time except perhaps what is to come. Said to be inspired by twentieth century transportation, it has elements reminiscent of luxury liners, bullet trains, aircraft washrooms and private power boats. The eroticism inherent in objects shaped for forward motion is augmented with symbols that bring to mind those thirties movies where love scenes occur as trains go into tunnels, or those seventies stories of the Mile?High Club. Steel rods thrust themselves through giant metallic eyelets in the tops of the curtains. Handrails are steely serpents. Lights are shaped like rhino horns (so are doorhandles) or hidden in portholes. Fifty of the hotel's 205 rooms and suites have open fireplaces. No, they are not television, listen to sound tapes or the radio. A curved slab of verdigris-coloured slate from Vermont surrounded the fireplace. Above it, a candle with an art postcard stood on a steel rhino horn. Lighting options seemed to be endless and each change subtly altered the colour of walls.

Two walls, fixed apart like open doors, half-screened the double bed, set into a French mahogany alcove. Bed linen was Italian, cover and pillowcases edged with grey grosgrain ribbon. For spectacle in the verdigris-slate bathroom, a custom-made (in California) tub, one and a half metres in diameter, vied with the Danish stainless steel washbasin, set in a triangular sheet of Italian glass. Enveloped from neck to ankle in a white towelling robe, I could make calls at the black telephones set into the walls of the bathroom, bedroom and sitting room.

So, what are the drawbacks? For a hotel to be running at top standard a month after its opening would amount to a miracle. The housekeeping staff were far too intrusive in the morning. I gathered, from newspapers left outside doors, that many of The Royalton's clients are late risers and room attendants are frantic to get their work done. Although ice buckets were refilled efficiently each afternoon, the hotel had not yet received its license to serve alcohol.

Still, The Royalton is not targeted at the conventional business traveller. But if you're in the business of cutting a dash in the arts, entertainment, fashion or society you couldn't have a better stage on which to play out your role. There's nothing on Broadway quite like it.