Soho House's Cowshed Products
Hotels love them a little less than we do. They are expensive and represent a serious decision because they are one more declination of their brand values. A priori they do not condition the reservation, during they condition the experience and a posteriori they feed the memory. They can be conversation material at an after-dinner table. And isn't that what life is about?
There are several schools of thought on this topic:
1) The alliance with a luxury brand: It seems logical, if we want a hotel to be perceived as prestigious, it must be wrapped in ad hoc elements. You have to look for firms that play in the same league as the hotel and vice versa. Some examples are: the new Nobu in Las Vegas has chosen Natura Bissé for its rooms, Le Bristol (Paris) Hermès and La Prairie and the Ritz in Madrid has partnered with Acqua di Parma in the Luxury, Royal and Presidential Suites and with Penthaligon's in the rest of the rooms.
Because this is another topic: not everyone has the right to the same type of toiletries, neither in brand nor in size. No way. Acqua di Parma is one of the most beloved brands among good hotels. The Gritti Palace hotel, which reopens with great pomp in Venice this week, has these little yellow bottles in its bathrooms. The same occurs with the aforementioned Hermès (Rotal Monceau-Paris or Alvear Palace-Buenos Aires), Ormond Jayne (Mandarin Oriental-Londres), Floris (Café Royal-Londres), Asprey at the Hotel Villamagna (Madrid), the aforementioned Hermès or Bulgari (Hotel Rector –Salamanca and in the Bulgari Hotels and Spa) . All these brands meet the requirements: they like men and women, hipsters and classics They have a pleasant smell and are known without being massive. The question always has to be: do we want to take it with us? If the answer is yes, it works.
2)I have an exclusive: For example, the W hotels label has Bliss as its house brand. It is part of his personality, so über-urban and hedonistic. Others get brands to make them and no one else but them. One example is Diptyque's bath products for the Mandarin Oriental in Paris. This brings us to the third school of thought. Other exclusive examples are Monastero Santa Rosa (Amalfi Coast) and Santa María Novella. This brings us to the third point.
3. Everything stays at home. Sometimes hotels develop their own cosmetics. This has been developed by chains such as NH, with its Agua de la Tierra line, COMO, with its COMO Shambala products, and Sibuet Hotels and Spa (France) and its Pure Altitude Spa. This achieves a total cohesion between the hotel and the image it wants to project. La Mamounia (Marrakesh) takes it to the extreme. Olivia Giacobetti has designed a scent for the hotel and the cosmetics are also exclusive and of course, they smell like Mamounia. to blessed glory There are others, such as Soho House, which have an independent but “sister” cosmetic line, such as Cowshed . Therefore, they are found in industrial quantities (oh yeah) in places like Babington House and all the Soho Houses in the world.
Toiletries: if we want to take them home, they work
Y, as in hamburgers and nail polish, there are also trends in this topic . Here are some:
- Size Matters. We find more and more hotels in which large, very large sizes are used and that cannot be carried. Or if they take, they are paid. This, of course, saves.
- Local, local and local. If there is kilometer 0 for food, why not for amenities? The closer the place where they produce, the more the culture of the area will be breathed. Monteverdi , in Tuscany has organic products from La Saponaria, Atrium (Cáceres) with fig soaps Made, of course, in the most natural way in Extremadura and the Royal Mansour (Marrakech) offers Les Sens de Marrakech products in its riad. Better known is the Kiehls case at the Carlyle. It is said that this brand is there because it is the one that Jackie O asked for. We believe it and we like to believe it.
- Small is the new big. With the niche we have run into. Hotels like surprises, controlled and positive but surprises. Above all they like the guests. For this reason, they are increasingly looking for the small brand that nobody has. Or have fewer people. Kiss My Face is used in the Standard (New York), C. O. Bigelow in the Downtown (Mexico DF) and Malin + Goetz in the Soho Grand (New York), Malin + Goetz's Habita (Mexico DF), or the Mondrian ( The Angels) . Another signature firm is Le Labo and can be found in places like the Grammercy Park Hotel (New York) or the Fairmonts. If you know the brand you feel part of an exclusive club, if not, you will want to know more. And you will use your own gel so you don't have to spend the hotel's. So it is and so it has always been.
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