Once upon a time, hotel boutiques used to feel like a naff extension of a late-night home shopping network. There’d be a few branded bits and pieces, along the lines of umbrellas, silk scarves, perhaps a notebook. They may have a relationship with some fusty old jewellery brand, likely aimed at guilty husbands needing a consolation gift to bring home to the wife. Hotels positioned themselves as completely separate from the rest of your life – gilded, glamorous and gated – and for the most part you left the entire experience behind once you checked out.
But today, hotels of all price points position themselves as “lifestyle brands”, an extension of their guests’ innate style and identity. That means they’re packed with personality: edgy interior design, droll handwritten messages on postcards beside the bed and, of course, a gift shop full of fashion, beauty and homewares that’s more craveable than anything you’ll find in a department store.
It’s no longer considered gauche to want to remind people where you’ve been; when hotel merch looks this good, customers are happy to walk the world as a branded billboard.
Arguably, no one does it better than the Ace Hotel group. Their secret is in the art of collaboration; they partner with like-minded brands that share the same aesthetic and cultural values to create bespoke pieces that they say “tell stories”. Their Kyoto hotel, for example, recently joined forces with cult LA sports brand Oyster Tennis Club to create a range of T-shirts, sweatshirts and gym towels printed with pretty sakura flowers in time for spring. At their Sydney outpost you can find collaborations with another LA fitness brand, Y,IWO, represented by silky Gold’s Gym-style shorts and sweatshirts.
Atelier Ace’s vice president of marketing, Jamaal Layne, says the secret of their merch success is that it prioritises items that you genuinely want to wear, rather than trying too hard to “sell” the hotel. “With us, you can have seven different shirts of ours and they will all look completely different,” he says. Other hotels, he continues, tend to stick to their own strict colourways and branding, such as the Beverly Hills Hotel’s commitment to their signature pink and green theme. “I think we do things a little bit differently.”
The Ace collaborations are so popular that the company knows of one superfan who’s made at least 100 orders, and is believed to be kitting out his own Palm Springs guesthouses with Ace Hotel gear. “It’s kind of nice to think of all these Ace pieces coming back together in someone else’s house,” says Layne.
Other hotel brands have also got the collab memo. Raffles recently partnered with heritage French department store Printemps for a range of cheekily themed The Butler Did It apparel – a nod to the brand’s promise that your personal Raffles butler will fulfil any request you have – as long as no one’s breaking the law. Ritz Paris has thrown its lot in with preppy American brand Frame, so far releasing five collections of pyjamas, jackets and nautical-striped sweaters. You may not have heard of South African luggage brand The Joinery but if you’ve stayed at Claridge’s, or the luxurious Londolozi Lodge in Kruger National Park, you may very well have noticed – or purchased – their sustainable bags and accessories, crafted from plastic bottles and branded with the logo of the hotel. They even designed a range of felt slippers for rooms that proved so popular they had to create extras. “They became such a cult following that guests would find the hotel boutique and say, I need another pair for my sister,” says co-owner Natalie Ellis.
Some of the best hotel merch is so confident in its own style that it eschews collaboration altogether. Luxury Italian hotel brand Pellicano is a fine example; its Issimo retail platform invites fans of the hotel to stock their own homes with impossibly chic Pellicano-branded ashtrays, coasters and even a leather and wood backgammon board. No partnerships required.
Of course, for every nattily embroidered sweatshirt or beach towel, there is a hotel that feels merch does not entirely align with its brand identity. Guests at these properties might want to take home the look and feel of their holiday, but they understand that an unbranded souvenir, one that truly represents a place, can sometimes speak the language of international style with far more fluency.
The buoyant and beautiful Portrait Milano, an extension of the Ferragamo footwear empire, declines to create any merchandise at all (how can you possibly improve on a Ferragamo pump?). Instead guests can purchase jewellery created by family member Maria Sole Ferragamo, and shop from an outpost of the edgy Antonia boutique, which stocks brands like Valentino, Givenchy and Off-White. One&Only Aesthesis on the Athens Riviera follows a similar path, curating hard-to-find items from Greek designers and artisans, rather than stamping its logo onto another tote bag.
However you buy into it, it’s increasingly clear that a hotel gift shop is as much about signalling to the world who you are, as well as where you’ve been.
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