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Art Deco elements that include vintage lighting and a period font frame the lobby’s midnight-coloured concierge desk. Championing old-world charm, the design team opted for silk-tasselled key fobs rather than electronic key cards; these are housed in a wooden pigeonhole frame. -
In the bathrooms, metal snakes wind through the shower doors, doubling as handles. -
In the bathrooms, metal snakes wind through the shower doors, doubling as handles. -
Accessed through a hidden bookcase door in Bar Marilou, the private salon is intimate and offers hotel guests respite from the busier bar. Its decor is a celebration of Southern darkness and mysticism, with celestial and astrological motifs adding character and charm. -
Accessed through a hidden bookcase door in Bar Marilou, the private salon is intimate and offers hotel guests respite from the busier bar. Its decor is a celebration of Southern darkness and mysticism, with celestial and astrological motifs adding character and charm. -
Kelly and Pamela envisaged the bedroom suites as sanctuaries of calm in a city that parties day and night. The colour palette was inspired by the subtlety of clouds, with ethereal inspiration reflected in wind-chime-like pendant lights that tinkle as they move. -
Kelly and Pamela envisaged the bedroom suites as sanctuaries of calm in a city that parties day and night. The colour palette was inspired by the subtlety of clouds, with ethereal inspiration reflected in wind-chime-like pendant lights that tinkle as they move. -
Kelly and Pamela envisaged the bedroom suites as sanctuaries of calm in a city that parties day and night. The colour palette was inspired by the subtlety of clouds, with ethereal inspiration reflected in wind-chime-like pendant lights that tinkle as they move. -
Mix-and-match mythology of a global nature dominates the colourful aesthetic in the hotel’s guest lounge. The lighting fixtures drew inspiration from corsetry boning. -
Pamela collaborated with Christopher Farr on the design of the guest lounge’s menacing tiger carpet. -
For Pamela, the challenge was to make the once formal room feel like a corner of a collector-traveller’s grand home. Floor-to-ceiling art – mostly Egyptian, Indian and African collectibles, along with rebirth iconography such as snakes and eggs – draws the eye upwards and enhances the residential feel. -
An honour system cocktail cabinet takes pride of place in a corner of the hotel’s shared living space. -
Doorframes were replaced with archways that, along with curved headboards and lavender paint, add femininity to the suites. Allegorical paintings by Louisiana artist Rebecca Rebouché hang above the beds, and boxed sculptures by Los Angeles artist Clare Crespo decorate bedside tables. -
The statement-making lobby sets the tone for the guest experience. “It’s a nod to traditional hotel luxury, but there’s the Ace twist to it – it’s very thoughtful,” says designer Pamela Shamshiri of the consideration that went into the space. The chequered marble floors were restored, and a dusting of gold added to the detailing of the original twin staircases to enhance their French flair. Sourced from local antique stores, nautical collectibles are reminders of the Mississippi beyond. -
Situated mere metres from the historic Lafayette Square and housed in a former City Hall annex, the hotel’s exterior reveals little of its quirky interiors. -
The statement-making lobby sets the tone for the guest experience. “It’s a nod to traditional hotel luxury, but there’s the Ace twist to it – it’s very thoughtful,” says designer Pamela Shamshiri of the consideration that went into the space. The chequered marble floors were restored, and a dusting of gold added to the detailing of the original twin staircases to enhance their French flair. Sourced from local antique stores, nautical collectibles are reminders of the Mississippi beyond. -
The statement-making lobby sets the tone for the guest experience. “It’s a nod to traditional hotel luxury, but there’s the Ace twist to it – it’s very thoughtful,” says designer Pamela Shamshiri of the consideration that went into the space. The chequered marble floors were restored, and a dusting of gold added to the detailing of the original twin staircases to enhance their French flair. Sourced from local antique stores, nautical collectibles are reminders of the Mississippi beyond. -
The statement-making lobby sets the tone for the guest experience. “It’s a nod to traditional hotel luxury, but there’s the Ace twist to it – it’s very thoughtful,” says designer Pamela Shamshiri of the consideration that went into the space. The chequered marble floors were restored, and a dusting of gold added to the detailing of the original twin staircases to enhance their French flair. Sourced from local antique stores, nautical collectibles are reminders of the Mississippi beyond. -
Airy and whimsical in mood, the breakfast room is a celebration of the city’s great outdoors. Treated in a monochrome palette of Delft blue, the wicker chairs, tent-like ceiling and trompe l’oeil botanicals call to mind Southern garden parties. -
Scarlet-coloured bookshelves add a flirtatious element to Bar Marilou, the only space in the hotel that is open to the public rather than reserved for use by its guests. Designed with the guidance of French hospitality consultants Quixotic Projects, the bar’s fringed seating adds naughtiness to the night-time boudoir mood.
WORDS Martin Jacobs PHOTOS Stephen Kent Johnson
Memorable design will have your looks turning from lingering to lustful at New Orleans’s idiosyncratic Maison de la Luz Hotel.
Ask anyone what it means to reinvent design-hotel luxury for the 2020s, and Kelly Sawdon is best poised to answer. A partner at Atelier Ace – the studio known for its creative work on the global collection of Ace Hotels – Kelly was tasked with converting New Orleans’s 1908-built City Hall annex into what the company considers its first foray into luxury properties. The former office building, with its imposing edifice complete with Beaux-Arts flourishes, reveals little of its now offbeat interior.
Enlisting the help of Pamela Shamshiri of the brother-sister interiors team behind LA’s Studio Shamshiri multidisciplinary design firm, Kelly set about conceptualising the hotel by questioning contemporary luxury. “New Orleans is such a complicated, beautiful and layered city; we wanted to do something that really celebrates that on a more human scale,” she says.
“We asked a lot of questions about what luxury is right now, and what the Ace version of that is,” adds Pamela, citing nonagenarian style icon Iris Apfel as an influence on the maximalist aesthetic. Intimacy, a strong sense of place and New Orleans’s multicultural heritage were key to the look.
The outcome is a hotel that’s reminiscent of a worldly collector-traveller’s townhouse. “It’s almost like a quirky residence; there are aspects of it that really, truly do feel like a home,” says Pamela.
Maison de la Luz is nothing short of audacious, and a welcome assault on the senses. The Art Deco lobby makes for a cinematic entrance, one that’s given next-level impact by a chequered floor and Wes Anderson-style concierge desk. Complete with vintage lamps, period fonts and pigeonholes for silk-tasselled key fobs, the desk sets the tone for the guest experience.
So too do the original twin staircases: thoughtfully restored, they anchor the entrance. “We just dusted in the gold,” Pamela says of the colour added to their intricate metalwork to enhance their French detailing. Glass cabinets housing antique-store finds, and framed ceramic snakes forming sailing knots that reference the Mississippi’s maritime endeavours, add personality to the space.
Nothing shouts multicultural quite like an assortment of collectibles, including artworks of ancient Egyptian pharaohs, African masks, festive Indian headwear and torsos referencing Greek antiquity. Their display in the guest lounge has a fun pick-’n’-mix approach. Positioned at eye level and above, they draw attention upwards, encouraging an appreciation of the grandness of the high-ceilinged space. They are the room’s showstoppers, and are paired with understated velvet armchairs and banquettes in a playful, jewel-toned palette.
Completing the scheme are colourful custom carpets created in partnership with Christopher Farr and depicting menacing wild animals. Pamela describes the space as madcap, and one that deliberately references global iconography, thereby acknowledging the city’s diverse past.
The breakfast room offers a dramatic change of mood from the hotel’s other public areas, its airy freshness a contrast to the prevailing drama. Here Pamela celebrates the outdoors, despite it being a space that largely shuts out views of the neighbourhood beyond. Visuals of overscaled botanicals in Delft blue, and taking the form of leafy foliage fussed over by bees, grace the white walls. Wicker chairs surround scalloped dining tables. These, and the trompe l’oeil forms of the striped tent-like ceiling, conjure the decorative trimmings of a Louisiana garden party.
“New Orleans is a town of pirates and ghosts, and when you walk around, you’re very aware of different spiritual influences,” says Pamela. The private salon speaks to this, and is as rich in mysticism and Southern darkness as the town of Savannah is in John Berendt’s Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil. Saturated in night-time blues and gold, the room’s colours are not its only nod to the skies above: framed celestial maps, astrological charts and vintage diagrams of heavenly eclipses add an erudite edge. The spiritual realm isn’t far from reach, as the room’s fringed stools, studded sofas, alabaster urns and dimmed sconces intentionally lend the space an occult mood fit for a séance…
For more information, visit maisondelaluz.com.
Looking for more architectural or travel inspiration? Take a look at the Hôtel Les Deux Gares in Paris.
