Combining mystery and romance with a sense of whimsy, The Chloe is a new small hotel in New Orleans that is big on evocative design, and captures all the special charm of this remarkable city.

With romantic antebellum homes and gorgeous gardens shaded from tropical heat by a canopy of oak trees, New Orleans’ Garden District is on every traveller’s must-visit list. And now there’s a fresh attraction: new luxury hotel The Chloe is situated just a couple of minutes’ walk away, in the Uptown District.

A genuine boutique hotel with just 14 guest rooms, The Chloe is housed in a renovated Victorian mansion that was originally built by renowned local architect Thomas Sully, with its reworked interiors designed by local decorator Sara Ruffin Costello. The new hotel is all about understated luxury, with moody themes typical of New Orleans – including mysticism and the natural world – reflected in the interior design. Think dim lighting, darker hues, slow-turning fans and winding rooms: a place to embrace all the mystery and romance of the Big Easy.

On arrival, guests are greeted by wrought-iron gates, an expansive brick patio and a front porch that features original tiles from the 1860s. In the lobby and other public areas, historic design details remain similarly intact; they include intricately tiled floors, dark woodwork, complex plaster mouldings and exceptionally high ceilings. The old staircase has a red carpet with a pattern of scrambling alligators, adding a playful touch to the period grandeur.

The Chloe is the first hotel from restaurateur Robert LeBlanc of New Orleans-based hospitality group LeBlanc + Smith. No surprise, then, that its restaurant menu has been conceived to feature modern takes on local classics such as a muffuletta egg roll, gumbo z’herbes agnolotti and shrimp étouffée dumplings. The dining room is just as evocative in design, with neo-Victorian light fixtures, a verdant tangle of hanging ivy and ferns, ochre leather banquettes and marble-topped tables. This being a tropical place, being able to eat and drink outdoors is essential – and at The Chloe you can choose to dine under crepe myrtle trees on a stone patio. And did we mention the outdoor bar area, the pool and the fragrant herb garden lined with Meyer lemon trees?

Upstairs, the guest rooms are also filled with whimsy and wonder, with special touches such as modern soaking tubs, four-poster beds or low spindle beds, and photography and artwork that include both artist originals and vintage finds. There’s a Victorian theme, but the rooms feel light and elegant, with crisp, white, monogrammed Italian sheets, custom-made dressing gowns, and toiletries and amenities produced by neighbourhood makers. Opulently patterned fabrics by storied British design houses House of Hackney and Morris & Co adorn mismatched chairs, with each chair also embroidered with an image of the cat that used to hang out at the original hotel in another charming nod to the history of the house.

Combining a distinct New Orleans spirit with thoughtful, assured interiors, The Chloe is a wonderful piece of design inspiration – and the ideal location from which to discover all the magic of this unique American city.

For more information, visit thechloenola.com

Looking for more architectural or travel inspiration? Take a look at the Sossusvlei Desert Lodge.

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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.

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