These Luxury Brands Are Now Getting Into the Hotel Game

Five new properties from a watchmaker, a fragrance house, a publishing power-player, and more.

Luxury fashion houses have been dabbling in hospitality for decades now, with iconic labels like Versace, Armani, Bulgari, Fendi, Gucci, and Louis Vuitton bringing restaurants and hotels into their orbit. But haute couture isn't the only way in.

In recent years, high-profile players in beauty, home design, publishing, and beyond have announced their own forays into the hotel world — often with the goal of bringing their brand equity and aesthetic along with them. Read on for five openings to know.

Audemars Piguet

The watch brand has been attracting travelers to its home village of Le Brassus, in Switzerland's Vallée de Joux, with a slate of projects: the company debuted its Musée Atelier Audemars Piguet in the summer of 2020, joined two years later by the 50-room Hôtel des Horlogers — literally, “the watchmakers' hotel.” Both were designed by Bjarke Ingels Group.

Christian Louboutin

The footwear icon will open an inn and restaurant in the coming months in partnership with luxury management firm Marugal. The 13-room Hotel Vermelho is in the village of Melides, on Portugal’s Alentejo coast — long a favorite vacation destination for the designer.

Elle

France’s fashion publishing giant made waves in spring 2022 with the announcement of two new hospitality brands. There’s the city-focused Maison Elle collection, which recently debuted with a 25-room property in Paris’s 17th Arrondissement; next year, a beach retreat in Jalisco will kick off its resort branch, Elle Hotel.

Fragonard

Provence became a little more fragrant last summer with the debut of the six-key Maison Fragonard, in Arles, a collaboration between Agnès and Françoise Costa — scions of the century-old perfume brand — and the Paris-based design firm Ateliers Saint-Lazare. A ground-floor boutique stocks apparel, home goods, and scents like the new Belle d’Arles, which has notes of orange blossom and citrus.

RH

The home brand has expanded into hospitality with a full-service yacht, RH Three; a forthcoming pair of private jets, RH One and Two; and, this September, the RH Guesthouse in New York City. Just a few steps from RH’s Meatpacking District showroom, the 1887 building houses a restaurant and subterranean caviar bar, nine rooms and suites decked out in Italian travertine and white oak, and a full-story “residence,” plus one of New York’s hottest commodities: a rooftop pool.