Twelve years ago, French shoe designer Christian Louboutin bought a holiday home in Melides, an agricultural community on the Atlantic coast, south of Lisbon. Everything was perfect, except this: “There was no restaurant where I could go every night and hang out,” he says. “My house was not built to have dinner. Lunch, yes. Dinner, no.” He found a small, nondescript home on the edge of the historic village and thought he’d open a bistro there. The local mayor had a grander idea. “He said, ‘Do a hotel’, ”Louboutin recalls. “So I did.”
Last month, Vermelho Melides—named for the word red in Portuguese, a nod to his signature scarlet soles—opened for business. Set in a newly constructed building that resembles a centuries-old convent, Vermelho has 13 bespoke rooms, a spa, a bar, and, yes, a restaurant, all designed by Louboutin in collaboration with Lusitanian architect Madalena Caiado and long-time friend Carolina Irving. “I didn’t want a busy hotel or a loud hotel—I can’t stand when you arrive someplace and there is music everywhere, very lounge-y,” Louboutin says. “If you go to a hotel, you should feel like you belong there, that feeling of home.”
To furnish Vermelho, Louboutin culled the storage units outside of Paris where he’s housed the gems he’s picked up at auction or on his world travels. “It was hard—‘Oh, should I keep it?’ ” he said of handing over pieces such as Spanish bargueño chests and an embroidered red velvet sofa designed by Henri Samuel. Found at the 2020 Christie’s auction of the Prince and Princess Sadruddin Aga Khan’s collection, it now sits in the top suite. “These pieces are an extension of me,” says Louboutin. “But keeping them in storage made no sense.”
Red, naturally, is the theme that ties Vermelho together, be it on the corridors’ floor tiles, the window shutters, the linen banquettes, or the wastepaper baskets. But other colours abound. The walls of one junior suite are a charming ocean-hued fresco by Greek artist Konstantin Kakanias (who recently painted an Old Hollywood mural at Fanny’s, the restaurant at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles). Swaths of Vermelho’s façade are also a watery blue wash, with enormous baroque ceramic appliqués by Giuseppe Ducrot, a fourth-generation Italian sculptor, whose one-of-a-kind work Louboutin discovered at Le Sirenuse hotel in Positano. The lush green gardens, with citrus trees, tall grasses, and fragrant botanicals, are by landscape architect Louis Benech, Louboutin’s long-time friend. And there are, of course, azulejos—Portugal’s famous glazed-ceramic tiles—everywhere. Some are 16th-century blue illustrative-style, from Louboutin’s personal collection; some are modern, in a plethora of cheerful hues, by Fábrica de Azulejos de Azeitão in Setúbal.
In December, Louboutin hosted a cocktail party at Vermelho for town locals and gave them a tour of the place. “They said it was like the hotel had always been there,” Louboutin recalls. “That’s the nicest compliment of all.”
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