Fop Culture
Its flamboyant attitude has influenced modern-day peacocks such as Bowie, Prince and Harry Styles. But the dandy philosophy can be traced back hundreds of years, when an impeccably groomed Englishman changed men’s fashion forever.
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What is a dandy? The word has its origins in the late 18th century, deriving from Jack-a-dandy: slang for a “conceited fellow”. Since then, the term has been used as an insult and bestowed as the highest compliment to a man (or woman) of style. While by extension dandyism—the philosophy of the dandy, with its celebration of surface, artificiality and the performance of self—has been both valorised as a heroic stance against conformity and pilloried as an expression of the most inane, reactionary snobbery.
In its most common usage, a dandy is understood as a man who draws attention to himself through flamboyant and often androgynous clothing (frills and brightly coloured fabrics)—think Prince in his ruffled shirts and purple Spandex, or Harry Styles and Timothée Chalamet attempting to pull off pussy-bow Gucci blouses on the red carpet. However, such affected peacockery is anathema to the rigorously restrained aesthetics and philosophy of true dandyism. With the launch of The Dandy, a new fragrance from the venerable house of Penhaligon’s—its notes of whiskey and smoke evoking the era of sleek, tuxedoed Art Deco gigolos and lounge lizards—and, more crucially, the news that the theme for next year’s Met Gala will be “the Black dandy”, coinciding with the New York Metropolitan Museum’s fashion exhibition— Superfine: Tailoring Black Style—the meaning of dandyism is about to be once again analysed and refracted through the lens of contemporary pop culture.
There have been dandies throughout the ages, but the dandyist philosophy has its roots in the British industrial revolution and the sartorial perfection of one George Bryan Brummell, better known as Beau Brummell. The grandson of a grocer, Brummell combined superlative tailoring, an ironic wit and glacial froideur to become the superstar of the bon ton—i.e. the highest echelons of Regency high society—and in the process he created the prototype for the modern suit and tie, and arguably, the first example of modern masculine celebrity cool.
Prior to Brummell, men in English aristocratic circles were still in the sway of late 18th century French courtly fashion—heavy embroidery, bejewelled buckles, silk stockings and powdered wigs. Brummell’s revolutionary style was unequivocally British. His simple monochromatic uniform of a tailored coat, waistcoat, skin-tight breeches, and cravat was adapted from the riding clothes of English country gentlemen—essentially sportswear—and a timely rejection of the decadent fripperies of the French Royal court. This was the original “quiet luxury”, where simple, high-quality tailoring is worn to actively blur others’ perceptions of the wearer’s wealth and social status.
Brummell’s hair was meticulously tonsured but unpowdered, he was fastidiously clean and close shaven, a new ideal of sexy, effortless masculinity that left his social peers—particularly his close friend, the Prince Regent, the future King George IV—looking like gaudy fops. It is emblematic of the paradoxical nature of dandyism that such seemingly effortless style required great efforts to achieve. His gloves were made by two separate glove makers—one for the fingers and the other specialising in the fit of the thumb. He claimed to polish his hessian boots with the froth of the finest champagne and hired a manservant of his exact proportions to, upon delivery from Brummell’s tailor, wear his master’s clothes for a day to ensure they did not appear too vulgarly new.
The most painstaking part of Brummell’s daily five-hour toilette was the arranging of his cravat—a piece of stiffly starched snow-white linen that his valet tied and draped over and over until it achieved an acceptable level of sculptural perfection. A famous anecdote tells of a morning visitor entering Brummell’s dressing room to find him and his long-suffering valet standing amidst an avalanche of discarded, crumpled linen. “Those are our failures,” Brummell pronounced drolly.
But Brummell’s starched cravat served another purpose beyond the sartorial, as once tied in place it made it difficult for him to turn or lower his head. This ensured that the Beau continuously regarded the world with his nose in the air, his unflappable composure aided by the fact that his only possible physical reaction to anything surprising was a disdainful eyebrow raise. His tailoring, too, cut close to his body and artfully padded to emphasise the Grecian proportions of his silhouette, functioned figuratively and literally as a suit of armour, protecting him against the venalities of the dizzyingly high society he had ascended to rule.
Ironically for a man who had invented himself as an exquisite object, Brummell’s number one rule of style was to never draw undue attention. He once advised that, “If people turn to look at you in the street, you are not well dressed, but either too stiff, too tight or too fashionable.” Naturally, Brummell existed to be looked at, but his obsession with sartorial detail was so meticulous as to render its perfections invisible to the man in the street. The line of a shoulder, the proportions of a cuff, were subliminal signals that could only be read by other elite initiates of the dandy sensibility.
Inevitably, Brummell’s tenure as the king of Regency fashion came to a squalid end. He had amassed enormous gambling debts, and believing his social position unassailable, insulted the portly and comparatively slow-witted prince. Upon encountering the heir apparent strolling with a companion in Regent’s Park, Brummell had enquired, “Who’s your fat friend?” Without royal protection, in the throes of late-stage syphilis and with the threat of debtors’ prison looming, Brummell fled to France. There, in a squalid two rooms in Caen, the Beau descended into madness, constantly washing, and ironing his tattered linens in anticipation of the noble visitors who never arrived. He was buried in a pauper’s grave.
Beau Brummell was gone but his dandyist philosophy did not die with him. Across the Channel, just five years later, Jules Amadee Barbey d’Aurevilly published the essay On Dandyism and George Brummel which would become a canonical text for a new generation of French poets, artists and writers. The decadent poet Charles Baudelaire particularly revered the Beau, penning a chapter of his 1863 treatise, The Painter of Modern Life, titled simply, The Dandy, as a paean to those he called “natural aristocrats” with “no profession beyond elegance” externalising their superiority of mind through their fastidious dress, exacting taste and stoic manner. The Industrial Revolution had created a large wealthy middle class and the means of mass production. And Baudelaire believed that within such an increasingly homogenised society, dandies were the last Romantic heroes, making a stand for originality and the bravery to be oneself. “Dandyism is a setting sun; like the declining star, it is magnificent, without heat and full of melancholy.”
The Irish playwright and poet Oscar Wilde, often referred to as a dandy, was another who fell under the Beau’s thrall. Brummell would have no doubt considered Wilde’s long hair, knickerbockers and beringed fingers the height of vulgarity. Wilde’s dandyism lay not in his wardrobe but in his affecting of a fearlessly unique persona, his wit and manner, much like Brummell’s, brought him fame but also protected him from those who disapproved of his ambiguous sexuality and overt self-promotion. While Wilde himself may not have been the personification of the dandy archetype, in his work he often celebrated the impenetrable shallowness and style of the dandy ideal. Lord Henry Wotton, the protagonist in his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, is dazzingly chic and hopelessly debauched, a Faustian dandy who preys on the vanity of his circle of young male admirers, leading them into dissolution and disgrace.
Wilde’s inspiration for the The Picture of Dorian Gray was the French decadent classic À Rebours by Joris-Karl Huysmans. This is the story of the jaded aristocratic aesthete Des Esseintes, so repulsed by bourgeois society that he sequesters himself in a bizarre and luxurious private world where he is free to indulge his fascination for the artificial, the arcane and the grotesque—from flesh-eating plants and Byzantine jewels, to an organ on which he creates melodies, not of music but esoteric perfumes.
It is widely assumed that the model for the neurasthenic Des Esseintes was perhaps the most imperious dandy of the fin de siècle, Robert de Montesquiou. Immensely wealthy and flagrantly queer, Montesquiou was admired for his razor-sharp elegance—famously captured in contemporary portraits by Whistler and Boldini—and his forward-thinking art patronage. He was one of the first to champion and collect Art Nouveau, but also pilloried for his pretension and brittle snobbery. Like Huysmans’ protagonist, Montesquiou was obsessed with creating daring and dazzling interior spaces (silver gilt ceilings, walls lacquered midnight blue and hung with medieval tapestries) all lit by sinuous Gallé lamps. Perhaps his most notorious contrivance was a Majorelle—arguably the greatest furniture maker of the period—glass-fronted credenza in which he proudly displayed his collection of rainbow-hued silk socks.
Throughout the 20th century up until now, many men and women have trod in the footsteps of Brummell and co, though few have the leisure or means to create entire worlds à la Montesquiou. Women too can be dandies, like Coco Chanel who rose from singing in cheap music halls to become a fashion legend. “My life didn’t please me, so I created my life,” she once said. Similar to Brummell, her style was inspired by the sporting wear of British country gentlemen, borrowing and adapting the equestrian clothes of her aristocratic lovers to create the eternally chic and classic Chanel suit. This suit was to become her uniform until she died. Even in old age she remained alarmingly slim and soignée, beetle-black bob wig framing her skull-like visage, puffing on her ever-present cigarette, her armful of Verdura costume bracelets clattering as she spat out dandyist aphorisms like, “Elegance is refusal” and “Many people think luxury is the opposite of poverty. It is not. It is the opposite of vulgarity.”
On the roster of modern male dandies, there are plenty of notables—Charles Watts, the late drummer for The Rolling Stones, in his impeccable British tailoring, stoically keeping the beat behind his ragtag bandmates, or David Bowie as the occultist dandy, The Thin White Duke. But it is the man whom Tom Ford, a meticulous dandy himself, described as “the world’s most formidable style icon”, who is Brummell’s truest heir. In the 1970s, Bryan Ferry, with his cool, retro-tailored tuxedos, pencil thin moustache and brilliantined hair, conquered the charts and seduced the peerage—a connoisseur of wine, women, cars, clothes, houses. The society interior decorator Nicky Haslam said of rockstar Ferry that “he was more likely to redecorate a hotel room than to trash it”, while British author and social commentator Peter York wrote that he was “a man of such meticulous self-curation that he could hang on the wall of the Tate.” One of Baudelaire’s “natural aristocrats”, the son of a Yorkshire miner whose job was to tend the pit ponies, Bryan Ferry once described himself with an epithet worthy of the Beau at his height, as “an orchid born on a coal tip”.
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How the ‘Studio 54 of Paris’ Gave Birth to One of the World’s Coolest Cologne Brands
From bath house to nightclub to 5-star hotel, Les Bains Guerbois has lived many lives. Its masterful fragrances are an ode to its colorful history.
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Rolex’s Gold Watches Just Got More Expensive
As the precious metal continues to rise in value, the Crown has adjusted the retail pricing of its gold timekeepers accordingly.
Rolex is rolling into 2025 hot with a price hike on its gold models. For those who bought new models at retail last year, that’s good news, but for those still on the Crown’s seemingly eternal waitlists, that could mean paying more when the time comes to collect on your long-awaited timekeeper.
Hard-to-get and expensive references are becoming even more out of reach. Last year’s gold releases saw price increases of around 9 to 11 percent. The Rolex Deepsea—the company’s shockingly heavy dive watch with an equally hefty price to match—went up from $83,997 in 2024 to $93,505 today for an 11.33% climb. Meanwhile, Everose models, such as the Rolex Day-Date 40 Ref. 228235 and the Sky-Dweller Ref. 336935, rose 11.57% and 9.26%, respectively, for new price tags of $74,635 for the Day-Date and $93,170 for the Sky-Dweller. That’s almost $8,059 more for each and that doesn’t factor in taxes.
It’s not a price hike just because they’re Rolex, and they can…although they could certainly get away with it. This is due to the continuing rise of the precious metal industry globally. In 2024, gold prices rose by nearly 40% with both consumers and countries betting on the investment due to varying factors from worldwide instability. At the beginning of last year, gold was roughly $3,223 per ounce and was up to $4,513 by the end of the year. According to some jewellers we’ve spoken with, they expect the price of gold to continue to rise and, given Rolex is, on its own, a pretty steady value riser, getting in on its gold models, even at higher prices than last year, is probably a pretty good idea. That is if you can get your hands on them. Pre-owned Rolex expert Paul Altieri of Bob’s Watches sees it for what is typically the driving factor in the watch world: rarity.
“The Rolex price increases aren’t just an economic reaction,” he tells Robb Report. “It’s a recalibration of value in a world where craftsmanship and scarcity remain timeless currencies.” As suspected, he adds that a price increase at Rolex nearly always equates to an increase in demand.
In other words, it may be high time to follow up with your Rollie AD…again.
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TAG Heuer Has Replaced Rolex as Formula 1’s Official Timekeeper
The luxury watch brand just signed a 10-year contract with F1.
The 2025 Formula 1 season hasn’t even started, and TAG Heuer has already been crowned a winner.
Over the summer, it was reported that the Swiss watchmaker was gunning to become the motor-racing competition’s official timekeeper, a title previously held by its competitor Rolex. Now, the brand’s parent company, LVMH, has successfully completed the sponsorship transfer with a 10-year contract after more than two decades.
“I am delighted to welcome TAG Heuer as the Official Timekeeper of Formula 1 as they start the next stage of their long history in our sport,” said Stefano Domenicali, president and CEO of Formula 1, in a press statement. “With their focus on innovation, accuracy and excellence, they are a natural partner, and I am excited to see how our intertwining heritage can tell new stories for the future as we celebrate our 75th year.”
In July, the watch company was in talks to reclaim its timekeeping duties—a role it previously held from 1992 to 2003 before Rolex took over in 2013. As Domenicali mentioned, TAG Heuer has a storied past with the auto racing sport ever since its logo appeared on the back of an F1 car in 1969 and became the first luxury brand to sponsor a team in 1971—which just so happened to Enzo Ferrari’s team. After its timekeeping title was handed over, TAG Heuer still remained as a major sponsor for McLaren until 2015 and in 2016, became the official timekeeper and partner of the Oracle Red Bull Racing team.
“In a sport defined by mental resilience, physical strength, strategy, innovation, and performance it is only natural for TAG Heuer to be at the very heart of Formula 1 as Official Timekeeper,” added Antoine Pin, the watchmaker’s CEO.
LVMH, which is owned by French billionaire Bernard Arnault, has been making a push into sports ever since it sponsored the 2024 Paris Olympics. The conglomerate made sure its stamp was all over the event with Chaumet designing the medals, Louis Vuitton handling the torch trunks, and Berluti creating the athlete’s uniforms. With this new agreement, expect to see more LVMH maisons trackside including Moët & Chandon, who was named the official Champagne supplier for the 2025 season.
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Car of the Week: This Shelby Cobra Is One of the Winningest Cars Ever. Now It’s Heading to Auction.
This 1965 Shelby 427 Competition Cobra Roadster, offered by Mecum Auctions, counts
two SCCA National Championships among its list of wins.
Whether called the “Essex Wire Cobra” or “Ollie the Dragon,” the car being referred to is revered as the winningest Shelby Cobra of all time. This legendary racer tore up America’s racetracks for over four decades, taking three major championships and a multitude of first-place finishes. As for its latter nickname, that was reportedly coined by one of the car’s most successful drivers, Dr. Dick Thompson. He’s quoted as saying: “We called the car Ollie the Dragon because every time you let off on the throttle, a belch of fire about three feet long would shoot out the hood scoop.”
This month, Ollie, the fire-breathing 1965 Shelby 427 Competition Cobra Roadster, better known in the racing world as the Essex Wire Cobra, will cross the auction block at Mecum’s 4,500-car Kissimmee 2025 sale in Florida on January 18.
“Over the years, we’ve auctioned some of the very best and most valuable Cobras,” says John Kraman, longtime Mecum TV commentator and analyst, “but this car raises the bar. It really is the pinnacle.”
How much will this storied race car fetch? Kraman isn’t making any predictions, but the vehicle is being talked about in the same breath as the 1962 Shelby Cobra bearing chassis No. CSX2000—the first Cobra that Carroll Shelby built. That example sold through RM Sotheby’s in 2016 for $20.9 million.
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“One interesting fact; during the restoration, Carroll Shelby himself visited McCluskey’s shop in Torrance, Calif., at least three times, to advise on the restoration and ensure its authenticity,” says Kraman.
As for the car’s racing history, it dates back to 1965. That’s when Essex Wire, one of the world’s biggest industrial wiring conglomerates, was looking to raise its profile in advance of it going public on the New York Stock Exchange. Essex Wire’s president, Walter Probst, approached its biggest client, Ford Motor Company, with a plan to promote the two brands by going sports-car racing using one of Carroll Shelby’s new Cobras. Ford agreed, and a brand-new 1965 Shelby 427 Competition Cobra Roadster, chassis No. CSX3009, was supplied by Shelby American in Wimbledon White. It came with Ford’s thundering 427-cubic-inch big-block, side-oiler V-8. The power plant has exotic magnesium intake manifolds and aluminum competition cylinder heads. Max output was originally more than 500 hp, and the engine is paired with a four-speed manual transmission.
This Cobra also features a Salisbury limited-slip differential, Halibrand racing wheels with knock-off spinners, and unmuffled, steel-tube side-exit exhausts. The simple, no-frills racing livery was limited to just a single Raven Black stripe with orange borders and “Essex Wire” in black letters on each side.
After being put through its paces at California’s Riverside track by the great Shelby test driver Ken Miles, now a household name after the blockbuster film Ford Vs Ferrari, the car first raced in April of 1965 in the USRRC 200 in Pensacola, Fla. It had 24-year-old Robert “Skip” Scott and Dick Thompson, a multiple SCCA champion, sharing the driving. They finished fourth. The car was raced non-stop between 1965 and 1982, winning two SCCA National Championships and an SCCA Production Championship, along with numerous individual race victories. From 1973 on, its 427 V-8 was producing 670 hp.
Describing the way the Cobra drove, Dick Thompson is on record as saying: “It was a real bear of a car, but it would go like hell. It was beautiful in the straightaway, but because it didn’t have much in the way of brakes, it was always hairy in the turns.”
Fast forward to the late 1990s when André Ahrlé, a well-known collector who had previously competed at Le Mans, acquired the partly disassembled car and commissioned Mike McCluskey to work his magic. “The restoration took more than five years, was very difficult, and very expensive,” Ahrlé states. “Part of the problem was that a restoration had previously been started and most of the parts were scattered all over the country.
According to Ahrlé, the car retains much of its originality, including such irreplaceable items as the rare magnesium intake manifold and aluminum competition cylinder heads, the original four-speed manual gearbox, and original 1965 Halibrand magnesium wheels. The new owner will also get a treasure trove of items with the car, including the original 427 V-8 that powered it during its racing heyday. Now completely rebuilt and race-ready, the engine sits mounted on a display stand.
“The beauty of the car is that it’s so famous that everything is known about it since day one,” says Ahrlé. “We have a collection of literally hundreds of period photos and documents, along with comprehensive details of the restoration.”
In addition, there’s an exquisite, highly detailed 1:5 scale model of the car, created by master-modeler Jorge Sordelli, plus the original helmet, race suit, and gloves worn by driver Ed Lowther when he won the car’s first championship in 1966.
Click here for more photos of the 1965 Essex Wire Cobra.
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How the ‘Studio 54 of Paris’ Gave Birth to One of the World’s Coolest Cologne Brands
From bath house to nightclub to 5-star hotel, Les Bains Guerbois has lived many lives. Its masterful fragrances are an ode to its colorful history.
If you were to rank all of the fragrance collections in the world, it would be hard not to put Les Bains Guerbois in the top five. With its no-miss lineup of 13 exquisite scents, it has quickly captivated perfume cognoscenti from Paris, where it’s based, to tastemaking locales across the world. And part of its charm and success is that each scent is an ode to its namesake building, a bathhouse turned nightclub turned hotel that has been earning a unique lore since it opened in 1885.
The property got its start as a thermal bath, Les Bains Douches, founded in the late 19th century by August Guerbois. From the beginning, it attracted a clientele with boldfaced names: Frequent guests included Marcel Proust, Claude Monet, and Émile Zola. Its original configuration boasted a pool and various saunas and steam rooms.
Though it managed to stay standing through two World Wars, its owner Maurice Marois transferred the lease a few times in the 1960s and ’70s. In 1978, its new tenants turned it into a nightclub, complete with renovations by a young Philippe Starck. Its opening party attracted revellers in the thousands, lured by its new concert hall, restaurant, and a robust lineup of musicians and performers. It quickly became a Parisian answer to Studio 54, and welcomed the likes of Bowie, Iman, Basquiat, Warhol, Gaultier, Jagger, and De Niro.
Les Bains evolved from discotheque to a New Wave stalwart in the ’80s, hosting banner acts like Joy Division and Depeche Mode, and onward to funk—a 1992 taping of Prince encapsulates that era, and on any given night you could spot a who’s who that included Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell, Madonna, Johnny Depp, and more. During this period, David Guetta served as LBD’s resident DJ.
The club shuttered in 2010, sat idle for five years, until Jean-Pierre Marois, the original owner’s son, opened the 39-key hotel that stands today, Le Bains Paris. There’s still a small club downstairs—and the original pool, though no longer functional, is still there—which still hosts stars such as Dua Lipa.
Every detail of the hotel itself is a nod to Les Bains’ history, from the checkered lobby floor worthy of a dance hall, to the in-suite hammams in many of the rooms. In spring 2024, Marois also opened a second post for the hotel: Les Bains Gardians, in the Camargue region, which took the brand’s unique aesthetic to the South of France.
Les Bains Guerbois, the fragrance collection, came to life in 2018. The name harkens back to the building’s first chapter and its founder, and its emblem Bacchus, the Roman god of wine and fertility. His bearded likeness was carved above the spa entrance in the 1800s, and greets hotel guests today.
Les Bains got its first scent in the form of a custom candle, called Atmosphere, which Marois commissioned master perfumer Dorothée Piot to concoct. It has a nuanced blend of spices, florals, woods and leather. The candle was so popular that three years later, in 2021, Marois launched the official fragrance line, Les Bains Guerbois, while committing to work exclusively with French noses, including Dominique Ropion, Bertrand Duchaufour, and Michel Almairic. Those four created all but two of LBG’s Historic Collection, called Une Date, Une Histoire” is the collection name. Each scent encapsulates a time and moment from the building’s past, such as its opening in 1885, or when Joy Division performed in 1979.
More recent scents, from the Those three noses have each crafted one scent from LBG’s growing “Formes & Matières” (Shapes & Materials) collection, are more tactile in nature, and reference specific locations in the property. Take 2023’s Raku, named after the hotel’s glazed ceramic bar and the Japanese lacquer technique that makes it shine. The best of this lineup, Damier, is an ode to the checkered floor that evolves from entrance to restaurant.
If you can’t physically go to Les Bains Guerbois, you should try one of its fragrances, which you can buy globally via Luckyscent.
Below, five of our favorites from this storied lineup.
1979 New Wave EDP
Perfumer: Dominique Ropion
Notes: Spearmint, peppermint, aldehydes, orris, woods, musk
The story: December 18, 1979. Joy Division takes the stage at Les Bains Douches. You can hear the whole set here.
My take: There’s a reason we don’t see many mint-tinged scents out there, but when they’re good, they’re great. The aldehydic essence brings a cool, metallic intrigue. This one is special, and peerless in its field. You could wear it any day, night, or season. It’s the first one I had to own from the bunch. In a word, wow.
1978 Les Bains Douches EDP
Perfumer: Bertrand Duchaufour
Notes: Yuzu, whiskey, clary sage, heliotrope, myrrh, tobacco, cedar, patchouli
The story: The doors of the nightclub are open—but only those who can make it past storied bouncer Marie-Line will rub elbows with Jagger, Basquiat, and Iman.
My take: This feels like the most familiar scent—in a warming sense. It’s a year-round scent for the guy who’s here to have a good time, but it’ll work specially well at cocktail parties in the cooler months.
Damier EDP
Perfumer: Fanny Bal
Notes: Black pepper, aldehydes, milky accord, sandalwood, patchouli, white musk
The story: The black-and-white checkerboard floor of Les Bains Paris swims to life as it evolves from entrance to restaurant to bar, a nod to three key eras of the property (spa, club, hotel).
My take: Possibly the most perfect pepper expression I’ve encountered. I can’t stop talking about it. (“How good was that peppery one, Damier?”) But it isn’t just the pepper that punctuates; the milky accord and the white musk deliver smoothness and soundness. Like the floors that inspired it, Damier is a terrific balance of contrasts.
1885 Bains Sulfureux EDP
Perfumer: Dorothée Piot
Notes: Mandarin, rosemary, blackcurrant, balsam, benzoin, incense, tonka, and vanilla
The story: A legacy is born with the Turkish and Roman baths inside Les Bains Guerbois.
My take: This rousing and heady scent is ideal for colder seasons and cosy evenings. When I first encountered the brand in its 2018 infancy, it was my favourite of the launch trio. Now, I find its strength a bit polarising for most everyday social situations. But when you really want to stir up a conversation, bathe yourself (lightly) in this broody masterpiece.
1900 L’Heure De Proust EDP
Perfumer: Jérome Epinette
Notes: Grapefruit, bergamot, blueberry, black tea, amber, praline, maté, vanilla
The story: Tea time with Proust and pals after a steam bath. Oh, to be a fly on the wall.
My take: While touring the hotel, I gathered that this one was among the maison’s favourites. And rightfully so: It is the perfect first impression, and ties into the tea room just off the hotel’s entrance. L’Heure De Proust is agreeable, conversational, and sophisticated, all in one.
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On Morocco’s wild Atlantic coast, two siblings have built a stylish hotel in tribute to their grandmother, the model and muse Antonia Fiermonte. And the backstory is as beguiling as the property.
In the early 20th century, a poor, beautiful brother and sister hatched a plan to escape the confines of their hometown Bari, the capital of Italy’s Puglia region. The brother had an athletic streak, and his headstrong, creative sister knew she was destined for more than a life as just another mamma in a run-down shack. The brother, Enzo Fiermonte, became a champion boxer. When he moved to America, he adopted the occasional sobriquet William Bird—the better to sidestep the prejudice against his Italian origins. This led him to Hollywood, where he starred in countless movies and married one of the richest women of the day—the Titanic widow and survivor Madeleine Astor—making him even more famous. The sister, Antonia, ended up in Paris, where she bewitched the surrealist-dominated cultural scene. Though a talented painter herself, she became better known as a model and muse, especially for two best friends, artists René Letourneur and Jacques Zwobada.
Both men fell in love with her; she married each of them in turn, and they lived in a ménage à trois in adjoining homes just south of Paris. But Antonia died young, at 42, too early to have left the impression she yearned to make.
Nearly a century later, another pair of siblings—Antonia’s wealthy and well-connected grandchildren—are working tirelessly to give her that lasting legacy. The brother, Fouad Filali, is the former CEO of Morocco’s largest conglomerate, ONA, which he ran for 13 years until 1999. King Mohammed VI is his former brother-in-law. (Fouad was married to the monarch’s older sister, Princess Lalla Meryem, for 15 years.) Fouad’s sister—Yasmina Antonia Filali, who’s named for their grandmother—is a passionate philanthropist who has spent most of her adult life running her own nonprofit, the Fondation Orient-Occident, which assists low-income women and refugees on both sides of the Mediterranean. They idolise their grandmother, and even though she died before they were born, they believe she deserves to be celebrated. “Everybody looked at me when I was young, and said, ‘You look like her, and you have the same character,’ Yasmina says. “I feel totally connected to her.”
The link is so strong that the pair started a hotel collection, named La Fiermontina in their grandmother’s honour, as a living tribute to her. They granted Robb Report exclusive access to the newest location in their portfolio, in Larache, Morocco. The hotel, La Fiermontina Ocean, joined outposts in Paris and Lecce, Italy—a chic apartment available to rent on the Place Vendôme and three separate properties not far from the Adriatic Sea, respectively—when it opened in 2023. The idea behind the grouping: “Let’s recreate her story with a little collection of hotels, following her journey around the world,” says Yasmina.
But they want the company to act as more than just an expensive memorial. The siblings aim to help poor women—women like their grandmother—to improve their lives. “We think about hospitality and philanthropy together,” Yasmina continues. “It’s how we breathe.”
La Fiermontina Ocean is the most extensive expression of that objective. It includes a complex of 14 luxury villas on Morocco’s wild Atlantic coast, 11 of which have ocean views and private pools. All of them are cannily angled to minimise the overlook from the other lodgings and are filled with minimalist, midcentury-inspired furniture. Some of the embroidered linens on the beds and in the bathrooms were produced by a nonprofit cooperative that’s part of Yasmina’s foundation. The landscape is punctuated by acres of mature olive groves—mostly trees brought in from Marrakech. There’s even a stand-alone beach club tucked under the dunes and accessible by a thrilling, hold-the-handrails journey down from the hotel.
But this isn’t some bubble of luxury, detached from its surroundings. The rest of the resort is located in the village of Dchier, next door to those villas; the siblings built the resort’s treatment rooms and hammam here intentionally, to encourage their predominantly foreign guests to engage with local people.
“I want to revive life here,” Fouad says from the driver’s seat of his Jeep, looking around at the town’s dusty road. It’s one of Morocco’s poorest areas. The previous king, Hassan II, focused attention (and investment) farther south, allowing both the commercial hub of Casablanca and the tourist magnet of Marrakech to boom. In contrast, when Fouad started buying land here 21 years ago, several villages in the area lacked plumbing. “How could I have a house here with a swimming pool when they don’t have running water?” he recalls thinking as he watched women carrying pails into their homes.
Fouad has erected other structures in Dchier and elsewhere nearby, doubling the number of classrooms here and in the three surrounding villages. For the hotel, there are simple rental cottages, aimed at a more mass-market clientele than the oceanfront villas, and a café. Rows of herbs in stepped gardens—used for tea service at the hammam, among other things—are tended by a team of workers. He has just reconstructed a small building in the centre of town and will lease it to a local to run a bodega-like épicerie soon, an alternative to the long walks to the market most have to make now.
The pair spent two years training residents to work at the hotel, to ensure that they benefitted directly from increasing tourism. That’s also the idea behind the breakfast-at-home program, which costs 450 dirham (around $70) per person: all of the money goes straight to the neighbourhood woman who invites you into her house for your first meal of the day, with a member of hotel staff joining as a translator—the better to prompt conversation.
The squat breakfast table of my host, Rahma, is piled high with food: crumbly, homemade pastries dusted with sugar; a fragrant dish of locally grown olives; slabs of swirled chocolate cake; and platters of various flatbreads, all still warm from the oven. There’s a bowl of amlou, made from almonds and argan oil, runny and not dissimilar to peanut butter and especially delicious slathered over the bread.
The centrepiece is a tureen of the thick bean soup bissara, a regional breakfast staple that’s drizzled with local olive oil. The entire meal is served in Rahma’s courtyard as chickens peck nearby and a few cats sidle past, casually eyeing the spread. A quartet of children sit to one side, giggling and glancing furtively at the food while their mother continues to cook, bobbing over to the table to pour more thimbles of mint tea. “When they open their house as your hostess, it gives them dignity, it makes people more equal,” Yasmina says.
Like their grandmother, the village girl from Italy’s dirt-poor south who morphed into a sophisticated Parisian muse, the siblings’ identities are hard to pin down. Their mother, Anne, now in her 90s and living in Paris, is their grandmother’s only surviving child. Anne married Abdellatif Filali, a Moroccan student who went to France to escape the unrest in his home country in the early 1950s. At first, they didn’t even speak the same language, “but they understood each other without talking to each other”, Fouad says with a shy smile. Filali eventually became a diplomat and, in 1994, he was appointed prime minister of an independent Morocco.
As a result of their Italian-French-Moroccan heritage, Fouad and his sister slip between cultures, sliding among names and languages. Yasmina toggles between her first and middle names depending on where she is in the world. Fouad is officially Fouad-Giacomo Filali, or Jacques in France—he has even been referred to in the press (incorrectly) as Giacomo Fiermonte. It’s telling how much he stresses that he prefers to be known as Fouad, a traditional Middle Eastern name, while in Morocco. Wherever they are, they want to belong.
It makes sense, then, that Fouad will slip into Arabic to talk with the hotel’s staff, or speak Italian to the jolly, bearded twentysomething chef, Antonio Gianfreda, who has just arrived from Italy. In fact, the menu at La Fiermontina Ocean nods to that cultural commingling: for one meal, a fish tagine spiked with fat, locally grown green olives; for another, a crispy pizza fresh from a wood-fired oven, covered in melting anchovies.
The property was originally intended as a private escape. The siblings fell in love with the area after staying with a friend, Patrick Guerrand-Hermès, the polo-playing scion of the French luxury maison, who has an estate just up the coast. They were so taken that they began buying land nearby. At first they would come, perhaps for a day, to sit and picnic in the dunes with friends. “It was our refuge—we were hiding from everyone,” says Yasmina. It’s easy to do here. Even on a warm spring day the beaches are empty: In some spots, the only evidence of human life is the occasional dilapidated shack along the water. (“Those are for smugglers,” one local says, only half-joking.)
As with the apartment in Paris and the resort in Larache, the siblings’ Italian hotel also began life as a personal project. They were smitten with Lecce, where the Hermès family also keeps a villa, which is about two hours south of their grandmother’s hometown of Bari. Inspired, the Filalis began snapping up property. Fouad recalls securing a swathe of farmland near Lecce first. “I bought it because of the olive trees, but I never built a house there,” he says. “I just had a small chair I’d leave there, and once in a while I’d go down and sit and look at the olive trees.” He ended up buying a building near the city walls next. “In the beginning it was for my house. But life, you know, happens,” he says with a shrug.
After working on the property for two years, Fouad’s contractors discovered subterranean rooms that, in his view, made it too large to be a private home. So he and Yasmina asked their friend Thierry Teyssier, the actor-turned-hotelier best known for founding the regenerative-hospitality company 700,000 Heures, for advice. Yasmina could see the potential in using tourism to help bring investment to the region, which has grown since their grandmother’s childhood yet still remains a poorer corner of the Italian peninsula.
As she would later do in Morocco, Yasmina launched a program offering work to women and refugees in need while training locals in the art of high-touch service. The family now operates La Fiermontina Palazzo Bozzi Corso, an old Baroque mansion with a rooftop pool and 10 suites, plus the 19-bedroom La Fiermontina Luxury Home.
They also recently reopened the Fiermonte Museum, whose exhibitions focus on their grandmother and her two artistic husbands, Letourneur and Zwobada. You can stay here, too. The renovation added four rooms to the property, with a lantern in each. (Guests are encouraged to explore the galleries, alone, at night.) Yasmina and Fouad’s mother, Anne, travelled to Puglia especially for the opening. “She was quite silent and surprised, in a way, that two children, at our age, dedicated our lives to our grandmother,” Yasmina recalls.
She plans to stay in Italy for a while, to stabilise the new museum while Fouad focuses on their Morocco project. But they’re not finished. The missing piece is a tribute to their grandmother’s globe-trotting brother, Enzo, who stayed in America after his divorce from Madeleine Astor and starred in films from the late 1930s through the ’70s. “Maybe we can make a project in New York and Los Angeles,” Yasmina says. “And that will be all for my great-uncle.”
