Much has been written about Jasper Conran’s five-star Villa Mabrouka since it opened last June. The boutique hotel in Tangier, Morocco has a “huge, ravishing garden”; an “unbelievably gorgeous pool”. It is the “tender, meticulous and magical resurrection” of a property that was once home to Yves Saint Laurent. To get to the heart of the matter, though, is to avoid such lyrical whimsies. The magic behind Villa Mabrouka is more straightforward. “It’s like a summit of all the powerful gays in fashion and media in the world,” one colleague summarised. And this, dear reader, makes it a very important place indeed.
Villa Mabrouka may call itself a hotel, but it’s really more of a club. Impossibly chic, inscrutable, as if it were members-only. As with most properties that come into homosexual hands, it’s not enough to appear exclusive simply at the point of entry. These aren’t properties that are restricted to the super rich; instead, they operate a more cultural sort of elitism. ‘No riff raff’ here means something quite different to ‘no riff raff’ at a Bulgari or Four Seasons hotel. It means they won’t let in anyone who doesn’t know who Wolfgang Tillmans is.
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