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Olga Polizzi: Hotel Design's Famous FemaleAsk Olga Polizzi, once the design force behind Forte hotels and now in business with her brother Rocco in Rocco Forte Hotels, what it is that women bring to the matter of making a hotel special, and her answer is down to earth.
“There are a lot of brilliant male designers who are good at creating fantastically dramatic sets, but women perhaps bring a more practical sense of what makes a hotel a nice place to be,” she says.
“Luxury, for me, isn’t the mini-bar in the room — it’s being able to ring down and have somebody bring you whatever it is that you feel like, instantly.
I always think about things personally — what would I want in a room?
It’s the only way I can work.
That’s why I put in things like a chaise longue, so that you can read or rest.
When I arrive somewhere I’m usually frazzled and just want to get to my room, so we try to make that arrival as seamless and comfortable as possible.”
You have only to look around Hotel Endsleigh, her new 15-room hotel set in 108 acres (44ha) on the edge of Dartmoor, to see what she means.
The sense of theatre is still there — in the wide entrance hall with its glittering 1930s wall lights, and in the dramatic green and black fabric over the entrance — but understated comfort is clearly her prime objective.
She has allowed the spectacular setting to be the
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3/9/2005 | Viewed 10,337 time(s)
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