The entrance here is so nondescript, you could walk right past without a hint of what's inside—a seriously sexy hotel, the brainchild of entrepreneur Ian Schrager and artist-designer Philippe Starck, where spacious rooms sport translucent orange Plexiglas tables, high ceilings, and two huge "infinity" wall mirrors. A mix of hipsters, music-industry types, and celebrities flock to the moody,...
The Redwood Room, at the Clift Hotel, can be a pickup joint, popular with rich businessmen and bottle blondes, but it also blazes with splendor. With its burnished redwood walls, tiger-striped carpet, and enormous bar carved from a single redwood tree, the room resembles an opulent hunting lodge and has been a San Francisco landmark for decades. Ian Schrager and Philippe Starck took over the...
Ian Schrager, king of such ultrahip hotels as New York's Royalton and Paramount, L.A.'s Mondrian, and Miami's Delano, renovated this classic old luxury property a few years back. Young trendsetters now flock here for overpriced monochrome lavender streamlined rooms with often-minuscule bathrooms, glamorous atmosphere, and a heavy dose of attitude. Its best attribute is the renovated historic...
Once your eyes adjust to the near-darkness, it’s a people-watching paradise. Ladies doing it up with tube tops and stilettos, fellas getting swanky with pinstripes and the occasional gold chain. With gorgeous deco lamps and floor-to-ceiling redwood walls, the place was a drinking destination even before Schrager pushed the style envelope. Forever teetering on the edge of good taste, but so...