It’s fair to say that Christian Louboutin knows a thing or two about luxury. And while he’s best known for his forays into footwear, that’s far from all that he has a finger in. Earlier this year, Louboutin spoke to InsideHook about Vermelho, the luxury hotel that he opened last year in Portugal.
“I don’t consider myself a hotelier,” he said at the time. “And, to be honest, I never planned to open a hotel.” That didn’t stop him from making a move into that space when the opportunity presented itself, though — and now, he’s established another foothold in that same space, this time via an investment in the luxury hospitality business Experimental Group.
As Eloise Hanson reports at Boutique Hotel News, Louboutin is the latest high-profile investor to acquire a piece of Experimental Group; Maison Gatti’s Alexis Dyèvre is also making an investment in the hospitality company. Hanson adds that this investment comes at a time when Experimental Group is expanding; while it currently has 10 hotels in its portfolio, three more are set to open next year — specifically, new spaces in Paris, Rome and Val d’Isère.
Experimental Group co-founder Olivier Bon said in a statement that Louboutin’s “international reputation, multidisciplinary artistic collaborations, creativity and intuition will be invaluable assets in supporting our development.”
As it turns out, Louboutin isn’t the only big name who sees Experimental Group as a good investment. A recent article in Hotels noted that both Jean Moueix and Brookfield Asset Management have also taken stakes in the hospitality firm recently.
Christian Louboutin on His Latest Venture: A Luxury Hotel
Vermelho recently celebrated one year of being openExperimental Group’s work in the hospitality space isn’t just about hotels; they’ve also opened a host of wine and cocktail bars over the years. The Venice location of their Experimental Cocktail Club earned high praise from Rudi Carraro in these very pages last year, including acclaim for the way that it “transforms with the seasons.”
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