Concept study·South Beach

The Vanity

A 1930s Art Deco hotel in South Beach, redesigned around how women actually travel together.

An original concept study. Imagery is conceptual.

Guest corridor with a grisaille garden mural, black lacquer doors, a sunburst ceiling light and a black and white marble floor

The guest

She is traveling with her closest friends for a milestone birthday, a long-postponed reunion or the weekend that has lived in the group chat for a year.

Every hotel she has booked for this trip was designed for someone else. One chair and one bad mirror. Four women sharing a bathroom counter the size of a laptop. Lobby seating arranged in twos. The Vanity turns each of those around.

The rooms

The rooms are too small for a conventional luxury repositioning, and no walls move. So the small room became the brief: the best-designed room on the street for four women getting ready at the same time. The vanity is the hero, not the bed.

Blush room with calla lily wallpaper, a dusty rose velvet bed, a lit vanity with two velvet stools and a pink neon sign reading your era — The Blush RoomBlush and sage botanical, dusty rose velvet

Sage room with a grisaille garden mural, an olive velvet headboard, a lit marble vanity and a brass champagne cart — The Sage RoomGrisaille garden mural, olive-sage velvet

Mauve room with botanical wallpaper on ivory, a mauve velvet bed and stools, and a window onto palms and the ocean at sunset — The Mauve RoomMuted botanical on ivory, mauve velvet

One shell in every room: black trim, a black and white marble floor, cream plaster and brass. Only the wallpaper and velvet change, which keeps the build simple and gives guests a reason to come back for a different room.

From Palm Beach to South Beach

The New Palm Beach Classic travels well. Restraint, real materials and collected pieces stay. Arches become Deco fans and sunbursts, daylight becomes lamplight and mirror bulbs, and the palette turns to black, cream and gold.

Color never goes on the architecture. Pink, sage and mauve live only in what changes from room to room: wallpaper, velvet, flowers, a robe on a hook.

The experience

Arrival, the room and a ground-floor restaurant built to fill with people who aren't staying, all designed for the group rather than the individual guest.

Guest room with a long marble double vanity ringed in bulb lights, blush velvet swivel stools, a brass champagne cart and a sunburst chandelier

Have a building that isn't performing?

The Vanity started with a constraint most owners would call a flaw. Finding the category inside a building is where every Palmaison project begins.

The aim: move a mid-market hotel into the upper boutique rate band with no structural work.

The full concept study, including positioning, programming and projections, is available to owners and investors on request.

Request the full study

Concept and design by Palmaison.