Condé Nast Traveller - St Barth’s never stands still, but this is getting ridiculous
July-August 2016

Nine square miles for 9,000 people: St Barth’s is one of the most coveted patches on the planet. And it’s no ragtag bunch who call it home, or second home (or place to park the superyacht). There are, bien sur, the French, insanely chic, floating around in white cotton dresses and Lacoste. The lovely LVMH outpost, Isle de France, is stuffed to its whitewashed rafters with preppy Americans dads and their three-year-old sons in matching Ralph Lauren, and moms and daughters in kaftan competitions. But, truth be told, the hotel is feeling a wee bit full and there’s a rumour that LVMH will buy neighbouring Taiwana, so maybe Cheval Blanc’s Guerlain spa can finally move out of the car park and the hotel can clock more beachfront suites. But what everyone is really holding out for is Jocelyne Sibuet’s new Villa Marie in the old Hotel François Plantation, a sibling for her St Tropez original; it’ll still be about food and wine, only now with phenomenal interiors. And who will come? Brits. All the nice ones; the sort who visit the Côte d’Azur in June not August, who prefer Hartfords to Vilebrequins. This Caribbean island sneers at glitz, shrugs at gloss; it likes things frayed and faded, scuffed yet styled. It is left to Eden Rock to supply a bit of glam, although still definitely no heels. Meanwhile, the new Hotel Le Barthélémy, designed by Sybille De Margerie (Mandarin Oriental Paris; Cheval Blanc Courchevel) set to shake up the spa scene. And that’s not all: it seems there’s finally going to be somewhere to hang out in Gustavia because the tired old Hotel Carl Gustaf has been snapped up by the group behind Fouquet’s Barrière in Paris. And now, whisper it, word has it that David Letterman has sold the sensational site on the Lorient headland and a hotel is a-coming. Who knows? I guess we’ll all just have to keep going back to find out.