Review: Armani Hotel Dubai

It was Richard Gere who started it, of course. I was hooked from the opening titles of American Gigolo: the Blondie soundtrack, Giorgio Moroder, and the flashy neon-style, slanted, cocktail-bar title type that spelt out Lauren Hutton’s name as Gere’s convertible drove along the Californian coast. Then there were the clothes: Gere arrives at his outfitters as Debbie Harry fades, and gets kitted out in head to Giorgio Armani tailoring. It was all louche and oh so L.A. It felt like the most hyper-modern, mature expression of the new wave lifestyle. For the whole of the 1980s I wanted to live my life artfully lit in the slanted shadows of a venetian blind.

Like Lost in Translation did for the Park Hyatt, American Gigolo was a film that changed the perception and commercial fortunes of a luxury brand through mass exposure. It put Giorgio Armani, king of Milanese minimalism and greige, on a much larger map. It created an aura around the Armani brand for a whole generation. Although I didn’t have a life that warranted one of his slick single-breasted suits, I hungered to inhabit his world. And so it was, at the age of 14, armed with copious birthday money, that I braved the Armani store in Mayfair to buy a bottle of Giorgio Armani fragrance. I wanted the scent, but more than that, I wanted the Armani experience. I wanted to walk out with an Armani bag and feel a part of Armani’s world.

Dubai is an architectural Armageddon. It is astonishingly vile. Migraine-provoking. There is no planning and no finesse. It’s so bad it’s funny

Fast forward, through three decades of design, and the Armani name isn’t just synonymous with slim unstructured tailoring. Long after the launch of the interiors line Armani/Casa in 2000, it now represents a whole universe. And if American Gigolo was the most hyper-modern expression of lifestyle in 1980, then modern day Dubai – home to an Armani Hotel since 2013 – is… something else entirely.

Architect and author Robert Venturi put forward several persuasive pro-glitz arguments in his influential 1972 book Learning from Las Vegas, but he could never have foreseen Dubai. Or perhaps he did, and he was being sarcastic. The grandstanding and the commercially driven aspects of design are all well and good, and can have their elegance and allure – what else is the Chrysler Building after all? – but Dubai is an architectural Armageddon. It is astonishingly vile. Migraine-provoking. There is no planning and no finesse. It’s so bad it’s funny.

The presence of the Armani Hotel in Dubai reinforces the idea that everything is available for a price: in a city that has no taste of its own, soft and sculptural amber lighting and laser cut leather are available wholesale. One could raise eyebrows at so many different levels, not least the fact that a country is effectively celebrating one of the world’s most famous and influential out gay men, while having a medieval perspective on homosexuality enshrined in law. But hey, that’s a whole different story – after all, 13 US states still outlaw “sodomy” (so perfunctory and quaint sounding), and Paris certainly hasn’t painted a picture of progressive liberalism of late.

It’s significant that the Armani Hotel Dubai is housed in what is the sole decent piece of architecture in the city. Actually, that’s an understatement – the Burj Khalifa would be a beauty in any city. It’s a svelte, glimmering, high tech, computerised, schematised update of art deco. Unlike, say, The Shard, it’s no architectural Seurat – it’s coherent and stunning in extreme close up as much as from afar. And when you’re floating in the A-shaped outdoor pool at the Armani Hotel, gazing up at the sky, maneuvering yourself into a perfect symmetry of building, pool corner, arms and legs, it offers a thrilling, quite sensual experience.

As I expected before seeing it in the flesh, the interior is worked to the nth degree, full of slick chocolate colours, stone and mahogany. It is angular, handsome, and artfully back- and up-lit in a way that would have Paul Schrader hungering for the 1980s all over again. The graphic lines, from the starship hallways to the boxes in the chocolate shop, are heavy and strong. Although Versace was always the brand that believed too much was never enough, it’s odd here that such a full-on holistic expression of Armani style feels a shade… too much. I still adore that Armani fragrance I bought when I was 14, and have a ritual of heading to Duty Free and spraying myself with it before I board any flight, but I wouldn’t want to pour a bucket of it over my head.

Because if you thought Armani was minimalist, this will change your mind. The lines may be “clean”, but they’re heavily Armani-scented, and that goes for the curved, sliding cupboards and wardrobes in the rooms. I loved it for a short stay, but I couldn’t live with it. But then, this is a five star hotel in Dubai, not the Chelsea. The Armani Hotel has the ambience of an opulent, contemporary show apartment in a wealthy global city. Which it sort of is, and which also might make it the perfect hotel in many respects.

Everything looks the part, but it’s overwrought, with too many ingredients on each plate and often a weird jumble of textures. Not Pierre Gagnaire weird, just… weird

The suites were all booked out on my visit – this is Dubai, after all – so I stayed in one of the Armani Deluxe Rooms. At 45 square metres, it’s not necessarily a space to linger in, but there’s a functional work area, and a very handsome bathroom full of Armani toiletries (yes, I took them all). The way the TV and wardrobes slide out of view on curved wall panels represents a smart use of space. It’s a nicely designed room, for sure. One key criticism: I couldn’t find the off switch for the lighting by the desk so, in frustration, I covered it with a magazine instead. Oh, and there was a rude awakening in the form of a surprise phone call in the middle of the night, which I never got to the bottom of.

The common areas of the hotel are, as you’d expect, glossy and showman-like, although evidently signage for the spa and pool had been deemed tacky – the spa (which is lush when you find it) is virtually invisible. Similarly I wandered, lost, into the gym (state of the art and glamorous enough to make you want to break into a sweat) en route to the pool. One other niggle: the loungers outside all have extravagant in-built, overhead, square parasols. They look the part, but in the low, late afternoon sun, they offer no shade. If only Giorgio Armani could fashion a universe where the sun remains overhead all day.

Unfortunately the restaurants at the Armani Hotel Dubai aren’t open for lunch, though I have it on reliable authority that the Japanese, Hashi, is particularly excellent. Instead I visited At.mosphere, on level 122 of the Burj Khalifa – the world’s highest restaurant. If the service was flawless (“You’re not drinking? Can I offer you a fruit drink to match your order, to open your palate sir?”), the menu at At.mosphere was less so. Everything looks the part, but it’s overwrought, with too many ingredients on each plate and often a weird jumble of textures. Not Pierre Gagnaire weird, just… weird. Predictably, the menu at At.mosphere plays fine dining bingo: “king crab ravioli”; “slow cooked foie gras”; “cherry velvet”; “tempura of oysters, edamame, caviar and champagne velouté”. It’s pretentious rather than bad, but then you can’t just have variations on fish and chips in the world’s highest restaurant. And fair play – every moment certainly feels like a major event, from the arrangement of colours and shapes on the plates to the glass-walled exit that takes you one storey down to the lift. And that view! The architecture and landscape 442 metres below is so absurdly alien, and so far away, that it resembles an abstract sci-fi movie miniature set.

By all accounts, the Armani Hotel is the best hotel in Dubai. Compared to the monstrous Vegas-style lobby of Atlantis at the Palm, with its vomit-inducing Chihuly installation, and the nauseating colour(blind) scheme at Burj Al Arab, that might not seem a significant boast. But the Armani would more than hold its own in Tokyo or New York. And, for a short while at least, it’s still thrilling, decades after he first caught the world’s attention, to be immersed in Giorgio Armani’s vision. C

 

Armani Hotel Dubai, Sheikh Zayed Road, Dubai
971 4 888 3888; armanihotels.com