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The world's first 1,000-room designer hotel has just opened in New York. Naturally, it's an Ian Schrager/Philippe Starck collaboration - a complete in-your-face design experience, more stage-set than hotel. In the public areas, translucent floors, illuminated from beneath, are dotted with logs that sprout not branches but Regency-style backrests.
As has become the norm with designer hotels, The Hudson, on West 58th Street (between 8th and 9th), doesn't so much announce itself to the world at street level as simply assume its rightful place. There is no name in sight - in fact, no lettering at all, only a small torch bearing what I presume is Starck's idea of an eternal flame, plus the usual smattering of pretty male models trying to act like doormen - the gist being, if you don't know what happens inside you shouldn't be here.
Schrager, of course, brought us the first "designer" hotel, Morgans, which is also in New York and opened in 1984. Since then, and along with Philippe Starck as his "designer-in-chief", he has created a string of hotels in the US and, more recently, opened the St Martin's Lane and Sanderson hotels in London. In fact, he's developed the concept of the designer hotel into a multi-billion- dollar business, spawning hundreds of imitators worldwide. Even India got its first designer hotel earlier this year, The Manor in New Delhi.
However, ascending one of The Hudson's entrance escalators two floors through a sea of yellow light and into the lobby with its chunky mock- Bavarian reception desk (staffed by more model-types), I got the distinct impression despite the novelty, I had somehow seen it all before. In a way, design hotels have become so homogenised in their desire to shock and...