Hotel of the Week: Hotel Straf, Milan
Posted by Kate on January 1st, 2010After last week’s game adventures on the African plains, this time we’re heading for the bright lights of the big city and the gritty, disheveled chic of Hotel Straf in Milan.
Style Industrial-cool installation
Setting Doors down from the Duomo
Why this week? A place this cool is only enhanced by the cold. The edgy, urban, minimalism of Hotel Straf and its buzzing bar make a fittingly fashion-conscious base from which to explore this city of style. And in honour of January – the mother of all months to secure a discount – Hotel Straf is offering free Sunday night stays when you book Friday and Saturday. Then there’s the city itself: Milan makes a great winter destination, its attractions largely indoors. Roam the shops of the designer quarter around Via Montenapoleone (a hive of high fashion boutiques such as Missoni, Armani and Etro); cosy up in the grand cafés of vaulted shopping arcade, Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, and marvel at the lofty magnificence of the city’s majestic cathedral.
Our favourite bits: Let’s start with the design. Bedrooms – a Continental take on shabby chic, with austere colour schemes, and texture, texture everywhere. Bathrooms – bronze with a big shower, or black with a tub; the lobby – chocolate-brown chaise-longues set against raw-concrete walls. Wellness rooms, where you can indulge in aromatherapy or chromotherapy treatments, and a bar worthy of London’s Hoxton or NYC’s East Village, mean Straf scrubs up as more than just a base for meandering Milan.
Mr & Mrs Smith say… ‘Straf is a celebration of bona fide cutting-edge minimalism, with black-clad, very friendly anglophone staff, distressed fabric under glass along its stylish corridors, and scuffed-satiny walls. It struck us as a destination for fans of the out-of-the-ordinary, the style-conscious and the arty. Vincenzo de Cotiis’ design has made the place almost an art installation in itself. If some of us have taken the odd lesson from hotel design, assimilating it into our own living spaces, this was the definitive masterclass.’
What a cool hotel!!! Thanks again for the tip!
By Jen Laceda
On January 1st, 2010