How to get the White Lotus lifestyle
The resort
For the second series of The White Lotus, the action is filmed at San Domenico Palace, a Four Seasons hotel in the upmarket town of Taormina, Sicily. The hotel was a 14th-century Dominican convent and has hosted Hollywood A-listers and royalty over the years. A superior room will set you back just under $1200 a night. The Royal Suite, where King Edward VIII once stayed, is POA.
The suitcase
Luggage needs to be expensive, matching, and there needs to be lots of it — to hold the regular outfit changes illustrated by returning character Tanya McQuoid (Jennifer Coolidge).
Bric’s is an Italian brand that can be found at Selfridges and its Bellagio range with Tuscan leather inserts gives all the 1950s vintage travel feels while still looking pristine at the end of a long-haul.
The shoes
Sprezzatura is the Italian word that’s come to mean “studied carelessness”: mastered by the Italians and attempted by the rest of us. However, Rishi Sunak has clearly been taking notes; his Tod’s Gomminos loafers in blue (starting from $650) look both elegant and relaxed and bypass the horror of showing any toe.
The shirt
The show’s costume designer, Alex Bovaird, says that in season two,
every character has a “bit of Italy in their wardrobe” and for finance-bro Cameron, who loses his suitcase in the first episode, forcing him to buy his wardrobe in the hotel boutique, this means a polo shirt and shorts with jaguar print and a brocade blazer, all by Etro. He also is seen wearing a printed silk shirt by Casablanca (upwards of $1300) in a later episode.
The book
The character’s choice of books is a device that says “something about
who they are — or how they want to be seen”, says writer Mike White. So it may be time to dust off that societychallenging esoteric tome that you bought with high hopes but, somehow, have failed to start. This season’s reads include Everything Is F*cked: A Book About Hope by Mark Manson, 2019 Booker Prize-nominated Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli and Lydia Kallipoliti’s The Architecture of Closed Worlds: Or, What is the Power of S ***?