GET A ROOM!
AT THE AMAN NEW YORK
Throughout the pandemic, wherever possible Esquire has refrained, we think politely, from recommending products that are unavailable and services that are inaccessible. Apart from the obvious irrelevance of selling you something you can’t buy — check out this amazing new film that’s never going to come out! — we worry that such recommendations might seem inappropriate, not to mention irritating, like a lockdown Instagram post from a jiggy private beach party.
Top of the list of topics we would typically cover but have, for the past year, deliberately ignored: far-flung foreign travel. What’s the point of telling you about a sybaritic new hotel in a long-haul destination when, for obvious reasons, you can’t fly there and, even if you did, when you arrived the place would likely be shut?
While we recognise that this magazine plays an aspirational role — it’s pleasant to dream about things, even, or perhaps especially, if you know you’ll never be able to have them — we also hope that most of the stuff we promote will be of interest to you as a potential consumer, so touting stuff that can’t be accessed seems counterintuitive.
Aman New York, which may or may not be open, or soon to open, by the time you read this, is a sybaritic new hotel in a long-haul destination. (Well, New York: not quite long-haul from the UK, although at the time of writing, when the idea of an afternoon in central London seems exotic beyond compare, Midtown Manhattan may as well be the moon.)
To be clear, then, unless you live in New York, we’re not advising you go for opening night. What we are suggesting is that when the oppor
tunity arises and you can leave the country safely and responsibly, you could do a lot worse than to book a stay at the new place from the hotel group behind some of the most stylish, luxurious and brilliantly run hotels anywhere in the world.
Since the opening of Amanpuri in Phuket in 1988, Aman has taken its place alongside the most famous names in hospitality, with an appeal distinct from the traditional leading hotels of Europe and North America: an Asiacentric approach that prizes serene minimalism over grand theatricality. The most famous Amans are located in spectacular wildernesses, from the mountains of Bhutan to the jungles of Indonesia; the beaches of the Philippines to the deserts of the American West. But they also do what they call “urban resorts”, in Tokyo, Venice and elsewhere.
The opening in New York, when it happens, will be a Big Deal. The Aman will occupy the Crown Building, at the crossroads of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street. As you would expect, it will have a vast and comically spoiling spa, three delectable restaurants of terrifying sophistication, rooms and suites of mind-bending sumptuosity, service of unprecedented subtlety and poise.
But even more important than all that, it won’t be your own home. It’ll be somewhere else, somewhere nice, somewhere far away, with a different (and better) view and far more take-out options. Any homesickness, should it arise, ought to be swiftly eradicated by switching on Netflix, realising there’s nothing you want to watch, and then having an argument about whether or not to go for another walk in the park. aman.com