Articles
Short pieces and long essays on the way the UHNW client travels in 2026.
Openings, chefs, the new mode of luxury consumption — written between issues of the Journal.
Membership & ClubsLong essay · 8 min read · 18 May 2026
The Sport Membership Index 2026
The bag was never the signal. It was always the backhand. A field guide to the twelve sport clubs that, in 2026, tell you everything you need to know about who someone is — and how they spend a Tuesday.
Membership & ClubsLong essay · 6 min read · 18 May 2026
Soho House Goes Private: What Members Actually Get
The $2.7 billion deal that closed on January 29, 2026 is less a sale and more a confession. The public markets could not hold what Soho House actually is.
NotesLong essay · 6 min read · 18 May 2026
The Price Is No Longer the Point
Three data points — a $400 pocket watch, a Chanel that fits, a padel court in the south of Spain — and the shift they spell for anyone still measuring privilege by the tag.
MembershipArticle · 4 min · 18 May 2026
ZZ's Club Miami & New York — Major Food Group's Private Take on the City
*Mario Carbone and Jeff Zalaznick built the loudest restaurant of the decade, then locked half of it behind a $30,000 door.*
IndustryArticle · 4 min · 18 May 2026
The Yacht Industry M&A Wave — Sunseeker, Sanlorenzo, Benetti
*A Chinese disengagement, an Italian listing that aged well, and the family office at the top of the global order book.*
TravelArticle · 3 min · 18 May 2026
Tulum's Quiet Restoration — Past the Jungle Cabanas
Five years after the overdose, the right table is back, and the photographers have moved on.
ExperientialArticle · 3 min · 18 May 2026
The Wedding That Costs Less Than You Think (Done Right)
Thirty guests, one bastide, and the quiet end of the two-hundred-person destination wedding.
IndustryArticle · 3 min · 18 May 2026
The Real Estate Agent Concierge — Why the Two Jobs Are Now One
The UHNW client now buys the residence and the villa from the same person. Here is why.
MembershipArticle · 4 min · 18 May 2026
The Mark Members' Room New York — Inside the Carlyle's Quieter Cousin
*Madison and 77th. The hotel everyone uses, the rooms above the Jean-Georges that almost nobody talks about, and the New York principals who prefer it to Aman.*
ExperientialArticle · 4 min · 18 May 2026
The Honeymoon That Saved a Marriage (And the One That Didn't)
Bali, Tulum, Saint-Barth — three honeymoons and three different couples.
TravelArticle · 3 min · 18 May 2026
The Hamptons Calendar — When Each Weekend Actually Matters
Memorial Day to Labor Day, and the four Saturdays in between that decide your summer.
MembershipArticle · 4 min · 18 May 2026
The Garrick Club London — 200 Years, Still Men-Only Until 2024
*Founded 1831. Voted in May 2024 to admit women for the first time. Judi Dench was first through the door. The structural shift across the traditional London circuit has only just begun.*
ExperientialArticle · 3 min · 18 May 2026
The Corporate Retreat as the New Off-Site
Yellowstone for the board, Comporta for the partners, Tulum for the founders — the new geography.
IndustryArticle · 3 min · 18 May 2026
The Branded Residence Wave Hits Sardinia
Mandarin Oriental opens at Pevero and Costa Smeralda quietly leaves the hotel business.
ExperientialArticle · 3 min · 18 May 2026
The Birthday Trip That Becomes the Tradition
Capri for the forty, Sardinia for the fifty, Aspen for the sixty — the right destination at the right age.
MembershipArticle · 3 min · 18 May 2026
The 2026 Class of Members' Clubs
Casa Tua Paris, ZZ's New York, Aman Club, Soho Mews — the entry fee against the value received.
IndustryArticle · 4 min · 18 May 2026
Soho House — From IPO to Take-Private, the Membership Model's Hardest Year
*Four years on the New York Stock Exchange ended in a $9-per-share buyout. The question is whether scarcity can ever be a quarterly metric.*
MembershipArticle · 4 min · 18 May 2026
Soho House at Fifteen — From Cool to Establishment, and Now What
*Nick Jones built it in 1995 above a Greek Street restaurant. Thirty years later the IPO is being undone and the membership is being culled. The reckoning has been a long time coming.*
IndustryArticle · 5 min · 18 May 2026
The Saint-Tropez Hotel Owners' Quiet Game — Who Owns What in 2026
*LVMH, the Floirat-Chevanne family, the Pariente group, Stéphane Courbit's Airelles, the Weill family. The Var, mapped by ownership rather than by stars.*
IndustryArticle · 4 min · 18 May 2026
Riviera Dining Group — The Story Behind MILA's Empire-Building
*MILA opened in January 2020 and went on to become America's top-grossing independent restaurant. The next three openings are the bet on what comes after.*
IndustryArticle · 4 min · 18 May 2026
Portugal NHR Is Dead — Long Live the IFICI
*The flat-tax regime that built Comporta and re-priced Lisbon closed on 31 December 2023. Its successor is narrower by design.*
TravelArticle · 3 min · 18 May 2026
Montana in July — The Ranch Trip the Hamptons Cannot Beat
Yellowstone Club in summer, a fly rod on the Madison, and the new American answer to August.
IndustryArticle · 5 min · 18 May 2026
Monaco vs Dubai — The Residency Arms Race
*Two zero-income-tax jurisdictions, two structurally different propositions, and a 2026 capture race the principality is not winning on volume.*
MembershipArticle · 4 min · 18 May 2026
Maxim's, Bus Palladium, the Paris Society Push — The Paris Members' Club Revival of 2026
*Paris spent twenty years losing the private-club conversation to London and New York. Three openings in eighteen months have brought it back.*
IndustryArticle · 3 min · 18 May 2026
Marriott × LVMH Bulgari Hotels — The Quiet Joint Venture Reshaping Luxury Distribution
*A 25-year partnership that lets the maison hold the brand while Marriott carries the operations, the financing partners and the Bonvoy distribution.*
IndustryArticle · 4 min · 18 May 2026
LVMH's Hospitality Build — Cheval Blanc, Belmond, Bulgari Hotels
*The patient assembly of a three-brand hotel empire by a leather-goods house, and the open question of what Kering does next.*
ExperientialArticle · 3 min · 18 May 2026
Longevity Is the New Nightlife
The social hour moved to 5:45 a.m. Nobody told you because you were still asleep.
MembershipArticle · 4 min · 18 May 2026
Mortimer House, San Lorenzo, The Twenty Two — The London Trio Quietly Replacing Annabel's
*Annabel's is still the headline. The actual rooms running London's social map in 2026 are smaller, harder to find, and not on Berkeley Square.*
IndustryArticle · 5 min · 18 May 2026
The London Non-Dom End — Where the Money Actually Went in 2025
*Two centuries of fiscal protection ended on 6 April 2025. The relocation map, twelve months in, is more concentrated than the trade press predicted.*
IndustryArticle · 4 min · 18 May 2026
Florida Real Estate, 2026 — Where to Buy Before the Wave
Coral Gables, Surfside, Sunny Isles, Bal Harbour — the new hierarchy of South Florida money.
ExperientialArticle · 3 min · 18 May 2026
EVJF in Ibiza — The 48-Hour Manual
Bagatelle to Hostal La Torre to Pacha on a Sunday — the programme that works without incident.
OpeningsArticle · 3 min · 18 May 2026
COMO Le Beauvallon at Three Months — The First Verdict
Field notes from the palace that reopened in April, after a week in the rooms and at the beach.
IndustryArticle · 5 min · 18 May 2026
Why Citadel, Goldman, and the Hedge Funds Moved to Miami — and the Numbers Behind It
*A $1 billion bayfront tower, a 13.3% state-tax delta, and a relocation pattern that has now passed the point of being reversed.*
MembershipArticle · 4 min · 18 May 2026
Casa Cipriani Milan & New York — The Most Beautiful Private Club Building of the Decade
*The Battery Maritime Building, 1909, was almost lost to the Hudson. Cipriani turned it into the most quietly desired members' room in the city.*
IndustryArticle · 5 min · 18 May 2026
The Branded Residence Boom — A $300 Billion Pipeline by 2030
*Knight Frank counts 611 live schemes and 1,019 by 2030. The asset class the UHNW buyer chose over the hotel suite is now a measurable industry.*
TravelArticle · 3 min · 18 May 2026
Aspen After the Slopes — The Summer Music Festival Nobody Talks About
Eight weeks of orchestra in the mountains, and the quieter Aspen the winter crowd never sees.
TravelArticle · 3 min · 18 May 2026
Argentina, the Polo Trip That Replaces Everything
Six weeks in Buenos Aires that make the European season look like an aperitif.
MembershipArticle · 4 min · 18 May 2026
The American Friends Clubs — The Network the East Coast Built While London Was Sleeping
*The Knickerbocker, the Union, the Brook, the Reading Room, the Maidstone, the Bath & Tennis. The old-money WASP network still controls the introductions. The new money has noticed.*
IndustryArticle · 4 min · 18 May 2026
The Aman Empire — Vladislav Doronin's $3 Billion Bet on Permanence
*One urban opening every eighteen months, residences over rooms, and a Saudi sovereign-fund cheque that revalued the brand at $3 billion.*
MembershipArticle · 4 min · 18 May 2026
Aman Club New York — The Most Expensive Membership in America
*$200,000 to walk in. $15,000 a year to stay. The Crown Building has produced the fastest-growing UHNW private membership in the country.*
IndustryArticle · 3 min · 18 May 2026
Adrian Zecha at 92 — The Aman Founder Starts Again
*The man who wrote the codes of minimalist luxury hospitality is opening a 24-villa farm in northern Japan this spring.*
IndustryArticle · 3 min · 18 May 2026
Accor's Orient Express Sails — When the Hotel Becomes a Ship
*The world's largest sailing yacht left Saint-Nazaire on 2 May. The luxury hotel is no longer a building.*
MembershipArticle · 4 min · 18 May 2026
5 Hertford Street & Oswald's — Robin Birley's Private London
*The single most exclusive door in the city, and the second one Robin Birley built six years later. No press, no photographs, no posts. Just the address and the jacket.*
Industry trendsPress note · 3 min read · 17 May 2026
The Membership Decade
Five trends I am watching in the upper end of hospitality and lifestyle, in May 2026 — and what they will mean for the visitors I work with by the end of the year.
HospitalityLong essay · 4 min read · 17 May 2026
Yannick Alléno — The Summit and the Sea
From a fifteen-table mountain dining room at three thousand metres to a Belle Époque beach club newly restored on the Gulf of Saint-Tropez, the chef with seventeen Michelin stars now sets the table at the two bookends of the European luxury year. A portrait, in two destinations.
HospitalityLong essay · 5 min read · 17 May 2026
The Good Openings — Summer 2026 on the French Riviera
What is actually new this season between Saint-Tropez and Monaco — the hotels, the chefs, the beach clubs, the membership rooms — sorted by what we actually recommend, what we politely avoid, and what is worth a special trip from Miami.
HospitalityLong essay · 6 min read · 17 May 2026
The Five Hotels That Define Saint-Tropez in 2026
The village has more excellent rooms than it has had at any point in its history — and the gap between the best of them has never been smaller. A short, unsentimental survey of the houses that actually matter this season.
HospitalityLong essay · 5 min read · 17 May 2026
Mykonos 2026 — A Summit Year
For the first time in the island's modern history, two international palaces open in the same summer. A guide to the new architecture of Mykonos at the top — and the reason the season I have been waiting fifteen years for has finally arrived.
HospitalityLong essay · 5 min read · 17 May 2026
Brickell, the New Mayfair of Miami
The banking towers south of the river were, until recently, where Miami went to work. They are now, increasingly, where Miami goes to dinner — and, on the upper floors, where Miami goes to belong. A guide to the shift, and to the two openings of 2026 that have made it visible.
IndustryArticle · 3 min · 17 May 2026
Why Three-Star Chefs Are Doing Beach Clubs Now
*Alléno at Beauvallon, Frechon on the Saint-Tropez port, Imbert at La Réserve. The beach is the new dining room.*
ExperientialArticle · 4 min · 17 May 2026
The Yacht Is the Hotel
*Three ports in seven days. The palace becomes the shore office. A new geometry of the Mediterranean summer.*
TravelArticle · 4 min · 17 May 2026
The Reading List for the Riviera Beach Bag
*Five books for the summer. The airport thriller is over. Serious fiction is back on the lounger.*
ExperientialArticle · 3 min · 17 May 2026
The Quiet Curator
The new status symbol is having someone who knows.
OpeningsArticle · 3 min · 17 May 2026
The Polo Summer That Beat F1 to the Headlines
*Saint-Tropez in July, Sotogrande in August, Geneva in between. The thirty-to-forty-five-year-old set is taking the chukkers.*
TravelArticle · 3 min · 17 May 2026
The New Map of Private Aviation
*The shared jet is over. The membership is back. A quiet redrawing of how UHNW families fly.*
MembershipArticle · 3 min · 17 May 2026
The Members' Floor That Replaced the Top Suite
*Why the UHNW client is buying the lounge access, not the corner room. A quiet inversion of the hotel economy.*
TravelArticle · 3 min · 17 May 2026
The Helicopter Etiquette Nobody Talks About
*Nice to Saint-Tropez in twenty minutes is the easy part. Knowing when not to take it is the rest of the job.*
ExperientialArticle · 3 min · 17 May 2026
The 48-Hour Reply (And Why It Matters)
*The luxury of 2026 is the considered answer. The concierge who replies in five minutes has misunderstood the brief.*
OpeningsArticle · 4 min · 17 May 2026
Sardinia Is the New Saint-Tropez, Quietly
*Costa Smeralda has spent two seasons being the place no one wanted to name. That run is about to end.*
OpeningsArticle · 3 min · 17 May 2026
Mykonos 2026 — Two Palaces, One Summer
For the first time, the island opens two full-service luxury hotels in the same season.
TravelArticle · 3 min · 17 May 2026
Geneva, the Discreet Capital of the European Summer
*The lakeside city as an arrivals hub, a staging post, and — for those who know — the actual centre of the season.*
ExperientialArticle · 4 min · 17 May 2026
From Object to Access
How the UHNW client of 2026 stopped buying things and started buying entry.
TravelArticle · 4 min · 17 May 2026
The DJ Calendar of the Mediterranean Summer 2026
The nights that will define the season, between Saint-Tropez, Ibiza and Mykonos.
OpeningsArticle · 3 min · 17 May 2026
COMO Le Beauvallon Opens After Eighteen Years
A 1914 Belle Époque palace returns to the Gulf of Saint-Tropez, with Yannick Alléno on the beach.
OpeningsArticle · 3 min · 17 May 2026
Casa Tua Paris — The Members' Room Lands on the Left Bank
The Miami townhouse club arrives in Paris, and it changes who eats where after midnight.
IndustryArticle · 3 min · 17 May 2026
Brickell Is the New Mayfair
And Vlad Doronin is the one quietly building it.
Travel DiaryLong essay · 5 min read · 16 May 2026
The Beaches of Pampelonne, Ordered
Three miles of sand, thirty operators, one decision that will shape your week. A clear-eyed guide to the beach clubs of Pampelonne — what to book on the first day, what to keep for the last, and what to politely skip.
Travel DiaryLong essay · 5 min read · 16 May 2026
Festive or Quiet — The Two Maps of Saint-Tropez at Dinner
Every evening in the village is, for the serious visitor, a choice between two cities. The map of the festive places, and the map of the quiet ones. A guide to both — and to the one address that belongs to neither.
Travel DiaryLong essay · 5 min read · 15 May 2026
The Var Address Book — Twenty Places No Guidebook Will Ever Give You
Inland from the postcard coast lies the part of the South of France the locals keep for themselves: a small republic of vineyards, perched villages, monastery hotels and country chefs. The twenty addresses I send my American clients before they ask.
Travel DiaryLong essay · 5 min read · 15 May 2026
Lunch at Chez Bruno: The Truffle Cathedral 40 Minutes from Saint-Tropez
An old farmhouse in the hills above Lorgues, a family that has cooked nothing but truffle for two generations and forty years, and the half-day ritual that has quietly become the most serious lunch in the South of France.
HospitalityLong essay · 4 min read · 12 May 2026
What the Top 0.01% Actually Want from Luxury Hospitality in 2026
Privacy has eclipsed prestige. The new badge of arrival is the table no one knows about, the suite that never appears on the public-facing rate card, the host who recognises you before you give your name.
Travel DiaryLong essay · 5 min read · 10 May 2026
The Forgotten Islands of Paul Ricard: A Mediterranean an Hour from Saint-Tropez
Bendor and Embiez, two small islands bought in the 1950s by the pastis baron and quietly preserved against everything that has happened to the Côte d'Azur since. A field guide to a part of the coast an hour and a half west of Saint-Tropez that almost no American visitor has ever heard of.
Travel DiaryLong essay · 5 min read · 8 May 2026
Saint-Tropez to Beauvallon: The Twelve-Mile Drive Worth a Week
A short route along the inner edge of the Gulf — past the vineyards of Gassin, the back road of Grimaud, the lavender beach at Beauvallon — that is, in May and September, the most beautiful drive in the South of France. A day-by-day itinerary for the American visitor who already knows the village.
Membership & ClubsLong essay · 4 min read · 5 May 2026
From Meal to Membership: Why Hospitality Is Becoming the New Lifestyle Platform
Restaurants used to sell dinner. The serious ones now sell something closer to belonging. A look at how the most ambitious houses of the decade — MILĀ, Casa Tua, Dorsia — have moved past the table.
Travel DiaryLong essay · 4 min read · 28 Apr 2026
Notes from Saint-Tropez: Six Tables Worth the Detour This Summer
A short field guide to the dining rooms — and one garden, one cellar, one terrace — that are quietly setting the tone of the village this season. Written, as always, after dinner, not before.
Branded ResidencesLong essay · 4 min read · 20 Apr 2026
The Art of the Quiet Stay: Why Branded Residences Are Replacing Hotels for the UHNW Traveller
The most interesting buildings opening this decade are not hotels. They are residences that happen to have a hotel attached. A short essay on why the wealthiest travellers have stopped checking in — and started moving in.