the place I loved against my better judgment
Anywhere that’s described, fairly or not, as a ‘playground for the rich’ makes me want to avoid it like the plague. It conjures up images of excess, of flashiness, of a lack of consideration or rootedness in reality that leaves a bad taste. I don’t need to point fingers.
In these places, the unbridled desire to reflect wealth and status overshadows all sensibility. One-upmanship means building anything and everything bigger than the last, commissioning yachts so large they don’t fit into most harbours, selecting the lavish over the sustainable, the international over the local.
I remember arriving in the Maldives, decrunching from the journey and absorbing the delicious warmth, the sound of the waves, processing the extraordinary seascape that I had flown over earlier that day, and suddenly being ushered to an underwater restaurant. It was arctic with air conditioning. Echoey with tinny music. Everything had an unsettling tinge of blue. It felt like sitting in a swimming pool for lunch. I was given a menu and directed with great flourish towards the Scottish salmon or Japanese Wagyu beef. Needless to say, I chose neither. It couldn’t have felt less like luxury to me. It’s not about being a killjoy, but it is about context, surely?
So naturally, I was sceptical about Mustique. All that money, all that notoriety. The island, in St Vincent and the Grenadines, gained legendary status in the years after it was purchased by Colin Tennant in the late 1950s. It was here that Princess Margaret retreated from the shackles of her royal responsibilities. Where big names including Bryan Adams, Mick Jagger and Tommy Hillfiger turned plots of land into their own Caribbean hideouts. David Bowie commissioned the extraordinary Mandalay and then sold it to publisher Felix Dennis. Kate Moss decamped here for her 50th birthday earlier this year. I was so ready to not to like it; I’d packed a suitcase of preconceived notions about the place, prickly and suspicious. And yet, and yet…
You have to fly in via Barbados, St Lucia or Martinique on The Mustique Company’s own 18-seater Twin Otter. The runway is a short sputter between beaches, the airport, a thatched-roof building with slow turning ceiling fans. You feel a bit silly and formal in your shoes.
Everyone drives around in open-sided Kawasaki Mules. It purports to be a barefoot, laid-back paradise. Levels of ostentation are present but measured—to a degree. The villas look as if you have given a child a piece of paper and asked them to draw their perfect storybook house. Some are palaces; some are villains’ lairs. In amongst the grand interpretations of local architecture are fantastical imaginative buildings including a Palladian folly straight out of Siena, a Balinese mini village, sleek James Bond crash pads and classic Oliver Messel beauties. They range from the vastly enormous to the rather charmingly tiny (relatively speaking, of course).
My favourite is the Beach House, where it feels like the rule book was thrown away and instead, the dream desert island escape was built, almost entirely from bamboo. It is a masterpiece of whimsy, a tactile, Seventies texture-blast of natural materials that flies in the face of what most people pertain to be luxury. This is—to use another phrase I really don’t like—the very best of ‘rustic luxe’. Around Mustique, flashes of bougainvillaea and hibiscus punctuate the lush green vegetation, turtles meander slowly across the roads and Dark and Stormies are whisked up at Basil’s Bar. This place is the proper epitome of a ‘playground for the rich’. And against my better judgement, I really liked it.
Issy von Simson
Still strongly tethered to her hometown London, Issy certainly knows what’s groovy in the UK capital. But, lucky for us, her knowledge extends far beyond the reaches of Zone 6. Perpetually drawn to the coast – the brinier the better when it comes to the air – Issy is our go-to for seaside getaways. Opinionated and organised, she’s pretty much our ideal travel companion; you know you’re going to get a perfectly planned trip when Issy’s in charge. So, follow her tips and do as Issy does. You’ll end up in the most gloriously unexpected of places.
