Delano

Mr & Mrs Smith have just returned from a stay at this Miami Beach boutique hotel, and just as soon as they've unpacked their mirrored Ray-Bans and sequinned sunwear, a full account of their Florida luxury city break will be with you. In the meantime, just to whet your wanderlust, here's a quick snapshot of Delano in South Beach …
 
Miami’s Delano hotel is something of a style icon: admiring its interior ‘vignettes’ and set pieces, it’s no wonder it has been used as a backdrop to so many music videos and fashion shoots. There are more than a few decorative space oddities, courtesy of Philippe Starck and the Delano design team: this is the kind of hotel where even the piano in the mid-century Florida Room lounge bar is made of transparent, shimmering Lucite. Oversized planters and dream-sequence chiffon drapes, for that Alice in Wonderland feel? Check. High quota of original art and furnishings by Antonio Gaudí, Man Ray, Charles and Ray Eames, Salvador Dali and Mark Newson? You betcha. Furniture in the swimming pool? Yup, that too.

Korres toiletries seem a fitting choice for the bathrooms of a hotel that makes all its guests look like Greek gods and goddesses – denizens of an extraordinary land where all the buildings and furniture are white, sculptural and set against a sparkling, sun-soaked oceanic backdrop. If you're not checked in here during Art Basel Miami Beach… well, you may as well not show up.
 
A state-of-the-art rooftop spa, an award-winning restaurant and Florida’s sexiest swimming pool cap off what is already a pretty remarkable hotel (a fact not overlooked by Miami’s in-crowd, who still flock here to rubberneck, people-watch and generally drape themselves over every gorgeous-looking stick of furniture). The Delano is a not-to-be-missed Miami experience…