Mr & Mrs Smith

Mr & Mrs Smith have just got back from a review trip to this Mexico City boutique hotel, and just as soon as they’ve unpacked their bags, a full account of their stay in Mexico will be with you. In the meantime, just to whet your wanderlust, here’s a quick postcard from groundbreaking design hotel Habita…

One thing Mexico’s Habita hotel group always gets right is the beds. Soft, spacious and never-get-up comfortable, all of the group’s hotels (Deseo, Basico, Condesa DF, La Purificadora and Azucar) share the same devotion to the science of sleep, with perfectly judged pillows and dive-in-and-disappear-duvets. It’s a formula pioneered by Habita Hotel in particular, the first design hotel to land in Mexico City, and still one of the leaders of the pack when it comes to boutique urban retreats.

The hotel was once a 60s apartment block, but a comprehensive architectural facelift has ensured that you’d never know it to look at. Elegantly but unassumingly wrapped in panels of frosted glass, the tall, square building sits pretty in Polanco – the Mexican cousin of Knightsbridge – and entices a regular crowd of wealthy wunderkinds to shake their collective booty on the rooftop terrace. Designed when minimalism was the order of the day, and spotless, icy white was the tone of choice, Habita’s decor is still surprisingly suave, and its sense of style is contagious – napkin doodlers become maverick graphic designers by osmosis, and IT staff can turn to It-girls at the drop of a sunhat.