Walt Disney may have perfected the theme park, but hotel impresario Ian Schrager has created a new kind of playland. Los Angeles trendsetters who want their fun served with a surrealistic twist are flocking to the Mondrian, a newly renovated modernist high-rise on the Sunset Strip. Distinguished by 50-foot-high mahogany doors, the Mondrian, built in 1959, is the newest in a string of boutique-style hotels -- which include New York City's Paramount and Royalton and the Delano in Miami -- devised by Schrager and designed by French architect Philippe Starck. Here, as at all of the duo's urban playgrounds, the unspoken mantra is simple: One must be seen in order to exist.
No longer regarded as refuges for sad loners or clueless tourists, hotel bars provide the perfect setting for the new martini-loving, cigar-smoking swinger set. The Mondrian's dazzlingly white lobby bar -- where Starck's signature illuminated marble table adds a friendly communal frisson -- features white school chairs with game boards, and even an electric guitar and bongos for those with the urge to jam. Out on the terrace, the Sky Bar, an open-air wooden hut, provides panoramic views. If Starck's aesthetic is ethereal -- ''I wanted to make the hotel like a magic cloud,'' he says, ''strange and surrealistic, like it's floating in the air'' -- Schrager's is refreshingly earthbound. ''The trick is to be friendly and accommodating,'' he says. ''The purpose is to be sure our guests have fun.''
In contrast to the modernist Mondrian, the Bar Marmont, next door to L.A.'s legendary hotel Chateau Marmont, takes its cue from old Hollywood. A lounge area is filled with Art Deco sofas, the ceiling is dotted with faux Monarch butterflies, and the place is always packed. ''There's an excitement at hotels, a sense of discovery and surprise,'' says co-owner Sean MacPherson. ''The aura and history add a degree of glamour that doesn't exist in a sleazy Hollywood bar.''
Hotelier Emanuel Stern -- president of New York's Soho Grand Hotel and plush Grand Bar -- thinks the allure of the hotel boite is more primal: ''There's something about hotel bars that have the smell of sex -- there's a sense that anything can happen.'' Starck's take is a soupcon more romantic: ''We live in a time when two cars are better than a fiancee. So I target the comeback of love.''
