Sitting and having a drink at either the One&Only or the Taj, two international luxury hotels in Cape Town, you relax into opulence — overstuffed chairs, grand decor and exceptional service. It is familiar and comforting. This is what top hotels are meant to look like. You don’t need to see the rooms to know that they will look like many of the other high-end hotels around the world. In fact, the Taj and One&Only are very similar — the one is colonial India, the other colonial Africa.
In comparison, stepping into 15 on Orange, the new flagship African Pride hotel in Cape Town, is a complete assault on the senses. 15 on Orange is not somewhere you want to sit and have tea with your mother — this is a place where you meet for after-work drinks to keep the buzz alive. This is a city hotel — it’s edgy, it’s New York or Hong Kong — this place screams design concept. It is, in short, a breath of fresh air.
As you walk along the red-marble “carpet” into the hotel, your mouth drops open. Mostly because of the extraordinarily tall doorman who actually has to duck to enter the lift, where you sit on a gold couch as you are transported to the first floor and reception.
You know immediately that you have walked into something different. The attention to detail is in the willow lamps (chains forming lampshades down the stairwells), the Versace-inspired carpets, the Plynyl wall paper that resembles chain mail, the songololo couch designed by Haldane Martin in the foyer and the Issey Miyake fragrance that comes through the air ducts. This is a place you want to touch and feel and explore. This is a hotel where you really do wonder just how they have taken the design into the bedrooms.
And you don’t have to stay there to find out, because there is something voyeuristic about this hotel. It is a place where you can watch people and be watched. There are atrium suites, which are little pod rooms with a glass wall looking into the seven-storey foyer. You can sip your cappuccino and stare at the guests as they go about their business until they get tired of being in a fish bowl and close the curtains.
The deluxe rooms have floor-to-ceiling windows, which frame the mountain and city around you, allowing outsiders to peer inside. There are two rooms with showers that could cause a pile-up on the street below if you chose not to close the blinds.
This may all sound like an outrageous attack on your privacy, but there is something really sexy and titillating in the design. In a world of reality TV shows and online blogs, it seems we want people to peer into our lives or to be the ones doing the peering. But overall the impression you are left with is that you have encountered something different, something that has set your senses alight. This hotel is worth a visit, even just for a drink, although that may be all you can afford, because it is certainly not shy on prices.
It’s the little things…
- Ladies toilets: The size of the bathroom in the foyer is just an extravagance in a city where space dictates that bathrooms be small and functional. Willow lamps dangle in front of walls that are covered in a textured wallpaper behind Perspex and then finished off with white fringes draped from the ceiling.
Bed throw: Sometimes it is the small things that you remember, such as the throw on the bed, which has silky (fake) fur on one side with beautiful, textured design on the other. You just want to wrap yourself in it while watching the clouds pour over the top of the mountain.
Crystal chandelier: The brochures will tell you about the 10 000 Murano crystal links that form the canopy over the Murano bar, but for me the chandelier hanging over the breakfast buffet was more dazzling. It reflects the light into thousands of multicoloured glistening stars. You just want to run your fingers over the crystal (which would then have to be cleaned individually with a gloved hand).
The orange onyx stone: The bathrooms in the hotel rooms have sinks set in orange onyx stone, which is then lit by a concealed light. It is warm to the touch and creates a soft orange glow that acts as a night-light so you don’t stub your toe on the way to the toilet.
The wallpaper in the bedrooms: The wallpaper was designed exclusively for the hotel and is a photograph of bare branches taken at Kirstenbosch gardens.
Service: At first I thought I was receiving undue attention because I was reviewing the hotel until I saw how they treated a friend who joined me for a drink. The staff really make you feel special. Housekeeping also reset the time on the iPod docking station after I accidentally unplugged it — how’s that for attention to detail?
– Size: The rooms are huge, on average 70m2, which is the size of the average flat these days.
Maya Fisher-French was a guest of Protea Hotels, owner of African Pride Hotels. Website: www.15onorange.com