Despite the place being called La Banane, and there being a lot of yellow to be seen, this is not nearly as visually busy as you’d expect. In fact there’s nothing busy at all about this hotel on the island of Saint Barthélemy. Far from it.
Villa La Banane sits like a unspoilt memorial to the past, at the end of a time tunnel back to the understated glamour of the 1950s Caribbean, in the era when the jet-set was an exclusive club, before every Tom, Dick or Harriet were getting married on the beach. This is a place to take a break between filming MGM motion pictures, or from which to write literature’s next classic.
The 1950s are in evidence thanks to the owners’ love of vintage furniture. Jean Marc Israël and Benjamin Fabbri have named the eight individually-designed bungalows after luminaries from ’50s design, such as Serge Mouille and Jean Royère, and much of the furniture carefully littered throughout was designed by Swiss architect Pierre Jeanneret for administrative buildings of Imperial India. Although you no longer need to be part of the ruling classes to stay here, there’s still a pleasing air of discrete exclusivity. And if you see anyone famous, remember old chap, it doesn’t do to gossip, what?
