‘Possibly the most beautifully stylish hotel I’ve seen’: Inside Christian Louboutin’s new property

When you think about it, it couldn’t be called anything else. Vermelho means red in Portuguese, so it’s natural that Christian Louboutin would reference his signature soles in his first hotel, which has just opened in the sleepy Alentejo village of Melides, close to the coast.

Unsurprisingly, flashes of red prevail throughout, from the in-your-face floor vermilion tiling in the flamboyant bar to the more subtle ‘V’ for Vermelho in the decorative cube on the door handles. Scarlet leather coat hangers can be found in the cupboards while the corridor has burgundy shutters and dusk-pink wall murals. And yes, the staff have red-soled shoes, though of the flat variety rather than stilettos.

Possibly the most beautifully stylish hotel I’ve seen, the 13-room property in a low whitewashed building with traditional tiled roof oozes glamour within. Heavy ash doors with geometric patterns open onto rooms where inlaid parquet wood floors meet walls whose lower levels are clad in Iberian tiles.

Those on the first floor are more individual, perhaps with a red bed beneath a wooden ceiling, or a decadent bath on the balcony. Ground-floor rooms are generally smaller but spill out into gardens created by French landscape designer Louis Benech; they only differ from each other in the design of the tiling on the floors and offsetting their Moorish-style baths.