Latent Orient

It never actually matters how you travel, it soon becomes a drag. The thrill of upgrading always diminishes. The tragedy of material success is that you get to experience the finer things, but, like every other sensory experience worth its salt, one becomes inured. After flying business class for a while, you just long for…
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Where the Wilde Things Are: L’Hotel, Paris

There’s only one thing worse than being reviewed by LUSSO and that is not being reviewed by LUSSO. What’s the most famous hotel room in the world? Leaving out the Overlook Hotel’s Room 237 on account of it being fictional (one hopes), Room 16 at L’Hotel, Paris is certainly a strong contender. “Give me the…
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Robert Clayman: Rant in E Minor

Steve Lukather is pissed. To clarify, he’s American and therefore peeved, not inebriated. David Byrne’s in a mardy strop, too. David is also American, but he’s actually Scottish, so if he was pissed, he’d be, well…perfectly happy. So why are these ageing stalwarts of the old ‘recording’ industry both suffering an attack of the gripes?…
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Mulsanne in the Membrane

This being the End Days, there’s a lot of people reaching for the ameliorating wisdom of the ancients. Since the Mayans have, if you’ll pardon the idiom, pissed on their chips post the whole 2012 damp squib, Chinese fatalism has been gaining some traction. Earth. Metal. Wood. Fire. Air. Traditionally, these elements were all significant…
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Garden of Earthly Delights: Le Cour Jardin, Paris

Nothing lasts forever. Luckily, one beautiful non-perennial favourite blooms once a year. As you are reading these words (if you hail from LUSSO’s own part of the Northern hemisphere), the days are drawing shorter, pleasingly-jaundiced leaves are gliding down to mulch pavements, morning skies are brushed by strata of smoke and peach strips and, as…
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Shaving Haven at Gentleman’s Tonic Express, St Pancras

A perfectly restful refuge for the hairy man travelling at 300 kph. A lady acquaintance of mine recently complained that the cost of her feminine razors had shot up in recent months. She put this down to the brutes at Gillette and Wilkinson Sword having to offset losses caused by the current beard trend. Being…
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Chateau Bouffement, France

Robert Clayman lounges in a stunning rental, outside of Paris, that redefines the meaning of the word ‘plush’. Jean Renoir’s ‘La Règle du jeu’ (The Rules of the Game) is one of the greatest films you’ve probably never seen. Even in last year’s Sight and Sound Greatest Movies of all Time poll, it was ranked…
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Why You Need to Stay at Saint-Tropez’s Hotel Byblos

A cool white bed sheet is strung across a washing line. Across its surface, the sun-projected shadow of a man, still, waiting. In front of it, laid out across the bottom of the cinema frame, a lithe, tanned, nubile young woman, sunbathing – naked. In 1956, this was how Brigitte Bardot was introduced to the…
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