EXCLUSIVE: The Manner Hotel, a New Luxury Concept From The Standard, to Open This Fall in SoHo
What if your most chic, connected friend had the doors open to their well-appointed apartment in SoHo for you to call home while staying in New York? If that friend welcomed you home at the end of the day with aperitivo and laid out local pastries and international newspapers for you each morning? And if, while in residence, you were surrounded by hand-done inlaid tiles, bespoke Italian furniture and dramatic murals?
Such is the concept behind The Manner, a new luxury hotel set to open at 58 Thompson Street this September from The Standard Hotel team (in other words: get your fashion week bookings in now).
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The hotel is spearheaded by Amar Lalvani, the executive chairman of Standard International, and is intended to feel more like a private members club than a traditional hotel. It seeks to be the more grown-up sister to The Standard’s properties; those who used to frequent the Boom Boom Room a decade ago atop The Standard, High Line might find The Manner more their speed today.
“I still love going to The Standard, but I also stay at other places. The Manner is elevated, I don’t like that word, but it’s more mature in a sense. It’s more refined. It’s more focused on the guest aspect, the service aspect,” Lalvani says. “When I was younger and would go to The Standard, everybody’s there and it’s so vibrant and there’s always something happening. That’s not necessarily how I travel today. When I get to a place, I like the intimacy that we have. I like the refinement that we have. It’s not a different person but maybe a different stage of life or a different experience that they’re looking for.”
The Standard team acquired the SoHo address, which used to house the Sixty SoHo, two years ago. As soon as the paperwork was signed, Lalvani started to think: “What could that whole place be? What should that place be? What speaks to us about it? What does SoHo need? What do we need? What does the world need in some ways?” he says.
He started to recall some of his best experiences traveling in recent years, and many were at the invitation of friends: on a friend’s boat, or staying in their apartment, “but those friends that are more stylish than you, more connected than you, the people that you look up to,” he says. What stood out to him was, one, the high-end decor element but also the feeling of hospitality that came from a less-is-more approach, which he came to think of as more luxurious than how many luxury hotels operate today.
“What I like about those experiences are they’re more refined, they’re more intimate, they’re more discreet and they’re more comfortable.”
Lalvani has done away with the traditional check-in desk experience, noting that today guests can check in ahead of time and that the process of checking into a hotel has become rather clunky.
“We’re trying to eliminate the forced hospitality interactions that happen. Because I run a hotel company, when I go to a hotel, they know I’m coming and when I walk in the door they just give me my key, which is great, but why shouldn’t that happen to everybody?” Lalvani says. “To me, that’s luxury.”
Instead, there’s a small desk downstairs in the hotel “that you might find at a jewelry shop.” If help is wanted it’s there, but again, when arriving to a friend’s apartment you’re home the moment you walk in the door.
The hotel is designed by Milan-based architect Hannes Peer, who specializes in residential design — this is his first hotel. His touches include chandeliers and floor-to-ceiling mirrors in the rooms, a gold leaf inlay inside the hotel’s bar, Sloane’s, and plenty of chandeliers.
There will be four food and beverage concepts, which are being led by chef Alex Stupak of Empellón. The street-level main restaurant will be called The Otter and is a seafood spot designed to feel “like a restaurant that belongs in SoHo,” Lalvani says. Upstairs is Sloane’s, also open to the public, and then there are two spaces reserved for guests and their friends: The Apartment, which will open when the hotel does in the fall, and, coming in 2025, The Rooftop, exclusive to guests and their friends and perfect for taking a morning coffee outside or having a nightcap with a view.
Lalvani describes The Apartment as the heart of the hotel, and imagines that during fashion week it’ll feel like the most in-demand private club of the fashion crowd.
“We want it to feel as if you’re in a home, meaning that if we’re sitting together, I can pour the wine for you. You can take your shoes off, put your feet up, you can relax. It should feel like that,” Lalvani says. “And you’re going to know that everybody there is either a guest there or a friend of a guest there; so it doesn’t feel exclusive, but there’s some intimacy about it.”
In the morning, pastries will be laid out from rotating local bakeries, and guests’ coffee orders will be remembered. There will be places to post up with a laptop or catch up with a friend by the fireplace.
“We want it to feel very familiar and very generous. And what I mean by that is that there’s no nickel-and-diming on stuff: you’re not charged for sparkling water, still water. You’re not charged for your coffee in the morning. You get whatever you want,” Lalvani says. “You’re not charged for the late checkout. You’re not charged for premium Wi-Fi. It doesn’t happen at your friend’s house.”
The name of the hotel, The Manner, speaks to the group’s manner of hospitality, one which Lalvani views as trailblazing.
“The Standard logo is upside down for a reason because we think it turned hospitality on its head in some way,” Lalvani says. “And I think we’re doing it again with The Manner in a very different way.”
themanner.com
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