Twelve years ago, the French shoemaker Christian Louboutin bought a holiday home in Melides,
a farming community on the Atlantic coast, south of Lisbon. Everything was perfect, except this: “There was no restaurant where I could go every night and hang out,” he says. “My house was not built for dining. Lunch, yes. Dinner, no. He found a nondescript little house on the outskirts of the historic village and thought of opening a bistro there. The local mayor had a grander idea. “He said, ‘Make a hotel,'” Louboutin recalled. “So I did.”
This month, Vermelho Melides—from the name of the word red in Portuguese, a nod to its signature scarlet soles – open for business. Located in a newly constructed building that resembles a centuries-old convent, Vermelho has 13 bespoke rooms, a spa, a bar and, yes, a restaurant, all designed by Louboutin in collaboration with the Portuguese architect Madalena Caiado and longtime friend Caroline Irving. “I didn’t want a crowded hotel or a noisy hotel – I can’t stand it when you arrive somewhere and there’s music everywhere, very loungey,” Louboutin says. “If you go to a hotel, you should feel at home, this feeling of being at home.”
