December/January 2014

DECEMBER/JANUARY 2014

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Notebook travel style A locally made hammock references the beachside location in the Tulum hotel’s thatched-roof lobby. OPPOSITE From a lobby counter, Nicolas Malleville’s perfumes attract guests to the scents. L ook beyond the juice bars and the yoga retreats, the superhighway and the supermercato, and you can get a glimpse of what the coastal village of Tulum might have been like centuries ago. The 800-year-old Mayan ruins still stand guard at the edge of the sea; the briny waters surge with bonefish and barracuda. Cell-phone reception comes and goes, a fact to be celebrated or cursed depending on whom you ask. So it’s no wonder that the Yucatan Peninsula beach enclave—the very embodiment of boho chic—has become a magnet for celebrities and fashion-world insiders seeking a way to unplug from big-city life. It was here that Nicolas Malleville, an Argentine model turned landscape architect and perfumer, and Milanese accessories designer Francesca Bonato decided to put down roots. “We wanted to settle in a place with access to an ancestral yet contemporary culture,” Bonato says. After falling for each other on a Tulum shore in 2003—she was on vacation, he was building a small limestone house on the beach—they began hosting visiting friends and family at Malleville’s bungalow. Soon this led to renting out rooms and offering spa treatments using ingredients derived from Tulum’s natural bounty. And then business took off. In the decade that followed, Coqui Coqui Tulum Residence & Spa—as Bonato and Malleville’s seaside outpost was known—begat three additional properties, in Merida, Valladolid, and Coba. The four hotels have since become Coqui Coqui Residences, a collection of intimate lodgings that proves the couple haven’t lost their cosmopolitan sense of style. 84 Lonny At the original Tulum location, the seven unerringly chic rooms establish an aesthetic with its own sense of place. There are no multicolored walls or shell decorations, no tchotchkes or oceanic seascapes. “We chose tropical dark wood, natural stuccos, and Mayan pastels,” Bonato says. Almost everything in the hotel is made in and around the area, from the wood bed frames and tables to the linens, glasses, and ceramics. Cottonblend hammocks—which take one month to create and are woven from the local plants henequen and sansevieria—beckon guests to ease into the regional lifestyle. “Mexico has incredible resources for handicrafts and locally sourced raw materials,” she says. “Plus, we have the heritage and skills passed down through generations of craftsmen.” Despite the popularity of their hotels, the duo’s primary business rests on one such skill: the Lonny 85