True Romance

One of the sexiest, most romantic (and, if you’re anywhere in the Northeast, relatively easy) places to do both is at an exquisite, evocative, eleven-room hotel in Hudson, New York, called The Maker. The fever dream of Lev Glazman and Alina Roytberg (the duo who founded the global beauty brand Fresh more than thirty years ago and sold a stake in it to LVMH in 2000), The Maker encompasses both the hotel and perfumes (and much more, as it turns out) with a louche, luxe ease, along with a sense of design and beauty that’s as particular as it is grand.

If, like many of us here at goop, you ever went more than a little crazy inside a Fresh store, you know the utterly enchanting way Glazman puts together a fragrance, how he manages to make any scent airy and complex and surprising and sexy all at once. Now, using only clean ingredients, he’s created new ones, and they are unlike anything that’s come before in the world of clean fragrance.

“Fragrance evokes such powerful memories, and you make memories at a hotel that you don’t make anywhere else,” says Glazman. And at this hotel, that memory-making effect is heightened. The design–a mix of one-of-kind antiques, artisanal work by Hudson Valley craftspeople, and a stunning art collection–is powered by the imaginations of Roytberg and Glazman and uniquely suited to quirky Hudson, at one point known as “the little town with the big red-light district.”

You remember the blue velvet coverlet in the Artist, the iron bed in the Gardener, the black marble tub in the Architect (each room is a completely different experience). The feel of the heated marble floors in the bathrooms, the crackling of fires in the fireplaces, and the low lamps oozing atmosphere. There’s even a special room for guests to try on scents that Glazman’s collected over the years; everything has been thought of.

The way Glazman and Roytberg focus on the subtlest details comes through in the scents themselves, as well as in the gorgeously thick ribbed glass bottles that echo the highball glasses in the bar (the same goes for the candle containers, which catch the light beautifully) and in the delicate patterns on the boxes, designed, as are almost all the wallpapers in the hotel, by Roytberg. (The wallpapers, batik-inspired woodblock floral prints transposed onto pearl linen, fulfill the dreams of many of us who long wished we could fashion the Fresh packaging into wallpaper.)

The iPads in each room are loaded with Netflix and the like, plus a “shop” tab that opens up yet another world of The Maker: You can buy almost everything in the rooms, from the custom-designed beds, lamps, and Roytberg’s wallpapers to the sheets, perfumes, and candles. All of this is available on The Maker’s website, too, and, opening this month, at a jewel-box store in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood. (Most of the sales are to people who haven’t even visited the property, Roytberg and Glazman say.)

But if you can, by all means visit, whether it’s for the hibiscus-infused Libertine cocktail (there are cocktails for every Maker scent, plus many more, including the exceptional Lost in Oaxaca) on a velvet sofa by the towering fireplace in the bar, a fluffy croissant in the cafe, or…the lost weekend we’re all dreaming about.