Styling by Grace Kapin.nNicolas wears Jacket and sweater by Marc Jacobs. White shirt by Adidas SLVR.nSpecial thanks to Serge Becker.

FROM THE ARCHIVE: NICOLAS MALLEVILLE, FALL 2009

We’ve been around awhile now, and we know a lot of our readers might not have had the opportunity to experience our earlier issues. So we wanted to give you the chance to discover one of our favorite stories from our archive every Friday. Some of them feature actors, musicians, or artists who eventually made it big, talents we are proud to have tapped early in their careers. Some have brilliant writing, and some have beautiful photography. Some have both. But all of them are so great we thought they deserved a second chance. This week we present Magnus Berger’s personal Fall 2009 profile of hotelier Nicolas Malleville, owner of the Coqui Coqui chain of hotels in Mexico. If you haven’t planned your summer getaway yet, this might just inspire you.

HOTELIER NICOLAS MALLEVILLE LEFT BEHIND THE BIG CITY TO LIVE THE DREAM ON THE YUCATÁN PENINSULA, AND HIS COQUI COQUI SERIES OF PROPERTIES HAS DEFINED AN UNDERSTATED LUXURY. NOW HE’S BRINGING IT TO NEW TERRITORIES.

When you meet Nicolas Malleville, there are a few things that strike you—he has a charming Argentine accent and great style, and he is very handsome. Born in Adelia María, Argentina, he always dreamed of combining travel with his other passions: landscaping, interior design, and things that smell good. After spending many inspiring years traveling for work and fun, he decided to settle down on Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula, where he would buy his first piece of land, on the beach in Tulum. The idea was simple: to create a nice life in a beautiful place. In 2003, Nicolas opened the doors of the Coqui Coqui day spa, which eventually turned into a hotel, which eventually developed into a highly sought-after line of perfumes, oils, and scented candles.

Each time I go to Tulum, Coba, or Valladolid to visit Nicolas, there is the feeling of leaving everything behind. When I first went, there was no electricity in the rooms, just candles—which was great once you got used to it. Now they actually have cell phone reception, because “the Americans were complaining so much.” The Coqui Coqui location in Tulum is literally on the ocean, executed in rustic simplicity, but with great taste. With only five rooms, the hotel feels exclusive and intimate. “The scale is key to achieving what we want,” Nicolas says. “If we went a little bit bigger, a lot of this would be lost, maybe not in the treatment of the spa, but in the overall experience, in the sense that every room is different and everything is handmade. It’s more the feeling of something private and residential, but with the amenities of a hotel.”

I met Nicolas for the first time in the early 2000s, a while before he acquired the land in Tulum. He was so determined, and the message he wanted to convey was so clear. He knew it would take a long time to get there, but the idea was already in place: two hotels with spas and a perfumerie with a line of homemade fragrances and spa products. He now lives with his Italian girlfriend, Francesca Bonato, in Valladolid just down the street from his perfumerie, where they use indigenous plants like agave, plumeria flowers, and eucalyptus to make their own perfumes, massage oils, and candles.

He is now about to open a retreat in the jungle of Coba, and two new locations—one in Grimaldi, Italy, on the French border, and another in Córdoba, Argentina—will give Nicolas the chance to travel even further. But the philosophy remains the same. “It’s the Coqui Coqui interpretation of the local tradition and culture. It’s not meant to preserve history or culture like a museum. It’s about taking local elements, and, with the eye of a foreigner, coming up with something new.” Like the hanging bridge between the two pyramid-like structures in Coba, which feels more Indiana Jones than ancient Mayan, but adds a playful element nonetheless. “In the end it comes back to the basic idea of a good life, and if you do it Coqui Coqui–style, you eat well, sleep well, and smell good.”

THE LAST RESORT - SURFERS LODGE PENICHE

The seaside hamlet of Peniche, a rustic town jutting into the Atlantic about halfway down Portugal’s coast, has long been a favored destination for Europe’s surfers, including John Malmqvist, who helped found Nord, Sweden’s first surf brand. “The first time I came to Peniche was eight years ago in search of waves,” he explains.

PLAYLAND MOTEL

Robin Scott and Jamie Wiseman are not new to the New York scene. They are, however, new to the beach. Scott, originally from London, and Wiseman, an Oklahoma transplant, are the savvy business minds behind the development of the Brooklyn club Output, and they are bringing their knowhow to the shore with their new project, the Playland Motel, which opened earlier this month on Rockaway Beach.

FROM THE ARCHIVE: BEN PUNDOLE, FALL 2008

We’ve been around awhile now, and we know a lot of our readers might not have had the opportunity to experience our earlier issues. So we wanted to give you the chance to discover one of our favorite stories from our archive every Friday. Some of them feature actors, musicians, or artists who eventually made it big, talents we are proud to have tapped early in their careers. Some have brilliant writing, and some have beautiful photography. Some have both. But all of them are so great we thought they deserved a second chance. This week we present Derek Blasberg’s Fall 2008 profile of King & Grove founder Ben Pundole—before King & Grove. Before you head to our favorite new Williamsburg pool, find out a little bit more about the man who made it all possible below.

HACIENDA DE SAN ANTONIO

The Hacienda de San Antonio—first established in 1890 and acquired by Sir James Goldsmith in the 1970’s—sits in the highlands of Colima, Mexico, near the crater of the Volcán de Fuego. The newly restored property, built on five hundred acres of a coffee plantation, offers comfort, tranquility, and luxury for those seeking either active pursuits or total relaxation.

RUSCHMEYER’S

Since opening a few years ago on the waterfront of Fort Pond, the Surf Lodge has become the go-to spot in Montauk, beloved for its summer live-music series, its surf pro, and its laid-back attitude. This summer, the iconic hotel gets a friendly rival of sorts in Ruschmeyer’s, its more settled cousin perched across the water. Situated in a grove of trees lined along the shore, the caravanserai of cabins—dating back to 1952—have been renovated and restored to more than their former glory just in time for the long evenings of the coming season.

TREEHOTEL

Rarely is high design an experimental attempt at anonymity. The boastful form, an often lofty dismissal of convention, seeks to teach by stepping above or outside boundaries, suggesting progress is solely a movement toward the future. What, then, if one revisits the past? Treehotel, a collection of modern structures in the unvisited woods of northern Sweden, posed the question when architectural firm Tham & Videgård Arkitekter unveiled its design several years ago: a mirrored glass cube suspended from a tree outside the village of Harads, sixty kilometers south of the Arctic Circle. To stumble upon the cube in its boreal surroundings is to experience Philip Johnson’s Glass House turned inside-out: eye-to-eye with yourself in the expanse, you are suddenly aware of solidarity in an environment not your own. But cross the connected rope bridge, hands clasped on a railing ten feet in the air, and you’re made an invisible viewer of that same stretch. The structure, celebrated and praised, is the product of that never-ending dialectic between industrialists and environmentalists, out of which we have finally learned that man’s expansion can be a collaborative process.

VICEROY ANGUILLA

With winter approaching, thoughts and plans begin turning towards the Caribbean, where even now extravagant new resorts are opening every season. One of the most stunning, from the burgeoning Viceroy chain, sits between two crystalline bays on the West End of Anguilla, a British island just east of Puerto Rico and north of Saint-Martin. A grid of thick columns and cantilevered horizontals of silver travertine—like a ’60s update of Frank Lloyd Wright—the Viceroy Anguilla, now just over a year old, marks a sharply minimalist turn from the traditional tropes of resort architecture. The main sensation is one of lightness and air, although guests are reassured that when Hurricane Earl passed by late this summer, those who stayed indoors barely noticed.

AMANGIRI RESORT

The first thing you notice when you step off the small twin-prop airplane in Page, Arizona, is the power plant. Its three smokestacks piercing the vibrant blue sky, the coal-burner sits in otherworldly contrast to the surrounding red desert. Still, it keeps its distance, and after a few days, it becomes just as much a […]

COQUI COQUI IN THE JUNGLE

For all the fans of Nicolas Malleville’s Coqui Coqui spots in Tulum and Valladolid, there is a new Mexican destination: Coqui Coqui – Coba. For the latest expansion in the Coqui empire, Malleville was inspired by local tradition, as always, and revisited the architectural history of the Yucatán. The resulting Coba residences, located 47 kilometers […]