The Coco Club in VIP Verbier, the Swiss resort favoured by the likes of Victoria Beckham and Richard Branson, launched itself as ‘the first luxury VIP club in the Alps’. Mark C O’Flaherty finds out what all the fuss is about.
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The big party trick at the Coco Club is the arrival of the Chalet Cocktail. A mixture of Krug, Hennessy Paradis and other liquid oddments, it comes in a blue, underlit, ski lodge-shaped ice sculpture, with six long, black straws sticking out the roof, and costs CHF10,000.
Ego equity
Welcome to Verbier. The buzziest A-list ski resort in Europe and as of December last year, home to the Swiss Alps’ first private members’ club, complete with a £30,000 gold leaf wall and white fur curtains. The Coco Club was created by Harvey Sinclair, an entrepreneur who sold his online recruitment business, The Hotgroup Plc, to Trinity Media for £55 million. With his business partner, Swiss architect Patrick Polli and backing from three Geneva-based oil traders, they transformed the basement of the Bristol Hotel in a £1 million overhaul. ‘It’s all part of a new trend for playtime investments in ego equity,’ says a Coco Club spokesman.
Boujis or not Boujis
With Jodie Kidd at the opening, and more celebrities taking Air France flights from London to Geneva than you can pack into Boujis on a Tuesday night, the trend looks set to continue. Though founder membership has been limited to 100, at a cost of £1,000 per winter season, Verbier, being what it is (one big wild and swish Sloane outpost and hedge fund clique), says anyone can rock up as long as they’ve reserved a table and paid £20. But that, naturally, doesn’t get you into the private room or allow you use of the private lift. There are always levels of exclusivity…
For more information
Coco Club
www.cococlub.ch |
