Victorias Secrets: in search of glamour

By Victoria Mather Published: 11:21AM GMT 03 March 2010

Previous of Images Next "Nothing is some-more glam than being privately greeted at the aircraft steps, whizzed to a in isolation room for pass inspection, thereafter strolling to a vessel full with uninformed mango" Photo: JASON FORD Avoid "the common hour in New York immigration surrounded by fat people" Photo: JASON FORD "The usually approach to cope currently is to transport in a state of dangling disbelief"

I instruct glamour. I instruct stardust. But I dont instruct bling. The difference? True glorious is not about gimmicks. Glamour is Marilyn Monroe, gimmick is Madonna. Glamour is carrying a hot-water bottle wrapped in cashmere popped in to your bed when you are feeling a bit frail (Wakaya Club & Spa, Fiji). Gimmick is carrying Swarovski crystals sprinkled on your bed at turndown (less fattening than chocolates on the pillow, but full of blood hideous to distortion on and probable to get in to places you would not instruct a Swarovski clear to reach).

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Glamour is the imagination of complicated travel. Once, drifting was glamorous - recollect those BOAC cinema of smartly-dressed passengers, the woman in a fit and the woman in a hat, being served by smiling air hostesses? Now we go by airfield hell. After the check-in online facism, the security strip-search and the delays, the travelling is but goal and the happiness has vanished.

The usually approach to cope currently is to transport in a state of dangling disbelief. From the impulse I leave my own bedroom, I think about the subsequent bedroom, umpteen hours away. New York, Tokyo, Venice, the Maldives, France: it is the enchanting glorious brazen one contingency anticipate, the glorious that comes from beauty, joy and surprise.

I gathering to the Alps one Yuletide and stayed en track at one of my prime hotels in the world: Château de Bagnols , nearby Lyon. Restored by Paul and Helen Hamlyn , nurtured to soundness (come the End of the World, when God hands out the esteem for Ruthless Perfectionist, step brazen Lady Hamlyn), it is similar to on feet in to a dream.

I was travelling with my husbands goddaughter, the glamorously declared Venetia Stanley; there was a lot of "Wow!" and "Awesome!" prior to we even got to the bedrooms - in that we each had a pleasing small Yuletide tree. Surprise! When we came behind to the bedrooms after dinner, genuine fires were crackling: an additional tasty warn (there is zero some-more glam than going to nap in zillion-threadcount linen sheets with firelight dancing at the feet of a four-poster bed).

It was so glamorous that Venetia right away wants to get tied together at Bagnols. I cant wait.

The alternative place that oozes genuine glorious is the Maldives. There, you travel from the craft to a boat, that is the sort of warn you instruct after a prolonged moody (particularly if you havent managed to get a Club Class chair on one of BAs approach flights, that are right away so renouned you might have to nap with Willie Walsh to secure one).

Its quite glamorous if you are met by the poetic woman from One&Only Reethi Rah. Nothing is some-more glam than being privately greeted at the aircraft steps, whizzed to a in isolation room for pass inspection, thereafter strolling to a vessel full with uninformed mango, papaya with squeezed lime, and celestial coffee. Then, on arrival, being super-speeded by beach cart to your villa, that is possibly right by the beach or over water, and your new joy zone.

Lets speak about H2O villas. Glamour is really the receptive to advice of H2O going swish-swish, lulling you to sleep. Or carrying it all around you. On an additional Maldivian island, Rangali, I have swum at midnight in the underlit sea-pool of my James Bond suite, with baby embankment sharks nudging me (I think they were only after my M&S cossie). It was rather a frightful warn but, God, I felt great afterwards. Compare that with Conrad Rangalis glam boaster thought of branch their underwater grill in to a apartment after dinner. Not being authorised in to your room until alternative guest have left at 11pm is my thought of agony. And thereafter theres the rather pale eau-de-battered-tempura smell about. Definitely a bling thing.

What is genuine glamour? Its the flowering plants in the Four Seasons George V in Paris, where millions are outlayed annually so that beautiful executive Jeff Leatham can disturb with his extravagance. Glamour is opening the mini-bar at the new Mark Hotel in New York and anticipating that it is a drawer done by Sub-Zero (the uber-fridge company), packaged with half-bottles of Puligny-Montrachet. Glam is the enchanting pool at the Cipriani. And gimmicks? Japanese loos that rub the body and blow-dry your bottom.

There is only one heirloom of glorious left in flying: the business-class-only moody from London City to New York. City is a small airfield (we love). You travel opposite the tarmac to the craft (we doubly love). US etiquette is privileged at Shannon, a immeasurable alleviation (just fifteen mins with 32 Goldman Sachs-ish types, rather than the common hour in New York immigration surrounded by fat people). And when the BA moody call pointer BA001, the same as Concorde, so glam lands in the made at home depot at JFK, it takes only fifteen mins from wheels-down to wheels rolling to the city. Thats not a gimmick.