Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/1121557
14 letter editor HUNT SLONEM T aking a page from our Dallas editor in chief, Christina Geyer: "The words on our June cover — The Tourists – say everything about what's inside." These tourists, on our cover and in the fashion pages beginning on page 46, are ethereal beings that I love for their gender fluidity and border-crossing, traveling joie de vivre. PaperCity creative director Michelle Aviña did some traveling herself to produce this portfolio. First was a trip to Mexico City to photograph the story, where her first choice for a location was rained out. The original model had pneumonia. And, a protest blocked the streets. No matter. When one is a child of the world, as Michelle is, you spin in circles and conjure a new location, new models, new theme in a 12-hour period. Photographer Iván Aquirre created the otherworldly, Seussian effects via post-production, as he and Michelle imagined traveling the world via spaceship — and elephants — in vivid Technicolor. The Tourists continue to the marvelous El Fenn hotel in Marrakech, where world traveler Diane Dorrans Saeks, editor of the wildly popular travel and design blog The Style Saloniste, visited with Madeline Weinrib, a partner in El Fenn, which was created by Vanessa Branson (sister of Richard Branson). Composed of a series of courtyard riads in the center of Marrakech, the lushly tinted plaster walls glow in shocking pink, mint green, deep turquoise, blush, and rose red. Colby Goetschius and his Episcopal priest partner, David Wantland, introduced The Tourists to the ecclesiastically elegant Hotel Peter & Paul in New Orleans, a 19th-century deconsecrated Catholic church and school that had been abandoned for a decade. Colby describes the 71 guest rooms of this heaven on earth as "a monastically austere hybrid of French country, Italian palazzo, and Gustavian styling." Iron beds topped with crosses, trompe l'oeil wardrobes inspired by Christian Bérard, hand-painted shower tiles, miles of Swiss checked fabric, and bolts and bolts of billowing saffron silk canonically suffuse the spaces, while communion comes in the form of a Sazerac cocktail. Let us all be The Tourists. Holly Moore Editor in Chief holly@papercitymag.com