Considering his ownership of some of the world’s most renowned hotels—the Chateau Marmont, in Los Angeles, Chiltern Firehouse, in London, and the Standard in New York, among others—it’s somewhat surprising that André Balazs wasn’t always in the hotel business. The Boston-born graduate of both Cornell and Columbia actually began his career in biotech, co-founding a company called Biomatrix with his father in the late 1980s. It was a huge financial success, but Balazs felt as though his work life was infringing on his personal life, and he wanted to reconcile the two. What better way to do that than run a hotel? After establishing the Mercer, in SoHo, Balazs built out a fleet of idiosyncratic, abundantly stylish, and much-beloved hotels. On this week’s episode of Table for Two, the hotelier joins host Bruce Bozzi to discuss his design philosophy, the most challenging aspect of his job, and his close relationship with Andy Warhol. Hear a preview of the episode below, and listen and subscribe on the iHeart app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
