When Verena Haller, the global head of design and creative services at Hyatt Lifestyle Group, described what luxury at The Manner – an uber stylish boutique hotel and haunt for New York’s creative class that opened in September 2024– meant to her, it wasn’t your traditional, gilded version.
“We wanted to turn traditional luxury on its head,” Haller says, before describing the idea of emulating a stay with your impossibly chic friend who has “a little more money than you do” and “a little better taste.” It’s the friend whose bathroom is stocked with fresh products packaged in slick, tinted glass bottles, who hosts divine dinner parties without breaking a sweat, and who’s already laid out two plush towels at the end of your bed before you flag wanting to jump in the shower.
The Manner marks one of the last projects Haller oversaw as chief design officer of The Standard hotels before being promoted to her current role in 2024 after the Hyatt acquired its parent company, Standard International. And it’s one that reflects the crux of her ethos carrying her through new projects. To Haller, luxury isn’t perfection. It’s care. Growing up in Italy, Haller moved to New York two decades ago and started in interior design at various architecture firms before landing at Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, a leading company noted for its modernist approach to design. After seven years there, she moved through top jobs at Morgans Hotel Group and Equinox Hotels, before landing at The Standard.
With such a wealth of corporate experience, Haller has often found herself navigating the tension between this and having independent creativity, yet her approach remains fundamentally unchanged. “There’s definitely a rebel in me. I rarely accept something simply because that’s how it’s always been done,” she says. Haller embraces risk, rejecting conventional formulas of hospitality to create something that teases a deeper and more emotional experience out of her guests. It’s this approach that has led Haller to make the unusual decision, in the context of our screen-obsessed world, to not have televisions inside The Manner’s bedrooms. “They’re for sleeping,” she says. “We wanted guests to feel comfortable enough to come downstairs in the middle of the night in a bathrobe and slippers, help themselves to something from the pantry, sit and read for an hour, chat with the host, and then head back upstairs.”
Much like a home, each section of The Manner plays a distinct role. There’s The Apartment, a private guest lounge that emulates a living room with its plump seating, bulbous lamps, and tiled floor, blanketed by thick rugs. Then there’s Sloane’s, a brassy, low-lit cocktail bar that Haller describes as “belonging to a host who had travelled, collected beautiful objects and filled the space with things she loved most.” There’s also Otter, an animated bistro enshrined in the canon of this very magazine, hosting the official launch party of 10 Men USA. “Each space has its own story and purpose, but they all belong to the same world,” she says.
Partnering with Hannes Peer, a brutalist interior designer with a residential focus, was another extension of Haller’s risk-embracing philosophy. Instead of leaning on a resumé with lots of prior hotel work, Haller trusted their personal relationship and prioritized Peer’s ego-free talent. After meeting at an exhibition in 2019 and discovering they were from the same area in Italy’s Dolomites, they became close friends. “I always felt there would eventually be the right project for us to work on together,” says Haller. When The Manner came about, it seems Peer felt the same way. “I calledhim and asked whether he’d be interested. He said yesimmediately. I remember saying, ‘You don’t even know how much we’re paying you,’ and he replied, ‘I don’t care. I want to work with you.’”
The pair’s creative exchange further crystallized Haller’s vision of luxury. “For us, luxury became craftsmanship. It became evidence of human hands at work,” she says. In turn, artisans from across the globe became key. The formidable, ceramic columns that brush the ceiling of The Apartment were hand-chiseled by LA-based sculptor Ben Medansky. The mural that snakes round the walls of The Otter depicting nude figures taking a river dip surrounded by lush woodland was hand-painted in Spain by artist-cum-architect Elvira Solana before being shipped over. “Throughout the building, imperfections are celebrated,” Haller says. “Even the walls in the guest rooms are intentionally not perfectly smooth because we wanted them to feel hand-painted.”
It’s an approach you might not suspect from a designer at the helm of such a mammoth company as Hyatt Lifestyle Group. Opening multiple new hotels each year (last year it was four, this year they’ve scheduled eight), the easy route would have been standardization, but this is the opposite of what Haller wants to achieve. “If I take an idea from one brand and repeat it in another, that’s a mistake,” she says when asked of the difference in designing for each hotel group under the Hyatt umbrella–The Standard, Andaz, Thompson, Dream and Bunkhouse.
“The most important thing we do before any project begins is create an incredibly detailed project brief,” she says. These briefs can take more than 10 weeks to produce and become the frameworks for how a guest understands each brand. What does wellness mean at the Andaz? What does nightlife look like at The Standard? What are the food options at Thompson? Haller believes if each of these questions don’t have a distinct answer, she’s not doing her job right. “Projects take years,” she says. “Circumstances change. Markets evolve. Sometimes we all agree that parts of the original brief no longer make sense and need to be updated,” she continues. Haller isn’t just designing interiors–she’s building narrative frameworks that allow every project to develop its own identity. The evidence is in her current roster of upcoming hotel openings. The Standard Lisbon is a project nearly a decade in the making.
Haller has teamed up with Spanish artist and designer Jaime Hayon to ensure the history that is embedded into the building is celebrated rather than constrained. On The Standard Mexico City, a Haller has partnered with Iceland-born, Los Angeles-based architect Gulla Jónsdóttir, primarily known for her use of curved lines and sensual flourishes. On Turks and Caicos, the group is gearing up to open a new Andaz but because the project started long before the merger of Hyatt and Standard International, the role “is often to layer additional care, detail and personality onto what already exists,” says Haller. Haller’s deeply human approach is refreshing. However, that’s not to mean moving into a bigger company hasn’t had its challenges. “I’ve had to become comfortable with making smaller changes because I know they’ll eventually create a much larger impact,” she says. But if anyone is capable of paying attention to the details and making them count, it’s Haller. She’s steadfast in her vision, trusting in her team and attuned to what really matters to guests. It’s what makes her the woman for the job of turning Hyatt, as she puts it, into “a truly brand-led company.”
“It’s what drives me,” she says. “I want to help make that vision a reality and prove that a large hotel company can be every bit as brand-focused and creatively driven as a much smaller one.” The Manner is just one of many projects which proves Haller can do just that. On the surface, it’s a beautifully designed SoHo hotel. In reality, it’s the clearest expression of Haller’s belief that luxury isn’t about spectacle, it’s about making people feel instinctively at home. “My instinct is always to ask why,” she says. “If the answer doesn’t make sense, I’ll challenge it. I’ll keep pushing until it does.” And if that’s the philosophy she’s now carrying across Hyatt’s global portfolio, the industry’s definition of luxury may well shift with her.
Taken from 10 Magazine MEN USA Issue 2 – HERITAGE, LEGACY, FUTURE – out October 4th! Order your copy here.
Text BELLA KOOPMAN
