15 Minutes with Liz Lambert
Author:Lindsey ShookLiving legend, hotelier and all-around vibes creator Liz Lambert is seemingly unstoppable. With a historic rise as one of the country’s coolest hoteliers, she is now a partner at MML Hospitality, whose portfolio of hotels and restaurants is expanding into California and beyond. Here, we spoke about what inspires her vision and what the future holds.
You have always had an understanding of how important architecture and design are to the overall hospitality experience. What other elements are evolving as key components for building a successful hotel brand? Something that has always been central for me is community—creating places that encourage camaraderie through music, art, food and culture. Where is the proverbial campfire in a space? Where does the light emanate from, where are people drawn to each other, what is the best way to create alchemy? I love making beautiful places, but the aliveness comes from the people who inhabit them.
Hotel Saint Vincent is one of my favorite hotels. Not only because it’s in New Orleans but because you transformed a historic building. Is historic preservation and adaptive reuse a crucial part of the MML mission? I fall in love with grand old buildings, especially when they come with character and story. That hotel began as St. Vincent’s Infant Asylum, an orphanage built during the Civil War by Margaret Haughery, an immigrant who suffered great misfortune in early life only to become the wealthiest woman in the city through her dairy and bakery businesses. She worked with the Sisters of Charity at a time when women weren’t allowed to own property, and she continued throughout her life to sell bread in the streets. The character of a building can bring a certain magic to storytelling, which is the business I think that I really am in. Many of our projects are adaptive reuse, and at the same time we’re working with some of the world’s most exciting minds in architecture on new-build projects, and those projects have another kind of magic altogether.
You are a native Texan but have a California vibe. What keeps you in Texas? I’ve lived in California twice—once during a semester at Stanford when I was 19 in a double-wide trailer on campus, and more recently with my wife, who is from the deep San Fernando Valley, in a beautiful bungalow in Laurel Canyon. We traveled back and forth from Texas for years, and I hope our son will hold some of his earliest memories there.
I’ve always been inspired by that period in the 1960s and ’70s in California when minds were expanding and people were speaking up for equality and justice. I love Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Catalog, a countercultural version of the internet before the internet. It was all about building skills and living off the land. So, yes, California has a big draw on my heart and has deeply influenced my work. But Texas is and always will be home.
Photos courtesy of Hotel Saint Vincent.
Your famed Aspen restaurant Clark’s just opened in Montecito. Why did you choose this region to open the second location? We’ve had our eyes set on bringing Clark’s to California for some time. When this location along Coast Village Road surfaced, we jumped at the opportunity. With its Mediterranean climate, hot springs, beaches, Spanish Colonial Revival architecture and access to pristine seafood, Montecito is one of the most beautiful places in the world.
I hear you are expanding in Aspen? The Mountain Chalet—we’re reimagining a beloved Aspen hotel, originally opened in 1954. Think of a place where you can take a steam bath after a long day of skiing, enjoy a perfect steak and an ice-cold martini at The Grill and get a bellman’s insider tip for the best backcountry powder stash before skinning up Aspen Mountain.
Can you share more about the 3D-printed hotel in West Texas? We are relocating El Cosmico to a new spot, a spectacular 60 acres on the east edge of town, overlooking the Davis Mountains. We’ve worked with Bjarke Ingels and with Icon, a building technologies company out of Austin that specializes in 3D printing, to design the new property, which is made up of a mix of printed hotel rooms as well as the trailers and tents from the current site and some beautiful new organic tents from Nomadic Resorts. I’ve been dreaming of expanding El Cosmico for many years but I could never have imagined we’d be 3D printing it. It’s completely fascinating how Icon’s work marries such an ancient way of building with what I believe will be the way of the future. This new technology builds more sustainably and efficiently than modern construction at scale. And the freedom to have curves, domes and parabolas—whatever you can dream—is wild.
Which interior designer’s work are you currently most inspired by? I truly love Pam Shamshiri. Thank you, California.
Favorite California hotel? Chateau Marmont…controversial perhaps, but a classic. Many important things in my life have taken place there.
If you could have dinner with anyone who would it be? Ann Richards, the former governor of Texas. I would love to hear what she would have to say about the current state of affairs. Or James Baldwin, for the same reason.
