If It Looks Like an Edition, and Smells Like an Edition…It Could Just Be Another Ian Schrager Brand

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Ian Schrager has decided to flatter himself. After years of operating a single PUBLIC hotel in New York City, the lifestyle hotel legend is opening the brand’s second location on September 16 in West Hollywood — roughly a mile down the road from The West Hollywood Edition, part of the Marriott luxury lifestyle brand Schrager developed and launched.

Schrager offered more details on the “luxury for all” brand’s West Coast debut earlier this year. The 137-key PUBLIC West Hollywood takes over the former home of The Standard, Hollywood, on Sunset Boulevard, which permanently closed in January 2021. The property is owned by entities controlled by Schrager, Tony Ressler, and Ed Scheetz, and The Ian Schrager Company will manage the hotel. The high-profile conversion arrives five months after the company announced a joint venture with Highgate to expand PUBLIC globally.

But one can’t help but detect a little family resemblance: The rooms and lobby feature a cream, white, and beige palette with pops of wood and natural greenery that will feel awfully familiar to anyone who has wandered through an Edition lobby. The real differentiator is the rate. Schrager designed PUBLIC to sit at a lower price point within the luxury space, and a comparison of bookable dates shows PUBLIC West Hollywood running about 15 to 25 percent below its Edition sibling up the street, with later dates showing an even wider gap in PUBLIC’s favor.

“The very system of a hotel itself and high costs to create products stifle and do not encourage or reward innovation… or taking chances or risks… to do something original,” Schrager said in a release. “It not only results in the uniformity of all hotels in their look and operation, but also the very business model… asset-free or light and financial risk avoidance. The public deserves and wants more.”

Schrager has long preached a more democratic approach to luxury, and PUBLIC is chasing a very specific guest: affluent but not ultrawealthy — someone who wants the feeling of luxury without the full complement of traditional luxury-hotel services. Whether the brand can actually reinvent luxury and mint a new kind of customer will take time to assess.

So What Does a Schrager Hotel Leave Out?

Schrager said most luxury brands boast about what they offer, but he argues PUBLIC West Hollywood is better defined by its omissions. There is no traditional front desk — the hotel leans on self-service options; though, Schrager insists the overall guest experience won’t be compromised. Rooms skip the television in favor of the ability to project onto an 8-by-12-foot screen.

Also missing is a celebrity chef, a concept Schrager himself introduced to hotels; the property’s three food and beverage outlets will instead aim to be unassuming, easy, and casual. Schrager said the hotel won’t feature “design on steroids” and will focus on being simple and straightforward — an approach he described as maximal effort in the most minimal way.

Perhaps the richest twist for a hotel created by the founder of Studio 54 is a nightclub with no blinking lights. In their place is a “speakeasy-style after-hours club” with an emphasis on sound guests can both hear and feel, plus an expanded rooftop public space modeled after famous outdoor parks.

PUBLIC opened its first location on New York’s Lower East Side in 2017, and the West Hollywood outpost won’t stay lonely for long. The Highgate deal covers acquiring existing hotels, building new ones, and converting current Highgate properties into PUBLIC hotels, though there is no word yet on what’s next in the pipeline.

In the meantime, advisors with clients bound for Sunset Boulevard now have a choice: the Edition, or the Edition-adjacent — at roughly a 20 percent discount.

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