The Town That Invented Après
From March 13–15, Highsnobiety will journey to St. Moritz for a weekend celebrating the rich cultural history of the Swiss getaway. The event will bring together an exclusive group of VIP friends of the brand alongside notable local personalities. Highsnobiety St. Moritz aims to inform our audience about what unfolds at the cultural heart of this unique destination — where art history has been made time and time again.
I grew up in the American South, where winter sports were not really part of the conversation. Snow rarely fell, and locals were mostly focused on spending summers slowly cruising on a pontoon boat in a brown lake. We took the occasional church trip on a bus to North Carolina to hit what they considered to be slopes, but which mostly consisted of a treacherous mix of ice and manmade snow. My few attempts at dismounting from the lift were humbling. I didn’t know what après-ski meant until I was in my early twenties, much less how to order a St. Moritzino.
I finally went to Aspen a few years ago and was immediately seduced by its beauty. But as wonderful as Aspen was, I knew Switzerland, St. Moritz, in particular, was the true motherland. Every image I saw from friends on holiday looked like a hi-res screensaver, lush and inviting. It’s part of the allure of Highsnobiety’s event, where we gathered to honor the lineage of luxurious adventure, a subject dear to my own heart.
So what makes a place a desirable holiday location for decades? It has to be useful, beautiful, and meaningful, someplace you want to return to year after year. A place that endures because it doesn’t overbuild, overbrand, or over-optimize. A place that simply doesn’t get boring. It’s a tall order.
St. Moritz fits the bill. An alpine resort town in the Graubünden canton of southeastern Switzerland, it’s where winter first became a lifestyle. Before this place, snow was something you merely tolerated or tried desperately to avoid. After it, snow was something you scheduled around. The town figured out early that cold could be luxurious if you packaged it correctly: sun, altitude, sport, champagne, repeat. That formula hasn’t changed much, which is the whole point.
But it’s not just about the slopes, 300 days a year of sun, or gaining access to the beloved ultra-exclusive Dracula Club to guzzle champagne. The region also has a rich history in the arts. Legendary gallerist and dealer Bruno Bischofberger, who co-founded Interview magazine with Andy Warhol, opened the town’s first gallery in 1963. The razor-clean air and natural beauty have attracted artists such as Giovanni and Alberto Giacometti, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Gerhard Richter, and Julian Schnabel. The neighboring village of Sils Maria (population 750) is where German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche spent his summers from 1881 to 1888, going for walks on the shores of Lake Silvaplana to get a little of that high-altitude clarity before enjoying a twisted breakfast routine of raw eggs, tea, and an aniseed biscuit.
There is a veritable constellation of hotels in the ecosystem of St. Moritz who continue to define the destination’s identity, but a standout is the Kulm Hotel, where a hotelier named Johannes Badrutt essentially invented winter tourism by convincing his English patrons to return when everyone else fled. In September of 1864, Badrutt made a deal with his summer guests: Before checkout, he invited them to come back in the winter, and if they didn’t like it, he would reimburse the travel cost. If they loved it, they could stay as long as they liked. Of course, they loved it. Badrutt’s original idea was revelatory: What if we treated winter as pleasure, not punishment? Everything modern here is downstream from that simple wager. Badrutt turned St. Moritz into the blueprint not just for skiing, but for a certain kind of glamorous seasonal living.
Like most far-flung and desirable locales, St. Moritz attracts a particular clientele, and in this case, a lot of them want to party. Founded in 1970 by jetset photographer, industrialist heir, and playboy Gunter Sachs, the Dracula Club is an intimate, nonprofit, members-only chalet featuring a blend of gothic charm, “retro ’80s-style disco inferno,” and modern, surreal elements. Requirements for membership at “Drac’s” are not monetary (although there is a membership fee); instead, it focuses on what can be referred to as “bite,” meaning personality, a sense of intrigue, composure, and, crucially, something to say. Members can store their own champagne in a locker. It has hosted international elites for decades and is today under the presidency of Gunter’s son, Rolf Sachs, an eccentric conceptual artist and designer who splits his time between Rome and St. Moritz.
The flashiness that we see as outsiders represents only a small part of the town. Arman Naféei is a DJ, music curator, and the Directeur d’Ambiance at the Kulm Hotel. Obviously, he loves the nightlife element, but is quick to point out that tradition plays a big role. “We are talking about families who have been coming to St. Moritz for three or four generations,” he says. But when pressed about seeing the sunrise from Drac’s, he admits that he sometimes partakes. “We all end up there,” says Naféei. The myth keeps updating itself. If nothing new happens, the story dies.
Today, for chionophiles, it’s less about novelty and more about continuity. Same lake, same ski run, same light, same rituals, quietly and subtly updated. People don’t keep going back because it’s perfect. They go back because it feels like theirs. St. Moritz doesn’t perform for you. It just exists, immaculately, almost annoyingly so, and dares you to keep up.
