Anse Intendance sits on the wild south of Mahé, a beach the roads reach late and the swell reaches early. Cheval Blanc built its sixth house into the hills above the sand and left the ocean to fill the frame.
Cheval Blanc is the hotel Maison inside LVMH, and this is number six. The five before it stand in Courchevel, Paris, Saint-Tropez, Saint Barth and the Maldives. The Seychelles address opened on the first of December, folded into the green slope above one of the island's least tamed beaches.
Anse Intendance faces the open Indian Ocean with nothing in front of it. The surf runs bigger here than on the sheltered northern bays, and the sand breaks against the rounded granite boulders that give these islands their shape. It is a beach people already drove an hour to reach before there was a reason to stay.
The house
The 52 villas are the work of Jean-Michel Gathy, who has drawn more of the Indian Ocean's hotels than anyone. He sets them into the hillside in pale timber and glass, gabled roofs pitched against the light, each one turned square to the water. Seen from the beach, the resort reads as a scatter of pavilions in the trees rather than a single building.
Inside, the volumes stay generous and the materials stay local. Stone, driftwood tones and woven texture keep the rooms close to the island, and the glass slides back until the ocean arrives without a frame. Contemporary lines, quiet colour, the view doing the decorating.
Gathy sets the villas into the slope and gives every one of them the same horizon.
The Splendid EditThe water
The main pool drops in two tiers toward the beach, its far edge dissolving into the line of the sea so the two blues run together. Palms and boulders hold the sides. Above it, the hillside villas keep their own smaller pools, cut into the deck with the whole bay laid out beyond.
Courtesy of Cheval Blanc — Anse Intendance, Mahé, Seychelles
The table
Five restaurants divide the cooking, each with a separate register, and the islands' Creole tradition sits somewhere in the mix. Dinner tends to end facing the same water it started against.
The spa was built with Guerlain, the group's oldest perfume house. Its treatments are keyed to the plants and waters of the Seychelles, the brief being the island rather than the label.
The Seychelles have never wanted for beauty. What Cheval Blanc adds is the kitchens, the service and the quiet, wrapped around a beach that already had the hard part done.
The Splendid Edit on Cheval Blanc Seychelles, Anse Intendance, Mahé. Details from Cheval Blanc and LVMH.
Photography courtesy of Cheval Blanc — Seychelles