Badrutt's

Local builder Johannes Badrutt was the founding father of St. Moritz
as we know it and is credited with being the inventor of vast luxury
Alpine hotels. Badrutt established a new level of opulence when he
opened the Engadiner Kulm in the 1860s and his son, Caspar, bought
an existing hotel – The Beau Rivage – in 1884, enlarging it into the
Badrutt’s Palace Hotel in 1896.
With its vast drawing rooms and Neo Gothic architecture, Badrutt’s
soon became an institution. Its clientele was not just the Swiss, but
the British upper classes who were drawn to the strong winter sun of
St Moritz. and all sorts of thrill-chasing events on the ice. By the turn
of the century, the town was Europe’s winter El Dorado and Badrutt’s
was the central base camp.
I wanted to photograph the grand entrance in 1960s period styling as
a nod to the time that Gunter Sachs and Brigitte Bardot helped make
St. Moritz the most glamorous winter resort on earth. What an era it
must have been. If only the elaborately decorated walls of Badrutt’s
could talk, they would no doubt tell tales of mischief and glamour,
but most of all they would speak of the one constant – the joy of life.