When your boutique hotel is as gorgeous as a supermodel, the last thing you want is to muck it up with employees who aren't runway material. Or at least that was the thinking behind the chic hotels that materialized during the go-go 1990's.
Who cared if the doorman couldn't be bothered to open the door, or the bathroom attendant was too busy checking herself in the mirror to hand you a towel? What mattered was that the staff could complement the hip décor like creatures from a Calvin Klein ad.
The textbook example of this approach was Ian Schrager, the nightclub impresario turned hotelier, who staffed his lobbies like Paris runways. In 1999, the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued Mr. Schrager for replacing nine bellmen at the Mondrian Hotel in West Hollywood with white Adonises who had been handpicked by Hollywood agents. The case was settled in 2000 for $1.08 million.
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Source - New York Times
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