This hotel celebrates Marrakech’s hedonistic heyday

Follow in the footsteps of Mick Jagger and Yves Saint Laurent in the super-stylish Izza

Words by Ute Junker

Photos supplied

A longer version of this article originally appeared in the Australian Financial Review

If you want proof that friendship and finances rarely mix, take a peek inside the Bill Willis Bar at Izza, the art-centred hotel tucked into Marrakech’s ancient medina. Once you have found the narrow lane which takes you to the riad – look for the green-and-blue carpet leading to the green wooden front door – walk through the lobby with its traditional zellige tiles and mid-century modern couches, past the emerald-green lap pool surrounded by intricately carved stucco walls, through the serene courtyard and on to the compact bar, named for the U.S-born designer who brought Moroccan style to the world.

A resident of Marrakech from 1967 to 2009, Bill Willis designed houses for the likes of the Gettys, Agnellis and Rothschilds, working with local craftsmen to feature traditional techniques in new arrangements, paring back Morocco’s traditional more-is-more approach to create a lighter feel.

Willis was also a notorious party animal whose favourite playmates included the likes of Mick Jagger, William Burroughs, and Yves Saint Laurent and his lover and business partner, Pierre Bergé.

The bar displays an extraordinary collection of Willis memorabilia including candid snapshots, elementary school reports, and a leaf out of his address book revealing that Paul Getty and Mick Jagger lived on the same London street. The most intriguing item, however, is a letter to Willis from Pierre Bergé, apparently in response to a request for funds.

Bergé’s letter – typewritten in cursive script on Yves Saint Laurent letterhead – starts off warmly with the salutation, “My dear Bill,” but by the third sentence, the tone has changed.

“It is absolutely impossible for us to grant you any advance whatever the protest,” Bergé continues bluntly. “I am sorry to have been obliged to take this position. Let me tell you, in a personal and friendly way, that if you had given to the owner of your house the money you spent on your useless Range Rover this would have largely straightened your affairs.”

After a full page of admonishment, Bergé blithely signs off, “Love”.

Flaps over finances aside, what united Willis, Bergé and Saint Laurent was their love for Morocco’s desert city. “Before Marrakech, everything was black,” Saint Laurent said. “This city taught me colour.” They were not the only ones to find inspiration under the North African sun. In the 1960s and ‘70s, a constellation of boho-chic jetsetters fell heavily under Marrakech’s spell.

Willis’ style may have provided the inspiration for Izza’s interiors – my pink-toned suite is exuberantly eclectic, featuring glorious vintage pieces including an 1950s Italian desk made of African Wengé wood, 1970s’ Murano glass lamps, tapestry chairs and custom rugs woven by women in the High Atlas mountains – but the hotel also celebrates his fellow creatives. Each of the 14 rooms at Izza is named for one of them, from Allen (Ginsberg) and Marianne (Faithfull), Cecil (Beaton) and Grace (Jones).

“All of them took something from the city – the colours, the smell, the architecture, the design, the art – and all of them inspired the city,” says Izza’s events and branding ambassador, Aicha Benazzouz.

Not that Izza is devoted to the past. This hotel’s multi-million-dollar art collection is resolutely contemporary and features many of today’s top local talents, while the shelves of the compact boutique display specially-commissioned pieces by acclaimed local ceramicist Fanny Lopez. Every detail feels thought out, yet Izza is a hotel that happened almost by accident.

“This was never going to become a hotel – it was supposed to be a place to hang out with mates,” Izza director Tim Slee tells me on a balmy September evening, just after the hotel’s first anniversary. When owner Neil Hutchinson, founder of investment company NEON Adventures, originally went looking for a Marrakshi riad to purchase, his plan was to find a home for himself.

Hutchinson’s chequebook got more of a workout than planned. He ended up with eight separate riads including Willis’ former home, which was then derelict and picked-over by looters. When Hutchinson and Slee inspected the property, the only movable objects they found were two suitcases tucked away in an alcove, which contained the Willis memorabilia. (“They’d taken everything but they had missed the most important thing,” Slee marvels.)

The other seven properties, all adjoining each other, were combined to create Izza, a charming labyrinth that includes three courtyards as well as a rooftop that stretches across seven interlinking terraces.

The entire process, including the rebuild of some of the riads, took seven years to complete, with the plastering alone taking a year. Just days after Izza first opened its doors, an earthquake in the nearby Atlas Mountains shook the city, leaving thousands dead. “Today’s the anniversary, you know,” Slee says quietly, before adding, “It’s amazing to see the resilience of the city.”

In fact, Marrakech today is in the middle of a creative boom. The industrial quarter of Sidi-Ghanem is awash with ateliers and showrooms, from carpet designer Soufiane Zarib’s wholesale warehouse to galleries such as MCC Gallery and Jajjah. Arguably one of the best places to dive into Morocco’s contemporary art scene, however, is right here at Izza.

Hutchinson has chosen 300 works from his private collection to display at Izza, a selection valued at US$7 million. There are photographs in the lobby, video art in the stairwells, drawings in the bedrooms, more photographs on the rooftop.

Guests can take a tour and get briefed on Moroccan artists such as Hajjaj, whose insouciant portraits are a flashy blend of fashion photography and street style, and the powerful photographs of Leila Alaoui, whose mother Christine partied with Willis and Saint Laurent, Mick and Bianca Jagger. Alaoui’s portraits are imbued with a melancholy that seems to presage her untimely death in a terrorist attack in Burkina Faso in 2016, aged just 33.

Hutchinson’s collection also includes an impressive selection of digital art and NFTs. My room contains works by Matt Deslauriers and Tyler Hobbs, both of whom use computer programs to create original art. Other pieces include Refik Anadol’s AI compositions and a dozen of Sebastião Salgado’s Amazonia NFTs, on show in the rooftop restaurant.

Izza doesn’t just display art; its associate artists program, run by a professional curator, works with young artists to help develop their careers. The artists involved not only have their work showcased within the hotel but also get a monthly allowance to spend at the hotel’s restaurant and bar.