“The club has mastered the idea of international luxury from the location to the adorable people working on the beach. We feel instantly welcomed and very much at home.” – Nate Berkus
Lisbon has never been more fun or more glamorous. JANET MERCEL meets Miguel Guedes de Sousa and his wife Paula Amorim, the brains behind Portugal’s style revolution.
The first hint that the JNçQUOI hospitality concept (elusively pronounced je ne sais quoi) plays in another league comes at the Lisbon airport. It’s not the Range Rovers or the futuristic glass ampoules of ginger-bright elixir that I crack open like a vitamin shot from Jupiter. It’s that I never see the airport at all. I’m met on the tarmac and taken to a plush room. Someone casually requests my passport, as though it’s an optional afterthought. Ten minutes later, we glide away in an SUV.
In moments, we’re upstairs on the balcony of the members club overlooking Avenida da Liberdade, Lisbon’s answer to the Champs-Élysées. My breakfast overflows with papaya, raspberries, and Ovos Moles de Aveiro, wafer-thin, nautical-shaped Portuguese delicacies filled with custard. JNçQUOI, a hub of restaurants, nightclubs, fashion and interiors boutiques and soon, hospitality–is the red-hot center of Lisbon’s society scene. Next March, JNçQUOI House makes its grand debut. The project is designed by Belgian architect Vincent Van Duysen. Think old world meets new fashion. JNçQUOI aims to be Portugal’s social universe—you might call it an empire—extending from city life to beach culture, with two hubs: Lisbon and the beach club an hour away in Comporta.
“The service is like nothing I’ve ever seen,” says Marjorie Gubelmann, a global DJ sensation who recently moved to Lisbon from New York. “It’s the most elegant, the most fun, the most delicious. I could eat in their restaurants every night of the week.” Design star Nate Berkus tells me, “We flew in from everywhere for Marjorie’s birthday at JNcQUOI.” For Gubelmann’s dinner dance, friends Tory Burch, Allison Sarofim, Neil Patrick Harris, and David Burtka arrived from all corners of the world.
Each JNçQUOI restaurant offers an entirely different vibe and cuisine. Avenida, a former theater, has soaring ceilings and a life-size velociraptor skeleton in a glass box. You might find club members Berkus and husband Jeremiah Brent lingering with their kids. “We love a long lunch with our children,” Berkus says. “And a private party at night.” At Avenida, I savor prawns and lobster draped in truffle mayonnaise piled so high with beluga caviar that it makes my jet-lagged head spin. Downstairs, the bar room is a glass-walled wine cage, part private tasting, part dinner theater. In a move of disco decadence, the black glitter terrazzo bathroom in the basement has stalls that circle a DJ booth like a surreal nightclub which it becomes at night.
It’s no shocker that chic Americans are flocking to Lisbon. Interior designer Alicia Murphy moved from East Hampton a year ago. “As a designer,” she explains, “It’s so inspiring to wake up here—the history, the light, the texture, and color. The US and the Hamptons are polished. Portugal has patina.” At JNçQUOI, Murphy found her community. Members’ programming is jam-packed: wine tastings, guest chefs, young members’ nights, concerts, guest DJs. “It’s the energy. And people—from Comporta and all over the world,” Murphy continues. “I bring clients and friends to lunch, and then at night we go out. I don’t want to be up until 3 in the morning, but I still want to dance.”
“The black glitter terrazzo bathroom in the basement has stalls that circle a DJ booth like a surreal nightclub which it becomes at night.”
The wizards behind Portugal’s Oz are Miguel Guedes de Sousa and his wife Paula Amorim, who began shaping JNçQUOI two years after they married. Paula brings high fashion as an original founder and investor in Tom Ford. Miguel has the precision of luxe hospitality, having spent his career managing Aman resorts. “The club has mastered the idea of international luxury from the location to the adorable people working on the beach,” Berkus says. “We feel instantly welcomed and very much at home.”
Shopping at JNçQUOI comes in the form of Vincent van Duysen-designed “Fashion Clinics” in the city and at the beach. I find La Double J, Pucci, and Johanna Ortiz nestled next to Balmain, Gucci, and of course Tom Ford—but the star of the show is Amorim’s own house label, “Paula.” The ready-to-wear line comprises luscious silks, bold prints, and tailoring made for jet-set ease. Amorim’s interiors collection, “House of Capricorn,” extends the same shot of glamour: embroidered Guimarães linens, richly patterned textiles, and a maximalist’s trove of Portuguese porcelain and silver. Touches of cork are everywhere at JNçQUOI, from the salt cellar and trivet on restaurant tables to accessories for sale. Paola’s family is one of Portugal’s largest cork exporters.
We’re Miguel’s guests for dinner later at Frou Frou, a supper club and cabaret with walls fringed like a flapper’s skirt. Resident drag queens Miss Velvet and Ming croon a duet with theater-level quality Dolby sound. The now-famous Peking duck arrives in a ceramic “rubber” duckie house and gets prepared tableside. In secret, we convince our server to secure a contraband pack of Marlboros to join the smoking crowd upstairs in the members club (I don’t smoke, but…Europe). We hurry through a hidden, hushed corridor, past Miss Velvet offstage, and up to the smoker’s balcony.
“My wife and I decided to join forces,” Miguel tells me. “We want to create this ecosystem slowly through tiers of hospitality—shoppers, restaurant guests, club members, hotel guests. Our clientele is so loyal. We started thinking: what next?” The what’s next never seems to stop, and it’s a family affair through and through. Miguel and Paula, with their commanding elegance and old-world beauty, are the living embodiment of the JNçQUOI ideal. Their children, Rui and Francisca Amorim, are also involved in the business, contributing to the brand’s vision for the future. Miguel, a Cornell Hotel School graduate, carries forward a legacy as well: his grandfather built the Four Seasons Hotel Ritz Lisbon.
“Old world meets new fashion. JNçQUOI aims to be Portugal’s social universe—you might call it an empire—extending from city life to beach culture.”
The next morning at the beach club, JNçQUOI Comporta, Parisian girls pass out on sunbeds, recovering from flights or the night before, sipping coconut water from whole shells. I grab one for myself. After the technicolor whirlwind of Lisbon, I need the electrolytes. Lunch is fresh caught cherne and camarão on ice. Fans hum softly overhead. Guests stretch out on the veranda overlooking the blue Atlantic.
That night, fully restored, the sun sets over Comporta. JNçQUOI architect Vincent van Duysen pads softly around the clay tile floors of Casa M, his home with partner Mateo Bou Bahler. Their small dogs yip around us. Design lovers will recognize the house, with Brutalist-meets-modern-monastery angles and exposed staircases open to the pine-forest air. We crunch through sand in the surrounding yard, which is completely open to the house. Casa M is where the inspiration begins for the next installment in the JNçQUOI universe—a hotel and villa residences adjacent to the beach club. “When we announced it, we had people crying. They flocked,” Miguel says proudly. “Club members say, ‘I don’t want to purchase a house, I want a JNçQUOI house. I want it to be iconic.’”
Van Duysen’s work maximizes a continuous flow between living indoors and nature. The hotel will harness this barefoot sophistication in its purest form with terracotta tiles, wood and cork, textured concrete, and undisturbed coastal sightlines from green roofs planted with native grasses. The residences are a turnkey paradise with live-in butlers, two master suites, fireplaces, terraces, pools, and even plates and forks hand- selected by Van Duysen. Adjacent is the 18-hole Dunas Golf Course designed by David McLay Kidd and inspired by Scotland’s terrain. “There will be 64 private villa units,” Miguel mentions. “Well,” he smiles, “63 because one of them will be mine.”
