Chateau Marmont occupies a mythic place in Hollywood folklore: a decadent sanctuary overlooking the Sunset Strip that has been attracting artists, musicians and movie stars for almost a century. The hotel’s storied past is reflected in its timeless logo, a typemark set in calligraphic strokes that invoke the uncial script first used by biblical scribes thousands of years ago.
The story of the Chateau Marmont logo
Chateau Marmont photographed in 1991
This Gothic lettering is perfectly in keeping with the aesthetic of the property itself, which opened as an apartment building in 1929. The original owner, Fred Horowitz, instructed architects Arnold A Weitzman and William Douglas Lee to model its design after the Château d’Amboise in the Loire Valley, a French royal castle dating from the 12th century and known as the final resting place of Leonardo da Vinci.
Chateau Marmont opened when Hollywood was in a state of flux, with the silent movie era giving way to the advent of the talkies. In 1931, Horowitz sold the property to the magician and film director Albert E Smith, who reconceptualised the property as a hotel just in time for Los Angeles to host the Summer Olympics in 1932. Writers including F Scott Fitzgerald and Dorothy Parker became early fans, and it wasn’t long before Chateau Marmont acquired a reputation for debauchery and discretion. In 1939, Columbia Pictures co-founder Harry Cohn famously instructed his stars: ‘If you must get into trouble, do it at the Chateau Marmont.’
When hotelier André Balazs took over the property in 1990, he knew he wanted to retain as much of the hotel’s historic ambience as possible. The logo was created soon afterwards, by creative agency Pandiscio Co, which utilised the Libra font originally created for the Amsterdam Type Foundry by renowned Dutch typographer Sjoerd Hendrik de Roos in 1938.
Given the number of artists and other creatives who flock to the hotel, it’s no surprise that the logo has been a source of inspiration ever since. After a stay at the Chateau, Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele conceived a 2019 collection that included handbags, shirts and sweaters that prominently feature the logo, as well as drawstring canvas bags inspired by the hotel’s laundry service.
The logo also appears on the Chateau’s signature stationery, which has been used as a canvas by a succession of visual artists. In a 1991 sketch on a hotel notepad, the Pop Art pioneers Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen reimagined the building’s towering exterior as a mound of caviar and avocado mousse.
More recently, the cartoonist Gary Baseman sketched Blackie the Cat enjoying Sunday brunch in the hotel’s courtyard, while the graffiti artist André Saraiva created a whole series of illustrations featuring his Mr A character on in-room stationery.
No doubt the distinctive typemark will continue to inspire those who stay at the hotel for generations to come. It is a logo that suggests that at Chateau Marmont, history is still being written.