The people of Buenos Aires, the porteños (“port dwellers”) as they are known, have a history of acting passionately, and we’re not just talking tango. During the financial meltdown of 2001, which began with eyebrows raised at the withdrawal limits suddenly imposed at ATMs and ended in the devaluation of the peso, there were impromptu and impassioned public demonstrations in the streets. Formerly shy and retiring middle-class professionals joined students in the streets, banging out a beat on pots and pans in protest at what was, effectively, the ruination of just about everything they’d taken for granted.
The city has experienced boom and bust more than once. But, right now, it’s on the up, and while there are still union-organised protests aplenty at President Nestor Kirchner’s nouveau Perónist policies, the city feels much as it must have done in the 1920s, when high living and high style were a priority, even if only for the lucky few. In many ways, the mood is as decadent as anything from the early scenes of Lloyd Webber’s Evita, even if the city looks very different these days. Less than a mile away from the professional dog walkers and the jacaranda blossom of the vast Haussman-style avenues of the old Microcentro, a dramatic new docklands development has sprung up in Puerto Madero, right under the flight path of Kirchner’s helicopter to the presidential palace, the Casa Rosada, recently painted a vivid, or hideous, pink, depending on whom you speak to.
From Santiago Calatrava’s futuristic pedestrian bridge, to regular sightings of burnt-out iconic rock legend Charlie García by the pool at Philippe Starck’s fabulously escapist Manchester-brick Faena Hotel + Universe, this is where the new money is. The pared-down modernist fonts on billboards heralding Norman Foster’s new apartment building here are every bold black inch a part of the Puerto Madero zeitgeist; the porteño equivalent of the flashy hedge-fund manager and local WAGs are falling over themselves up to buy flats in it.
Back over the water in the area known as Recoleta, which still has all the grooming and manners of the 16th arrondissement in Paris, things are updating too. The latest in a string of hot hotel openings is the Palacio Duhau Park Hyatt, an unashamedly contemporary update of the 1934 Duhau family palace, next to the Vatican embassy. With its cavernous silvered Piano Nobile salons, sweeping staircases and resident ladies who lunch on dulce de leche truffle desserts, it’s the progressive heart of elegant Buenos Aires, with electric blinds in the bedrooms and a contemporary art gallery to boot.
For a long time it was the brightly coloured corrugated houses of La Boca, with its touristy pavement cafes, alfresco tango and souvenir shops, that represented Buenos Aires abroad. That area is still as colourful as ever, but it’s Palermo, with its offbeat boutique hotels, small one-off designer stores and happening bars and restaurants where the buzz has been for the past five years. Many have compared it to New York, and its cobbled streets and chic stores do give it a downtown Manhattan feel, but the nickname of Palermo SoHo, along with the opening up of Diesel and Nike next to local indie operations, had many hurling accusations of hype. This is a city still finding its feet – but the hunger for all things fashion is inescapably intense.
Over dinner at Sucre, a restaurant that is so much part of the see-and-be-seen scene that the raised platform to the bathroom is nicknamed “the catwalk”, celebrity polo player and model Martin Barrantes gives his opinion on the rapid changes in Buenos Aires design: “Bruce Weber came here in 1997 and told me there was no fashion,” he says. “Now things are very different.” Above him, on “the catwalk”, a procession of Brazilian tourists walk to the bathroom and back, each giving a midway wiggle to applause and cheers from the dining room below.
