The Art of Emotional Curation at Hyde London City with LOOKFANTASTIC

How are luxury hotels redefining wellness and guest experience through emotional curation? In this editorial feature, contributor Deborah Kombe explores the collaboration between Hyde London City and LOOKFANTASTIC, examining how personalised self-care amenities are reshaping modern hospitality design.

Well, This Is a Lovely Way to Start a Morning

Stepping into the beautifully blush Leydi restaurant, a vibrant and renowned Turkish restaurant in the bohemian chic hotel that is Hyde London City, is like entering a peaceful edible sanctuary, right in the city. The candy floss pink tiling on the floor, anchored by chocolatey walnut walls and furniture, guided me and my clickety heels through the bar and to the private dining room, where a long, beautifully decorated table awaited stylishly dressed influencers and press alike, if I do say so myself.

The table, adorned with bouquets of soft white persian buttercups and sweet alyssums, created a perfect setting for the menus placed on top of clay coloured plates. I say menus. Plural. Because it wasn’t just the food menu that awaited us, consisting of Turkish Eggs, a favourite breakfast dish of mine, crushed avocados and fresh juices, but a self care room service menu. Based, not on ingredients or skin concerns, but rather how you want to feel.

We’ve Come a Long Way From the Free Shower Cap

Hotels have always had a bathroom amenity partner. It was transactional, passive, and largely ignored except by people who pocket the minis. Not me, obviously. Originally cheap and purely functional, by the 1990s upscale hotels started realising guests really do notice the small details, and bathrooms are one of the most tactile parts of a stay. The fact I was born in this era clearly means my birth has had a significant impact, right?

The real shift happened in the early 2000s, when hospitality started aligning with lifestyle branding. Experience became the product. Partnering with brands like Aesop or Le Labo added sensory identity, something I always remember about a hotel and have recently learned is the strongest of our senses when it comes to memory, and perceived luxury without huge infrastructure cost. Amenities became part of a hotel’s personality, a signal of quality, luxury product placement you’d actually use.

This happened to me at Jashita Villas in Tulum. I made good use of my free will and inhaled those scented diffusers so regularly, I had to ask the team where they were from. Coqui Coqui’s Room Diffuser in Flor De Naranjo, you’re welcome. Some hotels went further still, creating their own in-house lines like Soho House’s Cowshed, or offering scents to take home as a souvenir of the stay. 

Most recently, the shift towards Instagrammability. Hotels realising that guest experience is branding, and brands realising hospitality is one of the best ways to be experienced.

Hyde London City understands this well. Their bathrooms, designed to be a destination in themselves rather than an afterthought, feature Malin + Goetz for body and haircare. It’s a brand guided by the philosophy of less but better, known for its chic, no-nonsense approach to beauty and its commitment to diversity and inclusivity.

That choice of partnership says something quietly but clearly about the kinds of guests Hyde welcomes into their space. And for skincare snobs like me who absolutely clock what’s in the shower before anything else, that detail would only make me want to stay more.

The Shift I’ve Been Noticing and Can’t Stop Thinking About

Some hotels, however, are taking this a creative step further. What LOOKFANTASTIC and Hyde have done is move from product placement to emotional curation. The edits aren’t named after trending ingredients or skin types. They’re named after states: rest, curiosity, forgetting. That’s a fundamentally different language. It assumes the guest arrives with a feeling, not just a skincare routine gap.

And it absolutely makes sense that LOOKFANTASTIC are the right partner for this. For those who may not know, LOOKFANTASTIC is Europe’s number one online destination for premium and luxury beauty. As the number one destination, it’s fair to say they know exactly what their customer wants—making this kind of collaboration a creative and intentional one.

A deeper dive into their brand reveals that they’re guided by the idea of beauty, made personal. Which, when you think about it, is exactly what an edit named after how you feel rather than what you need is trying to achieve. This collaboration isn’t a coincidence. It’s a natural meeting point between two brands that both understand the guest as a whole person rather than a transaction.

This isn’t happening in isolation. Wellness in hospitality has been moving in this direction for a while, and personalisation is where everything is going. This reminds me again of my stays at IT Mallorca’s hotels last October.

We stayed across four properties, and in each one, the wind down routine included returning to the room to find a selection of teas arranged on the bed, each chosen according to how you might be feeling that evening: restful, wanting to decongest, wanting to debloat. It was such a thoughtful touch that stayed with me, and I’m noticing more and more hotels following this line of thinking.

Whilst the intention of a holiday is to have the best time, things don’t always go to plan, and that’s where helpful, intentional amenities like these bring you back to the calm you imagined when you first booked the trip. I’m naturally a better human on holiday, especially when it’s somewhere drenched in Vitamin D alongside Vitamin Sea. And it’s the small, emotionally considered touches that help me stay that way.

Fed, Inspired and Fully Ready to Check In

I left the breakfast well fed, inspired in that particular way that only happens when women gather, and excited to get into the products I’d been sent home with. The three edits each speak to a different kind of guest moment: one for when you’ve arrived underprepared and just need the basics to feel human again, one for the deep reset your body has been quietly asking for all week, and one for the curious guest who loves discovering what’s new.

I went for the latter, the Insider Edit, and almost immediately wished I’d chosen the Reset Edit. Classic me, performing indecision when I actually know exactly what I need. But then again, maybe that just means I’ll have to try the Reset Edit during a stay at Hyde. Was that subtle enough?

I can imagine arriving at Hyde London City after stepping off the train at City Thameslink, feeling a little flustered, a little tired, and simply wanting to be still for a moment. There are journeys where you don’t even want to unpack straight away, where the idea of rummaging through a suitcase for your cleanser feels like one task too many.

An edit already waiting, chosen according to how you actually feel in that moment, would be the kind of thing you don’t know you needed until it’s there. And honestly, I’d need to take photographs of the room before I unpacked anyway. I can’t possibly disturb a beautifully designed hotel room before I’ve documented it properly. Priorities.

The breakfast was a generous introduction. Beautifully curated, warm and genuinely considered, and the women around that table were great company, funny and encouraging, speaking to exactly the kinds of guests you’d expect at Hyde. But the real story of a collaboration like this lives in the room itself.

In the moment you arrive somewhere new, slightly tired, maybe underprepared, and discover that someone has already thought about how you might feel. That’s the piece I want to write next. Hyde, if you’re reading, I’m ready when you are.

The edits can be purchased for £50 at Hyde London City. For more information visit hydehotels.com/london-city, and to discover the products that might feature in your edit, visit lookfantastic.com.

Writer & Photographer

Deborah Kombe is a London-based writer and photographer crafting immersive stories and visual narratives that explore culture, travel and lifestyle.

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