Surviving fanciness in the French Riviera

You can have too much fun at “rich people summer camp.”

There’s a magical perk of working in fashion media called a press trip. One day you’re eating your Sichuan takeout over the sink in East London, the next you’re flying business class to the French Riviera because Burberry wants you to “experience summer” at Hôtel Belles Rives.

Business class gives you the dangerous feeling that consequences no longer apply to you. Unlimited champagne. Warm nuts. Entire physical separation from the general public. My enormous basket bag from [REDACTED brand not sponsoring this trip] didn’t fit under the seat or in the overhead locker, but nobody stopped me.

At Nice Côte d’Azur Airport I became briefly obsessed with the idea of becoming a luggage thief. The carousel system is built entirely on trust. I have never seen so many Rimowa suitcases in my life. Anyway, I followed the Burberry driver to Cap d’Antibes.

I got Riviera psychosis.

Hôtel Belles Rives has the kind of glamour that makes you instinctively sit up straighter. It’s an old Art Deco hotel perched directly on the water, once home to F. Scott Fitzgerald while he wrote Tender Is the Night—yes, models can also read a press release. Somewhere in the building you can practically hear somebody cheating beautifully.

Burberry had taken over the hotel for the summer. Blue Burberry check loungers lined the pier. Burberry parasols. Burberry towels. It felt less like a hotel partnership and more like Gatsby getting a sponsorship deal.

Nobody lets you touch your own belongings at luxury hotels. Three separate men grabbed my bags before I’d even entered the lobby.

Then I got to my room. Burberry boxes everywhere. Garment bags hanging neatly across the wardrobe. Beauty products lined across the bathroom. The poor hotel staff member was trying to explain the minibar while I nodded impatiently, waiting for him to leave so I could start ripping things open like a raccoon.

The room overlooked the sea in an almost offensive way. I immediately stripped naked, put on a Burberry bikini, and went downstairs. I asked the concierge where the pool was. “There is no pool,” he explained gently. “There is the sea.” Right. Of course. The Mediterranean herself.

I studied press trip anthropology.

Press trips feel exactly like transferring to a new high school halfway through the semester. At cocktail hour I wandered around clutching champagne trying to determine where I was supposed to stand and whether anybody could tell I was nervous. Eventually I attached myself to the Burberry PR team like a frightened duckling.

The food situation quickly became competitive. Towers of oysters. Prawns. Beef tataki. Crudités nobody actually touched.

Then I spotted Marc Forné, and we drank what I believe was three bottles of Chablis together.

I got first date jitters >.<.

The next thing I remember is waking up in my hotel room wrapped in a damp towel with every light still on like I’d survived an exorcism. I missed breakfast service. Whoops.

Hungover beyond medical description, I opened room service hoping for salvation. Instead I discovered there were also delicious options for dogs—an entire canine dining menu featuring minced beef, carrots, and rice. Apparently one influencer accidentally ordered from it because she thought it sounded healthy and was devastated when it arrived in a metal bowl.

I ordered a burger and removed the bun.

I went on a hot date.

Later that afternoon I had my Cheap Date interview with Devon Lee Carlson. I spent most of the day preparing emotionally. I booked a massage because I thought it might make me seem calmer and more mysterious. Side note: I didn’t have it in me to ask whether it was part of the brand comp situ.

Then came the “Everything Shower.” Exfoliation. Shaving. Moisturizing. When I say “everything,” I mean it!!! Full psychological reset. I opened a bottle of wine while getting ready because I was nervous. Technically unprofessional. Spiritually essential.

When Devon arrived she looked absurdly beautiful in a way that almost felt scientifically unfair (but, also, same). We sat on the pier drinking champagne while the sun set over Antibes and immediately drifted off topic. She asked where I was from, pulled up a map of New Zealand on her phone, and made me point to the exact location.

I kept trying to locate a flaw in her personality, but genuinely couldn’t find one. At one point I realized I had stopped interviewing her entirely and was just gossiping. Eventually a Burberry publicist physically came to retrieve us because we were late for dinner.

I’m suffering from Departure Depression.

Dinner unfolded on the terrace overlooking the water while the sky turned pink in that deeply European way that makes Americans start clucking. Nobody touched the food except me. Every plate looked like a tiny sculpture: white fish, white asparagus, white foam.

Later, inside the bar, I kept telling Marc I was cold until he gave me his jacket. I think he believed I was going to steal it. True. I don’t want to talk about how inebriated I got.

The next morning at the airport I ran into Devon again in the business lounge while looking genuinely catastrophic. She and her sister Sydney took one look at me and burst out laughing before immediately giving me anti-nausea pills and Erewhon supplements from their bags like glamorous paramedics.

Then they boarded their flight to New York and suddenly the whole thing was over. The champagne. The sea. The Burberry towels. The strange emotional intimacy that forms when beautiful people are temporarily trapped together on the French Riviera.

Onto the next one!

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• Burberry mini camera Burberry fan

• Tiny Burberry teddy in swim trunks

• Burberry sunglasses Burberry T-shirt

• Burberry x Hunza G swimsuit

• Classic Burberry check bikini

• Burberry woven tote

• Burberry Her perfume—genuinely incredible

• Burberry blush—wearing it right now

• Burberry mascara, Riviera-proof

• Three Burberry lipsticks for three separate personalities