Review of The Mercer, by The TI Review Team

Twice a year, in New York and February - during New York Fashion Week, to be precise - The Mercer proves it's still New York's incumbent for coolest place to stay, when every fashion editor worth her Birkin bag clamours for a booking. No wonder: Andre Balaz's hotel, the sister to Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood and housed in a landmark SoHo factory building, maintains every last ounce of cool it's had since opening eleven years ago. Chalk it up to clean, understated style and coolly insouciant (but never negligent) service.

The facilities

The Mercer's a self-contained paradise, but that doesn't mean you can't get anything you want from the outside world, including VIP access to it. To wit: guests have automatic membership to the super-chic Equinox Soho gym, just around the corner. Yoga and pilates instructors are available from 6 am to 10 pm (book it at the gym or in your room).

There's limo and personal shopping service, X Box and Guitar Hero (not to mention hundreds of DVDs) available for use, and a lending library in the downstairs lounge that happens to be one of Manhattan's most comprehensive repositories of art tomes. And then there's The Mercer Kitchen, which, though it's vacillated in and out of celeb favour over the years, remains a stalwart for delicious bistro food (the raw tuna-and-wasabi pizza is famous from Melrose Avenue to the Sixth Arrondisement).

The rooms

All 75 of them, from the most basic courtyard room all the way to the palatial Soho Suite, are lofty in proportion and style, with exposed brick walls, ebonized wood floors, and white-on-white décor with touches of deep brown and black (Christian Liaigre's the man behind the high style here). The huge windows flood spaces with natural light. The lofts and suites have small sleek kitchens for DIY dinner (or you can just order from downstairs and dine at your oak dining table). Make a point of staying in one night just to enjoy a long, luxurious bath in what must be one of the city's most spacious hotel bathrooms (stocked with Face Stockholm products, natch).