White stone balustrades, ornate fountains, wrought-iron decorative pieces, and a dimly-lit long bar littered with monkey nut shells.
There aren’t many places in the world that typify the colonial aesthetic quite as much as the Raffles Hotel.
And it is an aesthetic that sells. This eminent hotel has hosted everyone from Rudyard Kipling to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge – and its Long Bar continues to serve over a thousand of its famous ‘Singapore Sling’s a week.
In fact, in Singapore, many embrace the city’s colonial heritage as part of its place identity. A man on the street tells me, ‘the British influence was best’, and there is something indulgently appealing about stepping into a world where status is inherited, not earned.
Singapore’s colonial history has certainly not been good for everybody, including groups who find themselves on the peripheries of the city’s anglophone culture. Yet what this celebration of the past has delivered is a most unusual interpretation of luxury; an aesthetic that has barely been seen for 100 years; we might call it, colonial chic.
