Europe's winter glam capital is St. Moritz

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Jan 30, 2005 | by Janet Fullwood Sacramento Bee

ST. MORITZ, Switzerland -- The French have a term for it: "lecher la vitrine," to lick the window. In English, the same activity is less lasciviously called "window shopping." And in Europe's wintertime glam capital of St. Moritz -- a k a St. More Glitz -- admiring without buying is a spectator sport on a par with ice polo, skijoring, tobogganing and bobsledding, all of which were born here.

Tucked into the southeast corner of Switzerland in a stunning mountain region known as the Upper Engadine, St. Moritz is a resort town of 5,500 whose population swells to more than 100,000 at the height of the winter season. Think of it as the European equivalent of Aspen, Colo., a jet-set playground where the skiing, fabulous as it is, plays second fiddle to the more serious business of seeing and being seen. (Is that Hugh Grant at the Badrutt's bar? Could those guys in suits be bodyguards for Prince Charles? Both celebrities are annual visitors.)

This is the kind of place where the baubles in the windows don't have price tags, so if you have to ask, that gorgeous pink gown from Prada or handmade watch from Franck Muller probably isn't for you.

Unpretentious, St. Moritz is not. It figures, then, that in a town with more high-end boutiques than Beverly Hills (including seven Prada stores), the fashionista magnet that gets more looky-loos than Macy's windows at Christmastime is called Jetset. Here, each window is dressed as an art installation centered on a mannequin whose Barbie-doll figure (legs up to her armpits, Dolly Parton bust) is adorned with scraps of leather, feather and cloth that barely, just barely, can be called clothing.

"Hooker-wear," harrumphed an English-speaking onlooker with eyes wide open and nose pressed to the glass one day as I strolled by. "Even the mannequins look embarrassed to be wearing that get-up."

Maybe so. But wear it they do, says Weitke Loh, who moved here from Germany to work in management at the Kempinski Grand Hotel des Bains, a grand dame situated near the postcard-perfect lake upon whose frozen surface the town's signature winter events take place.

"They will wear it in restaurants, even out for coffee," she said. "It's really a fashion show here in winter."

I got a glimpse of the type in the otherwise dead month of September, when a Rolls-Royce Phantom V pulled up in front of the famous Hanselmann's chocolate shop and a uniformed chauffeur -- just like in the movies -- opened the door for a leggy blonde who hobbled out in skintight pedal-pushers and spiked heels. By the time she emerged from the shop, elegantly wrapped package in hand, a small crowd had gathered and was buzzing about who she might be.

Show, indeed, is what St. Moritz is all about -- and nature is a big part of it. The town is divided into two parts -- St. Moritz- Dorf, the upper town where most of the shops and hotels are situated; and the St. Moritz-Bad, the lower town named for the iron-rich mineral springs that have attracted summertime pilgrims since the Middle Ages. Above it all rise the frosted slopes of the Corviglia ski area and a cascade of multimillion-franc chalets.

If St. Moritz is not quite as knock-your-socks-off scenic as Zermatt, which has the incomparable Matterhorn rearing from its back yard, it lives up to its reputation as Switzerland's top winter resort. The town hosted Winter Olympics in 1928 and 1948 and is a fixture on the World Cup ski circuit -- World Cup skiing being to Europe what the Super Bowl is to the United States.

World-class athletes train here summer and winter, drawn by the aerobic challenge of the 6,100-foot altitude and crisp, thin air that combine to create what the tourist literature ballyhoos as a "champagne climate."

Much of the town's personality and cachet is wrapped up in the grand hotels -- five of them in the five-star category -- that grew up to serve well-heeled visitors. Their lobbies and bars are public living rooms for scene-seekers.

St. Moritz claims to be the birthplace of winter tourism.

The story goes that, back in 1864, hotelier Johannes Badrutt offered his British summer guests free accommodations at his modest Pension Faller (already a century old) if they'd stay the winter. They did -- and came back the next winter with friends. Lots of friends. Badrutt's little inn morphed into the luxury Kulm Hotel and afforded the Badrutt family the means, a few decades later, to build a second, even more palatial hotel -- called, naturally enough, Badrutt's Palace. It remains both a major landmark and a top-notch address in St. Moritz.

By the mid-19th century, denizens of the town already were experimenting with skis. By 1880, curling had been imported from Scotland. About that time, too, British "invalids" sent here to recuperate in the high, dry air started toying around with local Schlitten, or sleds, turning them into toboggans. A hair-raising, natural-ice canal called the Cresta Run was built in 1884. It continues, under the auspices of the St. Moritz Tobogganing Club, to attract an international cadre of daredevils for a series of races each winter. Riders (men only; women aren't allowed) careen along a three-quarter-mile course on head-first skeleton sleds, using rakes on the end of special boots to brake and steer.