The Shelborne

Jan 16

THE SHELBORNE

The Shelborne by Proper enters a new chapter — one that feels less like a reinvention than a quiet return to its original spirit.

Built in 1940, the hotel belongs to a moment in Miami defined by optimism and display, when Art Deco and MiMo architecture framed leisure as a civic virtue. The Shelborne was part of that atmosphere: confident, social, attuned to its surroundings. Proper Hospitality’s approach resists nostalgia in favor of continuity, allowing the building’s history to inform a contemporary sense of ease.

Savvy Studio shaped the hotel’s new identity, creative direction, and art direction through a research-driven process grounded in restraint and respect. Rather than treating history as ornament, the work looks closely at what the Shelborne once represented—its cultural position, its relationship to Miami, its sense of place—and builds from there. The result is a hotel that feels renovated and elevated, yet anchored by substance, memory, and context.

Downstairs, the hotel’s social life gathers around Pauline and Little Torch, a restaurant and cocktail bar led by a Michelin-starred chef. Conceived as destinations rather than amenities, they extend the Shelborne’s narrative into food, ritual, and conviviality — spaces where evenings unfold slowly, in step with the city beyond their doors.