Viva Mexico
LIZ LAMBERT IS A FORCE OF NATURE. She has spent the last three decades with her company, Bunkhouse, creating a string of properties in her signature blend of industrial style, Texas traditional, and Bohemian rock and roll chic. From the Hotel San José in Austin to El Cosmico in Marfa to New Orleans and beyond, Lambert has had a wide-ranging influence on the definition of what it means to be a boutique hotel.
Lambert eventually sold her interest in Bunkhouse, and in 2019 she formed a hospitality design and architecture firm—Lambert McGuire Design—with Austin restaurateur, Larry McGuire, and a lifestyle retail enterprise known as Far West. Both ventures are a natural outgrowth of her own personal style. El Cosmico, her campground/trailer park/ back-to-the-earth craft school on the outskirts of Marfa, Texas, was the inspiration for the lifestyle brand. Lambert explains, “After building El Cosmico, Far West was born as a retail space for creative collaboration. When I first started making hotels in the late 1990s, I wanted something more unique than what you normally see in hospitality. We designed everything from the weave, the patterns, and the shape of the robes.”
Of her new collection with Perennials, she says, “I fell in love with the collaborative process of working with textile designers and other makers. This collaboration with Perennials has been a chance to work side by side with both Far West, my retail design studio, and Lambert McGuire Design.” The collection, photographed here in Lambert’s “family compound” in Todos Santos in Baja California Sur, Mexico, is partially inspired by the handmade crafts of the area.
Lambert was introduced to Todos Santos in 2012 while working with American hotelier Chip Conley to create Hotel San Cristobal. Lambert says she immediately fell in love with the area and its craftspeople. “When building the San Cristobal, I really leaned on regional makers and materials: Oaxaca for textiles and rugs, and ceramics; Guadalajara, for furniture. During that period, I built a lot of relationships with crafts- people around Mexico that remain today. All of those relationships are evident throughout my Todos Santos house.”
She and her wife took the plunge and purchased property on the peninsula in 2018. She shares, “We love spending holidays and birthdays down here. We’ve been renovating buildings bit by bit. We see it as a special place to raise our son and pass it on to the next generation. A place for family.”
Learn more about this beautiful town that inspired the Far West collection. Read Liz Lambert’s guide to Todos Santos.