The Island Issue

We close the first volume of Amorielli at the far end of the year, on a small French island in the Caribbean where the season peaks exactly now. St. Barths — St-Barthélemy on the map — is barely eight square miles, chic and expensive and quiet about it: a place of hillside villas rather than resort towers, of French cooking rather than buffets, and of one small harbour, Gustavia, where the yachts pile in for New Year.

It sleeps differently from most islands. There are a few excellent hotels — Eden Rock, out on its rock at St-Jean, among them — but most visitors rent a villa, because that is the island's rhythm: private and self-catering, a pool and a view and a car, dinner out when you feel like it. Booking well ahead matters more here than almost anywhere, since everyone wants the same fortnight.

Getting there is part of the legend. No long-haul flight lands on St. Barths; you connect through St Maarten and drop onto a famously short runway on a tiny plane that clears the hill above St-Jean and dives for the strip, or you come the calmer way across the water by ferry. Either arrival tells you what kind of place you are on.

And then you eat. This is France set down on a Caribbean beach — the euro, the wine list and the cooking all come with it — and the tables, more than any beach club, are the island's real luxury. Twelve issues in, thank you for reading this first year; the second begins next month, back in the snow, a different hemisphere's summer, and a magazine finding its stride.

Vivienne Hartwell, Editor-in-Chief