VAULT
Moodboard
Reference stack. What to look at, what to feel, what to steal the discipline from. Not a Pinterest board. A curriculum.
Rule of use: study the reference until you understand why it works. Then apply the principle, not the surface. Do not copy an Aman lobby. Understand what Aman does with light, silence, and material, then hold that standard inside VAULT.
1. Hospitality (The Standard)
Aman Tokyo
The reference for arrival, silence, and vertical space. What we take: the discipline of doing less, at scale, with unmistakable quality. The lobby that reads as a temple, not a hotel. Materials that read as ancient, held to modern precision.
Aman New York
The reference for a members’ club feeling inside a hotel. What we take: the sense that the room belongs to the guest, not the property. Small details, hospitality-forward staff, the confidence to be quiet in a loud city.
The Peninsula Chicago
The reference for daytime luxury. What we take: how the café-lobby handles daylight, how staff move without hurrying, how a business lunch and a personal moment share the same room without either being diminished.
1 Hotel Central Park
The reference for warm materiality. What we take: oak, linen, unfinished textures used at scale without reading rustic. Warmth that reads sophisticated, not folksy.
Faena Miami
The reference for cinematic staging. What we take: how a lobby can double as a stage without reading nightclub. The oxblood note. The confidence to program a room like a performance, then let it settle back into hospitality.
Chateau Marmont
The reference for a room that outlives trend. What we take: patina, discretion, a members’ feel without the paperwork. Not the aesthetic, the aura.
The Ned London
The reference for a fitness-and-club membership hybrid. What we take: multiple rooms, one identity. Members moving between training, dining, and lounging inside one architecture.
2. Training and Movement (The Discipline)
The Class by Taryn Toomey
The reference for how a movement practice is treated as a discipline, not entertainment. What we take: the tonal seriousness of the practice, the founder as face without the founder as operator on the floor, the room designed for the work.
Equinox Hudson Yards
The reference for what an American luxury gym gets right. What we take: material spend, coach quality, spatial generosity in the training floors. What we reject: the volume, the branded loudness, the retail energy at the door.
Body by Simone (peak era)
The reference for a boutique fitness founder who became the brand while keeping the classes elite. What we take: how a face-of-brand posture works when the training is undeniable.
Life Time Athletic (top-tier locations only)
The reference for scale of amenity done well. What we take: recovery inside membership, not as upsell. Café that reads as a real café. What we reject: family-club aesthetic and suburban visual language.
Barry’s Bootcamp (as a warning)
The reference for what we are not. Studied so the team can articulate every place VAULT diverges. High energy, red lighting, influencer marketing, class-as-product. VAULT is the opposite frame.
Studio Wayne McGregor (London, dance)
The reference for how a serious dance space looks and feels. What we take: sprung floors treated as architectural elements, mirrors as design objects, the room built for the athlete first.
3. Design and Restraint (The Look)
John Pawson
The reference for negative space as luxury. What we take: the willingness to leave a wall empty. The discipline of one material carrying an entire room.
Vincent Van Duysen
The reference for warm minimalism. What we take: how brass, oak, and cream can be minimal without being cold.
Axel Vervoordt
The reference for patina and age in a new building. What we take: how a new space can be built to already feel lived in, without reading distressed or rustic.
Studio KO (Marrakech Yves Saint Laurent Museum)
The reference for architectural drama that stays quiet. What we take: how single-material walls can create ceremony.
Norm Architects
The reference for Scandinavian restraint in hospitality. What we take: proportion, light, and the confidence of doing less.
Kelly Wearstler (measured selections only)
The reference for material bravery. What we take: her use of travertine, brass, and oxblood-adjacent notes at hotel scale. What we reject: her maximalist rooms. VAULT lives on the quiet end of her range.
4. Editorial and Print (The Voice on the Page)
eighteentwentysix.com
The reference for editorial restraint on the web. What we take: the willingness to let type breathe, the wide margins, the absence of visual clutter.
Cereal Magazine
The reference for photography, layout, and rhythm on paper. What we take: single-column body, generous whitespace, photography that treats a space as its subject.
Kinfolk (peak era, 2015 to 2018)
The reference for lifestyle editorial without irony. What we take: light, skin, warm tones, the discipline of the commissioned image.
Apartamento
The reference for real-world interiors photography. What we take: the honesty of the frame, the absence of styling that reads staged.
The New York Times T Magazine
The reference for how a mainstream editorial brand handles luxury without cheapening it. What we take: headline restraint, story structure, subject-first framing.
5. Fashion and Retail (The Attitude)
KITH
The reference for a house brand that reads elevated without shouting. What we take: the apparel discipline, the store-as-experience, the founder-led editorial identity.
The Row
The reference for quiet luxury done at the highest level. What we take: material spend, cut, and the confidence to be uninteresting to anyone who does not already know.
Aimé Leon Dore
The reference for a brand built around a founder’s specific taste that expanded into a full lifestyle. What we take: the café inside the store, the cross-category expansion (apparel, coffee, home) held together by one point of view.
Loro Piana (retail environments)
The reference for material palette at retail. What we take: the way cashmere, wood, and warm light work together in the room.
6. Recovery and Bath Culture (The Rooms)
Aire Ancient Baths (New York, Chicago)
The reference for how a bathhouse can feel ancient inside a modern city. What we take: candlelight, silence, low ceilings, the sense of ritual.
Sisters & Co (independent contrast studios)
The reference for how recovery can be sold as a serious member benefit, not a spa upsell. What we take: the tonal seriousness, the scheduling, the private-in-public design.
Japanese sento and onsen (broadly)
The reference for water culture as architecture. What we take: material honesty (cedar, stone, water), the ritual sequence, silence as a design feature.
7. Performance and Stage (The Broadcast)
Small black-box theater staging (broadly)
The reference for our in-house stage inside THE VAULT INVITATIONAL. What we take: intimate proximity, no wing waste, lighting rigs designed for skin.
The Ford Amphitheatre (LA) and similar mid-scale performance venues
The reference for how a stage can host serious performance at a scale between studio and arena. What we take: the intimacy without smallness.
NBA Slam Dunk Contest (production quality only)
The reference for how a competition can be filmed with narrative structure. What we take: the athlete-first camera work, the moment-by-moment scoring drama, the broadcast production discipline. What we reject: the sponsor overlay density.
8. Music and Sound (The Atmosphere)
Aman spa playlist discipline
The reference for how sound curation shows care. What we take: the willingness to license, curate, or commission rather than stream. In-house playlist team, not Spotify.
The Class soundtracks
The reference for movement-specific sound design. What we take: how a class can be scored for its arc, not just soundtracked.
Peninsula Hotel jazz programming
The reference for live music at hospitality standard. What we take: the discretion, the level, the room that hosts it.
9. Brand Books and Systems (The Reference Rigor)
Aman brand book (as circulated in hospitality-design circles)
The reference for how a hospitality brand documents itself. What we take: the rigor of typography, color, and voice sitting inside one document that governs a global operation.
Airbnb Belo brand system (Design Studio era)
The reference for a modern brand system with a small palette carried across many contexts. What we take: the discipline of a small system, not their aesthetic.
Le Labo brand system
The reference for a brand that treats every touchpoint as a store window. What we take: the consistency, the material discipline, the copy tone.
10. Founder Presence (The Face)
Sofia Coppola as a director-brand
The reference for a founder whose personal taste is the product. What we take: the visual world she carries, the restraint of her interviews, the confidence that the work is the pitch.
Chriselle Lim (Bumo)
The reference for a founder-led hospitality-adjacent brand where the founder is face but the operation is professionally run. What we take: how a mother-founder can hold the front of a premium brand without becoming its staff.
Emma Grede (as founder profile, not aesthetic)
The reference for a founder building serious operating businesses in categories built for depth. What we take: the seriousness of the business posture behind the visible brand.
11. What We Study to Reject
Kept here to sharpen the discipline.
- SoulCycle (loudness, red lighting, promotional energy).
- Alo Yoga stores (retail-first, wellness aesthetic).
- Any Instagram-first pole studio (undermines the athletic frame).
- Any wellness brand that uses green in its palette.
- Any luxury gym marketing with “elevate” or “curated” in its opening line.
- Any spa that uses candles as a personality substitute.
Study each until the team can articulate exactly what VAULT does differently, and why the difference matters.
12. How to Use This Board
- Every new hire on the brand, design, or hospitality team is walked through this file in their first week.
- Every commissioned photo shoot references at least three items from this list in the pre-production deck.
- Every architectural or interior decision, from a door handle up, is checked against at least one material reference here.
- Every quarter, Taj adds or removes references as her taste evolves. This is a living document, not a launch artifact.
The board is the tuning fork. If VAULT ever drifts, come back here.