At Bloomberg Pursuits, we love to travel. And we always want to make sure we’re doing it right. So we’re talking to globe-trotters in all of our luxury fields—food, wine, fashion, cars, real estate—to learn about their high-end tips and off-the-wall experiences. These are the Distinguished Travel Hackers.
French entrepreneur Laure Heriard-Dubreuil co-founded the Webster, a boutique in an old art deco hotel on South Beach, Miami, eight years ago after stints working for both Balenciaga and Yves Saint Laurent. It quickly became a style-setting destination, in large part because of Heriard-Dubreuil’s own taste; since then, she’s opened satellites in Texas, California, and Florida. Later this year, she will add to her empire with a six-story, 12,000-square-foot Manhattan flagship in SoHo.
Heriard-Dubreuil spends much of her flying time on Air France, as she’s often traveling between Paris and North America, where she lives in New York with her husband, artist Aaron Young, and their son.
Carry a pocketful of sunshine on every trip.
Many people suggest getting some sunshine to ward off jet lag. I can never get enough sunshine—my first-grade teacher called me “the Tropical Plant” because of my love for sun. Vitamin D is like sunshine in a bottle—it helps fight inflammation and strengthen your immune system, in addition to helping mental clarity and regulating the melatonin levels in your body, which helps get your body ready for sleep. In the U.S., everybody uses melatonin, but I think vitamin D helps a lot: Try the oral spray by Dr. Mercola [which he recommends using five times daily]. It’s always in my suitcase, and I don’t know how I managed prior to discovering it.
This one tool will solve almost all your clothing and jewelry problems.
The Quick Unpick is the most simple, yet magical, invention. It goes through security [unlike] scissors; it can remove a label, fix a hem, remove a splinter and when traveling alone, it can aid in zipping dresses and clasping jewelry. I was traveling on a plane, and I had a tag in my dress that was itchy, and I started to have a rash; I was with a friend, who pulled one from her tiny handbag and she saved me. It was so so amazing, and from then on, I’ve always carried one. When you have that tiny thing, you feel like Inspector Gadget or MacGyver.
A surfer’s app is secretly the best one for predicting the weather in a new place.
The first thing I do to prepare is: Check the weather. For me, the weather is key—it will tell me what to pack and how to dress. If it’s tropical or not, dry or monsoon season, then the looks are different. My husband is a surfer, and he always checks the surfer’s weather app, Magic Seaweed, which he thinks is the most accurate. I don’t surf but I love watching him—he grew up in California, so he’s been surfing all his life, before going to school, etc. I’m always discussing the weather with my husband and got jealous that he always had the right predictions. So I just had to download the app for myself, and now it’s my go-to resource.
Her picks in Paris skew distinctly old school.