Hotel Modez – Arnhem, Netherlands
Fashion becomes hospitality in Arnhem’s creative Modekwartier, with rooms designed by a roll call of Dutch fashion talent.
Why DNA Hotels Loves It
● Dutch fashion illustrator Piet Paris conceived the hotel as a collaborative fashion project, inviting more than 30 Dutch designers to translate their individual signatures into guestrooms.
● Its location in Arnhem’s Modekwartier is no coincidence: many of the creatives involved have connections to the city and its influential ArtEZ fashion school.
● You don’t necessarily know which design you’ll sleep in until you arrive — turning the 20 individually conceived rooms into part hotel, part fashion exhibition and part surprise.
Fashion You Can Sleep In
Arnhem isn’t the first Dutch city that springs to mind when you think of fashion. It probably should be. The city’s ArtEZ Institute of the Arts has produced generations of influential Dutch fashion talent, while the surrounding Modekwartier has grown into a neighbourhood of independent designers, studios, workshops and boutiques. So when Hotel Modez opened here, creating another generically stylish design hotel would have missed the point entirely. Instead, fashion illustrator Piet Paris turned the hotel itself into a showcase for Dutch fashion.
30 Designers, One Hotel
The idea sounds deceptively simple. Invite more than 30 fashion designers to create individual rooms and give them enough freedom to make their own creative language visible. The resulting interiors range from remarkably restrained to wonderfully eccentric. Textiles escape their conventional role as curtains and bedspreads and become architectural elements. Fashion techniques migrate onto walls and furniture. Materials, patterns and objects tell stories that can change completely from one door to the next. Rather than imposing a single interior concept throughout the property, Hotel Modez celebrates the contradiction. The lack of uniformity is the design.
The Arnhem Connection
What prevents the concept from becoming a random collection of designer rooms is its relationship with Arnhem. Many of the participating creatives have links with the city and ArtEZ, whose fashion department helped establish Arnhem as an unexpectedly influential centre of Dutch fashion. That makes Modez more than a hotel decorated by fashionable names. It’s effectively a snapshot of a creative ecosystem. The hotel becomes a place where the city’s fashion identity can be experienced rather than simply discussed — particularly appropriate in a neighbourhood where designers still make, exhibit and sell their work just outside the door.
From Minimalism to Fashion Fantasy
Every room approaches the brief differently. The Humanoid room, for example, uses natural materials and subdued colours to evoke the Dutch fashion label’s characteristic sense of freedom and connection with nature. Elsewhere the approach can become considerably more theatrical, with bespoke textiles, conceptual interventions and unexpected material combinations transforming bedrooms into installations. Even choosing a room is unconventional. Guests don’t necessarily book a particular design in advance, meaning opening the door becomes part of the experience. You might get calm minimalism. You might get something completely different.
Brick, Glass and Brass
The architecture provides a comparatively robust backdrop for all this experimentation. Brick, glass and roof tiles define the exterior, giving the building a contemporary Dutch character while connecting it with the surrounding urban fabric. Brick continues inside, where its rough texture contrasts with the more colourful fashion interventions. At reception, a bright interior and statement brass desk immediately signal that this isn’t going to be an anonymous business hotel. Large windows bring daylight deep inside and establish a connection with the small park alongside the property.
Café Caspar
Downstairs, Café Caspar gives Modez something equally important: a life beyond its guestrooms. Rather than functioning as a formal hotel restaurant, it acts as a neighbourhood café and social meeting place, with food, drinks and speciality beers bringing guests together with Arnhem locals. In warmer weather, tables spill outside towards the adjacent park. It’s an important part of the formula. A fashion hotel could easily become an inward-looking exercise in styling. Caspar helps anchor Modez in the everyday life of its neighbourhood.
Sleep Here, Explore There
The Modekwartier begins outside the hotel, making Modez a particularly logical base for exploring Arnhem’s independent fashion and design scene. But another very different side of the region is close by. Just outside Arnhem lies De Hoge Veluwe National Park, where forests, heathland and open landscapes can be explored using the park’s famous white bicycles. And within it is the Kröller-Müller Museum, home to an exceptional collection of modern art. Fashion, architecture, art and nature make surprisingly comfortable neighbours here.
Made in Arnhem
Hotel Modez doesn’t attempt to compete with Amsterdam’s polished design hotels. Its appeal is much more specific. It could only really exist in Arnhem. The designers, the fashion school, the neighbourhood and the rooms all belong to the same creative story. Twenty rooms. More than 30 designers. And absolutely no interest in making every bedroom look the same. For a hotel inspired by fashion, that’s exactly how it should be.
