a day ago
Welcome to Scorpios, summer's hottest beach hangout
Sunday afternoon on the Bodrum coast and Scorpios is purring. Girls in Hunza G bikinis take selfies with their Loewe raffia handbags; a man in Hawaiian print Vilebrequin swim shorts tokes on a slim cigar. Everywhere, buttocks veiled in crocheted kaftans are Pilates-toned and gleaming, and pedicured toes slip in and out of Vuitton sliders. Waiters and waitresses in sandstone linens zigzag nimbly through the crowd carrying plates of ceviche, while a DJ revs up on the decks. In the Aegean Sea beyond, superyachts bob indolently in the breeze.
This is not just any bougie beach club — in fact, these coveted sunloungers mark the expansion of a glittering empire. If you've ever worn a Melissa Odabash kaftan, you've probably heard of Scorpios Mykonos, the ur-beach club founded in 2015 by the German hedonists turned hospitality moguls Thomas Heyne and Mario Hertel. It was named after the Mykonos private island where Jackie Onassis used to summer, and the vibes are legendary: small plates and ice-cool spritzes, DJs playing music while guests dance on the soft sands, admire the sorbet-coloured sunset or do some people-watching from behind cat-eye shades (Mick Jagger and Brad Pitt have visited). Scorpios Bodrum is hoping to do the same on this part of the Aegean coast — basically, to reinvent the beach club, again.
Even if Heyne — charming and loquacious, looking every inch the hospitality guru with his deep tan and mirrored sunglasses — hates the term. 'Look, basically I don't like the word 'beach club'.' He laughs. This is only, he hastens to add, because he thinks there's much more to Scorpios than that. 'Our main pillars are food, drinks, music.' They run a music label that supports emerging artists and DJs, and a bazaar to sell the work of craftspeople scouted from around the world. 'We are not a simple beach club. We are much more.'
He and Hertel spent 20 years working in the nightclub business, initially in Berlin. But the party lifestyle had hollowed them out: they were sick of hangovers that lasted weeks and the thudding monotony of EDM. They suspected some of their clientele might feel the same way. 'We realised that people not only like going out, they also want to do something good for their mind, for their body, for their soul — not coming home needing two weeks' holiday from the holidays.'
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They opened in Mykonos, and shifted the rules of the party. 'We brought it from inside to outside, from a late-night experience to a 'whole day into the early night' experience.' At Scorpios, the night ends at midnight. 'So the next day is your friend.'
To press the point, they also threw in a dollop of woo-woo — sound healing, gong baths, ecstatic dance. In Bodrum they're expanding this programme. High on the hill above the bay, Scorpios Bodrum extends into a network of 12 bungalows with infinity pools where guests can stay, a restaurant with a terrace that catches the evening light — and the Ritual Space, an airy stone room lit by skylights set into a high ceiling (imagine if Jacquemus designed a temple). Here, you can do what Heyne calls 'holistic' wellness — ie sound healing and breathwork — as well as 'biohacking' via treatments such as IV drips, or a sauna and cold plunge.
Usually I'd rather spontaneously combust than do a gong bath. But when in Bodrum … so I sign up for 'a transformative journey through sound and spirit', which basically involves freestyle dancing (oh God), then lying on the ground trying to 'feel present' while listening to gongs and chanting (oh God).
My instructors are lissom, glossy, dressed in the sort of simple clothes that come with unsimple price tags. But 20 minutes into the session I am letting my body move to the music. Really move — sway and stomp and shimmy to the pulsing drumbeats. Around me, people in acid-bright Alo Yoga co-ords find their own groove … I think: after five minutes I close my eyes and lose myself to dance. I have surrendered to the cult of Scorpios.
Still, it's a relief to be back on the terrace again sipping a fennel margarita. A few smartphones are pointed at the sunset — 'Every location we scout the first thing is, where's the sunset?' Heyne says — but mostly lenses are trained on the people who are here to see and be seen. He adds there is no such thing as an 'ideal' Scorpios customer: 'Everybody's welcome. Our philosophy is, treat it like everybody's the same. If you have one euro or if you're a billionaire.'
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Surveying the crowd, I would say they have overindexed on beautiful people, who — as golden hour settles over the terrace — look like they are shimmering. The number of statement bags on tables indicates a fairly conspicuous level of wealth. Scorpios could be tacky but toes the right line: staff wear Grecian dresses or slouchy smocks; cocktails are complex and dishes involve local ingredients. Nothing arrives with a sparkler sticking out of it; nothing happens behind a velvet rope.
'Beautiful people, really cool people, are attracting all the other people, who are booking the more expensive things,' Heyne says. He insists Scorpios is for families too. 'We want to have families, parents coming with their parents and with their kids.' (Mercifully I see only one during my stay.)
Heyne scouted the site when he was on holiday in Bodrum with his own family. On a boat trip he passed by a peninsula, 'and I said, 'Wow, what a location.' I called everybody — 'Hey, do you know who owns this?' ' It remained a mystery, until a year later when a friend called and asked if he was still interested in the site. 'Two weeks later I found myself in the office of the tourist minister of Turkey. I'm talking to him because he is a hotelier and has the peninsula under control.' Luckily for us, they struck a deal. 'It's a top location,' he says. 'I think it's cooking now.'
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He and Hertel won't stop with Bodrum: the next stages in the Scorpios expansion are sites in Tulum, Dubai and Athens, as well as adding villas to Mykonos. All the new Scorpios will have rooms. 'We wanted to give at least a couple of people the chance to have, instead of a 12-hour experience, a 24-hour experience.' I spend a decent part of my 36ish-hour experience drifting between my infinity pool and vast outdoor bath. In Dubai they will have medinas with 'amazing living rooms, sea views … the architecture of it is very much inspired by the movie Dune'.
Back in Bodrum and Monday afternoon is definitely 'cooking'. Three girls in black swimwear do a synchronised dive into the deep while a fourth films it on her phone. Every sunlounger and table is occupied. Buggies shuttle people between the bungalows and the sea and back again, while helicopters and PJs crisscross the cloudless sky, drowned out by the sound of the music at the club.
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More than just your basic beach club, then. 'We went to ChatGPT and said that we are offering this and this and this, and it said you are like a 'luxury hospitality lifestyle brand',' Heyne recounts. Or maybe it's just Scorpios.
