Bronwen Gora gained rare insights into a world that few see when she landed an invitation to the Dracula Club in St Moritz, one of Europe’s most famous members-only havens.
They said we would never get in. The Dracula Club, you see, is not only St Moritz’s most lauded private club, it is also one of only a handful of such elite members-only havens in Europe.
Started by the late famous art collector Gunter Sachs in 1974, the Dracula Club is where Swiss bankers, celebrities, captains of industry and the like join as life members so they can let their hair down alongside others of similar social standing. The Dracula Club swings open its doors only to these life members and their guests on weekend nights during winter – and we are intent on finding a way to join them.
Doing the impossible
It appears impossible. But where there’s a will there’s a way: The Dracula Club is operated by Kulm Hotel, and we are its guests. So we dress to the nines and take our plight to Kulm Hotel General Manager Heinz Hunkeler – and, suddenly, on our last night in St Moritz we find ourselves inside Dracula’s deluxe den, breezing past reception and climbing the stairs into the high-ceilinged alpine chalet-turned-nightclub for the elite. Guests pile in fast as midnight approaches. By the official 12 am kick-off time, the Dracula Club is heaving. Magnums of Krug are flowing. The DJ blasts tunes from his booth high above. Mirror balls twirl and smoke swirls.
Inside Dracula Club St Moritz
The scene is somewhat surreal. Men wearing formal jackets as per the Dracula Club’s strict dress code outnumber couture-clad women. Ages run from 20-something to 70-plus years. Mobile phones are conspicuous by their absence – the taking of photos inside is banned. Everyone is having fun, especially a good number of more senior revellers jiving away in their jackets while the younger set mostly sits back and talks.
If it sounds like one of the strangest nightclubs on the planet, it is. But the Dracula Club’s retro ’80s-style disco inferno still proves enormous fun. A man introduces himself to one of our party as the creator of “the new Twitter”. Another meets a New York film producer. A friend and I chat to bankers and businessmen in between dancing up a storm.
Around 2.30 am we relinquish our fleeting place amid the privileged. But nothing can take our memories, nor the right to dine out on the true story of how we cracked the access code to enter St Moritz’s most exclusive members-only domain.
This article originally appeared in volume 44 of Signature Luxury Travel & Style magazine. Subscribe to the latest issue today.
