If Richard Branson’s various Virgin brands have a common thread, it’s an intention to make the kind of jet-set lifestyle for which Branson is famous accessible to everyone — and in the case of Virgin Hotels Dallas, in the city’s blossoming Design District, that means the high-design, high-art boutique-hotel experience, at a price you don’t have to be independently wealthy to afford.

This eye-catching brick-and-glass structure stands at the north end of Music Row, just outside of Downtown, with its extraordinarily lively nightlife. And its interiors feature Virgin’s favored mid-century space-age aesthetic, but with a very welcome industrial edge to the public spaces.

The Virgin Hotel New Orleans gives you broadly what you expect, though some of the details come as a surprise: it’s a vibrant, fun, and ever-sociable sort of place, and there’s nothing the least bit minimalist about it. It’s set in the city’s Central Business District, which in New Orleans is quite a bit more fun than it sounds.

Virgin’s brand is so strong that a mental picture immediately forms upon mention of their name: some bright colors, some space-age mid-century modernist furniture, and an atmosphere that’s both seriously stylish and irreverently fun. The big surprise about Virgin Hotels Edinburgh, however, is its setting, in the 1864-vintage India Buildings, not far off the west end of the Royal Mile.

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