From humble beginnings as the quintessential SoCal beachside bungalow town, Manhattan Beach has gone upscale. Expensive homes, swanky restaurants, luxury retailers, and now, a boutique hotel. Though just three blocks from the beach, Shade is about interiors; these spaces, by celebrity decorator Christopher Lowell, are designed to appeal more to this new generation of aspirational travelers than to the surfers and beach bums who once made up the bulk of Manhattan Beach’s population.

Redondo Beach has been a pioneer of coastal California hospitality since the late 1800s, when railroad construction led to a sprawling wooden resort, aptly named the Great Hotel Redondo, in this part of the South Bay. Safe to say our concept of a great hotel is a little different from the Victorian-era Californians’, but they knew a good location when they saw one. While we’re talking firsts: the proprietors of Shade like to be the first to put down luxury boutique roots in a community, and this hotel is the first of its kind in Redondo Beach.

Malibu is a destination whose reputation, at least for visitors, rests more on legend than experience. It’s a magical little stretch of coastline, but one whose hotel options have historically been thin. No longer; the Surfrider Malibu is a Fifties icon transformed by its new owners — a Californian architect, an Australian-born free spirit, and an Italian race car driver — into the boutique hotel this town has always deserved, set right on the Pacific Coast Highway, directly across from Surfrider Beach.

With a name like that, it’s not hard to guess where they’re coming from. The Luxe Sunset Boulevard Hotel is luxe indeed, with a location that’s more upscale retreat than downtown hipster haunt — it’s spread over seven acres of parkland in Brentwood, near the Getty Center, where Sunset Boulevard is a winding mountain road, not a neon-lit urban strip.

Deep in the heart of West Hollywood, on a quiet residential street between Sunset and Santa Monica, the Chamberlain is actually quite a bit cooler than it looks. This is no backhanded compliment — in a reversal of what seems to be the standard procedure in Los Angeles, the Chamberlain presents an unassuming public face, and keeps its surprises to itself.

When the Line Hotel first opened, in its iconic modernist tower on Wilshire Boulevard, it instantly put the downtown-adjacent Koreatown neighborhood on the map for travelers who might ordinarily have looked elsewhere. It also put the brand-new Line brand on the map, and raised the profile of the Sydell Group, who are also behind Tablet favorites like the NoMad and Freehand hotels, and the Ned in London. Now, a few years on, it’s a fixture on the Los Angeles boutique-hotel landscape, as its stylish minimalist rooms and its buzzing public spaces have quickly become iconic.

Though the reference is likely lost on some of its visitors, the Petit Ermitage isn’t named for just any old hermitage. Here in the heart of West Hollywood is a boutique hotel that doubles as a tribute to Catherine the Great’s Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg (that’s the one in Russia, but you knew that). Come for the heavy atmosphere of Tsarist decadence, and stay for the poolside cabanas.

In Hollywood the line between history and kitsch is so fine as to be practically non-existent. But one way or another the Sunset Tower manages to land on the right side of the line. In the latter years of the golden age this Art Deco apartment tower was home to the likes of Marilyn Monroe and Frank Sinatra; and while today the mid-century atmosphere is still in place, it’s no museum — there’s nothing faded about the newly renovated Sunset Tower’s sober, earth-toned interiors, and it’s not collectors or autograph hounds but bona fide Hollywood players who frequent its halls today.

This particular corner of West Hollywood has changed a bit over the years, to say the least, but back when Charlie Chaplin owned it this jumble of English-style bungalows fit right in to the pastoral landscape. Chaplin left LA over sixty years ago, of course, and it’s a minor miracle that these houses still stand — but thanks to an enterprising hotelier, they do, in the form of the Charlie, a truly unusual boutique hotel. (We always mean that as a compliment.)

This 1920s estate in LA’s hip Silver Lake began its life as a Mediterranean Revival mansion for a now-forgotten silent-film star. Later it was a girls’ school, and still later a convent for Franciscan nuns. And when interior designer Dana Hollister bought it, she intended for it to become the kind of luxury boutique hotel that we’re all familiar with. But the neighborhood had other ideas, and in the end, what it became is something much more unique: part film set, part event venue, part dream house for Hollister herself, and — most relevant for our purposes — home to nine of the most unforgettably stylish rooms, suites, and cottages in Los Angeles.

Lately Los Angeles has been in the travel news for its edgy, urban offerings in Downtown and points east. But the more traditional luxury that’s particular to Hollywood’s high-end hotels has by no means gone out of style. If you’ve been to the Sunset Tower, then you’ll agree that hotelier Jeff Klein has a track record with this sort of thing, and it’s no surprise that news of his new Hotel 850 SVB West Hollywood at Beverly Hills, a residential-style luxury boutique hotel in West Hollywood, has met with much enthusiasm.

One of Downtown L.A.’s original architectural characters, the Giannini Building was once home to the Bank of Italy, and its 1922-vintage Art Deco style was a perfect fit for the golden age of Hollywood glamour. It’s this era, and the Italian connection, that inspires the Hotel Per LA, a hotel that successfully transplants the dolce vita of the Mediterranean to the rooftops of Los Angeles.

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