‘Quiet luxury’ is all the rage these days, the social media algorithms tell me. On Instagram and TikTok, Americans inform their followers that clothing with no visible branding is a true status signifier, before extolling the virtues of Barbour jackets and Loro Piana shoes. Aspirational people shouldn’t drive flashy new cars, they argue; instead, they should drive a 30-year-old Range Rover – as if the inevitable engine rebuild wouldn’t cost more than most people would spend on a car. When decorating, millennial grey is wrong, garish, and uninteresting; everything must be sage green with brass accents. There is nothing more quiet and luxurious than the B&Q colour-matching desk.
Fortunately, one Instagram influencer, latching onto the ‘quiet luxury’ trend, informed her followers of her favourite hidden gems in the region. Farther down the Dalmatian coast than Dubrovnik, situated at the southern side of the beautiful Bay of Kotor, lies the little Montenegrin town of Tivat. A cursory Google search told me that the town – the youngest in the region, yet with settlements dating from the Middle Ages – had undergone a rapid recent redevelopment, and now was attempting to position itself as the ‘Monaco of the Balkans’, a title that Tito surely would have been proud of. I had to visit.
