Miranda Makaroff y Pascal Moscheni sobre la vida en Ibiza, los pedidos de servicio a la habitación y el amor a primera vista.
Miranda Makaroff y Pascal Moscheni sobre la vida en Ibiza, los pedidos de servicio a la habitación y el amor a primera vista.
By Laura Regensdorf
The multidisciplinary artist Miranda Makaroff knows how to travel in style: to fashion shows, art fairs, and tropical idylls. She just does it in her own exuberant way, as seen in the new W Hotels campaign, “Hotel Tales.” Here, she sits down with her longtime love, the DJ and musician Pascal Moscheni, to talk about dream vacations, alarm clock woes, and mutual inspiration.
The word souvenir calls to mind a category of airport tchotchkes sized to slip into a carry-on. But the Spanish artist Miranda Makaroff has her eye open to a different kind of discovery when on the road, as seen from a painting hanging in the Ibiza home she shares with her boyfriend, the musician and DJ Pascal Moscheni. “I was walking on the street in Argentina and suddenly saw this atelier. I was like, ‘Wow, I want this painting in my house!’” Makaroff says over Zoom, gesturing to the wall behind her. The artwork’s cartoonish central figure—tattooed bicep, faded jeans, bull’s-head belt buckle—looms like a saint between the couple’s heads. “This [artist] guy and I became friends, and we did a collaboration together,” she continues. “It’s the beginning of a story of artistic happenings.”
Makaroff—an effervescent presence, brimming with kinetic creativity—seems to invite serendipitous interactions. Her work, which spans paintings, sculpture, and tapestries, is continually evolving as opportunities arise. A forthcoming project with the Milan-based rug company Illulian will debut underfoot at the spring design fair Salone del Mobile. Makaroff is preparing for a solo show at a Barcelona gallery in March, and she’s daydreaming about other materials. “I met a girl on the internet who reproduces parts of the body in resin, so it would be nice to do something together,” Makaroff muses. “I like to explore all the time different techniques, and also new identities, new styles.”
For Makaroff, kismet is part luck and part audacity, which plays out in her “Hotel Tales” campaign for W Hotels. The video’s lighthearted script presents a relatable scenario for a woman on the international party scene. As Makaroff spins the tale onscreen, glamorous in a black swimsuit and shades, it all started with a late-night flash of hunger at W Hollywood. En route to find a snack, she happens upon a room service tray, and at the exact moment her gloved hand snatches a French fry, the door swings open. She’s caught in the act by a “really hot, sexy, young guy,” she explains, and the campaign’s tagline sums up this stroke of good fortune: “You had to be there.”
It’s little surprise that Makaroff’s real-life meeting with Moscheni 12 years ago was every bit as glamorous and plucky and charmed. Here, the couple talk about creative pursuits, travel essentials, and the importance of offline vacations.
Laura: Your home looks quite colorful, from what I can see.
Pascal: Super colorful.
Miranda: Almost all the houses in Ibiza have the same decoration: very Mediterranean, with beige and browns and natural materials. This one is really different.
Pascal: At the beginning it was a bit shocking. Once, in our flat, she was like, “I’m going to paint the whole room pink.” So everything—the carpet, the ceiling, the walls, everything—was pink. But then it was really pleasant to be in there. From that moment on, I just delegated any type of color decision in the house to Miranda.
Color and music can really change the emotional temperature of a room, which must be a language you both speak well.
Pascal: Color, 100 percent. But to be honest, I’m not sure we even listen to a lot of music together in our space.
Miranda: He’s changing songs every two seconds!
Pascal: I do a lot of music skipping, like, “Would I play this song to DJ? Okay, next.” But Miranda, when she plays music, she’s painting or doing manual activity, so she can just have it on the side and create that beautiful atmosphere. We each have our own independent podcasts or music going on our AirPods.
This “Hotel Tales” video for W Hotels imagines a fictional meeting at 3 a.m. over a room service tray. How did you two actually meet?
Miranda: The thing is, he was dating this girl that was, like, my number one enemy [laughs], and my friends were talking about them: “Oh, they’re such a cool couple, blah, blah, blah.” And I was like, “It’s impossible that they’re such a cool couple if she’s, like, evil.” Suddenly we were in Paris for Fashion Week, and I was like, “Ah, that’s the guy who is dating that girl.” He told us, “I’m going to this Givenchy party. It’s the best party I’ve ever been to in my life.” We said we wanted to go, and he was like, “No, sorry, it’s impossible. It’s all these really VIP people.”
Pascal: This is unfair! It’s making me sound so annoying [laughs].
Miranda: I spent the rest of the afternoon calling everybody I knew to see if I could get into that party. So I go and meet him inside, like, “Oh, hi.” I wanted him to know that I was also powerful.
Pascal: She loves telling that story. She was waiting for me there, like, “See? I’m here.” So proud. Meeting Miranda was a bit of a plot twist. Until then all I’d heard about her was mainly negative stuff because my girl and all her friends would diss on her. And then I was like, Oh, Miranda’s super fun, super pretty—the opposite.
What drew you in after that first night?
Miranda: He made me fall in love by sending me tracks of music. For me, it was something that had never happened before. The tracks were incredible. I could listen to them for hours and hours, thinking about him, even though I had only met him once.
Pascal: Music was a big connection.
Miranda: And then you said, “You woke up the lion I have inside.”
Pascal: So embarrassing! We just started seeing each other more and more and more. It was a long-distance relationship at the beginning, Milan–Madrid, back and forth. Then, when it felt solid and super official, I moved. She made me quit my job to pursue DJing, which was what I wanted to do. That was a huge moment in my life.
There’s a through line between the leap of faith in making an entire room pink and the leap of faith in quitting your job to do what you love. You have a good angel on your side.
Pascal: Yeah. I think, opposite to myself, Miranda has barely ever had a job apart from herself. She’s always pursued her own interests.
Miranda: Well, I had a job! I worked for Jägermeister, doing shots from my mouth to old guys [laughs].
Pascal: But not a job where you wake up at seven, go somewhere, work until seven, and do that every day. You’ve had freelance jobs, but since you were very young you’ve always pursued painting and creating. And for me, it was like, Wow—what? Why is she waking up later than me and happier and making more money because she’s doing what she loves? You can actually do that?
Travel was a given during the long-distance part of your relationship, but what was the first trip as a couple?
Miranda: Cuba.
And what was that trip like?
Miranda: Horrible.
Pascal: A nightmare. The [trip organizers] ripped us off. The places we were staying were not at all what they had promised us, in terms of, “Oh, it has a magical beach with a little cabin.“ It was like—
Miranda: In front of warehouses.
Pascal: It was supposed to be our romantic getaway. The deal was we’d go to Cuba on my vacation, and when we came back I’d quit my job. Woo, freedom! And it was literally horrible.
Miranda: Pascal was so polite, he didn’t want to tell the guys that we were not happy, and I was holding all this anger inside. We rented a scooter because the driver they gave us was illegal, so he couldn’t drive through some areas that we wanted to go.
Pascal: And in the middle of all of that, we went to see dolphins in a reserve, and the keys to the scooter fell out of my pocket and dropped down to the bottom of the ocean. A dolphin went by and whipped his tail and that was it: The keys were gone forever.
Miranda: But we learned a lot from the trip!
It was a test: If you survived, it meant you’d be together forever. What’s your ideal couple’s getaway?
Miranda: The first thing is, neither of us has a phone. And we’re connecting with nature. I like the wild.
Pascal: I’m happy with any type of nature. I love skiing and things like that. But if it can lean more towards tropical and warm weather and ocean—mostly for Miranda—then it is good. To be honest, living here, we just get the ferry and go to Formentera, which is another island 20 or 30 minutes away, and we find beautiful peace. It’s an ideal three-day mental break.
So, the “Hotel Tales” video centers around room service. What is your standard order?
Pascal: Caesar salad and a club sandwich. I think it’s the only time when I have those two dishes. For some reason, hotels are really good at club sandwiches.
Miranda: Matcha latte, waffles. I had the best waffles at W Verbier, in Switzerland. I do a very weird mix that everybody thinks is disgusting: waffles, banana, bacon, cream, and syrup.
Pascal: I think in America that is pretty standard, though.
Miranda: That’s true.
Do you travel a lot separately?
Pascal: Now it’s a lot separately because, I get it, my trips are not that fun.
Miranda: Because he stays sometimes one night.
Pascal: My trips usually include no sleeping. Go to a city, stay awake and play all night, get on another early plane, go to another city, and 48 hours later you come back home. So not very compatible with Miranda’s traveling requests [laughs].
On the occasions when you do have time in a hotel room, how do you like to relax?
Pascal: I really appreciate when I go into a hotel room and there’s a bath. For me, it’s super important. When I arrived to Dubai the other day, first thing, boom, bath. And then, not because I’m a fitness freak, but just to combat tiredness: sauna and gym. I feel like it is anti–jet lag and sort of restores me very quickly, when I’m lacking sleep or had too many mezcal shots while I was DJing.
You’re so connected as a couple. How would you say the other person’s creative life inspires your own?
Pascal: Obviously the visual creativity that I’m exposed to every day is super [impactful]: the way the house is decorated, the furniture Miranda did or chose, all the colors, being surrounded by the art. But for me, the biggest advantage of Miranda is her creativity in thinking—the way she approaches life and problems. I’m more afraid to do stuff, and she’s way more out of the box than me. Obviously the artwork is incredible, I love it. But it is more like Miranda is more free, more wild. So that wild creativity is super inspiring to me.
Miranda: For me, of course, the music—especially at the beginning. Now that we’ve known each other for so long, it’s more in an intellectual or philosophical way. Pascal is like my guru of how to be a person on this planet because of the way he reacts, the way he talks to people, his aura. I am observing all the time the way he is, and he’s so evolved in some areas that I’m really not at all. He inspires me a lot to be a better person.
Pascal: It’s idyllic, but we obviously have a lot of fights also, no?
Miranda: When he puts the alarm in the morning! I’m wild, so I created my life not to have schedules and things.
Pascal: We’ve been educated so, so, so, so differently. Her education and my education cannot be more contrasting. It’s like, Wow, what is this creature? Miranda is the opposite of what I learned as a kid, and I am the opposite of what she had at home. And the middle line in between both of us, I think, is the perfect balance.
The alarm is funny.
Miranda: When I was a teenager going to school, having to put the alarm for 15 years, I promised myself that in the future I will never put the alarm. I will never have a boss. So when he puts the alarm for, like, 8:30 in the morning—and I have to wake him up, “Hey, the alarm is ringing!”—I want to kill him. Because all of your life, you’re trying to make your dreams come true, and then an alarm is ringing!
If you were in charge of packing the other person’s suitcase, what are some of the essentials you would pack for a trip?
Pascal: I would never take that risk of doing Miranda’s suitcase. I would fail! All I would be good at is making sure there are nuts, chocolates, and sweets. And some pâtisserie—I would go to the French bakery down the street. No way I’m getting into her wardrobe and choosing. I would not. What would you pack for me?
Miranda: AirPods. You lose your AirPods on every trip! He doesn’t need anything. Three shirts, two pants, and that’s it. I want to style him, but he doesn’t allow me because he says he wants to be very minimal. I’m the opposite—I want to be maximal. I want to have 100 things, so I can put together a little combination.
«He made me fall in love by sending me tracks of music. The tracks were incredible. I could listen to them for hours and hours, thinking about him, even though I had only met him once.»
Packing for fashion shows must be incredibly difficult.
Pascal: Pre-Fashion Week, the two living rooms are a no-go zone—you literally cannot walk through. Before leaving, it’s a suitcase explosion. And when she comes back, the suitcase also explodes.
Miranda: I leave it for three days [laughs].
Pascal: Three days, all around the house, and I’m not allowed to say anything. It’s like, why are you checking in for a one-hour flight? So annoying!
Because she lives in a big, magical world.
Pascal: I want to get on and off that flight as quickly as possible. I travel today, so in a while I have to leave for the airport. I have two gigs, two cities.
Miranda: And he got back here last night.
You must be good at making the time count when you’re together.
Pascal: I changed my plane for today to leave later, so I get to stay a little bit longer. And then in 10 days, we go on vacation together to Costa Rica. I mean, I DJ, but there will be a lot of vacation time also. Business and pleasure.
Well, this was both business and a pleasure—thank you. You two have a special energy. Miranda, I’m glad that you got into that Givenchy party.
Miranda: Me too! I was so stubborn. Thank God.
For more on Miranda Makaroff, follow her on Instagram @mirandamakaroff.
Follow writer Laura Regensdorf on Instagram @lauraregensdorf.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
What happens at W Hotels? Things that couldn’t happen anywhere else. Follow «Hotel Tales» on Instagram as some of our most notable guests sit down to share the unexpected moments that made their stays unforgettable. But truly, you just had to be there…
