What does the future hold for the exclusive Caribbean island that shuns shoes, spectacle and social media

To shoe, or not to shoe, that is the question. ‘You won’t need any shoes’, ‘don’t bother packing shoes’, ‘no one wears shoes,’ said three people, very much independently of each other, when I told them that I was going to Mustique. I didn’t believe them until I disembarked from the tin-can hopper aeroplane at Mustique Airport and bumped straight into a man waiting to collect his girlfriend. He was barefoot. Not to shoe, then.

People say a lot of things about Mustique. All of it, as it turns out — even the most fantastical of claims (including ‘you won’t need shoes’) — is true. I was told that the Caribbean island is ‘utterly unique’, that it ‘moves to its own beat’ and that I would be ‘welcomed with open arms’ (journalists are rarely welcomed anywhere with open arms). Travel journalists are plagued by press releases telling us that this hotel and that island is different from all of the others, that it was designed with ‘intention’, that it is actually exclusive. That is, of course, until Nikki Beach comes calling or someone turns up on a shiny superyacht brandishing wads of cash.

I was wrong on all counts. There’s no Nikki Beach on Mustique; in fact, there are no beach clubs at all. There are no restaurants, either, save for the one at the single hotel on its shores; or bars, save for the legendary watering hole set up by Basil Charles — plucked, as a young man, from obscurity by Colin Tennant, 3rd Baron Glenconner.

Ah, Lord Glenconner — it’s nigh on impossible to write about Mustique without mentioning him. The handsome rake whose wife, Anne, Lady Glenconner, revealed on The Graham Norton Show that he’d taken her to a brothel on their Parisian honeymoon. Lord Glenconner supposedly purchased the island in 1958 on the basis that it would be cheaper to holiday there through the winter than to heat their Scottish home.

A decade later, he formed the Mustique Company, encouraging similarly rich and titled friends to purchase plots of land and develop fancy villas on them. He famously gave a 10-acre plot to Princess Margaret, who erected an Oliver Messel-designed confection. In the late 1970s, he sold the Mustique Company to the villa owners, therefore ceding his majority stake in the island’s ownership. If you were to purchase a villa right now (there are five currently on the market), then you would become a Company shareholder.

Lord Glenconner’s antics (and Mustique’s past) are so well documented — including in this very magazine — that I do not need to rehash them here. What, instead, about the island’s future? How does a holiday destination that shuns influencers and social media and, to a large extent, overt displays of wealth, exist in a world that revolves largely — whether we like it or not — around all three of these things?

There are 109 villas on Mustique and more than 90% of them are available to rent, including Princess Margaret’s former pad, Les Jolie Eaux. The majority of these houses — each more impressive than the last, all achingly tasteful — are still owned by British families, although the Americans are fast catching up. There are Swiss, German and Canadian proprietors, too, who spend several weeks and sometimes months at a time on the island. ‘It’s a home primarily, more than a holiday destination,’ says financier Dr Mark Cecil. Although the island’s demographic will always skew to the older because it’s older people who typically have the money it takes to buy and build, the next generation is already falling under Mustique’s spell.

The week before I arrived, Kendall Jenner marked her 30th birthday by frolicking on its myriad sandy beaches with a group of equally famous friends and, last year, Harry Styles competed in the very popular and very competitive annual tennis tournament, the Reggae Cup. These same millennials may soon follow in the footsteps of people such as Phil and Rebecca Wieland, a company chairman and interior architect respectively, who purchased Oceanus in 2023. And although it may not be a young person’s place yet, it is a ‘youthful place,’ explains Mark, ‘because here, age becomes irrelevant. If you go to a dinner you might have a 16-year-old on one side and someone of 80 on the other. If you’re on Mustique, you’re a part of it, and it’s irrelevant what nationality or age or gender you are.’

Mustique’s attractions are endless — and ageless. Its unspoiled beauty; the non-native tortoises (no one can quite remember where they came from, or when) that stud various lawns and sometimes lumber down onto the beaches; everyone’s respect for their fellow traveller’s privacy and social norms that have long flown out the window in other monied destinations, such as St Tropez, Ibiza and St Barths. Miss Jenner might be one of Instagram’s most prolific users, but even she refrained from geo-tagging her two birthday posts, and no one would even entertain the thought of trying to snap a picture of The Prince and Princess of Wales and their three children, who holiday here regularly, let alone actually do it.

‘What I like about it,’ adds Mark, ‘is that you don’t have to make any decisions. There’s only one bar; there’s only one restaurant. You don’t get involved in traffic [everyone traverses the island’s curves in buggies that look like the progeny of a golf cart and a sit-on mower]. All of the things that dominate our normal lives disappear there.’ When I ask Dr Michael Bunbury — a former medical officer in the British Army and commander of the medical clinic for more than 30 years — what has changed during his time on the island, he doesn’t mention people or infrastructure or architecture. No, he simply remarks that the shoulder seasons have become a bit busier.

There are, however, subtle changes afoot that might be an indication of what’s around the corner. Chiefly a new spa, a beautiful homage to Messel’s original villas, built to a dizzyingly high standard. It is considered and slick and dripping with a sense of place — other identikit hotel spas would do well to take note. The treatments, designed in collaboration with Bamford, are faultless, too. I assume that, should the Mustique Company ever choose to renovate the charming Cotton House hotel — the only one on the island, obviously — it would look something like this spa.

This year also saw the opening of a shiny new medical clinic for Michael, which multiple people tell me is the best facility in the Caribbean. It follows hot on the heels of a ‘world-class gym’. You can just wander in, I’m told. If you’re in Mustique, everything is open to you. There’s no VIP access. Everything is open to everyone.

Should the mood strike, you can wander into any of the villas — including Sir Mick Jagger’s, jokes one resident over cocktails at Basil’s — because none of them has windows or doors. Spoiler alert: you should not break into anyone’s house, but you won’t have to, because you’ll receive an invitation to dinner mere minutes after landing. Residents move to the rhythm of a sort of timetable: cocktails in the Cotton House’s Great Room on Tuesdays, dancing at Basil’s on Wednesdays and tennis on, well, every day. On Sundays, residents flock to Lagoon beach for picnics served on top of tablecloths from The Pink House, a dangerously good boutique run by Lotty, Michael's wife. On their way to the thin sliver of beach lapped by calm and crystalline water, they have been known to scoop up hotel waifs and strays, too. Once you’re made it onto Mustique, you’re a part of the club and getting involved is thoroughly encouraged.

Conservation is perhaps the only area of island life that’s in keeping with what’s going on in the rest of the world. More and more villa owners are installing water-purification systems — with encouragement from the Mustique Company — which lessens the reliance on imported bottled drinking water and a discreet field of solar panels currently produces just under half of the required total energy. There are plans in place to almost double that number. The Company also employs a conservation officer, Kate Charles, who is working hard in partnership with neighbouring islands to restore elk- and staghorn coral, victims of the 2023 Caribbean bleaching catastrophe and 2024 hurricane.

As you’ve probably gathered, Mustique is a tricky beast to describe. It’s probably best compared to a prickly pear, which is to say hard on the outside — rumour has it that the ‘wrong’ kind of people have been barred from visiting — but oh so soft on the inside. A cocoon, with cocktails, from the real world. There surely must be a multitude of destinations keen to replicate its successes, but of course, its magnetism lies in the fact that it is impossible to emulate; the dynastic wealth required to create a second version is in rather short supply right now. As Mark points out: ‘Mustique doesn’t need to succeed commercially; it’s self-funded.’

The writer stayed at The Cotton House. Garden Cottage rooms start from £550 a night on a bed-and-breakfast basis. Visit the Mustique Island website for more information.