Don Juluxe x Sveta:

The Carré d’Or & Casino Sequence

 +  

“The art of witnessing without wanting.”

 · September 18, 2024
 · 2 min read
 
I’d barely settled into the spectacle when the roulette table spun away with a considerable sum of mine. The room was glowing: Slavic princesses orbiting the suave Don Juan — a Managing Partner with a prominent firm in Mexico City — and his son, Don Julio, a wide-eyed film student still buzzing from the Circuit de Catalunya. They were chasing the Formula One circuit across Europe, acclimating for the main event: the Monaco Grand Prix.

It all began at the starting line of my birthday weekend in Monaco — and like many great stories that begin with champagne and bad decisions, mine ended in laughter, loss, and a little bit of legend.

My own plan? Win big and upgrade our suite at Ô de Paris. Instead, I found myself captivated — not by luck, but by the electric stare-down between Sveta and Carlos at the roulette table. A lesson was learned that night: never gamble around Don Juan, Don Julio, and a Slavic princess named Sveta.

Here, fantasy parades as daily life. The Carré d’Or — Monaco’s gilded heart — is where the world’s elite shop for 12-micron wool from Himalayan yaks at “Gift of Kings,” or sip cocktails while casually adjusting Patek Philippes no mortal ever dreams of owning. In these marble-tiled sanctuaries, the line between exclusivity and absurdity disappears entirely.

The legacy of Prince Charles III still whispers through the Belle Époque facades, most notably at the Casino de Monte-Carlo — a temple of temptation where opulence and architecture duel for attention. It’s more than a casino. It’s a mirror of the district: storied, decadent, and impossible to replicate.

And then there’s the Grand Prix.

No other event encapsulates the soul of Monte Carlo like it. The roar of engines ricochets off cliffs and palaces, the crowd’s cheers rising like incense in a cathedral of speed. Here, motorsport becomes myth. Here, time slows not in stillness, but in spectacle.

In the margins of all this — behind the velvet ropes and smoked glass terraces — creativity hums. Fashion icons, artists, architects, and renegades gather to disrupt and design. And somehow, in this fantasy world shaped by royalty and ruled by roulette, inspiration still strikes.

Monte Carlo, after all, is not just for the rich — it’s for the restless.

So if you ever find yourself stumbling out of the Carré d’Or, feeling a little too light in the wallet and heavy in the head, pause. Look out toward the water. Let the sea remind you that everything grand is still fleeting. That the real currency here isn’t money — it’s myth.

Because Monte Carlo isn’t just a district.
It’s a mindset.