Dubai: if you’re not loaded and decadent, you can’t come in

10/06/2007

It’s Thursday night at a club in downtown Dubai, and Farouz is spraying a Methuselah of Dom Pérignon Pink Gold over the girls at his VIP table. The bottle has arrived surrounded by sparklers and accompanied by the theme tune from Rocky, so everyone knows it’s for him. It’s his third of the evening – each one costs an eye-popping £50,000 – and it won’t be his last. Just before the club closes, he leaves a Rolex on the table in full view of his admirers, swaggers up the central staircase with three £5,000a night hookers and steps into one of a long line of Bentleys waiting outside.

In a city that is experiencing a latterday gold rush, Farouz isn’t unusual. Booming tourism and rocketing property prices have conspired to turn what was once a humble fishing village into a big bang of man-made islands and gold-plated golf buggies. And with them has come a stampede of billionaires – sheikhs, Russians and international playboys – all desperate to outspend each other. Even British footballers – only modestly wealthy by Dubai standards – have been drawn like moths to a flame. David Beckham is among those who have bought property in Palm Jumeirah, a luxury development on a palm-shaped island.

The result is a kind of Monaco on speed, a cauldron of glitzy wealth, where outrageous spending is the norm. It’s a world that screams, “You are nothing without money.” When it comes to flaunting your wares, there are no limits, whether it’s posing in the stagnant traffic in a red Lamborghini, watering your three-acre lawn in the middle of the desert, hosting a week-long party on your yacht, or wearing a £5,000 Valentino dress to brunch on a Monday. For those with cash, anything is possible. The city even boasts Ski Dubai, a desert alpine resort, complete with real snow.

The slavering jaws of the city will snatch at any luxury brand that comes near its gluttonous grasp. And the brands are queuing up to feed it. “Everyone in Milan, Paris and New York wants to be involved in the excitement of Dubai,” says Rachel Sharp, editor-in-chief of Dubai Harper’s Bazaar, which was launched in March. It’s no surprise, either, when ladies walk around with manila envelopes stuffed with cash, perfectly happy to spend £15,000 a week on Fendi knickknacks at Harvey Nichols, which opened last year.

Understandably, perhaps, the rest of the Muslim world condemns the city as a haven of sin and decadence, and European sophisticates frown on it as the epitome of poor taste. But it is hard to ignore such a gaudy bauble. You can see the glitz at the Arabian Travel Market or Dubai fashion week, and you can judge the power of the city’s party scene by Naomi Campbell’s 72-hour, £1m bash at the Burj Al Arab hotel last year. All 18 floors of the seven-star hotel were booked for her 36th birthday, and each day had a different theme – all-white, hip-hop and Brazilian samba.

Before the party started, the American music producer Dallas Austin was arrested for allegedly bringing a stash of cocaine into the country, but instead of possibly spending years in a Dubai prison (the UAE has some of the strictest laws in the world), after a few calls from the right places, he was set free.

That money sometimes bends morality is no surprise in a place where it’s said, jokingly, that every third woman is a prostitute. If you’re rich enough, everyone loves you for it, and nothing is embarrassing. The social elite’s only concern is that they should be perceived to be wealthy, and the measure of that can involve everything from the sartorial elegance of their personal chef to having a golden loo. This is the place to see a sheikh with a gold watch weighing down one wrist and a Swarovski sticking plaster on the other, or an enormous Arab lady who continues to gain weight, despite working out with a full-time personal trainer, because she refuses to perspire in her Dior tracksuit and keeps taking cake breaks.

There is even a Dubai equivalent of Hello! magazine. At first glance, Ahlan!, a glossy, looks like a spoof. But flick through its Hot Young 100 list and you realise it’s no joke. One 29-year-old businessman on the list, who did not wish to be named, admitted that he earned much more than £500,000 a month as a real-estate broker and spent all his money on yachts and holidays. He happily spends £75,000 on a night out, and kindly lets young models “making their way” stay at his villa for free and guzzle from his golden goblet. One Russian businessman has apparently been living at the Burj Al Arab for four years and always settles up in cash – rooms cost at least £500 a night.

In among it all are at least 100,000 Brits, trying to forge their way in this promised land of milk and money. It’s easy to spy the red-faced Ralph Lauren-shirt brigade who have gleefully made their Faustian pacts, and it’s not hard to see why, when the average higher-earner makes £25,000 a month. That’s still pocket money for some in Dubai, but even so, it’s more than most could ever dream of making back home.

As one expat, Philip Jones, says: “It’s hard to tell the background of the British people here, but, of course, they are all upwardly mobile. There are a lot of English, Australians and Lebanese wanting a slice of the pie. Most of my friends are millionaires. The acceptable level is to own five sports cars. It’s hard to break into the clique here, but if you can get into the inner circle, it’s a licence to print money. I know one guy who had a couple of dirhams in his account and now he has 40m dirhams.”

So what’s the limit to this souped-up Vegas? Will all the sand have to be turned into gold? Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, the country’s ruler, says that they must not wait for the future to come to Dubai, they must make history.

Another sheikh is more explicit. “Soon,” he says, “every Count of Monte Cristo will be in Dubai. In 10 years, only rich and famous people will live here.” Really? Even the thousands of people working to service Dubai’s rich – the chauffeurs and waiters and manicurists and gofers? He is not unduly worried at the prospect. “I would hope robots or clones will do all that by then.”