Our story

Like most meaningful things, Sibarth didn’t begin with a plan.

It began the way things usually do: with someone caring a little more than they strictly had to. Ashley and Kristina Lacour don’t see Sibarth as something they own, but something they watch over. What they lead today wasn’t built overnight, and it wasn’t built alone. It’s the result of understanding that on an island like this, nothing truly belongs to you unless you learn how to belong to it. To understand Sibarth as it is now, you have to go back to the beginning.

In the early seventies, Roger Lacour was already living on the island, working at his sister’s hotel. There was no running water, stable electricity or easy to navigate roads. Just untouched nature. According to legend, Brook’s parents returned from a vacation to St. Barth convinced their daughter needed to meet “a lovely man”. She came and met Roger.

Once she was back home, Roger wrote letters. Real ones. Enough of them that Brook fell for the voice behind the ink, packed up her life, and moved to the island. Together, they built something simple and enduring, opening La Calèche in Gustavia; a boutique known for special finds. Even today, people still stop us to share about something they bought there, as if the object carried a little of the island with it. La Calèche turned into an informal gathering place. Locals came. Visitors came. Most people came with questions.

“Do you know a place we can stay?”
“Do you know anyone selling a property?”

The same questions, asked often enough, started to resemble a calling. Sibarth emerged from the back of that shop, not as a master plan, but as a response. To people, to needs, to the island itself. Nothing about it was obvious in 1974. There were no templates, no roadmaps, not even a real airport.

The island was a secret. Everyone who found it felt chosen.

They weren’t just early; they were careful. They had the skills to make something last and the sense not to break what was already there. Everyone knew everyone. Owners, guests, gardeners, drivers, housekeepers. The orbit was small, human, and held together by trust. The island had an unspoken code: arrive lightly, take care, don’t perform. Sibarth became one of its guardians.

Time, however, does what it always does. It hands things over. Brook and Roger’s ethos didn’t disappear; it shifted hands. In 2011, their son Ashley and his wife, Kristina, began writing the next chapter. They brought their own ambitions with them, while keeping the one thing that mattered intact: care.

You don’t inherit a place. You become part of it.

Ashley and Kristina met in the summer of 2007 on Block Island (Rhode Island) and have been inseparable ever since. To this day, they work side by side at the same desk. Ashley, born and raised on St. Barth, and Kristina, originally from Bulgaria, studied together in Brighton on England’s south coast. Alongside their business and management studies, they opened a small boutique of their own, because some habits are hereditary.

When Brook and Roger suggested they return to St. Barth to continue the family business, it wasn’t framed as destiny. It was framed as a possibility. The timing wasn’t romantic. Parts of the business had been consolidated. The partnership with our American sister company concluded. The world was changing. And so was the island. They came back anyway.

What followed was not preservation for its own sake, but careful refinement. The company was trimmed and reorganized, sometimes dismantled and reassembled. Processes were questioned. Creativity was invited in and technology became an ally. What mattered stayed. What didn’t was let go.

Not everything old is sacred. Not everything new is progressive.

Ashley and Kristina learned, sometimes the hard way, that perseverance is shown during uncomfortable chapters. Over time, the story became theirs. Not a sequel, but a continuation written by a different hand. The team grew smaller and more local. People who didn’t just work on the island, but lived it. People who knew when to step forward and when to take a step back.

Sibarth today is still family-owned, but no longer a family project. It’s a collective effort, shaped by people who care deeply about this place and the way it is experienced. Luxury to us isn’t all thread counts and marble counter tops. It’s precision. Knowing where the sun sets best in September. Knowing which villa invites silence, and which one invites laughter. Knowing when to say yes and when to gently suggest something better.

Attention is the rarest luxury.

Their vision isn’t louder than what came before; it’s clearer. Rooted in mindfulness, curiosity, and the belief that business, like islands, work best in harmony with their surroundings. The indigenous called it Ouanalao. The French say Saint Barthélemy. Most people shorten it to St. Barts. For us, it’s simply home.