Tag: lady weinberg

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Architecture Design Hotels Luxury People Restaurants Town Houses

The Franklin Hotel Knightsbridge London + Anouska Hempel

Franklin Minted

To be frank, it wasn’t the hardest decision in the world to while away a wintry Saturday afternoon, yes, the perfected world of a Saturday afternoon, wistfully tucked up in a swanky five star Knightsbridge hotel. Add Anouska Hempel (Lady Weinberg to you) to the mix, and it’s a given. The Franklin Hotel, retrieving the definite article, belongs to the family of London terraced houses turned boutique hotels by the New Zealand born designer, from the (very open) maximalist Blakes to the (now closed) minimalist Hempel. From the outside, it’s terribly similar to No.11 Cadogan Gardens. A Pont Street precursor perhaps? All candid brick elevations with canted bay windows. A cute crow stepped gable above a petite portico marks the entrance.

This stretch of Brompton Road between the V+A and Harrods caters for discerning Christian disciplines from Alpha (Low Anglican Holy Trinity Brompton) to omega (High Catholic Brompton Oratory). Ascetic or aesthetic? The Franklin is discreetly positioned on the streetscape, overlooking Egerton Gardens to the rear. Its red and white exterior gives way to monochromatic brilliance. The Lady has form. Blakes has plenty of black. The Hempel had plenty of white. Grey is the new black. A shadow play. Penumbra obscura. She has embedded a melismatic yet palpable narrative into the building’s very fabric. Before long it’ll be coloured by the exaggeration of memory. There’ll never a dull moment.

Anouska Hempel waxes lyrical on her latest creation, “The English love the Italians. The romance of Rome and Venice. All combined, opposite the Brompton Oratory, have become The Combination. Dark brooding greys and bright sparkling whites: floors of Carrara marble and slate. Garden windows abound onto a row of umbrella shaped pear trees. The glorious couture tables make the ground garden floor a sensation. I have had these made specifically to follow the floorplate. Venetian wells, piazzas, squares, dark greys with white punctuations. Mysterious.” Such moods, such moods and modulations.

Digging deeper, Loretto alumna Lady Weinberg, fresh from a stay at Abbey Leix, dwells on creation at large, “I hope that I have something more important to give the world than just what you see on the level of where I’m living at the moment. I think my mission is to bring peace and harmony and a sense of enjoyment, and also to bring something special into ordinary everyday life. I really have been very fortunate to have a little talent, and also incredibly fortunate to have had so many great opportunities. But I strongly feel that I am not the source of my own creativity, which must come from somewhere else.” Painterly, scholarly, otherworldly.

Bowing to mannerism, call it architectural etiquette, the palazzo look certainly isn’t by chance. This is the latest addition to Starhotels, an Italian family owned group. The bedlinen in each of the 35 bedrooms may be 400 thread count Italian Frette linen but the wrought iron balustrades of the enfilade were inspired by English conservatories. A mutual attraction | a binational lock-in love-in | a European commission. Anglophile Elisabetta Fabri, President and CEO of Starhotels, tipped off the designer about her passion. Anouska took it to fruition – with rigour. Hers is a symmetrical staging of sculpture: discovered, framed, mounted, foreground, background, grounded, released. Walls fading to trompe l’oeil, a mirage of Venetian eglomisée mirrors in the restaurant reflect the wonders of Alfredo Russo’s culinary capability. The Piedmont born chef snapped up his first Michelin star aged 24. Expect tiptop modern Italian cuisine. Disappointment is not, no never, on the menu. Exhilaration is. There are more highlights than a National Theatre performance of Amadeus.

Bed is a reinvented fourposter rising to a spidery crown, apropos to a rococo reverie or a baroque dream or a contemporary vision. It’s impossible not to be hyperbolic about this parabolic scrawl in the perfumed air. The entry to an arcane deserted world. And so late Saturday afternoon, yes, luscious late Saturday afternoon, descends into an undeclared denouement: a happy convergence of atavism with hymn charms. Shadow puppets at play. Unfurling the hours spent, later, so much later, upon reflection, through a glass, darkly; frankly it’s all about Franklin scents and mirrors.

 

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Design Hotels

Jumeirah + Grosvenor House Apartments London

The High Life

Griege. It’s the oligarch agent’s choice of colour from Belsize Park to Belgrave Square. Ban it. Griege is dull. Safe. Predictable. Life should be black and white with a dash of colour provided by Lavender’s Blue. So it was with a huge sense of relief as we gingerly – ever the shrinking violets – arrived at the Grosvenor House Apartments penthouse party.

Wow! Monochrome hasn’t looked this good since Anouska Hempel styled her eponymous hotel in Amsterdam. Entering the penthouse, via a high speed private lift of course, was like being inserted into a CGI. Writer and broadcaster and general bon viveur Lady Lucinda Lambton recently regaled us with her story of Monkton House, a Sir Edwin Lutyens building transformed by Edward Jones into the 1930s Surrealist style.

Exactly 90 years since construction was completed on Grosvenor House, another Lutyens building, it too has been transformed. This time into reverse hyperrealism (think about it and then catch up). The penthouse interior is undeniably second decade 21st century. It is defined and refined by rows of black framed neo Georgian sash windows and French doors which encircle the rooms like silent sentinels surveying the controlled decoration. This definition and refinement suggest a computer still, a mise-en-scène for the 20 centimetre screen.

Turns out Anouska aka Lady Weinberg, Bond girl turned society gal turned Renaissance woman, actually was the interior designer. A renowned perfectionist, she recently told FT: “I’m a control freak. We do it my way unless you’ve got a better way… Every now and again one of the little people suggests an alternative way of doing things, I say, “You are brilliant, thank you!” And then Anouska does it her own way.

The excuse for the party, if one was needed, was the launch of Jumeirah Living’s At Home. This programme introduces residents to a different aspect of luxury London living each month. Canapés and cocktails by award winning chef Adam Byatt (moreish mussels and multi coloured macaroons), a private viewing of artist designer Mark Humphrey’s first solo show Art in Life and piano playing in the hallway promoted the programme with impressive aplomb.

General Manager Astrid Bray declared, “We are delighted to host Mark Humphrey’s innovative collection Diamonds and Flames. He shows a true talent and his art perfectly complements our aesthetic. We feel Mark’s pieces, mixing classic skills of design with contemporary touches, will further set apart our hotel apartments. We’re combining the discretion of an exclusive Mayfair residence with a more private form of luxury and an immediate sense of home. We’ve people staying three days or a whole year. We’ve all of those!”

Precisely nine decades later, General Editor of the Survey of London Hermione Hobhouse’s words have turned full circle: “The Grosvenor House of the Dukes of Westminster has become the Grosvenor House of innumerable misters.” Now it’s possible again to live like a duke. A 24 hour butler caters for nights in and an Aston Martin Rapide for days out. The aptly named Grosvenor is the largest penthouse. At 448 square metres it’s the size of a decent townhouse.

Grosvenor House greedily grabs two of Mayfair’s golden addresses, Mount Street and Park Lane. A corner site, its terraces benefit from sweeping views across Hyde Park. If residents care to leave the privacy of their apartments, they can lounge in the second floor atrium. Thrillingly open seven storeys to the glass roof, the atrium is a cathedral to relaxation.

To paraphrase (or should that be plagiarise?) the hyperbolic alliterative Lucinda, the Grosvenor House Apartments positively bristle with the beautiful. They are a delight to be in and come up to sensational scratch. Jumeirah Living has proved itself to be a plum player in the field.