London’s Most Stylish New Hotel Will Make You Want to Redecorate
A bar at the Ham Yard Hotel in London. (Photo: Ham Yard Hotel)
The next thing I buy for my apartment will be the Moondog.
Let me explain.
This is a deliciously witty fabric by Kit Kemp, a pretty blue green linen embroidered with dogs watching the moon through a telescope. I first noticed it on a chair at London’s Ham Yard Hotel, in this case in a sort of tourmaline pink. It was in the deeply comfortable drawing room with its painted furniture, antiques, found objects, a riot of Kemp’s colorful textiles, the eye-catching art.
A Moondog fabric-covered chair at Ham Yard. (Photo: Reggie Nadelson)
There are eight Firmdale hotels in London and one in New York. All have been decorated by Kit Kemp, half of the couple (with husband Tim) who own them. With them she has reinvented hotel decor: each is personal and intimate, each gives you the sense you’re in somebody’s elegant and pleasurably eccentric English home. None is alike; everyone full of visual delights — like the crazy wall size array of clocks on the wall opposite the elevators at Ham Yard Hotel.
The Library at the Ham Yard Hotel in London. (Photo: Ham Yard Hotel)
Recently I checked into the Ham Yard, Firmdale’s newest, biggest, and most fabulous hotel. Located at the edge of London’s Soho, you can walk to the theaters, to the restaurants, to Covent Garden, and Piccadilly and Trafalgar Square. Ham Yard is almost a little resort compound inside the city; it has restaurants, bars, terraces, a library with really good books, a bowling alley, a big screening room, a row of shops opposite the hotel, a tree filled courtyard, a roof top garden.
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A colorful dining area at the Ham Yard. (Photo: Ham Yard Hotel)
I promised myself I’d come back for a long weekend and never venture further than the excellent nail bar a few yards from the lobby.
Oh, and my favorite thing at the Firmdale hotel: an honor bar for guests where you can also grab a little tub of excellent ice cream when you come in late at night and think: Oh, for ice cream late at night!
And yet, in my huge room, all is calm, private and pretty.
The author’s room. (Photo: Ham Yard Hotel)
My room has deep blue walls — a sort of Japanese indigo — and fabrics in blue and yellow. Of course, I wouldn’t mind that junior suite with the persimmon colored sofa. Or that room done in black white, red and blue. Just down the hall from my own huge room is a private roof garden just for guests with a view over London’s roof-tops. As you walk from the elevator to your room, you may be surprised by a witty portrait of Queen Elizabeth that owes perhaps a little to Andy Warhol.
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The exterior of Charlotte Street Hotel. (Photo: Charlotte Street Hotel)
I’ve been staying at Firmdale hotels since the Covent Garden opened more than 20 years ago. Each has a specific relationship to its neighborhood. Take Charlotte Street in the heart of Bloomsbury, the old literary ‘hood where the likes of Virginia Wolfe and Duncan Grant did their thing. The Charlotte Street has a Grant mural on the restaurant wall. The Haymarket, housed in an 18th century building, has a huge modern painting in the lobby; in the basement is a 55 foot swimming pool. In the Brumus Bar, the stools each has a dog embroidered on its back.
The pool at the Haymarket hotel. (Photo: Haymarket)
And this is only a tiny sample.
But this colorful, inventive décor does not get in the way of the practicalities: All the hotels have huge comfy beds and good lighting; there are outlets for your computer stuff (U.S. outlets, too) above every desk; big granite, marble and glass bathrooms; spacious closets. At Ham Yard, I spent far too much time soaking in the enormous tub, watching the TV on the marble wall.
But what I’ve always loved at the hotels is that every visit is a surprise. Will it be the tiny single at Number Sixteen its walls painted hot pink? A room at Dorset Square with red walls? The Knightsbridge, where the drawing room has blue and white sofas?
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A drawing room at the Covent Garden Hotel. (Photo: Covent Garden Hotel)
My favorite of the drawing rooms, though, is the one at Covent Garden with old Canadian maple wood paneling, brightly colored silk curtains in pinky orange, and tapestry covered sofas. I always want to come back, footsore and cold, to sit in front of the fireplace here.
Of her particular style, and aesthetic, Kit Kemp says, “I would never have anything in our hotels that I wouldn’t have in my own home.”
Over the decades, almost without knowing, the décor has taken over my life. I live in a loft in New York’s Soho and for a long time I was your minimalist sort of person (except for those socks left on the living room floor, always a problem for the minimalist). I had cream sofas; glass tables.
A Kit Kemp chair for Anthropologie. (Photo: Anthropologie)
Suddenly, it seemed, I had acquired a hot-pink rug, pale-green Italian linen slipcovers. And now, now that you can buy some of Kit Kemp’s things, I am considering her navy blue velvet chair from the collection for Anthropologie. Or maybe one of the hot orange chairs embroidered with a cat and a cherry tree. Definitely a couple of Moondog cushions, not to mention the “Sailor’s Farewell,” a textile with a sad little submariner saying goodbye as his ship goes down.
A Living Space, Kit Kemp’s book is available online, and in it a thousand wonderful ideas.
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