Martin Brudnizki on designing London’s most decadent night spots
Martin Brudnizki knows the formula for a good night out. For the interior designer, whose work has become synonymous with the higher end of the hospitality industry, the non negotiable is a statement bar. Take, for instance, the long, zinc-topped mahogany bar in Dean Street Townhouse (famously the spot where Prince Harry and Megan Markle first met), or the red-onyx bar in Sexy Fish, flanked by blue mermaids created by Damien Hirst, the rebellious artist who also made one-off sculptures for Bacchanalia, where 2,000-year-old statues accompany drinkers.
‘The bar is entertainment; it activates the space,’ explains Brudnizki, who has placed a dazzling, mirror-clad one at the centre of everything in his latest opening, Flute (named for a 19th-century flute-maker who used to have a workshop on the same street and not, in fact, the many glasses of champagne that are poured here everyday).
It is in the recently opened rooftop bar at the Broadwick Soho hotel where we met Brudnizki for a cocktail (his tipple of choice is a negroni sbagliato, FYI). It’s a space that the designer has described as ‘your grandmother’s Soho townhouse meets Studio 54’: an intoxicating collision of glitz, glamour and high camp. For an example, look to the corner of the room, where a small stage/DJ booth is backed by a gold-lamé curtain. ‘That’s a reference to Noel,’ says Brudnizki, citing the hotel’s owner, the entrepreneur Noel Hayden, who used to stand on a similar stage as a youngster, alongside his father and mother, at the family’s Bournemouth hotel, which would play host to magicians, comedians and more. ‘I thought, “Let’s pay homage to that past,”’ explains Brudnizki. ‘And, well, it’s very Soho.’
Hayden is the latest in a line of high-rolling clients to have entrusted Brudnizki with bringing the party atmosphere. Most notable, perhaps, is Richard Caring, the billionaire restaurateur who first allowed the designer to stretch his maximalist wings with the revamp of members’ club Annabel’s back in 2018. ‘He gave me a chance to explore, to see what works,’ says Brudnizki, who took Caring’s belief in him and ran with it. The excesses of that project – think clouds of silk flowers covering the ceiling in the ladies’ powder room, or a unicorn suspended bungee-style from a large hot-air balloon above the sweeping staircase – are still what many people think of when they picture his aesthetic.
Flute, though, is something subtly different. Brudnizki refers to it as ‘loose glamour’. It’s a look influenced by Soho itself – ‘a place that has always had an edge’. The designer was inspired by the original scenesters who have become part of the area’s mythos such as Molly Parkin, who was DJing at the now-closed Green Carnation Club well into her late seventies, or Muriel Belcher, whose trademark welcome of ‘Hello, cunty!’, which greeted
drinkers at her iconic club The Colony Room, is the stuff of legend. The latter shut its doors back in 2008, despite a small pop-up revival last year, and that’s a theme, too, when it comes to the bars Brudnizki remembers frequenting in his more hedonistic days. ‘When I moved to London, maybe 30 years ago now, every Saturday we would call and put ourselves on the list for one of Soho’s basement clubs,’ he recalls. ‘It has always been an exciting place.’ The area may have changed a lot in recent years, but the designer strongly believes that its energy hasn’t been quelled.
These days, he’s more likely be to found hosting parties with his partner, Jonathan Brook, at their West Sussex home (a grand affair that’s part of British prime minister Anthony Eden’s former country residence), 1930s classics by the likes of Noël Coward playing in the background, than falling out of a Soho club. However, Brudnizki can still conjure an air of debauchery like few others. In Flute, the details that set the scene include 1970s touches such as cork wall panelling – ‘it was something that would have been found in a lot of interiors during Soho’s heyday’ – and the layers upon layers of pattern that have become so synonymous with his work.
‘There is a lot in this space,’ he admits, adding that creating it ‘required a certain mindset, but there are rules’. When it comes to pattern, it’s the clash that is key. ‘Take a geometric print like this,’ he says, pointing to a nearby upholstered banquette. ‘It stands on a carpet that’s floral, more organic. They are completely different, and that’s why they work together.’ When it comes to colour, he’s rather devil-may-care: ‘I think you can mix any, as long as they’re tonally the same.’
The colour palette for Flute, which spans blush pink to pistachio green, is lighter than some of his more overtly sexy interiors, but that is because, as a rooftop bar with a wraparound terrace, it is often bathed in light. Much in the same way that he leans into the darkness in spaces such as Broadwick Soho’s downstairs restaurant Dear Jackie, with its quilted red-silk walls, in Flute the brightness is intensified with mirrored surfaces, brass details and a ceiling clad in glittering hexagonal mirrored mosaic tiles.
The art throughout (the remit of Brook, an art consultant) is, says Brudnizki, ‘an eclectic mix – but that’s sort of what Soho is, too’. ‘It’s a little melting pot,’ he adds. ‘It didn’t matter where you were born, or where you stood in the social-class system – everyone would come to Soho. And that’s the idea behind the art. There’s figurative, abstract, photography…’
Speaking of photography, Brudnizki is not immune to the delights of an Instagram-worthy bathroom. It’s a design flourish that now seems almost essential when it comes to hospitality interiors, but he calls these moments ‘by-products’, with the narrative thrust of each venue’s scheme remaining the main consideration. In Bacchanalia, his restaurant in a former Porsche showroom in Mayfair that takes its inspirations from Greek and Roman mythology, elaborate mosaics feature in both the men’s and women’s bathrooms – one black, to signal a descent into the underworld, and the other decorated to resemble an orchard with golden apples, representing the fabled Garden of Hesperides. In Flute, says Brudnizki: ‘You go into the bathrooms and see beautiful wallpaper with drawings of the boxes in a theatre, but all of the people are watching you.’ A little peep-show-esque voyeurism feels, again, very appropriate for the Soho of old. ‘If you get it, you get it,’ says the designer, with a barely perceptible smirk.
All these layers, references and treats for the eyes are there to achieve one aim: to make sure you are suitably amused. ‘Hospitality is about enjoyment,’ says Brudnizki. ‘I want people to walk in and smile, to feel as if they are going to have the best time.’ And there’s a version of that good time to suit all tastes. As the designer puts it, his studio has ‘many feathers to its hat’. People may know him for his outlandish landmark projects – Annabel’s, Broadwick Soho – but that’s not the full picture. ‘I hate pigeonholes,’ he explains. ‘I understand what minimalism is. I know what maximalism is. I understand modernism and classicism. For me, those are the four pillars in design that I would use. Then, I mix it all together.’ The result of that blend may sometimes surprise Brudnizki fans, but it’s all about staying faithful to a sense of space. What rings true in Soho may not work for Mayfair. Similarly, the scheme for New York’s Fifth Avenue Hotel, completed in late 2023, would be wrong for Hôtel Barrière Fouquet’s, a new opening in the city’s Tribeca neighbourhood.
Brudnizki’s studio is now working on projects in Tokyo, and its reach is becoming ever more international. ‘It’s fascinating to look at how we can create narratives in other cultures,’ he says, ‘but you can never know if you’re getting it right or not – it’s about an emotion. It’s about the fantasy of it all.’ Whether you’re going for dinner or drinks, or staying in one of Brudnizki’s hotels, he wants the interior to ‘invigorate you; to give you that boost of energy’ that can make or break an evening. mbds.com
