Tag: marble

The bogs of Bayswater

Christian Huhnt recounts an evening at the launch of La Suite West

I have a personal connection to Inverness Terrace as twice in my life I’ve had to crash at my friend’s place there. It’s less than a minute from the new Anouska Hempel-designed hotel, La Suite West, and runs parallel to Queensway.

Bursting with cheap Chinese, Arabic and Mediterranean restaurants, this is an area that has great transport links to Oxford Street and the city centre that is also a very short walk from Hyde Park. As a result it’s full of tourists. Here, they arrive and depart every day, wandering around with heavy luggage trying to find their way. Most of them look like they’re hopelessly lost and in need of a good scrub. The tourist density here is almost equal to that of Victoria Station’s Gatwick Express exit or the Piazza San Marco in Venice.

The lobby of La Suite West, 41 – 51 Inverness Terrace, London, W2 3JN

Party guests at the launch of La Suite West

Please don’t get me wrong though. I have always felt that this place, the heart of Bayswater, has been totally underestimated. It is charming with lots of London Plane trees and a very cosmopolitan feel. Lady Weinberg, better known as the visionary designer and sometime actress Anouska Hempel, plainly agreed as she integrated all that was good about this atmosphere into the hotel that she has cleverly designed.

“Let’s celebrate with a little champagne”

Guests at the party included the British supermodel and VogueTV presenter Jade Parfitt and Duncan McDonald of Propeller Communications

Our party correspondent Christian Huhnt and Inga Buschke enjoying the launch of La Suite West

Angelo Valentino also represented “The Steeple Times” with his daughter

Guests at the launch of La Suite West

Susan Ansary, a regular on the party circuit, even put in an appearance

Arriving at the hotel entrance, you get a feel of how important it was for Hempel to grasp this outside space and use it as a communal environment for the guests. I was invited to visit on the evening of the hotel’s launch and this was the area where guests congregated. Here, along with the champagne, they served molecular bites including Nutella ice cream that had been shock frozen using liquid nitrogen. This, they told me, had been done to avoid ice crystals appearing and the result was a very smooth and creamy texture. I’d put money on this having left the menu now though as just days later I read news reports of a girl in Lancaster losing her stomach after drinking a cocktail made in a similar manner. With hindsight, I must say that my stomach is very glad that they got the measure just right.

When you enter the hotel, which first opened to guests three months ago, you feel as if you are visiting a Scientology church or traversing the ramp of a Star Wars space shuttle. Coming “onboard,” you enter a reception hall, in which a friendly concierge welcomes you. The whole interior is very minimalistic and has been reduced to hues of only black and white. A long fireplace leads you deeper into this shuttle, onto a main corridor, past the dining rooms and connects into to labyrinthian walkways that transport guests to their appointed suites.

I was told that the hotel rooms are all decorated in the same style and have similar layouts. They differ only slightly in size. On the evening of the launch, the largest could be admired and all of them had a very independent feel as they benefited from their own access to the street. Essentially, the rooms are quite small but all offer the contemporary luxury that any jetsetter would expect. The bathrooms have a particularly sophisticated feel and are clad in marble throughout. The extendable televisions hidden in the bed frames perfectly fitted with the minimalist design, but where this became bizarrely rigorous was the flexible water hose in the bathrooms that dispensed with the need for good old European toilet paper.

One of the hotel’s bedrooms

A toilet at La Suite West – complete with hose attachment but minus loo roll

La Suite West is a great step forward. In fact, it is a very audacious move towards upgrading a whole area that clearly has potential for more and which, at the time of writing, does not offer anything better than shabby hostels and seedy bed and breakfasts. The hotel is a well-arranged concept and evidently Hempel put a lot of thought into the execution of it. The design is well composed, but being German I did notice some of the carpets and minor details could have been a little better.

One last piece of advice: the management might want to ship in some bog roll. Some ageing Brit might decide to show up and I’m sure nobody would want a scene from Fawlty Towers to be played out in that rather smart lobby.

La Suite West, 41 – 51 Inverness Terrace, London, W2 3JN. Telephone: +44 (0) 20 3642 3928. Website: http://lasuitewest-px.rtrk.co.uk

Images by Andreas Kirchberger and Christian Huhnt.

October 12, 2012
Why pay less?

Living life to the full Donald G. Abbey style

“Why pay less when you can pay more?” is a mantra that some strangely choose to live by. In my time, I have encountered a couple with a different Ferrari for each day of the week, someone who proudly declared their home had a window for each day of the year and an heiress who insists upon the local baker feeding her dog daily with a freshly baked caviar pie.

When I discovered a house in California priced at $78,000,000, I didn’t expect to subsequently find out that the same vendor is also selling another of his homes in Montana at the very same price. Having done a little research into Donald G. Abbey, the commercial real estate tycoon who owns both The Bradbury Estate and Shelter Island, I discovered that here indeed is another personality whose excess knows no bounds.

I suppose when people sell homes of this worth, the asking price they set is quite irrelevant. “What,” I’m sure they ask, “is $5 million between friends?” Equally, when it comes to developing such properties, characters of this nature do not show any reserve. Bling is most definitely the order of the day and the larger and flashier one can build, I guess, the better.

An aerial shot of The Bradbury Estate, 172 Bliss Canyon Road, Bradbury, California, CA 91008, USA

The front elevation of the main house

The owner and his guests need not get wet on arrival in their limousines

Abbey’s Bradbury Estate is a case in point. This vast property consists of a 33,000 square foot main house with 7 bedrooms and 10 bathrooms. It is almost entirely made of French limestone and includes a chef’s kitchen with a pizza oven, a 2,000 bottle wine cellar, an oak paneled elevator and a leather paneled poker room. Bedrooms include domes with hand painted frescos and in addition there is a detached 6,700 square foot guest house above a 10 car garage and a 5,700 square foot pool house with a catering kitchen, gym, massage room and a subterranean EPA certified 25 yard rifle shooting range complete with a gun storage room and 2 large safes.

The hall of the main residence comes complete with a gallery and bar

A vast library provides the perfect space to enjoy a good book

The library’s glazed ceiling

Another palatial reception room

The house features a rather impressive kitchen

Mr Abbey’s copper bath tub comes complete with a mat displaying his initials in front of it

Within the 8 acre grounds there is a cross shaped infinity-edged pool – perhaps Mr Abbey is religious – that is “just a few feet short of Olympic length.” It requires 350,000 gallons of water if it is to be filled to capacity. Adjoining this is something even more ludicrous: a 1,000,000 gallon, temperature-controlled rainbow trout pond that cost some $8,000,000 to construct. The pond is said to be “adorned with perennials,” is heated by a custom gravity separator with UV filters and is “chilled for the trout by a 300-tonne central cooling plant.” At Bradbury, thoughts of water crisis in Sudan and Ethiopia come way behind the needs of Abbey’s rainbows.

The rear of the house viewed from above The Bradbury Estate’s $8,000,000 trout pond

The estate’s 350,000 gallon near Olympic length cross shaped infinity edged swimming pool

The property’s EPA certified 25 yard rifle range

For those wanting to avoid California’s UV rays, Bradbury also boasts an acre of porches, decks, loggia and walkways. A 600ft blue stone driveway completes this “once in a lifetime trophy property” that “belongs in the portfolio of the most astute collector” and it has space for “60 foot truck access or multiple limousines.”

When Mr Abbey has tired of California, he is able to retreat to his own island in Montana. The 24 acre Shelter Island on Flathead Lake includes 7,000 feet of frontage to the water, a world class sporting clay course and 3 computer controlled tracks and docking systems that allow boats to be landed in the dry dock without riders ever leaving the craft or handling a line. The island is powered via an underground armoured utility cable that carry 12,000 amps to it along with CAT-5 computer cable and phonelines and the main entertaining space features a mammoth television of some 120-inches in size.

An aerial view of Donald G. Abbey’s Shelter Island

Mr Abbey’s passion for copper continues with a conservatory made out of the metal on the lakeside elevation of the main residence on Shelter Island

The Great Room of the main residence on Shelter Island

Mr Abbey’s passion for fine wines is displayed in a bar and tasting room in the property

The owner and his guests can access their boats without having to go anywhere near the water

Abbey has built over 44,000 square foot of accommodation on his island. The main house has 5 bedrooms and 8 bathrooms. His “Great Room” features ceilings of some 45 foot in height and in addition to yet another indoor shooting range, there is a kitchen that woudn’t look out of place in The Savoy hotel.

In the UK, the property most similar to anything Abbey has built has to be Updown Court at Windlesham in Surrey. Developed by a former bricklayer named Leslie Allen-Vercoe, the house was described by him as being: “The most important residence to be built in England since the 19^th century.” Architectural critics did not agree and some went as far as to say that it looked like: “A cross between a Tesco superstore and Center Parcs.”

Allen-Vercoe’s behemoth of a house is gargantuan in size. With 103 rooms it includes 24 bedrooms, 5 swimming pools, a 2-lane bowling alley, a squash court, a floodlit tennis court, a 50-seat cinema and a panic room. The heated driveway that led to the house is entirely made of marble and cost some £2.5 million to construct but plainly none of this appealed to the market as it languished for sale at a price of £70,000,000 from 2006 to 2011 before being repossessed by the Irish National Asset Management Agency (NAMA). Updown Court was sold for half the original asking price to a foreign buyer in October 2011 and is, I believe, due to undergo extensive remodeling.

Updown Court, Chertsey Road, Windlesham, Surrey, GU20 6HY, UK

Allen Vercoe once stated: “If Elton John were a house, he’d be Updown Court.” Equally, I imagine if Mr Abbey’s residences were to be compared to any celebrities they’d be the vulgar car crash that is Donatella Versace and the ludicrous money obsessed singer with a dollar sign in her name, Ke$ha.

Updown Court, Shelter Island and The Bradbury Estate all illustrate that money cannot buy you good taste. I suppose, though, that those who ultimately come to live in them will have plenty of space to choose how and where to enjoy their own form of misery.

For more information about Donald G. Abbey, go to: http://www.theabbeyco.com

For information on both The Bradbury Estate and Shelter Island, contact Bob Hurwitz of the Hurwitz James Company on +1 310-477-8865. Website: http://www.hurwitzjamesco.com

A website devoted to The Bradbury Estate can be viewed at: http://www.bradburyestate.com

A video of Shelter Island can be watched at: http://vimeo.com/11404637

For more details on Updown Court, go to: http://www.updowncourt.com/

October 4, 2012
A Monopolistic mansion

Could 100 Park Lane become the property that achieves the accolade of being Britain’s highest priced private residence?

Occupied by property giants Hammerson since 1969 as their corporate headquarters, the 44,000 square foot Grade II* listed Dudley House is one of Park Lane’s finest landmark properties. It is supposedly about to come to the market as a single-family residence and a price of up to £250,000,000 could be achieved.

The Park Lane façade of Dudley House, 100 Park Lane, Mayfair, London, W1Y 4AR

Dudley House, the only remaining example of an early Park Lane mansion, is named after the Dudley Ward family and built on the site of an earlier house with stabling. The site was acquired by John, 6th Baron Ward, in 1742 but it wasn’t until 1759 that the 3^rd Viscount Dudley and Ward began “judicious alterations” to the house. Having paid £6,510 at auction for his late half-brother’s interests in Dudley House, he added an entrance portico and stained glass windows whilst his successor, an ”eccentric intellectual and politician,” set about turning the building into “the most pleasing object in the vicinity.”

Works by the architect William Atkinson, carried out between 1827 and 1829, included a screen of Ionic columns, fine ceilings and gilded plasterwork. They remain to this day but it is the 1855 alterations of Samuel Whitfield Daukes that are truly impressive. Carried out on the instructions of the 1^st Earl of Dudley, these included a magnificent 80ft picture gallery designed to showcase a collection of Italian and Flemish paintings and a vast 50ft ballroom.

The picture gallery at Dudley House

In 1895, Dudley House, which is situated at 100 Park Lane, briefly passed out of the Dudley Ward family and into the ownership of a “hard-headed South African mining magnate” named Sir Joseph Benjamin Robinson. Sir John Hubert Ward bought the building back in 1912 for £10,000 and remained there until his death in 1938.

Wartime bombing caused significant damage and this was not repaired until Hammerson took over Dudley House. Having hired Sir Robert McAlpine and Sons as contractors, designs by Sir Basil Spence and Anthony Blee were executed to restore the building. Hammerson remained there until 2006 when they jointly sold the leasehold interest on the house with freeholders Grosvenor for £37.4 million to Bristol Isles Ltd., a private investment company controlled by Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thana, the emir of Qatar.

His Highness Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani (1952 – )

The ensuing renovation, directed by the designer Alberto Pinto, has been described as “tasteful” and is said to have cost some £75 million. The resulting air-conditioned home features some 17 bedrooms and 14 reception rooms.

It’ll be fascinating to see who “Doesn’t pass go!” and purchases this mammoth mansion (if indeed His Highness Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani decides not to move in himself).

For more details on Alberto Pinto, go to: http://www.albertopinto.com

For more information about His Highness Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani: http://www.qatarembassy.net/emir.asp

May 25, 2012
Leslie "Les" Allen-Vercoe (also known as Les Vercoe)

This property developer tried to sell Britain’s ugliest crib, Updown Court at Windlesham in Surrey, for £70 million in 2008. It languished on the market for years and looked like a cross between a Tesco store and Center Parcs. The mansion included five swimming pools, a heated marble driveway and 103 rooms. Nobody loved it but after it was repossessed in 2011, it was finally sold on for £35 million. Meanwhile, Allen-Vercoe appeared in the dock at Southwark Crown Court in 2012 in relation to a case involving the £10 million mortgage fraudster Joanne Sarah Pier (also known as Zoe May Fletcher and Maria Micheala). He was cleared.

May 23, 2012
A chic serpent

A review of Roberto Cavalli Vodka

The Italian fashion designer Roberto Cavalli is best known for using exotic wild animal prints in his creations and for giving jeans a “sand-blasted look” that has become the standard style for the majority of brands.

Roberto Cavalli

Born in 1940 in Florence, Cavalli sells his main lines in over 50 countries and owns various clothing brands as well as producing watches, perfumes and eyewear. Married to Eva Düringer, who he met when he was a judge at the Miss Universe 1977 pageant, Cavalli’s success is often attributed to his success at maximising returns from “celebrity endorsement.” Victoria Beckham, Halle Berry, Brigitte Bardot, Mary J Blige, Elton John, Sean “P Diddy” Coombs, Kate Moss and Shakira all number amongst his muses and customers.

The father of five children from two marriages, Cavalli chose the symbol of the snake as the mascot for his fashion house and most of his inspiration is said to come from nature itself. His brands especially prospered in the United States after the plot of an entire episode of Sex and the City centred upon a Roberto Cavalli dress but it is his wife who is credited with transforming his business fortunes. “I was thinking maybe to stop,” Cavalli told Time International, “… but then Eva became interested so I started—for her—to involve myself again.” Today, his net worth is estimated at $500 million.

Roberto Cavalli Vodka

After being told about Roberto Cavalli Vodka, I got in touch with Tommaso Cavalli, the eldest son of Roberto Cavalli, who has built himself a successful career breeding horses and developing the family’s wine and spirit range. Based in Chianti, where the family also produce their Tenuta Degli Dei range of wines, Tommaso Cavalli, in a 2010 interview for DNA India, suggested:

“When people hear about Cavalli Vodka or Wine, they want to try [it] out because of the name.”

This indeed tallies as there have been various attempts at cashing in on fashion and celebrity in the vodka market in recent years. Most, though, have floundered or been trounced as shoddy attempts to take on Grey Goose and Belvedere. I haven’t heard, for example, much of Donald Trump’s vodka since 2006 and critics described it as one that “will produce a not-so luxurious hangover.” Roberto Cavalli Vodka, launched in 2005, however, has deservedly proved itself truly to be an exception to this trend.

Tommaso Cavalli pictured with his family’s vodka

Packaged in a stylish frosted bottle, this is one that has been designed to look elegantly sophisticated. Tall and slender, with an appropriately snake like climbing up it, this is a bottle that suitably reflects the “ultra premium status” of Cavalli’s brands.

The vodka itself is 40% ABV and uniquely is made entirely in Italy. The purest water is taken from the Monta Rosa slopes and the finest of grains come from the valleys where the South-Western Alps meet the River Po, Italy’s longest river. Filtration through flakes of Italian Carrara marble results in a taste that I found subtly peppery with a slight hint of citrus. Roberto Cavalli Vodka, as a result, makes a perfect martini but also works well in long drinks.

Of the vodka that bares his name, Roberto Cavalli concludes:

“I love the pureness of vodka, especially of my vodka: it is like water and fire coming together in a single element.”

If you’re looking to add an element of style to your drinks cabinet, make sure you add a bottle of Roberto Cavalli Vodka. It can only add to your status as one who’ll be considered both super cool and super chic.

For more information on Roberto Cavalli Vodka, go to: http://www.robertocavallivodka.com

Purchase Roberto Cavalli Vodka through TheDrinkshop.com for £48.95 for a 70cl bottle at: http://www.thedrinkshop.com/products/nlpdetail.php?prodid=3682

Follow Roberto Cavalli on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/roberto_cavalli

April 3, 2012