British Vogue | January 2001

HOTEL DELUXE

As slick behind the scenes as it is in front, 's Sanderson is the London hotel that everyone wants to see and be seen in. Christa D'Souza checks in during London Fashion Week.

By Christa D'Souza

It is 4 o'clock on a damp Monday afternoon, the eve of a private cocktail party that is hosting at his Sanderson hotel in Berners Street to kick off London Fashion Week and, as usual, the lobby is teeming with calm, decorative activity. In stalks Jade Jagger, hair sodden from the rain, giving the floor a quick once over before disappearing into one of the Galaxy lifts by the billiard room. Out of the other emerges Boyzone's Stephen Gately, looking furtive in an oversized sheepskin coat with the collar turned up. Watching him intently is a gaggle of Japanese guests, dressed head to toe in Burberry, and a couple of Italian fashionistas lolling on a bright blue, cartoonishly elongated chaise longue.

Behind the front desk, meanwhile, upon which sits a massive vase of spot lit hydrangea, is a row of slick, grey suited reception staff who could not be friendlier, but somehow make me feel a little awkward about my suitcase. (Thank God it doesn't have wheels.) After I've checked in, a model like bellboy leads me to the lifts. Inside, techno music pulsates softly, much to the curiosity of two rather straight laced businessmen who are also being led up to their rooms. Then, for about five seconds, we are suspended between floors. "Beam me up, Scotty," quips one of them. Just as my fellow passengers are beginning to get slightly hysterical, however, we start moving again. Did we get stuck or did we stop for a reason? You never quite know with a place as self-consciously cool as this.

We get out at the sixth floor and the bellboy leads me down a dimly lit, impossibly narrow corridor (no obese people in this hotel, obviously), opening the door to my room with a proud flourish. Before us lies a whiter than white bedroom cum bathroom, divided only by two layers of gossamer thin curtains. There's a huge silver sleigh bed set at an angle in the middle of the room, a big white egg for a footrest and an important-looking objet on a pedestal, which turns out to be an interlocking pair of pewter dumbbells (designed, like everything in the hotel, by French creative guru Philippe Starck). The piece de resistance, though, is the lavatory, which is housed in a green glass cubicle and, by the looks of it, has absolutely no soundproofing whatsoever. This is a little worrying since I have invited my other half to stay for the night, but then perhaps that's the point. Bathroom as theatre, and so forth.

Bathroom as theatre, lobby as theatre, model like doormen with bits of curly wire behind their ears, and concierges with their own laptops. These have all been part of 's philosophy ever since he opened Morgans in 1984. A slick little hotel in midtown New York with rooms designed by Starck (who remains his design protégé), Morgans was Schrager's first foray into the hotel business. But it was his next New York hotel, Royalton - with its Yves Klein blue carpets, its hipper than hip restaurant and edgy lobby scene - that became the blueprint for his empire of funky boutique hotels. Thereafter, any hotel that he opened became the place to be - from Delano, his "urban resort" in South Beach, Miami (appropriated by Madonna and her crowd from the moment it opened); to Mondrian in LA, with its Skybar, and St Martins Lane in London, whose Light Bar and restaurant, Asia de Cuba, were instantly judged to be hang out hits by Jade Jagger et al.

Really, it's all rather reminiscent of the way Jade's mother, Bianca - along with Andy Warhol and Halston - deemed New York's Studio 54 the place to be back in the Seventies. But this being the Noughties, it's all about hotels rather than nightclubs and restaurants. Actually, make that hotels, nightclubs and restaurants rolled into one. Schrager's hotels are our equivalent of an upscale mall - eating drinking, sleeping, people watching, shopping, even billiards-playing, all under one roof. One stop shopping, in other words. We are such a nation of lazy bones, us Brits, it's no wonder the concept has caught on.

While Jade and Dan were hanging out at St Martins Lane, however, the hyperindustrious Schrager was hard at work on Sanderson. And as soon as it opened for business, that, of course, was where everyone migrated. It's the hotel that Schrager feels best exemplifies his ethos of "new luxury". Set right in the heart of London's garment district, Sanderson is housed in a former wallpaper showroom. It's such a pity its original owners never got to see what Schrager did with their beloved building. What would they make of the Salvador Dali red lips sofa in the lobby? Or the yellow "tongue" chair? Or the huge Light Box electronic installation, which one friend of mine insists is a magnified image of Philippe Starck's own sperm?

Perhaps they would approve. Madonna and Guy Ritchie do. So do Ricky Martin and Matthew Williamson, both of whom hosted parties at the hotel when it opened last spring. And so do Kate Moss, Jay Jopling, Beck and Alexander McQueen, all of whom were guests at the various "stealth" openings Schrager threw to introduce his latest baby to London. Then there's Lady Helen Taylor, who, along with Madonna (of course), Princess Rosario of Bulgaria, JoaquÌn CortÈs and David Collins, helped host a cocktail party for Sargent Cancer Cure for Children (one of last spring's best bashes); Robbie Williams (who swears that the women who hang out at Sanderson are the most amazing he's ever seen in London); and, of course, Jade, who virtually lives here when she's not in Ibiza. Musicians, designers, dot.com millionaires, aristos, models (super and manqués) - you name it, everyone rubs shoulders at Sanderson. Which is all music to Schrager's ears.

He is, without doubt, the king of the hip hotel. But being the master of Zeitgeist that he is, the description slightly repulses him. "You know, I hate the word 'hip'," he says from his office in New York (typically, he cannot be here for the Fashion Week party because he is in the middle of planning another for the imminent opening of his latest Manhattan hotel, Hudson). "I like the word 'subversive'." He considers Sanderson the most subversive of his hotels to date. "The idea is to do something contrary, something that violates the status quo," he explains, "and as long as it is well executed, it works. If it's not well executed, then it's just trendy."

An hour later, I head for the Long Bar (about 13 metres long), which is situated between the lobby and the restaurant, Spoon, and where the cocktail party is to be held. It is only 5.45pm, but almost all of Starck's "eye" bar chairs are occupied - by fashion folk grabbing espressos before the next show starts, besuited locals getting sozzled on £9 cocktails and Fendi bagged female twosomes too busy looking at the front door to talk to each other. Indeed, the scene is such a tableau of late Nineties Manhattan, I can hardly believe we are within five minutes' walk of Top Shop.

Around them swirl the staff, steely eyed with concentration for the festivities tonight, polishing the Murano glass chandeliers and aligning the endless layers of curtains. Although it is still raining, the restaurant crew is setting up outside, in the Japanese-style courtyard. "We have 400 people coming," says one waitress, staring doubtfully up at the thunderous sky, "where else are we going to put the overflow". As trays of gleaming champagne glasses whizz back and forth, a semi-circle of leggy, black clad cocktail waitresses forms around Ondine, the bar manageress, for their party pep talk. Ondine, a dead ringer for Donatella Versace from behind, is answerable to Henry, the bar manager, who has been seconded here from St Martins Lane. A big burly young man who could double as a bodyguard, Henry seems preoccupied. The fact that the lobby is not licensed means that no one will be able to leave the Long Bar with a drink in hand. Then there are all these people sitting here who haven't been invited tonight. Come 7.30pm, they will all have to be asked, very politely, to leave.

In the loading bay at the back of the hotel, Laurent, the London chef appointed by Spoon's owner, French restaurateur Alain Ducasse, is presiding over long makeshift tables that have been set up to assemble the elaborate canapés: row upon row of Guerande salted and peppered soft boiled eggs, mini caviar parfaits served in little porcelain spoons and bonsai sized BLTs with spiky strips of chargrilled bacon protruding from them like punk haircuts. Back in the sparkling aluminum kitchen, batches of the chef's special roasted chicken wings are being slid into ovens. "Ere, Didier," shouts a large cockney accented man in white overalls. "Don't burn 'em, will ya?" As if.

One floor down, tables laid with white linen tablecloths (custom designed by Porthault) have been lined up like beds in a hospital corridor in preparation for breakfast tomorrow morning. Because of tonight's festivities and the hotel's full occupancy, the run on room service tomorrow morning is expected to be frantic. Around the corner, in another white tiled and stainless-steel room smelling like Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, are the pastry kitchens. Tray after tray of mini chocolate "pizzas" and chocolate Louis Quinze bars (a rich truffle specialty of Ducasse's Monaco restaurant, Louis Quinze), are waiting to be baked in the huge ovens, while Sebastien, the brooding pastry-chef, carefully applies the finishing touches to an army of individual apple flans. This is London, remember, not New York - there shouldn't be much wastage on the pudding front tonight.

Another floor down, in the rabbit warren-like staff quarters, waiters and waitresses on the night shift are putting on their regulation black cufflinks (a notice pasted to the wall warns that anyone who loses them will be fined £2), or snatching a quick bite to eat at the fluorescent lit staff canteen. Making myself a coffee in a plastic cup, I sit down between a friendly looking waitress and some Balkan sounding chambermaids. The dish of the day is chicken, which the waitress tells me has been shipped over from France - just like all the other food in the canteen.

On her way upstairs, she shows me the training manual that every Spoon employee owns. It makes fascinating reading. There's the "no bullshit" rule (if you do not know the answer to a question, you do not make one up); and there's the "five foot" rule (acknowledge all guests with eye contact and, if possible, a greeting of the day - practice this whenever a guest is within five feet of you). Further down the page, there are exhortations such as "make a friend every day!", "be proud of your work!" and "have fun and make money!" Would that every British institution made such reading compulsory, eh?

Just past the canteen is housekeeping, run by Peter, a former head butler at the Hempel. If the lobby is the soul of the hotel, then Peter likes to think of his tiny, windowless office as its gristly spinal cord. If, for example, I am a recovering alcoholic and need the minibar to be emptied before I arrive, if I need to find out whether my room is facing east (to pray, that is) or if I need to know the thread count of the bed sheets (450 per square inch - twice the usual figure, as Jennifer Lopez discovered when she last stayed), then housekeeping is where I would call.

Peter, who has a staff of 82 and is as much of a perfectionist as Schrager, would not dream of letting his chambermaids loose on the 150 rooms until they have done at least 10 days' training. Since many of them do not speak English, this involves studying the Look Book. This is a collection of highly detailed photographs, taken by Starck's design team, of each of the 20 room types available to guests (such as deluxe with gym, penthouse and superior disabled), so that everything looks exactly the way the management team at the hotel's headquarters in New York likes it. The silver tissue box, for example, cannot be placed anywhere other than behind the bathroom amenities; the dove grey Pashmina (available to guests for £300) flung oh so casually on the bed has to be "gathered in the middle, with the tassels facing away from the door", just as it is in the photograph. "It's better that way," says Peter, who sounds like Mr. Hudson from Upstairs, Downstairs. "Nothing is ever up for discussion."

But then, almost everything has to be sanctioned by New York. That's the way it works around here. "The theatrical, the quirky and the iconic - that's all the outside," insists Schrager. "That's the show. Behind that, there is a hard driving, very controlled business enterprise, because, if it is not financially successful, then I don't have the opportunity to keep doing these things and being adventurous."

Back upstairs on the first floor in Agua, the hotel's spa - a 10,000 foot split level space hung with layer upon layer of billowing, luminous white voile - customers are prettying themselves for tonight. In the waiting room, a tented area in which the action - or rather, relaxation-revolves around a bubbling chrome cauldron, Jade's boyfriend Dan Macmillan and I are awaiting our respective treatments. All these curtains make me feel slightly uneasy, particularly since I'm in for a full leg and bikini wax. But my therapist, Melanie, a sweet Australian girl, tells me that no one has barged into a treatment 'room' by mistake yet. She turns out to be so good at her job that I fall asleep almost as soon as she gets to work. This must surely be a record in depilatory circles.

Apparently I'm not the only one who could develop an addiction to Agua, the first branch of which was opened by Schrager's estranged wife, Rita, at Delano. Jade, for example, thinks the spa at Sanderson is the best place to recover from too many Purple Bar Martinis. Karen Elson says she didn't even bother to unpack when she arrived for Paul Smith's show last week, instead heading straight for one of Agua's six-hour jet lag treatments. Fellow model Erin O'Connor usually plumps for the 90 minute Eve Lom facial; and the TV presenter Gail Porter, I notice, has signed the visitor's book twice today.

By 7.30pm, the tasselled rope and purple carpet have been placed outside the front door and a group of hopeful paparazzi starts to cluster. An hour later, and it's taking at least 20 minutes to get from one end of the Long Bar to the other, with a lot of the guests braving it outside, huddled happily under those massive overhead heaters every outdoor restaurant has in LA. Although there is no VIP area, there are plenty of "919s". (This is Schrager's own special code for VIP and the number that restaurant staff inscribe on the reservation list beside the names of important people who've booked tables.) Tonight's 919s include Jonny Lee Miller, Ray Winstone and Damon Albarn, all of whom seem to be gravitating towards the DJ. It is far too loud to talk, so most are swaying slightly in time to the music. If there were a dance floor, they would be on it by now.

In walks Jade with Dan trailing behind her, looking quite different from the rather weedy seeming youth I saw in the spa earlier and wearing a smart camel coat and a silver spike through his left ear. My toes have already been impaled twice by someone's Jimmy Choos and, for a brief respite, I wander out into the lobby towards the hotel shop, the Gold Kiosk, where, alongside newspapers, magazines and aspirin, essentials - such as a Lucien Pellat Finet cashmere baby pinafore (£265) and a Bloom cushion covered in a Pucci print fabric (£175) - are for sale. Within seconds, though, I am gently relieved of my drink by a pretty girl with a bit of curly wire coming out of her ear. Henry, standing squarely in front of the "sperm box" by the front doors, merely shrugs apologetically.

By 12.30am, alcohol has stopped being served in the Long Bar, but the party continues. Jade, Dan and entourage are sitting at Spoon's top table smoking Marlboro Lights and eating pink Bubble Gum ice-cream from lopsided glass goblets. Feeling a touch lopsided myself from mixing raspberry Martinis and wine, I head for the sixth floor and just about navigate the way to my room. (There's a reason all the corridors are so narrow and dimly lit - Schrager says that their tunnel effect forces guests to keep their voices down.) As I insert my key into the lock, however, I find it doesn't fit. When I go back to the front desk, the receptionist politely announces that the electronic key system has temporarily crashed and that I'll need a bellboy to let me in. Although it's almost 2am, drinks with edible pansies floating on the top are still being served in the Purple Bar and a desultory game of billiards is going on next door.

As I wander blearily into Spoon for breakfast the next morning, there is no evidence at all of the festivities last night, thanks to the army of cleaners who, since 3am, have been diligently polishing, scrubbing, buffing, and even repainting the white skirting boards. Mind you, there aren't many of us here: American Vogue's Plum Sykes in a tight skirt and a pair of very high heels, a lone businessman reading The New York Times and, at top table, a collection of near comatose male models and their bookers, all staring at the table in silence. Oh, and the chef, looking very Gallic this morning in a blue and white sweater and horn rimmed glasses. It's amazing to think that he left here at lam and is back six hours later.

I choose an egg white omelette and a cup of the best coffee I've tasted since the last time I was in New York, but blanch slightly at the £21 bill. It is by no means cheap here. The tube of Berocca tablets in my room costs £9, and the 1990 Dom Perignon Rose, which sells for about £75 in Oddbins, costs £300 in the Purple Bar. Indeed, rooms here are almost on a par, in terms of cost, with Claridge's (my room, for example, is £650 a night). But so what? Where else in London might you find a cardamom Martini? Or a purple billiard table? Or staff who work as if they were shareholders? If you object to the exorbitant prices, you probably aren't meant to be here anyway. "Sanderson is not for everybody," agrees Schrager. "We call it our 'couture' hotel. It can't be mass produced, cut out like a cookie or taken everywhere. I'm not interested in having bus tours pull up outside the front doors. It doesn't work like that, but for those people who do respond to it... they belong here.

"People used to accuse me of elitism in the Studio 54 days," he adds, "but it's not really about that. There's no door policy here. It's all about doing something on the edge - something original that naturally finds its own audience. It's like a self operative editing process, and I rely on that process. I mean, where is the rule written that you're not supposed to play music during dinner at a restaurant? People want to be challenged. You just have to give them the means to be."

Suddenly desperate to share the Sanderson experience with my three year old son, who happens to be just around the corner in GapKids with his nanny, I call them on the mobile and tell them to come round for tea. But after three minutes of them being there, I break out into a cold sweat. The entire contents of the minibar have been tipped onto the floor; all the toiletries wrested from their pretty silver boxes, the white egg footrest upturned and the sheets streaked with chocolate. And he doesn't want to leave. In fact, he loves it so much that he shrieks like a stuck pig when his nanny tries to tell him gently that it's time to go. We eventually lure him down to the lobby, where Karen Elson is posing - virtually topless - on the red lips for a Vogue photographer. Model Frankie Rayder, in town for the Luella Bartley show, is wandering around looking for a light; and Philippe Starck, just in from New York, is vainly attempting to persuade one of the reception staff to give him a pass key. The door system crisis continues.

Because this is my last night at Sanderson, I invite three friends to Spoon for dinner. Despite its exorbitant prices, sniffy reviews and a menu that you need a Ph.D. in Maths to decipher, it's packed. Among the diners are a ornery looking Starck, chewing on a pair of chopsticks, a couple of hairdressers, Sir Tim Rice and Sir Mark Weinberg (husband of London hotelier Anouska Hempel). Luckily, we do not have to wade through the poster sized menus. Our handsome maitre d' informs us that the chef has decided to choose for us (a reprimand, perhaps, for only ordering a salad for lunch). Apparently we will be having something called Sexy Spoon.

Dish after exquisite dish arrives at the table and many of them are chef's specials: a cappuccino of girolles, cream of frogs' legs soup, caviar and broccoli parfait, lobster bolognese, truffle risotto, roast saddle of lamb, fillet of beef with shallot confite marmalade... Everything is so delicious that we temporarily forget that we weren't very hungry in the first place.

The bill, when it arrives, comes to £428. Would Schrager think it terribly subversive, I can't help wondering, if we were to take some of the leftovers home?

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