The entrance is one of London’s best preserved Art Deco interiors<\/p>\n
Maybourne<\/p>\n
A hundred years ago, a London hotel announced to the press that it was to undertake some renovations. They would be, it promised \u2018nothing to startle but much to admire\u2019. Instead, it created one of the most important surviving Art Deco hotel interiors.<\/p>\n
‘Art Deco sought to fuse art and industrial design, initially at an exhibition held in 1925 in Paris, the Exposition Internationale des Arts D\u00e9coratifs et Industriels Modernes in the Grand Palais,’ Kate Hudson tells me.<\/p>\n
While hotels – especially luxury ones – need armies of employees, only a very few have their own archivist. Kate Hudson is employed by Claridge\u2019s<\/a> in Mayfair. For guests and design enthusiasts who want more than surface appreciation, Hudson runs regular tours, which are free to attend.<\/p>\n Basil Ionides’s bar was created in 1925 at Claridge’s restaurant<\/p>\n Maybourne<\/p>\n In 1926, Basil Ionides was commissioned to transform the restaurant and several suites in the original Claridge\u2019s building. Ionides – who grew up in Scotland and attended the highly influential Glasgow School of Art – published two best-selling books, Colour and Interior Decoration (1926) and Colour in Everyday Rooms (1934). His influence can particularly be seen in Claridge\u2019s restaurant – glass windows with starburst designs in coloured glass, pillars and cornicing.<\/p>\n The interiors of one of Oswald Milne’s bedrooms at Claridge’s<\/p>\n Maybourne<\/p>\n Soon afterwards, Oswald Milne started to transform large swathes of the Claridge\u2019s 1898 building, followed by an extension that included a ballroom and another wing of rooms but it\u2019s his entrance to the hotel that is now considered to be one of London\u2019s most important pieces of Art Deco architecture. This light-filled glass and steel construction with curves in all the right places leads into the hotel\u2019s lobby and foyer. A century later, seemingly untouched with Milne\u2019s original mirrors and pillars, this is still Claridge\u2019s hub.<\/p>\n Living History At Its Most Elevated<\/p>\n In the latter part of the 20th century, many hotels weren\u2019t particularly respectful of the period. The Savoy-Plaza in New York and the Palais Rose in Paris both fell victim to the wrecking ball, but many other hotels saw once-prized Art Deco detailing banished in refurbishments.<\/p>\n However, the interiors produced by Ionides and Milne are still in situ at Claridge\u2019s, from the whimsical tent over the entrance to metal etchings around doorways. Above the entrance to The Fumoir is a glass panel that was presented to the hotel by Rene Lalique in 1931. By the grand piano (and Claridge\u2019s is the sort of hotel that will have a grand piano in its entrance), is a small, very delightful sculpture by Jacques Adnet of a dove. Marion Dorn, a pioneering textile designer, was commissioned to produce rugs. Her original designs – with her trademark geometric patterns – are regularly rewoven so that they can remain in place,<\/p>\n The exterior of Claridge’s dates from 1898.<\/p>\n Maybourne<\/p>\n While the Savoy remains London\u2019s most famous Art Deco hotel (and also has its own archivist, Susan Scott), at Claridge\u2019s, the design ethos fused with the rise of the Bright Young Things, a movement that emerged after the First World War but also, immediately in its aftermath, Spanish flu, a pandemic that had to an exceptionally high death toll among the young.<\/p>\n Bright Young Things, Then and Now<\/p>\n Largely from aristocratic backgrounds, the Bright Young Things decided to party, and Claridge\u2019s was one of their most popular destinations. Key participants Stephen Tennant and Cecil Beaton created elaborate fancy dress for parties at the hotel. (Between October 9 and 11 January 2026, the exhibition, Cecil Beaton\u2019s Fashionable World<\/a>, taking place at the National Portrait Gallery, will explore his work as a photographer, including this period) but the artistic outpouring was literary too; F Scott Fitzgerald stayed at Claridge\u2019s. Nancy Mitford, who chronicled the movement in novels that included Love in a Cold Climate would have been a regular too.<\/p>\n A bedroom at Claridge’s with Art Deco detailing<\/p>\n Maybourne<\/p>\n \u2018There is a tendency to mythologise the fashion and that sense of immediacy of the era, but Claridge’s was undoubtedly the backdrop to some wonderful revelries,\u2019 points out Hudson as we look at a case of Claridge\u2019s dance cards and party invitations from the era.<\/p>\n