London can boast a club so exclusive that it could refuse entrance to the Beatles: it’s Annabel’s which, in 2018, changed its address and interiors. Now it’s decorated with Bevilacqua’s Italian fabrics for chairs and cushions, too.
The luxury furnishings of the new Annabel’s
The only nightclub where Queen Elizabeth II has ever set foot in – as well as a long list of other famous heads, both crowned and uncrowned -, has always featured magnificent interiors. Just to give you an idea, when the young entrepreneur Mark Birley opened it in 1963, at 44 Berkeley Square, in the basement of a friend’s casino, he decided to place here a huge Buddha sculpture he had bought in Bali.
The figure was auctioned, as well as the rest of the furniture, when the new owner, the restaurateur Richard Carling, moved Annabel’s a little farther down the street, at number 46. The chicest club in London now occupies an entire Georgian mansion, restored and renovated by interior designer Martin Brudnizki, who’s made the most of the historical building while preserving the club’s traditionally extravagant personality.
Every single detail at Annabel’s evokes the magic of a glamorous party: there are flowers everywhere, the ladies’ toilet is completely pink, from the marble floors to the basins and to the roses rimming the mirror, whereas the Rococo fireplaces are the building’s original ones, as well as the stuccoes. Not to mention the animals, both exotic – elephants and tigers cropping up on carpets and walls -, and fantastic – a winged unicorn rearing at the bottom of the stairs.
But there’s a room where natural elements get… wild.
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The Jungle Bar and its Italian chair fabrics
If you go down to the very bottom of the mansion, you enter the actual nightclub and its Jungle Bar. The name says it all: guests are welcomed by a massive gilded gorilla and can sit on chairs covered in animal-print fabrics, among which our Tigre velvet.
Each centimetre of this nightclub seems to be occupied by some animal or natural element, thus giving the illusion of being in a jungle. Cushions help creating this atmosphere, too, with their exotic animals and fruits, such as those on our decorative Uccelli and Melograno cushions, covered in lampas.
Do you think patterns and decorative elements are far too many? Very well, that’s exactly the effect Brudnizki was looking for: bizarre and extravagant. A homage to the exotic world and to the lightness and fun pervading these rooms and their illustrious guests. After Frank Sinatra, Naomi Campbell and Leonardo DiCaprio, who’s going to spend their nights in this original and chic club?
Photos: © James McDonald, Martin Brudnizki Design Studio
