You see the elephants first: two stone sentinels standing several stories above Broadwick Street in the heart of London’s Soho, juggling and doing card tricks in jewel-toned waistcoats and top hats. “The biggest difference between this project and any other project I’ve ever done is that there was zero red tape,” Andrea Gelardin, creative director of the newly opened hotel Broadwick Soho, tells me. “One day, someone said, ‘Would it be crazy to put giant elephants on the front of the building?’ And the next: boom, there they were.”
Boom is right. Step through Broadwick Soho’s red front doors (overshadowed somewhat by the Big Top-inspired sign beaming out the hotel’s name above them) and it takes all of two seconds to realize you’re in a world of Martin Brudnizki’s creation, but with the camp dial turned up to Liza-with-a Z levels and a Fellini-esque edge: think mirrored ceilings, onyx counters, and not just leopard print textiles but wallpaper covered with a whole safari’s worth of big cats. The 57-room bolthole was conceived as one part love letter to the unholy trinity that is Soho’s Dean, Frith, and Beak Streets, and one part homage to Mon Ami, the seaside hotel that owner Noel Hayden’s parents, Noel Sr and Jackie, ran in Bournemouth in the ’80s before package holiday deals to Spain undercut the U.K. travel market.
References to said parents—who were guests of honor at the martini-drenched launch party this month, hosted by Noel Jr in a tropical Hawaiian shirt—are writ large across the hotel’s two restaurants (Bar Jackie, a place for espresso and bomboloni, and Dear Jackie, a subterranean den whose menu is filled with Italian classics like sea bass crudo and vitello tonnato) along with its two bars (the cozy Nook and the rooftop Flute). Fittingly, Brudnizki and co made a point of working with other family businesses wherever possible when overseeing the decoration; Sogni Di Cristallo provided the bulk of the lights and mirrors, while the acres of marble throughout the hotel come courtesy of Gormley.
As for Gelardin: despite being a fixture of the music and fashion industries for years—working on everything from Lady Gaga’s Super Bowl LI Halftime Show to Louis Vuitton catwalk extravaganzas—this marks her first foray into the hospitality world. Among her tasks as Broadwick Soho’s creative director? Translating carefully preserved family photos onto knick-knacks dotted throughout the hotel’s common areas. Take the matchboxes at Flute, each of which is emblazoned with an image of Noel Sr doing magic tricks for his guests a full four decades ago. “There’s a real mix of high and ‘low’ throughout,” Andrea says. “We’ve got car boot sale finds next to Francis Bacons, Bridget Rileys, Howard Hodgkins…”
As for how she paid tribute to “the characters of Soho”? “This is a project conceived by a group of friends, really, and conveniently, one of those friends happens to be Jamie Poulton, the co-founder of Randall Aubin, whose parents and grandparents all owned businesses nearby,” Gelardin notes with a laugh. “He’s so up on the history of the neighborhood, which has helped us so much.” Meanwhile, she took herself off to the BFI archives to study footage of Soho in the ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s (“we’ve actually licensed clips from the documentary Sunshine in Soho for our website”) and incorporated aesthetic nods to “the neons, sex shops, and theatres” that define the area at every turn.
“This isn’t a private members’ club,” Andrea stresses. “It’s meant to be a place where everyone, whether they’re staying at the hotel or not, can drop in for a blue Hawaiian at Flute or a gelato at Bar Jackie. Our goal is very much to be a part of the neighborhood, and that’s reflected in the pricing wherever possible. And, honestly, one of the best parts about getting to work on this project has been getting to explore Soho in more and more depth. Even after all of these years, there are still so many treasures to be uncovered here.”
Below, Gelardin shares five Soho stalwarts everyone should visit.
- “Reckless Records is the oldest record shop in Soho, and its selection is fantastic.”
- “Garlic Shots, one of the only proper dive bars left. I’m all over it.”
- “Slightly off-piste (and possibly not technically Soho), but the Church of Notre Dame just behind Leicester Square is full of Jean Cocteau murals, and is a genuinely peaceful place in the middle of a quite chaotic area of London.”
- “I have to mention Bar Termini. Their Bloody Marys are just the best.”
- “Frith Street Tattoo, which is where I got my tattoo. The coolest people work there, and they have the best guest artists.”