Shoreditch House is going to be Britain’s hottest new club
The hipsters of the East End take some persuading – but it looks like Shoreditch House is going to be Britain’s hottest new club.
The arrival of Nick Jones’s Soho House group in London’s oh-so-Noughties East End was not a wholly simple affair. With the original Soho House – opened in 1995, in Soho – now synonymous with vodka-and-tonic-swilling media types, and its Notting Hill outpost, the Electric, heaving with BlackBerry-toting movie princesses (male and female), some people had started to feel that the brand was a little stale.
How did he expect such a complacent, commercial group to slip seamlessly into Britain’s hippest neighbourhood? You can put as many bowling alleys as you like in your venue, or rooftop swimming pools, zinc-topped bars, City views, billiard tables and the world’s longest Chesterfield (it’s 52ft long, cost £35,000 and is covered in mustard mohair), but the cool crowd won’t buy in if they think it’s full of the wrong people.
Lulu Kennedy, director of Fashion East, an organisation that supports up-and-coming young designers, is one of the ringleaders of the East End’s creative revival and exactly the sort of customer the new Shoreditch House needed. Jones, in signature style, threw a bash. “They had this hard-hat party while it was still a building site,” Kennedy says. “I got chatting to a few people and, by the end of the evening, they had asked if I would be part of it.” Buoyed by the conviviality of it all, not to mention Jones’s trademark charm, Kennedy joined the committee on the spot.
Jones has spent £6m turning two floors of a former tea warehouse on Bethnal Green Road into his sixth members’ club (he also owns several other sites, from spas to cinemas, that are open to the public and has clubs planned for everywhere from Miami to Istanbul). He claims he could have made much more money with a chain of brasseries. “But it’s not about money; it’s about interesting people,” he insists. “Just because we’re getting bigger, I don’t think we are diluting anything. There are so many interesting people about. I’ve never thought of what I do in terms of exclusivity. I think in terms of space. And the more sites we open, the more space our members have.”
Of course, Soho House is exclusive. With only 1,000 memberships available for Shoreditch House (all now sold) and a total worldwide membership of 12,000, your Soho House member is still a rare breed. Where Jones has got it right is in courting genuine ELTs (east-London types) such as Sandra Esqulant, the landlady of the YBA hangout the Golden Heart, in Spitalfields, for 30 years. “The east-London crowd are quite a protective bunch,” says the club’s membership secretary, Sophie Siegle. “It’s a real community. They wouldn’t have accepted anyone meddling with the DNA of the place.”
Some of the biggest names in British art and fashion are now on board, including Jake and Dinos Chapman, Giles Deacon, Roland Mouret, Tim Noble, Sue Webster, Rachel Whiteread and Conrad Shawcross. Initial fears that the club would sound the death knell for the area by bringing in hordes of vibe-killing suits have proved unfounded. “The only City people we have are in because they are married to the right people,” says Matthew Clark, director of the ad agency Mother, who introduced Jones to the building. “Besides, there is money in Shoreditch. It’s just not ostentatious City money. There are lots of small companies, independent spirits, doing well over here. That’s the magic of the place.”
The interior has been designed by Tom Dixon. “We were all terrified by this enormous space,” he says. “We wanted to preserve the rawness that is intrinsic not just to the building but to the area as well.
Hopefully, we have maintained something of the spirit of the east – although I was hoping to include an element of the Bengali community with a Bollywood screening room or restaurant. But Nick wasn’t going for that.”
For Lulu Kennedy, as happy swapping gossip with Esqulant as she is sitting front row at fashion shows, “It’s lovely to have a place where you can wear a nice dress without someone spilling lager over it. There aren’t many places you can go on a luxury spree in the east of London. A lot of sexy places get taken over too quickly by the out-of-townies.”
Now, her big concern is whether she will be allowed to go topless by the rooftop pool. “There’s room for all sorts of things in east London,” she says, “and I’ll be very disappointed if that’s not one of them.”
Shoreditch House opens tomorrow: www.shoreditchhouse.com
***
How did he expect such a complacent, commercial group to slip seamlessly into Britain’s hippest neighbourhood? You can put as many bowling alleys as you like in your venue, or rooftop swimming pools, zinc-topped bars, City views, billiard tables and the world’s longest Chesterfield (it’s 52ft long, cost £35,000 and is covered in mustard mohair), but the cool crowd won’t buy in if they think it’s full of the wrong people.
Lulu Kennedy, director of Fashion East, an organisation that supports up-and-coming young designers, is one of the ringleaders of the East End’s creative revival and exactly the sort of customer the new Shoreditch House needed. Jones, in signature style, threw a bash. “They had this hard-hat party while it was still a building site,” Kennedy says. “I got chatting to a few people and, by the end of the evening, they had asked if I would be part of it.” Buoyed by the conviviality of it all, not to mention Jones’s trademark charm, Kennedy joined the committee on the spot.
Jones has spent £6m turning two floors of a former tea warehouse on Bethnal Green Road into his sixth members’ club (he also owns several other sites, from spas to cinemas, that are open to the public and has clubs planned for everywhere from Miami to Istanbul). He claims he could have made much more money with a chain of brasseries. “But it’s not about money; it’s about interesting people,” he insists. “Just because we’re getting bigger, I don’t think we are diluting anything. There are so many interesting people about. I’ve never thought of what I do in terms of exclusivity. I think in terms of space. And the more sites we open, the more space our members have.”
Of course, Soho House is exclusive. With only 1,000 memberships available for Shoreditch House (all now sold) and a total worldwide membership of 12,000, your Soho House member is still a rare breed. Where Jones has got it right is in courting genuine ELTs (east-London types) such as Sandra Esqulant, the landlady of the YBA hangout the Golden Heart, in Spitalfields, for 30 years. “The east-London crowd are quite a protective bunch,” says the club’s membership secretary, Sophie Siegle. “It’s a real community. They wouldn’t have accepted anyone meddling with the DNA of the place.”
Some of the biggest names in British art and fashion are now on board, including Jake and Dinos Chapman, Giles Deacon, Roland Mouret, Tim Noble, Sue Webster, Rachel Whiteread and Conrad Shawcross. Initial fears that the club would sound the death knell for the area by bringing in hordes of vibe-killing suits have proved unfounded. “The only City people we have are in because they are married to the right people,” says Matthew Clark, director of the ad agency Mother, who introduced Jones to the building. “Besides, there is money in Shoreditch. It’s just not ostentatious City money. There are lots of small companies, independent spirits, doing well over here. That’s the magic of the place.”
The interior has been designed by Tom Dixon. “We were all terrified by this enormous space,” he says. “We wanted to preserve the rawness that is intrinsic not just to the building but to the area as well.
Hopefully, we have maintained something of the spirit of the east – although I was hoping to include an element of the Bengali community with a Bollywood screening room or restaurant. But Nick wasn’t going for that.”
For Lulu Kennedy, as happy swapping gossip with Esqulant as she is sitting front row at fashion shows, “It’s lovely to have a place where you can wear a nice dress without someone spilling lager over it. There aren’t many places you can go on a luxury spree in the east of London. A lot of sexy places get taken over too quickly by the out-of-townies.”
Now, her big concern is whether she will be allowed to go topless by the rooftop pool. “There’s room for all sorts of things in east London,” she says, “and I’ll be very disappointed if that’s not one of them.”
Shoreditch House opens tomorrow: www.shoreditchhouse.com
***
posted by Ronnie Rocket @ 12:03 PM
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