Up your Street

Friday, 9:30 am, January 8th, 2010

Living in London, I know as well as anyone how expensive the town is these days. Being a stylist, I know even more about how stupidly expensive a well decorated piece of the town is these days. So this new hotel that has appeared on Dean Street in the heart of Soho which is gleefully stylish and reasonalbly priced, shows that times may be a changin’…

Situated in a four-storey Georgian townhouse, once home to the Gargoyle Club, The Dean Street Townhouse Hotel and Restaurant is created by the team behind the Soho House and Shoreditch House private members’ clubs and the Babington House hotel-club in Somerset. Comprised of thirty-nine stunningly decorated hotel bedrooms and an all-day dining room, serving one-hundred-and-twenty for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and situated on the buzzing Dean Street of Soho – you would imagine that occupying this space would fetch a pretty penny…

In fact prices range from £90 per night for a ‘broom cupboard’, £120 for ‘tiny’ and £270 for ‘bigger’ [the biggest]. Each room is exquisitely decorated in a contemporary/traditional way that is so prevalent in the Soho House brand. Small surprises are hidden in every room, from tiny minibars, and fancy bathroom products to flatscreen TVs and complimentary trendy magazines. I for one am thoroughly impressed, as I recall a time when I stayed somewhere similar in Kings Cross [not even cool] for one night in a similar townhouse costing me £80 for a horrible broom cupboard with sloping floors and claustrophobic fittings.

Each of this hotels bedrooms are individually designed with hand-painted Georgian wallpapers, upholstered vintage seats and sofas, antique-style bath tubs, bespoke Egyptian cotton linens, and authentic Georgian design features. On the ground floor sits a dark and cosy restaurant where the food is overseen by the owners of the Ivy, J. Sheekey and Scott’s, and modestly priced too! The problem with having such delights in your city is that you have no reason to stay…