Grazia - London’s Grand Hotel Bellevue is a lesson in posh maximalism

In its article "London’s Grand Hotel Bellevue is a lesson in posh maximalism", Grazia presents the Grand Hotel Bellevue London.

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Fusing codes of British aristocracy with worldly elegance, London's Grand Hotel Bellevue is proof hotels are havens for design.

LONDON, ENGLAND — There’s nothing like driving down the streets of London, your head sticking out of a classic black cab, and watching the long line of perfectly white terraced houses stretch past you to make you feel like you’re in a romantic comedy. Perhaps because this scene has been memorialised in cinema countless times—Notting Hill, Bridget Jones’s Diary, Love Actually, What A Girl Wants, Winning London, Sliding Doors.

These snippets, however, are as fleeting as the quick pans you see from the car’s window. In the inner central suburb of Paddington, just a stone’s throw from the bustling station, leafy canals and foothills of Hyde Park, a storybook house on a serene street offers you the opportunity to delve deeper into these snapshots. Flanked by the green Norfolk Square Garden, this quiet row is home to a grand Victorian townhouse. Its deposition is classic, stately and unassuming from the outside, but its contents offer a cultivated ambience with sumptuous and perfectly curated furnishings.

The Grand Hotel Bellevue is a luxurious retreat that fuses old-world elegance with contemporary luxury, spanning five floors and sixty rooms. The English might have a reputation for being “frazzled”, but nothing is cluttered or confusing about this space. On the contrary, the property is a lesson in posh maximalism and curating a warm milieu for city slickers. This is, at least in part, due to the hotel being the first (and four-star) outpost of Lignée, a French family business dedicated to high-end hospitality.

This is evident from the moment you step through the black wood and glass doors. Like Alice In Wonderland’s rabbit hole, the passage through the white stone façade transports you to a homely escape enhanced by vintage touches and a study of aristocratic character. The walls are slicked in a rich terracotta that canvases the entire ground floor. Here, you can find the lobby, which contextualises the codes of a typical British manor with European flair.

A fireplace topped with a baroque mirror is partnered with a traditional “settee” wrapped in a gorgeous golden velveteen fabric and ancient Sultanabad rug and backdropped by a glossy mocha boiserie. A custom bookcase following the same conventions is lined with hotel-branded trinkets and glass jars of lollies making the room feel like a sort of Willy Wonka chocolate factory if run by Wes Anderson.

Better still, it’s not a fictional inventor or whimsical auteur who concocted this space, but famed Paris-based architect Fabrizio Casiraghi. As per the designer, a narrative of an imagined couple’s residence became the starting point for the Grand Hotel Bellevue’s interiors. “An aristocratic Englishman and his eccentric, globetrotting wife take over the home, which they decorate by merging their taste and aesthetics throughout,” the property revealed.

The jet-setting sensibility of one of the spouses is best exemplified in the hotel’s bar. Lobby watering holes are a perennial melting pot of tastes and cultures, with the aesthetics of whoever enters via the proverbial revolving door forever imparted into the decor. At the Pondicherry Bar, this sentiment is taken one step further. Envisioned like an exclusive members’ lounge, the intimate destination features a liquor shelf lined with mirrors and Hollywood-style light bulbs to create a playfully theatrical space akin to a ticket booth at a theatre house.

The discerning luxuriate will also be enamoured with the embroidered tapestry lining the walls. Created by Emily Adams Bode Aujla of the eponymous New York-based, heirloom-inspired brand, the rich fabric depicts South East Asian motifs like elephants and tigers scattered across the navy blue textile like stars in the night sky. Like everything in the hotel, these panels are rooted in nostalgia and patchwork the past and future together with a simple charming thread.

Elsewhere, this east-meets-west charm expands into the bar’s cocktail menu. Helmed by mixologist Matteo Dessi, formerly of The Ned and The Charlotte Street Hotel, the drinks draw inspiration from Indian, French, and British flavours, making them sips savoured around the world all the while enjoyed when settling in for after-work drinks, pre-dinner aperitifs or a sophisticated nightcap.

A model wooden sailing ship perched in the niche of the bar’s window also further enacts the hotel’s vision as an anchorage for modern voyages.

Subtle hints of maritime influences are spotted throughout the hotel but never more obvious than in the bedrooms. Perhaps due to its proximity to London’s Little Venice, the furnishings draw on the cabins of boats with large white beds and dark wooden furnishings bathed in light like sun reflecting off the water’s surface.

Gothic crown mouldings, endless lamps and a quaint tiled bathroom elevate the space beyond a place for rest, with the lush, soft fabrics and intelligent details that maximise the small area size (see: built-in storage nooks).

Virginia Wolf once quipped that “to walk alone in London is the greatest rest”. We’d contend that this can be found through a far less laborious pursuit; checking in at the Grand Hotel Bellevue. A property that fully justifies its appellation, a lavish escape in the heart of London is only a short drive away.

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Read the article here.