I've always rather fancied the idea of living in a hotel. While others obsess about properties with multiple rooms, the notion of residing in just one has much more appeal. Room service, fresh towels, a Do Not Disturb sign on the door and a stream of new neighbours has to be the perfect domicile arrangement — particularly if that room is in Claridges.
The glorious five-star hotel on Brook Street is the “home away from home” for the style cognoscenti during London Fashion Week and Diane Von Furstenburg has even decorated 20 of its suites. Though I have only been there a handful of times they’ve all been memorable, as I met Tom Ford in the bar when he was still Gucci’s creative director and dodged Vogue’s Anna Wintour pacing the lobby in her trademark trench coat.
It was the Wintour moment that sprang to mind last week when I returned to the hotel to meet American designer Dennis Basso.
The celebrated fur fashion king, who dresses everyone from Upper East Side socialites to hip-hop artists, was in town to launch his first fragrance.Interestingly to me, he also dressed Meryl Streep for her Wintour-inspired role in The Devil Wears Prada. Spot a good fur on film and you can be certain it’s a Basso, be it the full-length white foxes draped over Catherine Zeta Jones and Renee Zellweger in Chicago or the sleek skin fur cape modelled by Charlize Theron in Snow White and The Huntsman.
