The Connaught Bar

Attempting to define how David Collins Studio’s creative partnership with Maybourne produced such magical spaces as the unforgettable Blue Bar and dazzlingly successful Connaught Bar is like trying to analyse the moves of Rogers and Astaire, with all the best entertainment duos, it’s best to sit back and enjoy them. Ideally with a chilled martini.

But let’s rewind. If you didn’t get to experience 1990s London (I’m sorry), it might be hard to imagine a time when frequenting a hotel bar was not considered the height of cool or sophistication, or simply a nice thing to do. In fact, it wasn’t really considered at all. This changed in the late ’90s as a cocktail renaissance swept the capital, boosted by the boutique hotel trend transplanted from New York and a wave of new members’ bars. The city was electrifying, its movers and shakers of film, art, fashion and music out every night. Things were so good that Vanity Fair devoted an entire issue to Swinging London.

In 1998, Ramon Parajes, MD of the Savoy Group, then owner of the Art Deco grand dame Claridge’s, decided it was time to create a “destination bar”, one that evoked the allure of the hotel’s sparkling interwar heyday. Enter David Collins, the Irish-born architect with an affinity for Art Deco and a talent for elegant hospitality spaces, already proven by his restaurant successes for Pierre Koffmann, Marco Pierre White and Nico Ladenis. With fond recollections of the late David Collins describing anything dull as “too dreary, too dreary”, one can only imagine his absolute delight at the prospect of transforming the existing “unloved and forgotten” buffet restaurant, The Causerie, a fusty relic drowning in swathes of flouncy fabrics, heavy pelmets and skirted tables, into something fresh, new and debonair.

Peel back the chintz and the space had great 1930s bones, courtesy of British architect Oswald Milne; the transformation was dramatic yet sensitive, informed by consultations with English Heritage. Claridge’s Bar is a masterclass in Collins’ talent for timeless glamour. Milne’s elegant Columbian pine panelling was artfully retained and burnished by the beauty of les arts decoratif with French artist Pierre Bonnefille applying layers of moss-green and bronze paint pressed with hessian, imbuing the room with a subtle patina.

To this, Collins added the shimmer: mirrorwork, a palette of silver and eau de nil, recessed glowing lighting, geometric-patterned appliqué silk drapes, bespoke lamps and a curved white onyx bar with black patent-leather panels, plus a new “snug” upholstered in teal silk tucked behind the fireplace. Perfect for late-night trysts, or for VIPs to hide away in. He anchored the glitz with warmer touches: walnut parquet flooring, a stone fireplace, seating in deep red crocodile-stamped leather, and walnut and macassar ebony tables inspired by Art Deco master Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann. The final stroke of genius was reinstating doors onto Davies Street, granting the bar its own entrance, through which the Vogue glitterati glided on opening night in autumn 1998.

And so they continued to flow, alongside fashion, art and Hollywood royalty, all adoring its discreetly chic, metropolitan vibe. In 2001, Nick Foulkes credited the bar with Claridge’s revival, writing in the Evening Standard, “A couple of years ago this Brook Street institution was about as relevant to modern London as the oeuvre of Barbara Cartland… Then the unthinkable happened: Claridge’s became cool.” Almost three decades later, Collins’ interior continues to shine.

Collins’ next dalliance with Maybourne would prove even more seductive, a bijou bar that has since passed into its own lore. A non-descript sitting room at The Berkeley became The Blue Bar in October 2000, a gem of a cocktail lounge that was almost named The Lutyens Bar, in reference to the ornate historic wood carvings of cherubs, vines and flora that cascaded down the walls. Originally by British architect Sir Edwin Lutyens, these were salvaged from the 19th-century Berkeley in Mayfair. Collins’ inspired intervention, echoing a memory of his own pale-blue childhood bedroom, was to formulate a bespoke blue gesso, chosen because it could be removed without leaving a trace, with which to coat the entire interior. Fifty coats later, with a final dusting of red mica, the iridescent shade “Lutyens Blue” was born.

Small but captivating, The Blue Bar was a spatial rhapsody in blue: an Eileen Gray-inspired lavender-and-blue rug like an abstract artwork underfoot, and low-slung armchairs informed by Jean-Michel Frank in cross-hatched lavender and blue leather, all afloat against a lavish black crocodile-print leather floor. It instantly attracted fashion A-listers of the time: John Galliano (his favourite “home away from home”), Zac Posen, Isabella Blow, Jade Jagger, Naomi Campbell and Stephen Jones to name a few. Its success was sealed when Madonna herself declared, “I adore The Blue Bar.” The Blue Bar’s cult status even extended to two sell-out compilation CDs released in 2002 and 2005 capturing its signature soundtrack, the first featuring a rare mix of Madonna’s “Music”, a particular coup at a time when the singer rarely permitted her work to appear on compilation albums.

“The smoky soft colour gave the feeling that on entering you were diving through the surface into another world, one of dark, sultry glamour,” recalled fashion expert Stephen Doig in the Telegraph in 2020, writing of the bar’s mythic allure. “The splashes of scarlet on the fringed chandelier tassels and lampshades lent it an oriental exoticism. It was tiny, so much smaller than I had imagined. This made it even harder to get a table. Even Madonna was known to queue.” Its closure in April 2025 is unlikely to dim The Blue Bar’s mystique; it will remain the pinnacle of a specific cultural moment in the Noughties when the capital’s fashion, pop, celebrity and hospitality worlds fused into one glamorous, self-mythologising scene.

In the years that followed, the hotels themselves entered a new chapter. The Savoy Group was acquired by new owners in 2004 and, following the sale of The Savoy itself, Claridge’s, The Berkeley and The Connaught were brought together as Maybourne Hotel Group in 2005. The relationship with David Collins Studio continued.

And so, to The Connaught. Tasked with creating a new bar as part of a £70 million hotel restoration, Collins conjured up a space steeped in the spirit of 1920s English and Irish Cubism. Walls were transformed with a hand-painted Hibernian landscape, designed in collaboration with Atelier Pierre Bonnefille and realised in dusty pink, pistachio green and pale lilac, all framed within platinum silver-leafed oak panels. Leaning into the quintessential English spirit of the hotel, The Studio also introduced nods to Savile Row tailoring, such as intricate brogue detailing on the perimeter of the tables.

Across its three interconnecting rooms, a cool, sculptural sensibility reigns, with curvaceous seating, hand-burnished dégradé and crocodile-stamped leathers, metal-studded black leather tables, and an abstract silver leaf mirror artwork, anchored at one end by the rather spectacular bar. The high-gloss lacquered bar front in British Racing Green is topped by a cream marble counter with Giacometti-inspired solid metal gates, coated in silver leaf flanking the bar. Described by David Collins Studio themselves as “the artisanal tour de force”, these enhance the overarching cultivated aesthetic.

The bar is, fittingly, a return to form for a site with a history of indulgence. In its previous incarnation as the Coburg Hotel during the 19th century, rumour has it the future King Edward VII hosted decadent “champagne and peaches” parties there. Now it’s all about mixology, with a ceremonial black-and-chrome Martini trolley and Agostino Perrone at the helm continually pushing the craft forward with bespoke ingredients and drink innovations. He likens the bar’s ethos to a cocktail recipe combining service, cocktail, attitude and guest experience – telling Departures magazine in 2020 that “every time the [Martini] cart goes out, we put in 120%”. His meticulous approach has clearly paid off, with the Connaught Bar crowned number one in The World’s 50 Best Bars in both 2020 and 2021.

Three bars, all unique, but sharing that signature DCS sensibility, glamorous, artisanal, timeless and certainly never “too dreary”. Claridge’s Bar arguably sparked the hotel’s renaissance; The Blue Bar showed how a singular, poetic idea of colour and craft could conjure its own mythology; and The Connaught turned precision into theatre, elevating the Martini to an art form. Like all the best double acts, David Collins Studio and Maybourne never repeated a winning formula; but they kept inventing an captivating new dance. Nearly three decades on, the show goes on.