London calling

Tim and Kit Kemp, the couple behind the quirky and glamorous Firmdale Hotels are winning accolades faster than you can say "boutique"

Turbulent times haven't deterred Tim and Kit Kemp, the couple behind England's quirky and glamorous Firmdale Hotels. They're winning accolades faster than you can say "boutique" and are about to swing open a new set of doors in New York

As international financial institutions fold like decks of cards, retailers bemoan a future of grim takings and the roar of doom and gloom bellows ever louder, it seems almost impossible that anyone would even consider opening a new boutique hotel. Undeterred are Tim and Kit Kemp, the husband-and-wife owners of Firmdale, the UK’s most successful private boutique hotel empire. Later this year, the pair will open the Crosby Street Hotel in the heart of New York’s SoHo. Built on a site that was being used as a car park, the hotel marks their first foray outside Britain (where they have six properties in the best parts of London).

Opening in the US has been partly inspired by their already loyal American clientele, who kept asking when they were going to open on their side of the Atlantic. “They kept saying there was nothing like what we do here in London,” says Tim. Having looked to European cities – Edinburgh, Paris and Milan – as possible sites for expansion, New York came to life for the Kemps when they secured the eight-storey car park. Slotted between Prince, Spring and Lafayette streets, it’s a stone’s throw from bustling downtown Broadway, and the city’s 365 days a year, 24/7 lifestyle promises the high-occupancy rate the Kemps need to support such a major investment. “For us, there’s no appeal in opening a hotel on the Riviera that is only open for a few months of the year. SoHo is about as pulsating as you can get,” says Tim. “Sometimes the thought of it is so terrifying it makes me want to stay in bed all day and think it through again,” returns Kit. Yet full-steam ahead they go, with an 86-room hotel complete with hi-tech screening room (a Firmdale trademark that is much loved by A-listers) and a lavish garden. They are using sustainable building materials and systems wherever possible and hope to attain the US Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Green Building Council’s Gold rating for the hotel.

Kit’s skill as the group’s design director is what distinguishes Firmdale hotels. Where international conglomerates tend to impose a blueprint on their hotels so they all look the same,  Kit approaches each new space as if it were her first. “Every building and every piece of work has to stand on its own – there should always be an element of surprise and fun, a slight quirkiness ...design shouldn’t be too serious,” she says. No two rooms in the group are ever the same. “I always try to have something unexpected in a room,” Kit explains, “something that surprises the eye, something to make (guests) curious and want to go around the next corner to see what is there. I want them to feel like they might meet someone or see something very exciting.”

Original art and sculpture provide Kit with much of her inspiration. In fact, an unusual piece is often the starting point for a new hotel’s scheme. It might be something by someone of great renown – such as collage artist Peter Clark or Colombian sculptor Fernando Botero – but often the artists she supports are relatively unknown. “I’ve always liked artists who do their own thing – it suits our ethic and ethos. There is a completely different feel to their work, which gives it soul. I like to think each hotel can be a small showcase for what’s happening in art today.” Fabulous art is also the perfect design trick for difficult, deep or dark spaces, she confides: “It helps guests to forget they’re not looking out a window.”

For Crosby Street, a piece by Scottish paper cut-out artist Jack Milroy, inspired by the writings of A.  S. Byatt, will take centre stage in the lobby. “It gave me the idea of creating a salon mood, to play on the idea of people meeting to talk, think and interact,” says the self-taught designer. However, it will be Kit’s eye for mixing graphic patterns, vibrant hues and tactile textiles in a comforting, elegant way that will help Firmdale make its impact on the Big Apple. “I don’t really believe in quiet, good taste,” she laughs.

Embracing the eccentric nature of English style – happily fusing eras and influences, modern with antique, eye-popping with traditional, rustic with hi-tech – is about as close to having a formula as Kit gets. One outstanding example of this is her juxtaposition of a shimmering stainless-steel Tony Cragg sculpture, a black London landscape by John Virtue and yellow sofas and chairs in the John Nash-designed, Regency-style Haymarket Hotel.

“I don’t like interiors that look ‘high-heeled’; I don’t like things to be too designed, with unnecessary curves and bends,” she says. “Comfort is just as essential – there’s nothing worse than a room designed for purely aesthetic reasons. A chair has to be a comfortable chair; a lamp has to give the right light. I love nothing better than seeing a guest move the furniture around so they can really put their feet up and relax.”

Such a fresh, innovative approach to design saw Kit declared last year’s Andrew Martin International Interior Designer of the Year, dubbed the “Oscars for the interior design world”. “Kit’s use of colour is tremendously brave and exhilarating,” says Martin Waller, managing director of Andrew Martin. “She has a remarkable skill in incorporating extraordinary things such as paintings, sculptures and artefacts to dramatise her spaces. She goes where other hotel designers fear to tread.”

She is also particularly good at making very grand rooms feel informal and fun yet breathtakingly glamorous. The Haymarket’s Shooting Gallery (with its hand-painted grey, sepia-toned de Gournay wallpaper and 1970s Lucite tables) and its basement swimming pool (featuring Martin Richman lighting that suggests the sun rising and setting over the water) illustrate this perfectly. Each hotel’s design grows organically, Kit says, and often changes midway as she deals with unforeseen influences: perhaps the way light enters a window or the practicalities of heating and sound-proofing. “Even I’m surprised at the end of it,” she admits.

With their US venture, the Kemps are keen not to merely create a pastiche of English country-house interiors and service. The feel of Crosby Street will be distinctly American, playing on the iconic SoHo loft-look with a brick, stone and glass construction and floor-to-ceiling warehouse windows.

In addition, the Kemps are working with local artists and designers on the furniture, fabrics and finishes. Most notable are Philadelphia-based artisans Galbraith & Paul, who are producing many of the vivid, hand-block printed fabrics. “We will be flying the stars and stripes outside the hotel as well,” asserts Tim, “and we want to play a key part in the community, by linking, for example, with the SoHo Partnership to employ a homeless street sweeper.”

It is a long way from the business of providing student accommodation in east London, which was Tim’s first venture. But even 30 years ago his approach was unique. “I made my first set of curtains from fabric I bought at Harrods and I put proper sheets on all the beds. I created comfortable rooms just as I would have done in my own home. It gave us a point of difference.”

During this time, Kit was working at an architectural practice in London. A mutual friend introduced er to Tim but it wasn’t until they were seated next to one another at a wedding that something finally clicked. For Kit, becoming involved in the business was inevitable. “Tim was always working so I was never going to see him otherwise,” she jokes.

As for taking the leap from one-star bedsits to five-star accommodation, the Kemps didn’t see that as such a big task. “Hotels really are nothing extraordinary,” Tim quips, in his trademark self-deprecating way. “They encompass everything you do in your own life, from feeding your family to maintaining your home (but) on a grander scale.”

In 1985, the Kemps opened Dorset Square on a leafy residential square near Marylebone station. It was one of the first boutique hotels, alongside Anouska Hempel’s Blakes in South Kensington and Ian Schrager’s Morgans on Madison Avenue in New York. Dorset Square was sold in 2002 to fund other projects.

Tim says “bigger budgets, better buildings, more interesting locations” have driven them to open almost a dozen more hotels and upscale restaurants. Each hotel, while embodying the Firmdale synergy of brilliant location, intimate interior and excellent service, has taken on a unique persona that celebrities love.

Covent Garden Hotel attracts Hollywood stars from Cate Blanchett to Meryl Streep; Charlotte Street Hotel is a hit with the area’s advertising and media types; The Soho is favoured by the hip music crowd, including Jennifer Lopez and Coldplay. Also in the Kemp stable are two upmarket B&B hotels, The Knightsbridge and Number Sixteen, which have discreet facades and calm, comforting rooms.

Yet despite the famous fans and constant glossy magazine “It List” accolades, the Kemps shun he limelight, preferring time at home with daughters Tiffany, 22, Willow, 21, and Min, 18. “I think it’s dangerous to start believing what people write about you,” says Kit. “You’re only as good as the last thing you did, so you have to have the right reason for doing something and stay true to who you are. I’ve always thought you can either be famous or you can work. Very rarely can you do both.”

This approach may be what gets them through the next few, possibly difficult, years. “We constantly invest in our hotels so that even in a downturn we are on an even keel,” Tim says. “We have no one else interfering. Shareholders tend only to care about the money and rarely have passion for the product. In an upturn, Kit and I keep the money in the business so we can keep refurbishing our existing hotels and investing in new ones. You can see that we respect our guests – they’re not walking over threadbare carpets or sipping from cracked teacups. If you get the product at least half right, then, with a bit of luck, success follows.”

Yet one wonders why they would want to keep opening new hotels when they could just as easily retreat to the family home in Hampshire or to their beachside villa in Barbados and enjoy their fortune, which last year’s Sunday Times Rich List estimated as £116 million ($272 million).

“The hotel business is an ever-moving feast and creating each hotel from scratch is like writing a book – there’s a beginning, middle and an end and all the challenges, like writer’s block, in between – so there’s an enormous sense of achievement when you see an idea come to fruition,” says Tim. “Besides, repetition has never been a part of my character; I like to go off and start all over again. One project is never the same as the next.”

So it seems world domination of the boutique hotel market is merely a natural progression for the Kemps. “We really do care about the experience our guests have,” says Kit. “After all, the success of our business relies on them coming back again and again. At the end of the day, if it all falls apart and we end up with only a pair of plimsolls to our name, at least we can say we gave it a bash.”

“Wouldn’t it be terrible not to like what you do?” adds Tim. “You may as well just give up and do something else.”

firmdale.com