LONDON — The Zetter Bloomsbury made its official debut Thursday night with a party that had a guest list more typical of a fashion week after-hours than a hotel opening.
Fashion designers, including Charles Jeffrey, Conner Ives and Patrick McDowell, rubbed shoulders with actress Kim Cattrall, fashion photographer Juergen Teller and ballet dancer Edward Watson during the immersive takeover of the six interlinked Georgian townhouses, which comes with a rare, 10,700-square-foot garden.
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Guests were served with canapés prepared by executive head chef Debjit Dass, including beef tartare on potato terrine and rarebit croquettes, with a live oyster station and a dessert spread of summer berry tartlets, macarons, orange cake, and Victoria sponge.
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Designed by James Thurstan Waterworth, formerly European design director at Soho House, the 68-room boutique property leans heavily on the location’s Georgian bones and its setting directly opposite the British Museum.
He described the design as “Georgian meets the eclectic British Museum,” drawing on the institution’s collections from Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas, and throwing it into a bit of a melting pot. Waterworth inherently brought a more craft-driven layer to the location, furnishing it with antiques and vintage elements and one-off pieces done in collaborations with British artists and craftspeople.
Compared with the Zetter’s more Victorian-feeling Marylebone and Clerkenwell properties, Bloomsbury is deliberately more pared-back. It is the group’s first new hotel in a decade.
“We wanted to take it a little more Georgian, going back to the roots of the building,” Waterworth said, calling the project “a bit of a new way forward for the brand.”
Communal spaces are central to the strategy, aimed at London’s design-savvy, fashion-focused crowd as much as overnight guests, given its proximity to the hustle and bustle of Soho. A garden Orangery allows for breakfasts and events outdoors, while a drawing room and multiple event spaces are designed to function as living rooms by day and party venues by night.
“As a brand, it’s less about the food and more about the drinks and informal greetings,” Waterworth said, noting that check-in is handled casually, with guests seated and offered a drink rather than facing a traditional reception desk.
The target customer, he added, is someone “more interested in the arts, who wants a cozy getaway” in a central but slightly tucked-away location, and who appreciates “a break from the trends.”