COMFORT beats style doesn't it?' asks Robin Birley. He should know; comfort-physical, visual, emotional—is buried deep within the DNA of his Mayfair club, 5 Hertford Street, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. Beyond the heavy curtain that sequesters members from the outside world is a warren of rooms, including four dining rooms, several bars, a cigar shop, a private dining room and sitting room upon sitting room of varying shapes and sizes, burrowed into the club's five floors.
Not a square inch of space has gone to waste: chairs, tables, banquette seats ensure that every nook and darkest cranny provides somewhere for breakfast, lunch, dinner, dancing, a drink or assignation. On every vertical plane are serried ranks of paintings and photographs (many of Mr Birley's family and friends), as well as wall lights and fabrics that imbue the spaces with a feeling of being in the home of a convivial Edwardian collector with very catholic tastes and a small army of staff.
For anyone interested in the club's place amid the ever-shifting sands of classic English taste, the mystique that surrounds its membership is a distraction from the more serious question in hand; how do you pull off a feat like this without it descending in a mess of unhinged eclecticism? The answer is that you work through an exhaustive (and exhausting) sequence of decisions, day in, day out, with the help of people whose instincts you trust, such as Rifat Ozbek, Tom Bell, Jane Ormsby Gore, Julian and Isabel Bannerman, as well as the nonagenarian polymath Willie Landels, and you magically pull it together, like von Karajan in a handmade suit and Charvet tie, your baton gently teasing magic from the air. The result is simply—without hyperbole like no interior you've ever seen. If you're not a member-or likely to be the guest of one-you also never will.
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