he week before I meet
him, Martin Brudnizki
found himself on a crawl
of Paris’ five most exclu-
sive clubs. It was not his
scene. He’d been at dinner
with the Costes family, a
clan of influential French
restaurateurs and hoteliers
who own 40 luxury establishments through-
out Paris. They wanted to enlist Brudnizki to
redesign one of their properties, L’Aventure,
a club and restaurant close to the Arc De
Triomphe. They were eating at a restaurant –
Les Jardins Du Presbourg, one of their own- that Brudnizki had designed and
that had opened a month earlier.
And given he was in the city, what
better opportunity to check out the
Parisian nightlife? Brudnizki, his
partner, Jonathan, Thierry Costes and
Thierry’s wife, Constanza, piled into a
car and began a tour of the competition.
They got back to their hotel at 3.30am.
“I never go out,” says Brudnizki. “I had
to get up really early the next day.” He
pauses. “But it was fascinating to see
how the French programme their night-
clubs. They’re all the same.”
It’s no surprise that the Costeses came
calling. Restaurants, hotels and clubs are
Brudnizki’s beat: Annabel’s on London’s
Berkeley Square is the big one, the neo-
rococo magnum opus that he completed
in 2018 after a whirlwind 18 months.
To call it opulent is like calling the Burj
Khalifa “tall”: 500 kilogram onyx croc-
odiles with basins scooped out of their
backs double as the sink in the men’s
and women’s bathrooms; a gilt-hoofed
unicorn hangs from a floating bouquet
of roses in the stairwell. In one room,
thousands of diamanté ceramic flowers
bedeck the powder-puff pink walls.
Not every Brudnizki design is as fanciful as
Annabel’s, but even beyond the club’s carefully
calculated madness, there’s barely a corner of
London’s most exclusive enclaves (Mayfair,
Fitzrovia, St James’s) that Brudnizki hasn’t
helped shape over the past decade.
There’s Sexy Fish, across Berkeley Square from
Annabel’s, which feels like being in a dark fish
tank even before you encounter the actual
fish tanks that have been built into the walls of
the subterranean private dining room or the huge
glass crocodile centrepiece designed by Frank
Gehry. Lamps shaped like huge cream-coloured
koi carp swim above a bar – statement bars are
a Brudnizki hallmark – and topless mermaids
designed by Damien Hirst stretch lithely at
either end. Then there’s the art deco-inspired
Brasserie Of Light, in Selfridges, whose massive
mirrors seemingly take their cues from the
famous fan-like pinnacle atop New York’s
Chrysler Building and where a giant mirrored
Pegasus bursts out of the wall; The Ivy, more
traditional but just as iconic, big central bar, art
on every wall, masses of cut glass; and Scott’s,
sleek and timber-panelled, with its own mirrored
centrepiece by Gary Webb. There’s Harry’s
Bar, Daphne’s, Smith & Wollensky, Aquavit, 45
Jermyn, Holborn Dining Room. Even for those
with an aversion to Michelin stars, his work is
there on the high street, at Strada and Côte and
Jamie’s Italian and Las Iguanas and Gourmet
Burger Kitchen. Brudnizki’s design influence has
spread across London from a handful of Mayfair
establishments and is increasingly visible in NewYork, Paris and farther afield. His has become
the dominant aesthetic of the last decade in
high-end hospitality, imitated among lesser
design studios everywhere from five-star hotels
to walk-in eateries across the UK.
Even if you think you’ve never been in a space
actively designed by Brudnizki, you’ve been in a
place influenced by his ideas. Typically, you will
sit in a captain’s chair upholstered in plush red
or green leather, sipping an Old Fashioned from
a cut-glass tumbler under an elaborate crystal
chandelier. Hand-painted wallpaper straightfrom a William Morris sketchbook adorns the
walls. A large, central bar dominates the room.
Every surface is decorated in a different finish.
In 2020, minimalism is very much out of favour
and you have Brudnizki to thank for it. Since
founding his studio in Chelsea 20 years ago,
Brudnizki has repopularised materials such
as marble and bronze that once were seen as
ostentatious or vulgar and has reintroduced
prints and patterns to surfaces, occasionally
applying a different finish to every possible
facet of a room.
“I’m interested in creating worlds,” is
how Brudnizki summarises his design phi-
losophy when we meet at Annabel’s. Easily
over six feet tall, his style is slightly
“Wes Anderson”: burgundy corduroy
suits, rollnecks and patterned socks. His
colleagues describe him as fastidious.
“I’m sure Martin and Jonathan would
rather be at home watching Downton,”
one tells me when I mention their night
out with the Costes.
“We create a fantasy,” Brudnizki says.
Looking around, I don’t doubt him.
Annabel’s is “high Brudnizki”: the cul-
mination of a personal design style that
values playfulness, warm lighting, art-
historical references and big statements
(bars carved from pink onyx or chande-
liers shaped like wilting flowers). Over
two decades, Brudnizki has honed a
style that, when he founded his studio,
would have been dismissed as, at best,
outlandish and, at worst, the height of
bad taste.To understand the impact of
Martin Brudnizki, it’s impor-
tant to understand what tastes
were like before he was designing inte-
riors under his own name. In 2000,
design was dominated by a stark,
white minimalism. Most restaurateurs’
dream flagship would have looked like an
unadorned white cube. The walls, floors and
ceilings were cool, clean planes delineated with
simple shadow gaps – those deliberate breaks
between surfaces that divide a room into
squares and rectangles – and simple finishes.
For the furniture, fixtures and equipment,
there would be nothing that wasn’t chrome,
cream or white. The most cutting-edge design
innovation of the era was Jony Ive’s iPod. If
the restaurant concepts of the time could be
expressed in musical form, they’d sound some-
thing like Dido or maybe Moby. Brudnizki’s,
meanwhile, would be “Ride Of The Valkyries”.
John Pawson was the most prestigious name
you could ask to design your home, while
for your firm’s new office or the museum you
were endowing, you’d try to secure Frank
Gehry, Daniel Libeskind or Zaha Hadid. >>Even if you’ve not been
in a Brudnizki space,
you’ve been in one
influenced by his ideasCafé Novikov in Baku and (opposite) Annabel’s in London,
both of which were designed by Brudnizki (pictured)PhotographsJames McDonald; Andrew WoffindenMARTIN BRUDNIZKI04-20FeatureMartinBrudnizki_3446750.indd 210 10/02/2020 15:20
210 GQ.CO.UK APRIL 2020