Observer Magazine | October 15, 2000

"CHIC AND CHEERFUL"

The big surprise at the Hudson in New York, the latest and Philippe Starck hotel to open, is not the baroque chairs, rooftop garden or canteen dining room... it's the price.

Budget hotels are usually associated with lukewarm showers, missing bath plugs and depressing decor. But the New York hotel maestro and French designer Philippe Starck are determined to change all that. The paint at London's luxury Sanderson hotel is barely dry and already the duo are back in New York, showing off their latest creation. For once, it is not aimed at the jet set and the super rich; this is a chic and stylish hotel experience you can actually afford.

The Hudson is the sixth hotel Schrager has worked on with Starck. As well as London's Saint Martin's Lane and the Sanderson; there is the Paramount and the Royalton in New York, and the Delano in Miami.

According to Schrager, 'With the Hudson, I wanted to do something elegant - the opposite of the Sanderson.' Most of all however, he wanted to do something cheap. And inexpensive it certainly is. Single rooms cost just $95 a night - a quite inconceivable price for somewhere smart in the Big Apple - especially when you consider that the facilities include three roof gardens, a swimming pool, an archery range and a basketball court.

At the end of September, work at the Hudson was in full swing. Dozens of workmen were busy getting Schrager and Starck's latest venture shipshape for its grand opening on 3 October.

Starck, meanwhile, was holding forth in the restaurant: 'The general idea is that a young cyberkid goes off on holiday to visit his nutty grandmother. She lives in a haunted castle in Scotland, and in this castle are lots of incredible things. She has collected objects from all over the world, and together they go off on an acid trip.' With its long, dark wood benches and communal tables, the canteen is not unlike a university dining room. At the end of each table is a big, baroque chair that would not be out of place in a medieval castle. Along one wall are enormous floor-to-ceiling cupboards, containing everything from olive oil and pasta to beans and crackers. In the centre is the kitchen proper, decorated with images of silhouettes against flames. The high point, however, is the windows, on top of which Starck has placed a film to make it look as if Mars is landing on 57th Street.

The vision is certainly surreal, but not quite as surreal as Starck's own discourse about the hotel. At one point, he describes it as 'a place where you are stoned without needing to smoke', and you could well be forgiven for suspecting that Starck may have been doing a few drugs himself. Either that, or the hotel has started to have a strange effect on him.

Schrager, meanwhile, is rattling on at about 200mph. Basing the restaurant on a campus-like canteen, he says, fits in perfectly with the concept. 'The food is basic and honest,' he says, before raving nostalgically about the mashed potatoes, chicken pie, meat loaf and apple pie of his own school days.

In person, Schrager is a ball of energy. Dressed in a zipped black nylon jacket and pleated white trousers, he strides about purposefully and, before you know it, he's swept you out on to the pavement, pointed out a skyscraper he hates down the street, and informed you that the 23-storey building which now houses the Hudson used to be home to the Channel 13 television station. Coincidentally enough, it was originally built to house a hotel, also called the Hudson. 'It was like a YMCA with a gym and a pool,' says Schrager's president of design, Anda Andrei. 'You can still see an advert for the old hotel on a billboard on one of New York's highways.'

Work on the present hotel started three years ago, and the renovation was apparently rather tricky. 'It was like an extremely difficult game of chess,' declares Starck, 'but I'm very proud of the way I resolved things.'

The public spaces, in particular, are a heady experience. In true Starck fashion, they are dramatic, flamboyant and playful. There are huge plant pots and a 3m-tall watering can on the garden terrace, photographs by Jean-Baptiste Mondino of cows wearing couture hats in the library and Louis XVI chairs made of silicone in the bar ('It's the same material as fake tits,' Starck takes pleasure in pointing out).

In the bar, an extravagant Versace armchair with sculpted gold swans as armrests provides a striking contrast to a simple bench made from a tree trunk by Jurgen Bey for Droog Design. In the lobby, an Ingo Maurer chandelier incorporating hologram images of light bulbs hangs above a traditional carved reception desk. Meanwhile, in the library, there are old-fashioned card tables next to the latest flat computer screens. 'An extreme modernity is juxtaposed with an archaism and classicism,' he affirms. 'The tension and energy that this creates is very sexy.'

Less sexy, however, is his description of the hotel's concrete faÁade - 'a post-Third World War bunker with a yellow stripe'. Even more disconcertingly, he says the bar (with its gold alcoves, glass floor and ceiling painted by Francesco Clemente) 'looks like what you'd find if you peeped into somebody's brain'. Fortunately, Andrei's comparison of the second-floor garden terrace to 'a romantic playground' is rather more appealing. She evokes the big, flowery mattress surrounded by Moroccan lanterns and hundreds of candles, while Schrager likens the reception area to the set of the movie Beauty and the Beast and asserts that the ground-floor shopping area is reminiscent of a 'decompression chamber'.

The area in question houses Schrager's first-ever lifestyle store. On sale are items you can find in the rooms (towels, sheets, etc), a whole range of Philippe Starck products, and anything else that Schrager considers 'cool, original and refreshing'. 'It's not unlike Colette in Paris,' he says. 'I want to get into retailing big time.' Indeed, as well as incorporating the concept into all of his hotels, he promises a catalogue and web site in the near future.

After the full-on experience of the public spaces, the bedrooms are thankfully relaxing. Paneled in wood, with dean white furniture, they are small but skillfully conceived. Glass stools are stored underneath the bedside tables for extra seating. A mini-bar, safe, television, CD and DVD player are all housed in a hidden cupboard and a pair of Francesco Clemente lamps sits on either side of the bed. 'The rooms are like the interior of a little wooden egg,' says Starck. 'Not at all phantasmagorical. The aim is for them to be friendly, cute and cozy.'

Rather strangely, he insists that the most important thing about the Hudson is 'its freedom and courage not to be in fashion'. By that, he means that it doesn't espouse a minimalist aesthetic. Nevertheless, it is sure to be the hottest, hippest, most fashionable place in New York this winter. For Starck, visitors who choose to check it out will enter 'a three-dimensional dream, a realm completely separated from reality'. For Schrager, they will simply check into the best hotel he has built to date. 'I'm in this business for pride,' he asserts defiantly. 'It would be sad if you looked back and thought you'd done something better before!'