Guillaume Siard and Michael Hazlewood Designer dining: celebrating 30 years

Designer dining: celebrating 30 years of David Collins Studio

CODE’s Adam Hyman looks back over the history of David Collins Studio and the late designer’s lasting legacy on the London restaurant industry.

La Tante Claire, 68 Royal Hospital Road, Chelsea SW3 4HP.

This was the first restaurant that David Collins ever designed. The site - which is now home to the three Michelin-starred Restaurant Gordon Ramsay - was opened by Pierre Koffmann and his first wife Annie in 1977. The French chef had spotted a house in Harpers and Queens that had been designed by Collins and so contacted him to ask him to design La Tante Claire. The rest, as they say, is history.

La Tante Claire (Image credit: David Collins Studio) Watson explains that “people would often assume that David was off travelling around the world and ask if we ever saw him. If he was in London, he was in the office. He was very hands on with the business. He loved London. He was incredibly cultured. He had a passion for fashion, art, jewellery and he’d often attend two or three events a night when he was in town.”

With the studio in safe hands, their pipeline of business looks just as strong as the ones they have worked on with projects for Harrods and hotels in Melbourne and Qatar to name but a few.

“Our future at the studio is about working with the right client. It’s all about quality. We do a lot of work overseas now as well as the UK”, muses Watson.

Looking through the list of all the hotels, restaurants and bars that DCS has designed since 1985 reads is nothing short of impressive. Familiar names such as The Connaught, Bob Bob Ricard and Brasserie Zédel dominate the latter part of the timeline but it’s only when you start to look further back at the beginning of his career in London in the late 80’s that you start to realise just how many iconic restaurants the Dublin-born architect and designer had worked on.

Harveys (Image credit: David Collins Studio) Many working in the world of hospitality and luxury fashion will be familiar with Collins and his work. Whether it’s Claridge’s bar, LimeWood hotel or Alexander McQueen’s stores worldwide. I bumped into Pierre Koffmann at the time of writing this piece at Russell Norman’s launch of his Spuntino book. He recalls working with Collins, who also designed La Tante Claire when it moved to the Berkeley hotel in 1998. “He could be difficult to work with as he always had very set ideas on things but I guess that’s why he was so good at what he did. However, he was not a foodie.”

In July 2013, Collins suddenly passed away after a short illness. The news shocked the restaurant world, those who had worked with him and those of us who just enjoyed sitting in the dining rooms he had created. On Thursday 23 January 2014, The Wolseley hosted a tribute for Collins, a decade after he had designed the restaurant with Jeremy King and Chris Corbin.

Tom Ford, Vogue’s Hamish Bowles and Mario Testino were just some of the names that came to 169 Piccadilly to show their respect. Two years on following Collins’s death, the design studio is celebrating its 30th anniversary.

“David very much wanted the business to continue”, says Iain Watson, managing director of David Collins Studio (DCS). “Due to the size and nature of the business, there was a succession plan in place. We were just not expecting to have to implement it when we did.” Watson was left in control of the business, along with the studio’s creative director, Simon Rawlings, communications director David Kendall and design director, Lewis Taylor.

A couple of years after Collins had designed La Tante Claire he received a phone call from a young chef opening a restaurant on Wandsworth Common. That chef was Marco Pierre White who had admired the interiors at Koffmann’s restaurant and so instructed Collins to do the refurbishment of Harveys in 1998, a year after he and Nigel Platts-Martin had opened it. There’s a story that when Pierre White was asked who designed the restaurant he said, ‘some chap called David Collins who has probably gone bust now.’ Collins went on to design The Oak Room, The Canteen, The Criterion, Mirabelle and Quo Vadis for Pierre White.

“La Tante Claire and Harveys were very influential to David’s career”, notes Watson. “Harveys was very different in aesthetic with more period features.”

A relationship that is probably one of the most recognised in the London hospitality industry was that of Collins and Corbin & King. Their first project they worked together on was J Sheekey - the famous theatre land restaurant that Corbin & King put back on the culinary map. Today the room remains timeless. It’s a tribute to the three of them how the room has stood the stand of time.

I ask Watson about his first restaurant project and what it was like designing such a place. “J Sheekey was 100 years old and Jeremy and Chris had just bought it. At that time in the industry there were lots of big restaurants opening in London like Quaglino’s. The restaurant is made up of five small rooms and rather than make them into one big space, David suggested keeping the space as it was.”

“It was the first time Edelman leather from America had been used for leather banquettes in a restaurant and the hand blown glass lamp shades were inspired by shells. Collins went on to design The Wolseley, The Delaunay, Brasserie Zédel and Colbert with Corbin & King. But for Collins his vision stretched beyond the leather booths and antique gilded mirrors of the top-end London restaurants. Although not widely written about, Collins worked on a number of high street restaurants, both on the design and concept. He was very influential in the expansion of Café Rouge and worked with the group until 1999. Karen Jones, who co-founded the group of restaurants with Roger Myers in 1989, approached Collins about the project. They’d developed a prototype site on Kensington Park Road in Notting Hill. At the time, there was nothing like Café Rouge - London had never seen an all-day offering. Dining at that time in the capital meant strict lunch and dinner hours at restaurants. If it worked, Jones had plans to open sites nationwide and she was keen to get Collins on board.

“We were working out David’s flat in Earl’s Court when Jones approached us about Café Rouge. If we were to work on the project we need to move to proper studio so we took some space in Chelsea Wharf. We ended up working on around 150 Café Rouge sites”, explains Watson.

Collins’s work has also been experienced by most Londoners going about their day to day lives, even if they don’t realise it. Pret A Manger founder, Julian Metcalfe, was good friends with Collins and contacted him about the evolution of the business’s interiors and branding in order to update it before a global roll out. David Collins Studio were influential in the lower level grab and go elements of the famous sandwich chain and designed their first pilot site on Mayfair’s Conduit Street. Before Pret a Manger, the Studio also worked with EAT founders Neil and Faith McArthur on their pilot store on Villiers Street by Embankment. DCS ended up designing around fifty of their stores.

I never had the privilege to meet David Collins. I remember visiting the Delaunay during its guinea pig trials and seeing an exquisitely dressed (in navy, naturally), strawberry blonde man with chunky eyewear gracefully hanging from a ladder adjusting one of the spotlights. It was only later that I learnt that this was David Collins. I’ll never forgot that moment I witnessed - seeing an artist add the final touches to his masterpiece.

Every time I walk into the Delaunay I always look at that spotlight.

Adam Hyman @AdamMHyman

To celebrate David Collins Studio’s 30th anniversary and forthcoming projects, there is an exhibition at Phillips in London from 22 -23 October.