From his early days creating interiors for the restaurants for Pierre Koffman and Marco Pierre White, David Collins went on to redefine the idea of luxury hospitality. The spaces he conjured after setting up his eponymous studio with co-founder Iain Watson are designed for making memories – interiors that live on in the mind long after you visit them. Think the iconic The Blue Bar at the Berkeley Hotel (where style icons such as Madonna, Naomi Campbell, John Galliano and Isabella Blow mingled), the elegant Connaught Bar or cheekily ostentatious Bob Bob Ricard, with its table-side ‘Push for Champagne’ buttons.
This year, David Collins Studio is celebrating its 40th anniversary – a landmark made all the more poignant by the fact that its mastermind is no longer here to celebrate it. David Collins sadly passed away in 2013, but the spirit of his design, the love for glamour and attention to detail, has continued to thrive through the work of his team.
Those lucky enough to have visited the ‘Convergence’ exhibition at The Lavery during London Design Festival will have seen the impact of The David Collins Foundation, set up to honour Collins’s passion for art. Every year, it and the Arts Foundation present their Futures Awards, honouring talents in fields from art and design to poetry, film and more. Two poems written by Ella Frears and Will Harris on the theme of blue were an unexpected highlight, blue, of course, being a David Collins signature.
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Leading the way in maintaining and pushing the David Collins Studio style to new heights has been Simon Rawlings, the studios’ chief creative officer, who in our exclusive film reveals the seven decorating rules that underpin every project’s success.
Introduced by Bethan Ryder, who has literally written the book (two of them actually) on leading hospitality design, this insight into David Collins Studio’s signature style is full of lessons that can be gleaned for homes too. The focus is on materiality, timelessness, intrigue, being artful (think including conversation pieces by artisans, like the platinum silver-leafed oak panels on the walls of the Connaught Bar by Atelier Pierre Bonnefille), creating joy through unexpected uses of colour, glow with glamorous lighting and lustre (what Rawlings calls ‘the sparkle and the twinkle’).
These are all ideas that have made David Collins Studio the go-to for opulent dining and entertaining, but that can bring a luxuriousness to any space. Indeed, these seven principles have been used beyond bars and restaurants as the studio has expanded into designing high-end residential spaces, luxury retail spaces and even a cruise ship (in 2024 the studio collaborated with Cunard on the Queen Anne).
Distilling 40 years of knowledge on interiors, this is just a snapshot of what makes David Collins Studio such a force in the industry. It’s a helpful snapshot, though! We have certainly been taking notes. davidcollins.studio
