News

Jun 01, 2023

My day as a billionaire resident of 1 Grosvenor Square

By Annabel Sampson Smooth operator: Tatler’s Annabel Sampson plays it cool

By Annabel Sampson

Smooth operator: Tatler's Annabel Sampson plays it cool outside No 1 Grosvenor Square

‘Would you like to spend a day as a billionaire resident of 1 Grosvenor Square?’ is the easiest email I’ve ever had to respond to. Would I like to go beyond the ‘embassy-level’ security and spend a day as a fully-formed member of the richest club in the world? The 1 Grosvenor Square apartments have a habit of making headlines when they change hands: ‘London Penthouse in former US embassy sells for £140m!’ and ‘Queen's new neighbour adds £100m flat nearby’, they boom. So my answer was always going to be a hard ‘yes’. ‘When?’ I asked.

From humble beginnings at Holkham to dressing Zara Tindall, Marcus Fairfax Fountaine, one-half of Fairfax & Favor, reflects on a decade in business

By Chandler Tregaskes

My journey to gazillionaire-dom began when a member of the concierge team, with sweeping silver hair and a Hollywood demeanour, came to collect me in the ‘house car’ – an electric Bentley with a ‘1GSQ’ number plate – from South East London. ‘I haven't been here for a long time,’ he says earnestly (do the 1 per cent ever travel south of the river, I wonder?). Gliding past Brixton's O2, the chauffeur remembers visiting as a guest of David Grohl when he was working at the Mandarin Oriental (‘He gave me tickets to one of his gigs,’ he explains, ‘lovely man’).

By Rebecca Cope

By Stephanie Bridger-Linning

By Stephanie Bridger-Linning

Breakfast of Kings at 1 Grosvenor Square

Inside an immaculately appointed dining room at 1 Grosvenor Square

By Rebecca Cope

By Stephanie Bridger-Linning

By Stephanie Bridger-Linning

Rolling into 1 Grosvenor Square, in the very heart of Mayfair's village (as the locals call it), I exude Main Character Energy. We enter through The Vault: a garage with enough gilded security to rival Gringotts Bank (interestingly, the timber honeycomb design is the most Instagrammed part of the building, I’m told). Inside the residence there's more marble than the Baths of Caracalla. At one end of the corridor a screen is up. ‘Someone is moving in,’ the concierge reveals. My brain does an automatic flick through the Sunday Times Rich List.

A holiday home is reportedly due to be built just yards away from the Queen Camilla's Wiltshire bolthole, Ray Mill House

By Natasha Leake

So what is the profile of the average resident? ‘Some are incredibly well-known household names,’ says Blandine de Navacelle, creative director of Studio Lodha which was charged with designing the apartments. According to the Times, Russian-born billionaire entrepreneur Andrey Andreev (creator of dating apps Badoo and Bumble) reportedly bought a 1 Grosvenor Square apartment for £145 million. Another unnamed buyer bought three and knocked them all together to create a 15,600 sq ft home after only having a video tour. Some apartments are occupied by university students while their parents are in another city. Then ‘there are people in their 30s, 40s, 50s… from tech, finance, old money, business from all over the world,’ Blandine adds. One thing many residents have in common is their desire for discretion. ‘They like to be able to slip from place to place,’ Blandine says, in a rich French-inflected accent. Often, a 1 Grosvenor Square apartment is just one in a portfolio of properties (alongside the country gaff, the villa in Provence and an apartment in New York or Dubai). These are the people who can buy a private Beyoncé or Oasis gig in their living room for a birthday or Bar Mitzvah should they wish.

The Oval Office replica that leads to my 1 Grosvenor Square apartment

By Rebecca Cope

By Stephanie Bridger-Linning

By Stephanie Bridger-Linning

Blandine (formerly of LVMH) is a bona fide ‘Queen of Serene’. Lounging on a plush sofa (of her selection) in pincer high heels and an embroidered mini-skirt, she is a living embodiment of impeccable taste. ‘My look is more subtle and sensitive,’ she says, ‘not brash, gold-on-gold-on-gold’. There’d be no amount of wealth she’d be intimidated by – and rightly so, since, when it comes to sprucing up the apartments she is the first point of call. ‘Just another Miro, just another Old Master,’ she laughs, recalling a super-rich resident who keeps sending photographs of paintings he owns – and has apparently forgotten – to factor into a re-design. For other clients, Blandine and her studio source everything. Studio Lodha's parent company, Lodha, bought 1 Grosvenor Square from the Canadian Government for upwards of £300 million in 2014.

Tatler's Associate Editor, Sacha Forbes, was dispatched to the gilded principality for the most glamorous event on the Formula 1 calendar: the Monaco Grand Prix

By Sacha Forbes

En-route to my two-storey townhouse – my home for the day, which is valued at circa £23 million – we pass through The Oval Room, where a young JFK played and where his political aspirations reportedly took hold. It's a slightly shrunken version of the original Oval Office and is lined with Ionic pilasters and monochrome photographs which illustrate the building's diplomatic history: as the US Embassy (between 1938 and 1960) and later the Canadian Embassy (between 1961 and 2014). Biometric data permits access to my home, which is jaw-dropping in scale, and looks out – through bulletproof glass – to Grosvenor Square (and beyond that another former American Embassy, now a golden eagle-topped Rosewood Hotel-in-the-making). The art is a lot to take in: a humungous Julius Grünewald oil painting is the focal point of the room. Shelves are lined with sculptural ceramics, a reflective Anish Kapoor-like golden saucer and an Ansel Adams-esque panoramic landscape – as well as interior touches by Dior and Hermès. And if you think that billionaires don't have pets, you’re wrong: ‘There are hamsters, dogs… even hedgehogs in this building,’ says Blandine, her eyes twinkling.

Home sweet home at 1 Grosvenor Square

By Rebecca Cope

By Stephanie Bridger-Linning

By Stephanie Bridger-Linning

By this point: it's brunch. Any influencer (as I am well on my way to becoming), would die and go to heaven at the sight before my eyes. Shapely ceramic vessels brimming with berries, Fortnum's granola, piles-upon-piles of pastries and every juice under the sun (including, even, strawberry) are laid out before me. I must admit, I could get used to this life. Everything is filmic, even the doors don't slam (they glide). It is like a mansion from The O.C. – but better.

By Delilah Khomo

Ahead of my diamond masterclass at Sotheby's (when I generously proffer my ears to sample multimillion pound jewels), I have a tour. The upstairs library is an Ian Fleming-worthy space that can be booked out by residents or used as a sort of sitting room: there are chess sets, backgammon boards and an enormous telly. ‘The 1 per cent like to mix with the 1 per cent,’ Blandine says. ‘They know they are hanging out with people on a similar level.’ Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby party scene is mid-flow when I enter the dedicated cinema room.

By Rebecca Cope

By Stephanie Bridger-Linning

By Stephanie Bridger-Linning

A bathroom worthy of King Triton

The property's crowning glory is the long, elegant turquoise swimming pool – the longest indoor pool in London. It's a vision, immaculately lit up like Rihanna might be about to go swimming in it (which maybe she has? Wilder things have happened). The sauna is formed of great big slabs of Italian marble artfully pieced together. The sleek, pink marble hallway culminates in a 14 kilo moon-like disc by Simon Allen.

By Laetitia de Belgique and Sinah Bruckner

By Rebecca Cope

By Stephanie Bridger-Linning

By Stephanie Bridger-Linning

Following the lead of my fellow residents, I take lunch at The Connaught (just two minutes away). I feast on champagne and ceviche, while a toddler dressed as a CEO in a sleeveless cashmere jumper eats candyfloss at a neighbouring table. Ah, village life! I learn that on the private members’ club scene, the less ‘obvious’ choices are where the off-the-scale rich frequent. 22 Mayfair, which is basically down the garden path (on the opposite side of Grosvenor Square) is the one. ‘Some clubs will turn away even the richest people,’ confides Blandine, ‘it's not about wealth’.

After lunch, still thinking about diamonds and champagne, I have the best massage of my life. I’d recommend it, only you can't book in unless you live there. Emerging shiny-faced and hazy, I cross paths with a real-life resident (which feels like a rare thing); she is lithe, high-ponytailed and smiley. I wonder how she's made it to the inner sanctum?

The Vault: my way into the exclusive address

Prime vistas: A view of 1 Grosvenor Square

By Rebecca Cope

By Stephanie Bridger-Linning

By Stephanie Bridger-Linning

Post-spa, back in my home, the light is fading and the trees in the square are silhouetted against a fearsome peach sky. Fire blazing, I request all the most eccentric details of 1 Grosvenor Square's residents. Do they all have big plumped-up lips, are they always sheathed in diamonds? ‘Some people are very unassuming,’ I’m told. They’ll turn up to look around an apartment and you’d never know they were among the one per cent. Others, however, are gloriously ostentatious.

As the Chelsea Flower Show bursts onto the social scene, Tatler reveals the nearby hotels that are just as glorious as the gardens

By Tatler

After my gel manicure – no one at 22 Mayfair would trust me without – it's cocktail o’clock. Grosvenor Square, laid out in the 18th century, was always meant to be London's smartest address and with No 1, it's more than delivering. My day is done, but I’ll be back. I’m already scheming my Silicon Valley breakthrough that will fund my return – watch this space.

The spa at 1 Grosvenor Square

1gsq.com