Amazingly, the original rooms still exist, despite the fading of time’s decline being generally incompatible with 5* service (indeed, such establishments tend to perform full overhauls every five years). Their survival owes to repeated and committed restorations, most recently, over two years, by Hare & Humphreys. It’s possible, if you check in and out at the designated times of three p.m. and noon, to spend 21 magical hours amid the silk and chintz swags, gilded mouldings and ornate splendour of the famed designer’s imagination. They’re rooms, said Messel, that he would have liked to live in himself.
History and layout
The Oliver Messel Suite includes a generous living room – the bookshelf on the left opens to reveal a secret mirrored cocktail cabinet.
Gilded rococo furniture and elaborate window dressings in the living room
The Oliver Messel suite was commissioned as part of a larger redecoration to mark Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation, The Dorchester having been one of her regular haunts, and where her engagement to Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten was announced at a private dinner in July 1947. Situated on the 7th floor and at nearly 1500 square feet, it is more than twice the size of the average London one-bedroom flat, awarding it an immediate sense of lavish excess which is entirely deliberate. The commission came on the heels of years of post-war shortages, and the rooms were conceived as a romantic wonderland. (Messel, incidentally, spent the war as a camouflage officer, transforming pillboxes in Somerset into picturesque haystacks and fairytale ruined castles.)
The entrance is through a tented vestibule which leads into a reception room, and from there into a broad corridor off which is found a pantry, the bedroom, and connecting bathroom. Then, double doors dramatically reveal a grand living room: there are squashy velvet sofas, a table that seats six, and French windows that open onto a generous terrace, also designed by Messel, with views over the roof tops and spires of Mayfair. Should you have children with you (I brought my 13-year-old interiors enthusiast daughter) overnight beds can be made up for them; the single bedlinen is adorned with adorable illustrations of the hotel’s façade dressed for that 1953 coronation, when the balconies were bedecked with swathes of fabric.
Design notes
The rooms are a masterclass in architectural optimisation, tone, fit and furnishing, which combine to mesmerising effect – and merit dissemination. Messel’s worlds were marked by his distinct use of colour, and here an ebullient vibrancy is afforded by a juxtaposition of buttercup yellow and cerise with duck-egg blue, white and gold. There’s an accompanying sense of airiness, aided by the suite’s double aspect, a prolific use of mirrors, chintz running riot over curtains, chairs and walls – and ethereal voiles that prettily skirt the dressing table, boudoir the bathroom, and soften incoming light shafts. The elaborate curtain treatments invite further study, particularly the rosetted tie-backs and ruched pelmets.