It’s Friday lunchtime, and do we have a lot to talk about. Wednesday’s letter, which exclusively broke the news of the lawsuit involving event company The Gathery and Aurora James, caused quite a commotion. (If you missed it, you can read it here). It was picked up by Fashionista and Business of Fashion (thank you, Jessica Kwon), ripped off by the New York Post, brought more emails than I can answer into my inbox and sent a thousand-subscriber wave to RPS.
If you are new here, welcome. We are not always talking about million-dollar lawsuits, but we do like to keep things interesting.
Let’s get to the drama happening across the pond at Maison Estelle. For those of you who have not been lucky enough to visit, Maison Estelle is an extremely exclusive private members’ club on Grafton Street in Mayfair. Hotelier Sharan Pasricha opened it in 2021 inside a Grade I-listed Georgian townhouse, with interiors by Roman and Williams (who are also responsible for Marcel in The Breuer Building). Across seven floors are four dining spaces, 11 bars and two levels devoted to nightlife. (RPS subscribers may remember my reporting on Estelle’s attempts to make it to New York: first considering a Flatiron location, then trying to take over the Sistina townhouse on the Upper East Side. Neither worked out—yet. Plus, RPS was also the first to report on their scouting in Hudson Valley.)
So you can imagine the reaction when members woke up Thursday morning to an email announcing that Maison Estelle was closing immediately for “a few weeks.” The explanation did not offer much: the club said the closure related to information received from the Metropolitan Police following a “serious public safety matter outside the premises,” and that it was working with Westminster City Council and police while reviewing its “licence conditions.”
At least six (yes, six) RPS subscribers forwarded me the email, all looking for answers. What happened? How long would Maison Estelle actually be closed? And where, more importantly, were they supposed to go in the meantime? Celeste, perhaps? (It’s Maison Estelle’s sister club which opened in Notting Hill this year, so at least there is somewhere to defect).
The answers, straight from the horse’s mouth. Or at least from inside the club. After the jump.
Plus: Café des Artistes returns, Le Rosey gets a superyacht classroom, Mark Zuckerberg talks fashion, Cashiers, North Carolina keeping getting richer (and filled with more old billionaires), Eugene Remm gets the Vanity Fair treatment, and more.
