Anouska Hempel

Stacy Shoemaker Rauen: Anouska, we’re so excited to have you here today. We always start the podcast with where you started. Where did you grow up?

Anouska Hempel: In Australia, but I never did grow up, you know that, that’s the problem. Australia, the Antipodes, New Zealand, Australia, New Guinea, all the way around there. We were part of that pioneering vision of my mother and father at the time. And here I am.

SSR: Were you a creative person growing up?

AH: Yes, I was. I was a pain in the neck and got sent to boarding school very early on because I upset everybody else. It’s true. Got sent away at 6 because I used to count the eggs on the table, line them up and be just apparently, very difficult. My pre-concept of how life should be at that stage began. And you got three other little daughters underneath, and my poor, old mother was having a bad enough time to make ends meet let alone having me being, I don’t know, slightly odd, I think.

Anyway, it wasn’t as bad as it sounds. It was fine. And I loved going to boarding school. My education was a boarding school in Sydney. A fantastic ladies-rearing up school, and very elegant and proper and posh. Everybody came from everywhere. People from the islands, who grew up in the Solomon Islands or Fiji or anywhere around there, couldn’t have a proper education, who were from a clerical background, were sent to this amazing school in Strathfield. And we all met each other. We all grew up together. And I think I knew every bit about those kids more than I knew about my own family. And that set my imagination going.

Because when you’re very young, when your mother said this and your father said something else, and the other chap died in a boat trying to get a whale, and the other one got a spear through his nose, and the other one got a boomerang in his head—or whatever our stories were—I think that’s where my inspiration came from.

SSR: Where was this boarding school?

AH: Strathfield, Sydney. Northern suburbs, frightfully grand and everybody watched each other’s mother coming up and down the thing to take you home and take you in. It was always interesting to see how all the old ladies dressed or the young ladies dressed. And thank God we had a school uniform because you could be poor or rich or whatever you were. And I really believe in a uniform for when you’re little. I know I digress a bit, but it really is important because all you do, you can stand out with your personality. Nothing else, nothing to do with your shoe, nothing to do with your mask, nothing to do with clever sneakers or the size of your pants or any other blooming thing, because you’re all the same. And you’ve got to be, within that uniformity of growing up, you had your own personality shining through or not, as the case may be. And when I look at all the kids now going to school and one mother’s got more money than the other mother and the backpack’s better than the other one’s near me, it’s amazing how those things stick and stay.

SSR: For sure. Besides the eggs, did you continue reorganizing things and loving design?

AH: Oh, yes. Absolutely. Used to put the stools in a row and opened the door at the right amount of light and the blind was always up or down at the right spot, according to me, that was. And I should think it was pretty painful having me around. I was busy.

SSR: And fun, fun at the same time.

AH: I hope. I think, apparently, there were moments.

SSR: What did you do after boarding school? Was that when you headed to London?

AH: I worked in a psychiatric place for a little while, then I came straight to London. And this is where I started my real career is over here. Well, I haven’t had one except here.

SSR: And what brought you to London? Why London?

AH: Because I can only speak English, that’s why. I didn’t know what I was going to be doing in Athens or Italy or whatever. And most young Aussies who didn’t have another language, always came to England. I loved the whole feel of England. I loved the green. I used to read all those magazines, used to look at all the film stars that came in and out of London and the Liz Taylors and the Richard Burtons doing whatever they were doing at the time. I thought, look at that green tree. Look at that road. Look at that thing. Look at that bumper bar, look at that car. Look at this, look at that. And we were isolated in Australia, or I thought I was. I don’t think I’d be now. But when I was very young, I felt I had to go. I had to get out and London, in particular, England, was for me.

Oh, somebody met me in the street and said, ‘You’ve got a pretty face.’ I said, ‘Haha,’ like one does, pretty face. I said, ‘Yeah, okay.’ He said, ‘Would you like to do a Cadbury’s Flake advertisement?’ I didn’t even know what a Cadbury’s flake is. Went and found out what Cadbury’s flake was in the shop with him and he said, ‘I’d like to meet you in three day’s time as Ashbury’s. You’ve got exactly the sort of face that of want.’ And I said, ‘What sort of face is that?’ He said, ‘Well, you look a bit like Julie Christie, you look a bit like Brigitte Bardot. You can be somebody in the middle.’ And I said, ‘That’s okay. That’s good going. Thank you. That’s really kind.’ Anyway, turned up at Ashbury’s. I did the interview. I did the whole thing for them, and it was good fun. I thought, gosh, I could get the hang of this. I got paid an astronomical amount of money and the guy was for real. I apparently was for real. And his name was Robert Hughes, I remember, at the time. He became a famous Australian director in the early days, and we got started really. I was just very lucky. You read about those stories, don’t you? What are you going to be? Well, there’s mine.

SSR: What was it like being a Bond girl?

AH: Couldn’t give a hoot about a Bond girl. They’re forever being ducking in diving. It was fun though. Really good fun. Had a lot of fun in my life, met a lot of great people, and that introduced me to how I could possibly be as somebody running a hotel or doing something different to everybody else at the time. And that’s how it all got started. Meeting people, people saying to me, ‘There’s no way to stay in London, Anouska. There’s nowhere. You either go to the Dorchester or you’re in a fleabag bed-and-breakfast down in Earl’s Court. There’s nowhere in between.’ I kept thinking, I’m meeting all these fantastic people who are giving me huge amounts of advice. What can I do? So I got cracking.

The bar at Monsieur George Hotel & Spa in Paris; photo by Gaëlle Le Boulicaut

SSR: How did you transition from film into design and hotels?

AH: I don’t think you have to transition; I think you can do it, or you can’t do it. You have a lot of little posts on the way about what makes you you and your experiences and you bring it all together. And one, I think, does it throughout one’s life. It’s not a transition, it’s a continuation.

SSR: And what did you take from your lessons in film into your world of design?

AH: I don’t know. Smile a lot, don’t stare, be kind, be nice, whatever it was I have to do. And just bring the whole thing of your own personality into your own place and be yourself within it.

SSR: And so tell us about Blakes. How did that come about? What did you want to create?

AH: I wanted to create what I created. I bought the buildings from a very kind bank manager at the time, in the days where could chat up bank managers. and I promised him that he’d get the first payment, the first whatever it was. Lent me the money, thought about it, dreamt about it, did it, opened it. It grew with me, I grew with it, we grew into a rather funny sort of a legend of, again, some of the people that I was meeting in my industry of acting, such as it was, but basically we made all the money in the beginning, for me anyway, came from the commercials that I made. And they were the big money spinners at the time. My savings and my world was poured into, with my heart, I add, into Blakes in those days. It became my home, my energy, my spirit. My children grew up there. We all just lived there—lived through it and kept on going.

It was a pretty nice environment created. I am not very good at the kitchen sink and I thought I’ll never be at the kitchen sink, particularly, which was the life of my darling mother. And I wanted to be free, but have a sort out and live the way I thought I wanted to live, and have somewhere to be living it. And that was there. And then home, then Addison Road and dada da, and off it goes.

SSR: What do you think attracted people to Blakes so much? I mean, what was it that you created that-

AH: Dare I say me.

SSR: Well, yes, besides you.

AH: I deserve that. I was the housekeeper, I was the turn-down girl. I could clean your shoes. I could hang your shirt up. I could put it out again in the morning. I could take your money and give you the right change and whatever it was. Personality came out of the other people knowing, the other people, it became a destination and a place for people to throw their ideas together and become very, very creative. It became, with me steering it, it just became a funny, kind of sanctuary for people who were creative, and who didn’t want to be in the normal run-of-the-mill end of the world. And they just all liked each other anyway, so they all went there, and it happened.

SSR: Do you have a favorite memory of being there? Was it the opening? Was it just being in the room with everyone coming in?

AH: I opened it not knowing who the people were going to come, and it was a busload of Manchester football people who turned up and I said, ‘I was full. I was completely empty.” I closed the door. I thought, I can’t take this. I can’t do this. This is wrong. I’ve got this wrong. I stood there and said, ‘I’ve made a terrible mistake. Hotel’s completely full, and I’m so sorry. I suggest you go around the corner to Number 55-81 Barkston Square.’ It wasn’t a hotel they walked into up there, rang the doorbell, this woman said, ‘Who sent you?’ I had sent them, and they said so. Then she came around and there was a big argument went on. In the meantime, the busload of real old devils. They were all rather sauced at the time, and I really got to fight. I thought, I can’t cope with this. And they went and found somewhere else. I think they ended up at the Holiday Inn. Lots of funny things like that. There was never a real opening. It was just word of mouth and it just sustained itself by the great and glorious clients and customers. And of course, obviously friends over time.

SSR: Was there a favorite part of working on the Blakes or working the Blakes, something that sticks with you?

AH: Well, everything. I designed it, built it, did it, put the people in it, looked after them. Everything was to do with everything we do. Rosalind’s telling me to talk to you about moving the furniture around. What nonsense.

She wants me to tell you the story [Alice Cooper], who took all the furniture out, took it out of the room, put it in the hall. We all had to jump over it while he slept on the floor on a rubber mat. We had lots of weirdos like that. She’s quite right to remind me of this. And then we had a terrible pop singer. He wasn’t terrible, he was just peculiar. And he was a bit like Boy George of our day. And he came down, he had a big basket and said, ‘I’m very sorry, I have to ask you for three pillows because my guest tonight is a snake.’ And he opened the top of the basket, was this huge python. We all nearly died, but he stayed. His name was Alice Cooper.

SSR: Oh, wow.

AH: Alice Cooper and friends, we had in and out, and the John Galliano and the fun and the laughter, and the noise of weird and wonderful, extraordinary people. And then the very stuffy, very laidback businesspeople would turn up with their little whatever it was. And we had a fantastic mixed gender environment that was always fun, I hope, and a fantastic staff. And I own my success to the people who helped me run it, helped me do it, and continued with it through ups and downs and just kept there. And we’ve just opened up—At bights, you could go and have supper at 11:30, midnight, and you could stay till 3. That was unheard of in London. And that became a place. You could go to the theater, but you could stay all night as well and have dinner with us. Then of course, you could stay, and then you’d have breakfast at midday or 1 o’clock, whereas in other places it was all regimented. We were free. We were spontaneous. And I think that spontaneity helped the procession.

The 50-room Hempel Hotel in London

SSR: For sure. And how did the Hempel Hotel continue that vision or expand on what you wanted to create?

AH: Oh, it didn’t. It was completely different. It was completely to do with my architectural aesthetics at the time. I’d done the Blakes, I’d done all my business, I’d hung everything up and down and inside out and roundabout and had a whale of a time. And I’ve always had an architectural eye for things, I think. And I just decided that really, I would like to do something where the architecture stood out more than the things that I was putting about the place. I had to concentrate very, very heavily. Had very, very charming Australian architects, and I worked myself silly for that, because that was an architecture expression. But you could still see it was under one hand. It was under the one guise, the one me, which was maybe what I have to do. If I let go of anything and somebody else interferes, it goes wrong.

There’s a lot of dedication, a lot of discipline went into that. And for the five years that I ran it, opened it and ran it for the Japanese, it was a huge success. And after that, as various other people got involved in it, I felt that it was time to say, thank you all for being so great to me on that experiment, and they did. And I left it be. Ever since then, all the other hotels I’ve done around the world, I’ve taken the expression, the environment of the city more to heart than I have done before. If I’m in Singapore, I’m with the Singaporeans. Same with the food, I’m with the Chinese, I’m with every single thing you can think about decorating and designing and smelling and being in Singapore, to heart, regimented maybe, and safe and sound maybe, but with the same experiences. A little bit more spirit of the culture, because the culture of the Hempel was very, very strong and very strict. You just didn’t make a mess. You just took your bag with you and you put it away. And whereas in Singapore, I’m encouraging it. It’s a little bit looser. You go to Paris, I find I’m working with the Moroccan aesthetic. I think that Paris owes an awful lot to North Africa, which my lover owner believed in, because he used to stay with me at Blakes. I said, ‘Yes, get on with it. Just do it.’

You’ve got the oasis of Morocco of Marrakesh, you have a mixture of the whole of the fusion of the food between the French and the North African. And I always like to say that the French were very lucky. They were very close, and they were very much influenced by it. They don’t recognize it so much in their aesthetic and their combinations of things, which has been an outsider I did. And apparently, everybody seems to like it. So that’s going well. And then in Franklin in London, I pretended to be very, very rich English woman with a lot of Italian lovers that came in and out, and I decorated the rooms around when I’d read a book to them, and I’d educate these young chappies to play the violin and read the newspaper to me. And so I have romantic delusions and illusions everywhere I go.

SSR: That’s great, and that’s the story behind each hotel.

AH: Yeah, have to have a story, otherwise what’s it for? Just makes money? It’s not in my remit, that. You don’t start out making money, you start out being the artist with a dream and then go and do it and hope for the best.

The Warapuru resort, located on the Bahia coastline of Brazil

SSR: What’s your favorite part of the process? Is it the beginning? Is it the feeling out the building and figuring out what you want to create? Is it the opening? What’s your favorite part?

AH: It just happens immediately. The idea of what you’re going to create is the excitement of the whole thing. How you go about it is how you go about it. I don’t say favorite anything. It doesn’t come like that to me. The dream comes in the middle of the night, I get up and I do it. And that’s the thing, knowing what you’re going to do right in the beginning, whatever concept you have, you’re true to the concept, true to yourself and let it expand and then let it grow. There’s no favorite part. Sitting somebody down and having a cup of tea and who has read a book on Winston Churchill or the other one who’s got a Fedora hat in the corner. It’s nothing to do with that. It’s creating the atmosphere very quickly, and then having the continuity and the ability and fantastic people around you to do it. The favorite part, perhaps, it’s just seeing it flourish and grow.

SSR: And how do you stay inspired or where do you find inspiration?

AH: By seeing more and more things around me that I really don’t like that I really am not inspired by, gives me inspiration to get cracking again, get going and get on with it. That’s how it happens. And our next project will be Chile in Santiago in South America, where I’ve been working on a wonderful hotel for the last two or three years. And because of COVID and Satinder Garcha, who owns it, who’s our owner of the Duxton in Singapore, who’ve I’ve worked with in New York and his home and borrowed lots and lots of things for him, is reinstating this extraordinary development of Two Cities Hotel next to the cathedral in Santiago. That will get itself starting in October. The dream is, as I saw it in the beginning, the concept is still there, and I want to create the concept into the reality. Probably February next year, we might be there.

SSR: That’s amazing. And for the Hempel Hotel, your use of white and grays. I mean, you stepped outside of the box back then when you did that. What was it that you wanted to experiment? I know it was an architectural gesture, but what was it about just having this beautifully pristine look?

AH: I’m pretty good at being different. So that was the idea at the time. That’s what I was seeing. That’s what I was feeling, and that’s what I did. And there’s no particular reason for it. It was a shadow in my mind and the whiteness of the light and whatever I was thinking at the time, which was probably distilling all the bits and pieces and going to the future and striding into the future in a very different kind of way. That’s all, which is an expression of what I did then. And what I’m doing now is an expression of now. And I should think in about three years’ time I would come up with something, like a big black hole. Watch out.

SSR: What’s your style at home?

AH: Anything I can find, I shove it together and I put it round the corners with all the leftovers of this, that, and the other. I wouldn’t say it’s the most comfortable place in the world because I think beauty comes before that, but hopefully I can mix beauty and comfort together. And I like tables and chairs, like sitting upright, I like working and thinking upright. I’m not sloppy by nature. I’m probably quite difficult to live with, but we seem to manage.

Monsieur George Hotel & Spa in the 8th arrondissement of Paris; photo by Gaëlle Le Boulicaut

SSR: That’s great. Is there something you haven’t designed that you want to design? Anything on your bucket list?

AH: I need an airplane. I need a drone. I want to design a drone. I want to go up in a drone. I want 40 rooms in a great big drone. I want to leave the city airport. I want to shoot straight up. I want to go laterally straight over. I want to get to Marrakesh, and I want to have 40 wonderful suites inside a drone where you can travel with me and I’ll travel with you. And when you get out, you just press a button and the slide comes out of your door. You take your Louis Vuitton suitcase into the desert and there, waiting beside you, is a wonderful sheik of Aramy, Araby or whatever. And off you go into the desert for a trip with your 40 friends. I don’t know, 40 or 80 or 90. I wouldn’t know about the logistics of money. But you don’t have to do it from city to city. You can do it from the city to the desert. City to the coast, city to somewhere. It’s the taking off is the problem, and then going sideways the rest. Coming down is nothing.

I’m going to do a drone hotel and I’m going to make it special. And it’s going to be ergonomically nuts, and it’s going to be glorious and you can go anywhere. And that will be the way to travel very soon. Drones have the future. They were named after lazy, old bee who took his time to get up there, but when he did, he just kept going. And that I can drone on.

SSR: We always end this pod on the name of the podcast. What has been your greatest lesson learned?

AH: My greatest lesson learned is I’ve still got so many lessons to learn.

SSR: Perfect. Always learning. Love it. Well, thank you for doing this again.

AH: Call me any time.

SSR: thank you, Anouska. Talk soon.

AH: Very sweet of you to say that. Bye-bye.