Los Angeles is always on to something new, yet the fashion-forward city’s storied past is equally as impressive as its present. Rather than shirking its 1880 roots, the Los Angeles Athletic Club (LAAC) is celebrating this history with a multiphase renovation that includes a grand reveal of the hotel and athletic club’s redesigned Blue Room. The iconic space was completed in 1912 as an exclusive lounge for the Uplifters Club, a group of influential male celebrities and leaders, before it was repurposed as a conference room. Following a refresh by British designer Timothy Oulton and his global style directors Danielle Monti-Morren and Raoul Morren, the room has been reborn to once again play host to the who’s who of LA.
“It’s a club inside a club, like nothing else inside the LAAC, which makes it all the more desirable to get invited to,” says Oulton. “We wanted to preserve its history but marry it with something daring and modern.”
Contrasting its fabled past, the updated Blue Room is discreet by design. During the hotel’s renovation process, a forgotten Prohibition-era stairwell, once used to store liquor, was revealed. It now connects the property’s third-floor bar to the fourth-floor Blue Room via a trick bookcase Oulton installed in homage to the room’s member’s-only roots.
“We introduced the bookcase to keep that playful element there,” explains Oulton, who outfitted the stair in a mélange of vintage art pieces—a challenge that required “a trapeze act to reach the higher spots and create a floor-to-ceiling effect.”
The team then ripped out the room’s faux ceiling, pulled up the carpet, and polished the concrete floor to inject it with industrial differentia. Sparsely accented with athletic paraphernalia, the bar itself is a modest departure from the room’s lush layers of décor.
Upon entry, guests find a montage of vintage artifacts and memorabilia. A palette of black and the room’s namesake blue predominate in a series of intimate furniture groupings that engender a feeling of separation. “Each seating area is its own private space that together form a collection of unique vignettes,” Oulton says. The areas include lounge furniture centered around tables and complete with rugs “so you feel as though you could be in someone’s home,” he adds. A focal point of the room, an Oulton-designed sofa features a giant British flag design over a Chesterfield silhouette upholstered in distressed denim and canvas. “It’s our salute to royal Britannia mixed in with a bit of rock star attitude,” he says.
Overhead, drums repurposed as light fixtures hang amongst rope-suspended crystal chandeliers with aged frames. “The drum collection draws inspiration from my childhood days when my father was a major in the British army,” says Oulton. “Collecting military drums, I was intrigued by their detailing, construction, and classic regimental colors.”
