Ostentatious displays of wealth are no longer crass and common. As one
thirty-something socialite observes: “When I was growing up in the Eighties,
the English upper class was very low-key. The guys would drive around in
beat-up old Polos, smoke spliffs and hang around in laid-back clubs like
Crazy Larry’s in the Kings Road. If you had a trust fund, you didn’t boast
about it. If you saw a Ferrari, it was usually driven by the children of
Greek shipping magnates or Nigerian or Arab oil tycoons. They were the ones
who showed off and had a string of gold-digger girlfriends.”
Now the most low-key hang-out of the golden set is Boujìs nightclub in South
Kensington. Key to its success and status as the premier upper-class youth
club is its popularity with Princes William and Harry. Despite the
occasional tabloid snap of a drunken Harry staggering from its doors, Boujìs
prides itself on discretion. I meet owner Matt Hermer at the club’s
fifth-anniversary party on a limpidly lovely evening at Syon House, a minor
stately on the fringe of West London. Handsome and effortlessly charming,
the former banker has a just-stepped-off-a-yacht vibe, with his cheesecloth
shirt and light tan. Under a domed conservatory, his regulars – mostly
twenty-something fashion plates with slightly scruffier boyfriends – mingle
like guests at an Evelyn Waugh wedding. Freddie and Gabriella Windsor are
there, and later, at an after-party at the club itself, they are joined by
James Blunt and Princess Beatrice.
The music is the high-energy throb of Ibiza, the food monkfish and chocolate
cake, the drink good champagne. The crowd do not grow raucous, although, as
the night passes, a hard-partying contingent emerges. Hermer looks across
the emerald lawns with Gatsby-ish indulgence, waving to socialite Lady Emily
Crompton as she sashays by in ridiculous wedge heels. “All this is about,”
he says, “is boys with money wanting to go where there are pretty
girls, and the prettiest girls wanting to go where there are wealthy,
eligible boys.” It is the central contract of high society, unchanged
since before Austen.
I visit on a Tuesday, Boujìs’ premier night, where, by 11pm, a queue of nubile
Eastern European girls is snaking along the pavement. The gender ratio Jake
the manager strives for is 3:1. Downstairs is what looks like a network of
dimly lit drinking caves, filled with bed-like banquettes where princely
indiscretions, fuelled by Crackbabies – Boujìs’ signature shot, a syrupy mix
of passion fruit and vodka – are shrouded in darkness and deafening music.
Judging by the racially mixed collection of pudgy blokes watching the foxy
dancers, high society has an ugly filter that applies only to women. By
midnight, we are ordered to stand: our banquettes are required by Bon Jovi.
Maddox, in Mayfair, is a similarly slick joint, overflowing with beautiful
girls; even the DJ, swaying in her booth in crystal-encrusted headphones, is
a model. But, while there may be no champagne-spunking displays at Boujìs,
no City boys high on bonuses, at Maddox, owner Fred Moss – who has been
launching London clubs, including Chinawhite, for 20 years – says he has
never witnessed such egregious spending. “One guy rang me up around City
bonus time,” he says. “He asked if a client of his could come in and throw
£50 notes up in the air like confetti. I said, ‘Yeah, sure – if I can be
there to catch them.’” As Vassi Chamberlain observes: “Snobbery is dead. The
whole notion of vulgarity has been wiped away. Now it’s cool to be rich.”
In part, for the traditional upper classes, the unembarrassed pursuit of cash
is a matter of economic necessity: the invasion of global wealth into London
has forced up house prices. And the living style of the new global rich is
not shabby chic: the much-mended bespoke shoes or hand-me-down ball gowns of
old. It is about the latest Dior handbag, the third home, private jets and
keeping up with the Joneskys who don’t have the tiresome necessity of paying
taxes.
No longer does a high-born lady disparage arrivistes whose money was acquired
through “trade”. Certainly not when the Queen’s cousin, Lady Helen Taylor,
is paid to wear Armani clothes and Bulgari baubles, and Lady Gabriella
Windsor is a “brand ambassador” to Ralph Lauren, an American designer who
took English country-house style and turned it into a luxury-goods empire.
It is caste by cash, not class. The new British Brahmans are not idle rich.
The term “socialite” is more derogatory than ever before. Anyone who is
anyone has distinct purpose and a career, and many aristos have become
energetic entrepreneurs and financiers – whether the Earl of March building
his Goodwood sports world or the Earl of Mornington, Arthur Wellesley (a
future Duke of Wellington), who has become rich from his own efforts in
private equity, or the Hon Nat Rothschild, a hedge-fund manager whose own
personal fortune, at 36, is expected to eclipse the fortunes of all previous
Rothschilds.
And this money is not to be stacked up quietly in Coutts, but to be lavishly
enjoyed. The haunts of the new rich are not subtle, tasteful places. At
Boujìs the drinks are at normal London club prices and a table on a weekend
night might spend £500.
But elsewhere, the point is not to enjoy what money can buy, but to be seen to
spend it. There are ten clubs in London, three opened only recently, where
when a Methuselah (equivalent to eight bottles) of champagne is bought by a
table, the house lights are dimmed and triumphal music – such as the Rocky
or Star Wars theme tune – is played while a train of waitresses carry it in, decked
with sparklers.
Crystal, just off Oxford Street, looks to me like any club in Croydon:
barn-like with a fit-inducing lighting system and a phalanx of huge booths
along the back wall. But this was the scene of P Diddy’s post-Diana-gig
party and where Pete Doherty reportedly copped off with a South African
model to cheat on Kate Moss. The minimum spend for a table of ten on a
weekend night is £6,000. But co-owner Raymond Béchara says that, recently, a
punter arrived and blew £17,000 within 15 minutes. “It was his 25th
birthday, so he bought four of our special bottles of Moët, which are
covered in Swarovski crystals and cost £4,400 each – two to drink and two to
spray on his friends.”
A Russian guest, finding himself seated near Orlando Bloom, said he would
spend £30,000 if he was allowed to talk to the star for five minutes. He
bought a Methuselah of champagne, chatted with Bloom, took photos and
considered his money well spent.
