Meet the luxury transformers changing the world

“Visionary” is a big claim to make about someone – but one we stand by for the entrepreneurs profiled here. What is striking about their stories, however, is that their visions weren’t epiphanies so much as a recognition that something they wanted wasn’t readily available – delivered how, when or to the quality they sought. So they set out to change that. An online marketplace for vintage furniture, a club for wine connoisseurs that wasn’t stuffy or old-fashioned, an international delivery service for exquisitely presented, sustainably sourced fresh flowers, an aesthetic for luxe living that chimes with the times… Many of us will be glad that these are now available to us – and, indeed, will have enjoyed, consumed or bought, from the midcentury modern furniture that we love living with to the flowers gracing our kitchen tables. The vision comes in spotting these gaps in the market and in our lives, and finding inventive ways to fill them. So hats off to our chosen few – and to visionaries and innovators everywhere. 

THE VINTAGE FURNITURE QUEEN: SANDRINE ZHANG FERRON, VINTERIOR

“Choosing vintage is a win-win – you get a home with character and a choice that’s better for the planet,” declares Sandrine Zhang Ferron, who left a career in finance to found Vinterior, the thriving online marketplace for furniture formerly known as secondhand and now described as “pre-loved”. But if the furniture is vintage, this is very much a business model de nos jours.

Founded in 2016, Vinterior is a “two-sided marketplace”, like Uber or Airbnb. These online platforms match two groups, people who need something with the individuals or businesses who can supply that – which in Vinterior’s case means more than 2,000 sellers with hundreds of thousands of pre-owned pieces, delivering to buyers in the UK and beyond. 

You can find all sorts on Vinterior, from Sèvres porcelain to industrial benches. By year two of the business, however, “midcentury sideboard” was the most searched-for object on the website. So it’s clear that contemporary urbanites’ love of modernist furniture has been a key plank (walnut, perhaps) of its success. Indeed, Zhang Ferron’s quest for an iconic armchair by a 20th-century Danish designer is key to the brand’s foundation story. 

“I founded Vinterior after experiencing first-hand how difficult it was to find high-quality pre-owned furniture. Sourcing the right piece – a yellow armchair by Poul Volther – was a real challenge. I spent months searching fairs, shops and online before finding what I was looking for. That made me realise there was a real gap in the market.” 

Zhang Ferron, who was born in China and grew up between France and Britain, began by learning coding, which, “with no tech background, was a challenge. But it gave me the skills to build the initial version of Vinterior.” The next hurdle was the classic chicken-and-egg problem. “Without buyers, I couldn’t attract sellers, and without sellers, I couldn’t attract buyers. I decided to focus on supply first, reaching out to 12 London dealers I had discovered when shopping for myself. Once I had 200 products listed, I launched the website.” 

When she made her first sale, Zhang Ferron “did a little dance to celebrate”, and the rest is history – or, rather, the stuff of today’s startups, with a round of funding from Seedcamp, the venture capital firm that has invested in the banking app Wise, the fintech business Revolut and the AI-media innovator Synthesia. Meanwhile, Zhang Ferron continues to collect midcentury modern pieces – although that Poul Volther chair “will always have a special place in my heart, as it sparked my passion for vintage design and completely changed the trajectory of my career”.

Vinterior

THE SUPER-LUXE TASTEMAKER: MARTIN BRUDNIZKI, INTERIOR DESIGNER AND ARCHITECT

“I want to create spaces that allow people to relax and unwind – and encourage fun and enjoyment,” says interior designer Martin Brudnizki. He has been true to his word, designing spectacular reinventions such as the iconic Mayfair restaurant Scott’s and the Splendido hotel in Porto­fino; new openings that feel as if they’ve been around for ever, such as the Paris hotel Le Grand Mazarin and a new Annabel’s (two doors down from the original 1970s jet-set members’ club); and some private homes he’s too discreet to talk about. 

In the 25 years since he launched his MBDS studio, which employs 100 people in London and New York, Brudnizki’s design aesthetic has come to represent a vision of a contemporary luxe lifestyle that is sophisticated and glamorous, but also warm and human. One forte has been the ever more intertwined worlds of luxury hotels and private members’ clubs. 

“No longer a place just to rest your head, hotels are now where you can escape from the daily monotony of life,” he says. They offer everything from spas and gyms to bars, restaurants, clubs and, increasingly, co-working spaces. With this in mind, “hotel design has become an extension of how we live – or want to live”. It also influences how we decorate our homes. And right now, he explains, “residential design influences hospitality spaces more than the other way round”. 

While his output and influence are global, Brudnizki is proud of his Swedish roots and how these continue to inform his work.

Growing up in Stockholm, he immersed himself not just in “a European design sensibility”, but in “Sweden’s iconic designers and architects”. And for anyone who associates Swedish design with quiet Gustavian elegance or cool, pared-back modernist simplicity, Brudnizki cites influences that account for his often bold palette and the rich materiality of his interiors: “I have early memories of visiting the Stockholm Public Library, designed by Gunnar Asplund – a space that has inspired me hugely over the years.” Likewise “the whimsical scenes” painted by Carl Larsson, the work of the Svenskt Tenn studio and the “vibrancy and joie de vivre” of fabrics by Josef Frank – often a riot of colour, with vividly depicted natural motifs. 

Brudnizki especially admires the movement known as Swedish Grace, which rivalled modernism in the 1920s: it combined traditional craftsmanship, folkloric traditions and Arts & Crafts styles with the clean lines of Art Deco. Innately luxurious, Swedish Grace is now highly collectible, winning notable fans such as the late Karl Lagerfeld. While the Swedish modernists triumphed in the 1930s and the postwar period, perhaps this movement is now enjoying the last laugh – as minimalism makes way for Brudnizki’s more eclectic eye. 

Asked to single out a favourite project or two from MBDS’s first 25 years, Brudnizki is diplomatic. “I get asked this a lot, and I can never pinpoint a favourite,” he says. “They are all enjoyable in their own right.

“However, there are a few projects that reflect significant moments. Scott’s was the first fine-dining restaurant in London that we reworked and it signified our move away from the high-street chains where we cut our teeth. I love this space and still regularly visit it.” 

Soho Beach House in Miami was that group’s first US opening – “a pivotal moment, taking an iconic British brand and integrating it into a new region. I could go on – the first time working with the Costes brothers, Sydell Group [the hotel operators] and LVMH.” And then Annabel’s, of course – reimagined with full-on maximalist glamour. “A special project,” he recalls. “We were given a huge amount of creative freedom and were continuously pushed by the client.” 

And a future project Brudnizki has his eye on? Something less fancy, maybe. “I’ve always been drawn to water and my home country, so I have a yearning to design a home in the Swedish archipelagos.” 

MBDS

THE FLORAL REVOLUTIONARY: WHITNEY BROMBERG HAWKINGS, FLOWERBX

Whitney Bromberg Hawkings recalls the lightbulb moment in 2015 that led her to found Flowerbx. “As a working mum, I was buying everything in my life online,” she says. “Flowers were the one thing I couldn’t buy online in a simple, chic way – for myself or as a gift.” 

Everyone likes fresh flowers, surely. In the fashion industry, however, they’re a kind of currency – as Bromberg Hawkings knows well. Born in Dallas and educated at Columbia University in New York, she learnt this and other facts of fashion life while working for Tom Ford at Gucci. Smart, charming and ferociously hard-working, she soon gravitated from being Ford’s assistant to head of comms when he launched his own label. 

On the day of a Tom Ford show, Bromberg Hawkings would clock the bouquets arriving. “From Karl to Miuccia to Calvin, everyone sent a large quantity of a single kind of flower,” she recalls. And she would set out to do the same for Tom. Only then she would often discover that what arrived “wasn’t at all what I had asked the florist to send”. Maybe it was a mixed bouquet, or the flowers looked tired – or, worst of all, they came wrapped in plastic. 

“Floral gifting is meant to be wonderful” both to give and to receive, she says. Faced with this failure of taste, Bromberg Hawkings set out to create a brand that was “beautiful, chic, consistent” – one flower, one colour, presented simply but elegantly. She recommends pink ranunculi as a symbol of admiration. 

For her, sustainability is a sensibility as well as an ethical choice. “I was appalled by floral gifts wrapped in cellophane, with cards on a plastic stick,” she says – appalled by the naffness, certainly, but also the sheer waste. 

Starting out with just £50,000 of capital, and operating out of a warehouse on an industrial estate in Acton, west London, Flowerbx today delivers in 23 countries across Europe, and on America’s West and East Coasts.

Its flowers are seasonal and cut to order, so they are always fresh and therefore remarkably long-lasting, while the packaging is recyclable or compostable. 

Half of Bromberg Hawkings’s orders are from people buying flowers for their own homes – and the good news for those of us who feel a pang of guilt while treating ourselves to a bunch of flowers is that these blooms are as sustainable as can be. Flowerbx has secured B Corp status, the gold standard of responsible corporate governance. 

All this while Bromberg Hawkings runs a (needless to say) flower-filled and strikingly elegant family house in west London, and raises three children with her husband, Peter, a fashion designer who, until recently, was creative director at Tom Ford. Flowerbx is a business, for sure, but also a mission. As she sees it, flowers aren’t just beautiful – “they have an important role to play in our mental health and wellbeing”.

Flowerbx

THE WINE DISRUPTOR IN ST JAMES’S: GRANT ASHTON, 67 PALL MALL

A neoclassical landmark on London’s Pall Mall might seem an unlikely launchpad for a wine-trade disruptor. As befits one of the poshest streets in London, Pall Mall feels very grand, while the former bank building at number 67 looks positively plutocratic – “money architecture” at its best, designed by Edwin Lutyens in 1929. Inside, however, Grant Ashton has transformed the bottom three storeys into a club for wine lovers. Clearly, the tradition of enjoying fine wine in a private members’ club in St James’s goes back centuries. Nonetheless, 67 Pall Mall represents a new model – inclusive, innovative and global in reach. 

“It was a bit of an accident,” Ashton says modestly, although surely one doesn’t “accidentally” acquire a trophy building on Pall Mall. With a successful City career behind him, a large wine collection and a sense of weariness at the “sky-high” prices on London restaurants’ wine lists, he and some of his wine-loving friends “had this idea of opening a place where we could enjoy bottles from our own collections without the usual mark-up”. Or “a wine-centric restaurant” – serving good food to be enjoyed with good wine. “When I applied for planning permission, the local authority wasn’t keen on more restaurants or bars in the area. They did, however, approve a club, and that’s how 67 Pall Mall came to be.” 

That was in 2015; since then, new clubhouses have opened in similarly grand addresses. “We thought only a few hundred people would care about a wine club,” Ashton recalls. “Now we have 4,000 members in London, 3,500 in Singapore, a few hundred in Hong Kong and just under 800 in Verbier, which only has 4,500 residents.” Coming soon are premises in Melbourne, Shanghai, Bordeaux and Beaune, while there’s also a new En Primeur service – effectively an outreach programme for wine lovers who live beyond easy reach of a club. 

In each of 67 Pall Mall’s locations, Ashton has rounded up likeminded investors keen to set up a club “created by wine lovers, for wine lovers”. Members pay annual membership fees of between £1,500 and £2,500. They can store their wine at the club in perfect conditions – to be enjoyed on site or at home – but the club also offers excellent wine at volume, buying where possible at source and avoiding Ashton’s wine-trade bugbear, “the middleman”.

The buying team is always on the lookout for something new, even “experimental”, to offer alongside much-loved classics. The wines are served to members with only a small mark-up – and often by the glass, using clever Coravin technology that allows wine to be poured from a bottle without removing the cork. 

It hasn’t always been straightforward, Ashton admits, turning a passion into a business. But “our success comes from that passion, along with the hard work to build a strong community”, which he hopes is an inclusive one. He is keen to dispel any sense of snobbery or elitism about wine: “It doesn’t matter what level of knowledge someone has. We want everyone to feel welcome and enjoy learning more.” 

So, while the St James’s location might conjure up images of old-school clubland – and the décor (conceived by Soho House’s former design director, Simone McEwan) evokes the contemporary members’ club scene – 67 Pall Mall can also be seen as part of a ground-up movement of wine lovers and urban wine clubs, everywhere from Brooklyn to Hackney. Only with a particularly smart address. 

67 Pall Mall

This story also appears in the new Portfolio magazine. Register here for your exclusive copy