|Places| From left: Eden Nairobi owner Anna Trzebinski; her late husband Tonio’s studio has been converted into a beautiful guest house are artists who have just returned from their shows at the Venice Biennale, with a few tag-alongs who will probably be invited to the next. There are fashion designers and filmmakers, bankers and authors, two conservationists, and the opening team of the forthcoming Soho House Nairobi, who were not invited, but came anyway. At one point, a chain of dancers is led around the room by Samburu men in tribal costume, reeling in the stragglers as they go. “Now that was exactly what I needed,” an American writer enthuses hours later as he heads to the bar for one last drink. The next morning, the houseguests are a bit more demure (all signs of hangovers are muted by blocky sunglasses) as we embark on a jeep safari to Nairobi’s hinterland in order to follow in the recent footsteps of David Adjaye and Simon de Pury and visit the stars of the African art world in their homes. Eden comprises two buildings and nine rooms in total: three in the main house, five in the studio annexe and an artist-in-residence suite called Ololokwe. The main house is equipped with a beautiful open-plan dining area, a living room with a fireplace and a veranda. The studio annexe has a shared living area on the top floor as well as a stacked pair of bedrooms that share a fireplace, bar and dining area. There’s an open-air restaurant facing a pond and a Boma fire pit in the garden, where the Samburu greet sundown with soulful ballads. The resemblance to a family home is intentional. Trzebinski and her late husband, Tonio – one of the leading Kenyan artists of his time – built it as newlyweds almost 30 years ago. “My stepfather [son of the original Lord Delamere and a good friend of Karen Blixen] donated the land, my grandmother gave us some money and we did the rest,” Trezbinski explains. Staircases and coffee tables were made out of salvaged wood from a shipwreck that Tonio discovered on the beach while surfing on their honeymoon; the lamps in the living rooms are also his handiwork. “Tonio built a separate studio for himself because he wanted a place to paint. We never wanted a kitchen within the house, so we constructed it separately,” she says. In 2001, when their son was nine years and their daughter eight, disaster struck. A month after 9/11, Tonio died in a headline-making carjacking that never has been solved. Trezbinski was in America at the time, pushing forward her fashion designs that have been sold to the likes of Jemima Khan, Caroline of Monaco and Laura Bailey, among others. The aftermath was devasting. “Early that year, Tonio had an exhibition in New York and I had a suitcase full of clothes and went along. I met Donna Karan and she gave me an order worth ,000; on my way home, I met Paul Smith and he gave me £35,000. Until the day Tonio was killed, I was his muse, I was a mother and I had a household, PHOTOS FROM LEFT: JENNIFER CLASSEN, XIOMARA BENDER; OPPOSITE PAGE: XIOMARA BENDER 22 CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM PLEASE CHECK THE LATEST GOVERNMENT ADVICE BEFORE BOOKING TRAVEL OR DEPARTING ON ANY TRIP
We are a working family. Most everyone you meet at this hotel has been working for me for 20 years or more – Anna Trzebinski then all of that was gone. I had nothing but the money I made with my clothes.” Hoping to find new strength in nature, Trzebinksi went for a walk in northern Kenya and fell in love with a Samburu warrior and guide called Loyaban Lemarti. Their traditional marriage took place in his village, the bride wearing a red suede dress of her own creation; the groom slaughtering a large bull at her feet, which was then roasted by men in a special wedding blessing. She and Lemarti opened a beautiful safari camp that attracted international celebrities, but the reaction of the white Kenyan community was still “totally unforgiving”, so the couple decided to move to America after the two older children had left home. Trzebinski let her Nairobi estate to a friend’s safari company, using the money to launch a glam-forward fashion boutique in Aspen. “One day I was doing so very well, the next, so very not,” she says drily. “When I moved back to Kenya, my ex-husband stayed,” says Trzebinski, who has packed a lot of life into her 56 years. While she spent much of the pandemic in firefighting mode, dealing with the collapse of her incomes, the rental contract on her Langata home was suddenly terminated. She auctioned off her entire stock of clothing online to raise the cash that was needed to keep the all-female African team afloat that for many years had lovingly manufactured her collection. Art is central to Eden’s values – the sculpture is by the owner’s son Stanislaw, the outsized canvases by her late husband Tonio The idea for her new Eden was developed to make ends meet, but also as the next step in an ongoing effort to give back to her country; she feels that the local community has always been there for her when she needed support. “We are a working family,” says the designer. “Most everyone you meet at this hotel has been working for me for 20 years or more.” Trzebinski is proud of the fact that none of her staff lost their job, none took a salary cut and that she was able to fold the Samburu employees from Lemarti’s Camp into the new enterprise. Today Eden’s handful of buildings have been transformed into an urban sanctuary that doubles as a living museum and offers a new kind of hospitality. Within six months, Trzebinski’s tailors (who until recently were embellishing exquisite suede coats) sewed the mosquito nets that are now wrapped around the four-poster beds, painted the butterfly murals that connect the communal areas, polished the hardwood floors and draped sand-coloured netting across the showpiece restaurant’s fibreglass roof to soften the sunlight. A “woman-made” borehole and lake provide the water source for the kitchens, while 1.6 hectares of sun-drenched garden embrace the houses. Trzebinski’s children are represented by their own work on the grounds – Stanislaw is a sculptor and Lana a ceramist – while all the walls are covered in Tonio Trzebinski’s beguiling paintings. “When I finally brought them out of storage, it felt like a three-monthlong ‘date night’ with him. It took me ages to hang the works and weave everything together, connecting the book and the snuff and the headrest collection. I was carefully feeling my way back into the old life, like Cinderella, but wearing no wedding dress.” That her own lavishly embroidered kaftans, coats, shawls and bags can be bought at the working atelier on the premises is one perk of staying at Eden; another is the loving care with which her team looks after the guests. The emerging hotelier still feels “that it can never be about heads on beds”. Her modern-day paradise has loftier aims, with the artist-in-residence programme being especially dear to her heart. “If the rooms are empty, we let them come here, feed them, give them a bottle of wine and let them stay a couple of nights. We’ve had poets, writers and musicians who composed an entire music album here, and they called it Eden.” Guests of all kinds can sample curated experiences of the local artisans, of philanthropy opportunity, even of investment – and, last but not least, forest conservation. Trzebinski is mad about trees. Each year she grows 2,000 in seed bags and has them distributed by plane through the Kenyan Forest Service. “What you’re seeing now is only the first chapter,” she says. “And there is so much more to come.” eden-nairobi.com CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM 23
