Art & Design Best in
Art & Design Best in Class Where Dreams Come True Luxe London bedmaker Savoir pairs time-honoured British craftsmanship with – well – anything its clients can imagine. By Brian Noone The Aero bed, created around a client’s tailplane from a DC-3 aircraft The Aero bed started with a phone call from a client,” says Alistair Hughes, the charismatic managing director of bedmaker Savoir. “He had acquired the tailplane of a DC-3 aircraft and asked if we could turn it into a headboard and provide a matching frame.” An extraordinary request for most furniture companies, this was just another day at the office for Hughes and for his London-based firm, which handcrafts around 1,000 beds each year, all of them made to order. “We came up with a design, incorporating the side tables and designed matching legs and support for the bed,” Hughes continues. “The result was fabulous.” Common wisdom dictates that we spend a third of our lives in bed, so we ought to lavish time and energy on picking out a fittingly decadent haven of repose. It is a reasonable position, but one weakened by our lack of consciousness while using it – at least for the most part – which is why so many of us end up spending significantly more on our automobiles than on our beds, though the proportion of our time spent in each is correspondingly opposite. Some who do prioritise their beds like to think of them like their timepieces: objects 52 CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM
Contemporary patterns from Dashing Tweeds are the key ingredients to Savoir’s latest creation, below PHOTOS © SAVOIR BEDS that retain, almost mystically, some of the intense, handcrafted devotion that went into their making, perfect down to the last detail, whether that’s the finely milled teeth of the watch’s escapement or the hand-laid yak hair of the bed’s supportive topper. Savoir’s beds have no trouble living up to these heights: the firm’s mattresses take as many as 120 hours to create, from teasing out the horse-tail fibres that act as natural cushions to hand-tying each box spring into position. For Hughes, there is a practical perspective as well. “Sleep is increasingly being seen as fundamental to both our physical and mental health,” he says. “Most things that are good for us require some real effort or determination, from exercise to the right diet. But sleep is entirely pleasurable – the opposite of hard work. By making sure they have the best bed, our clients are making an investment that pays off every morning of their lives.” Savoir started as an in-house subsidiary of London’s Savoy Hotel, making each and every guest bed as perfect as possible. Hughes, with a small consortium of investors, took the brand out on its own in the late 1990s, but “Most things that are good for us require some real effort or determination. But sleep is entirely pleasurable – the opposite of hard work” he changed very little: all the beds are still made with the same traditional handcrafting methods (and the Savoy still uses Savoir mattresses, as do a number of top-shelf hotels across the globe). What Hughes did bring was a flair for the original, for creating beds that people hadn’t even imagined were possible. Such is Savoir’s reputation now that clients have come to relish approaching Hughes with particularly challenging commissions. “We never want to say no, assuming the request is legal and safe,” he confides. “Everything has a price, but if the client has the means, we will find a way.” The Aero bed involved a lot of CAD designing and consultation with metal specialists, while another, circular bed can rotate via a few swipes on an iPad. A recent project brought Hughes to Savile Row, as the client wished for a headboard made with a particular tweed. Fate intervened – Hughes’ tailor, Kathryn Sargent, suggested he also should try a tweed from the same producer for his own cycling jacket – and thus was born Savoir’s latest collaboration with Dashing Tweeds, a London-based textile maker that is updating the traditional wool weave for the 21st century. What tomorrow will bring, Hughes cannot know, but that’s precisely the magic that animates him and his team. “For one client a brightly coloured headboard may help support their wellbeing, or an oversized headboard may give another client a sense of security,” he says. “We are finding that people are embracing the freedom to explore the individuality of creating a bespoke bed.” savoirbeds.com. • CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM 53
