44 DEPARTURES STYLE STATEMENT PIECES Making an Entrance Dior snakeskin bag, similar styles, dior.com The plush new hotels of London’s Bloomsbury neighbourhood are a sumptuous stage for the latest standout accessories. Photographs by Maxime Poiblanc. Text by Christine Ajudua. Styled by Jennifer Hartman L’oscar Conceived as a temple to Oscar Wilde, the first London hotel venture by French designer Jacques Garcia opened last year in a converted Baptist church. With plush velvet furnishings, silk wall panels and a sevenstorey chandelier hanging in the central stairwell, Garcia’s 39-room L’oscar makes it easy to live up to one’s blue china, as Wilde would say. loscar.com
From left: Givenchy calfskin bag, givenchy. com; Chanel lambskin clutch, chanel.com The Bloomsbury With its poet-in-residence programme and a library dedicated to frequent guest Seamus Heaney, The Bloomsbury, set in an Edwin Lutyens building modelled after a doll’s house, makes good on its literary heritage. The 165-room property reopened after a major renovation in 2017 and features a stunning pair of bars: the Coral Room, designed by Martin Brudnizki, and the 1920s-style throwback the Bloomsbury Club Bar. doylecollection.com 45 DEPARTURES
