“Style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.” So says Oscar Wilde’s Gwendolen Fairfax in The Importance of Being Earnest. Fittingly, the newly unveiled Flemings Mayfair suite on London’s historic Half Moon Street honors Wilde’s bachelorhood and the enduring irony of his most celebrated play, becoming, at once, the neighborhood’s most stylishly sincere room.
Wilde’s Trivial Comedy for Serious People premiered on Valentine’s Day 1895. The farce, about two bachelors each assuming the name Ernest to dodge social obligations skewers the hypocrisy of the flamboyant Victorian society. Flemings’ three-room suite, housed in one of the hotel’s 13 Georgian townhouses, riffs on Wilde’s wit and its proximity to the playwright’s one-time home on the same street. Tully Filmer Ltd. has translated Wilde’s pithy idioms into the suite’s whimsical colors, textures, and contemporary adornments.
“We set out to reimagine the suite as a captivating space that not only celebrates Wilde’s legacy but also offers our guests an experience that is both historically rich and beautifully contemporary,” says Henrik Muehle, Managing Director of Flemings Mayfair.
In the play, Gwendolen never travels without her diary. “One should always have something sensational to read on the train,” she boasts. True to the text, every guest kindly receives a copy of the play on arrival.
With Wilde as your guide, gallivanting through bohemian bachelor lore and London’s literary past has never been easier. When a stroll through nearby Green Park and by Buckingham Palace inspires thirst, slip into the Fleming’s Manetta Bar for cocktails inspired by the realists—try the Gertrude Stein-inspired Rose is a Rose or The Lost Generation—and the fantasists, such as the Joycean Chamber Music, sipped beneath portraits of those very same bon vivants.
Bring the book, raise a glass, and immerse yourself at Flemings Mayfair.
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