In Living Color

How Kit Kemp turned 40 years of style into a hotel empire in London and NYC

- STORY BY MARK C. O'FLAHERTY

WHEN A DESIGNER creates a new look and enjoys huge success with it, they get relentlessly copied. How many places have you stayed with city map graphics on hallway carpets? Or a vintage record player with a selection of classic vinyl by the minibar? All easy and cheap to replicate. But when you have a big, expensive idea and—crucially—only you know to execute it perfectly, that’s worth more than a trademark. Which is why Tim and Kit Kemp's Firmdale Hotels remain as unique as they are lucrative, 40 years after the first one opened in London's Dorset Square. There are now eight hotels in London and three in New York. The latest, Warren Street Hotel in TriBeCa, opened in 2024. Turnover for the group was more than $263 million last year, a new record for the business, but of course still "boutique” compared to behemoth international brands. Kit, who looks after all the visual elements of Firmdale, heads up her own eponymous design studio with two of her daughters, Minnie and Willow, and is currently working on a 12th property, in Bloomsbury, which she explains is "one of the townhouse hotels’ in a historic building that is quite distinct from the “all singing, all dancing” purpose-built properties such as Ham Yard in London and the three New York sites.