Famed 19th-century Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi spent 20 years of his life holed up at the Grand Hotel et de Milan. Legend has it that when he was ill, hotel staff would scatter the surrounding streets with straw to dampen the rattling noise of the passing carriages so as not to disturb his slumber. Many of the rooms are still named for their famed previous inhabitants—Maria Callas, Giorgio de Chirico, Rudolf Nureyev, The Duke and Duchess of Windsor—recalling the hotel's station as a venue deeply entrenched in the history of Milan.
More recently, the Grand Hotel has become a go-to destination for the flocks of designers that descend on the city each year for the annual Salone del Mobile design fair. Located in the so-called Golden Triangle fashion district of Montenapoleone, just across the square from the buzzing Armani Hotel, the Grand Hotel has always had one foot planted firmly in the past. Therefore, local conjurer of all things bewitchingly nostalgic—AD100 interior design firm Dimorestudio—was the obvious choice to reimagine the on-site Gerry’s Bar and the hotel's lobby.
“We wanted to do a soft restyling for them,” Dimorestudio cofounder Britt Moran tells AD PRO. He and Emiliano Salci, Dimorestudio’s creative lead, had already completed a refresh of the historic hotel’s rooms in 2013, so the duo were quite familiar with the hotel’s mythology. “It’s a magical space,” Moran says of the bolt-hole, which opened in 1863 and is thought to be the oldest hotel in Milan. “It has a very special history and patina to it. We wanted to make sure that we were conserving that.”
Hesitant to erase too much of the hotel’s distinctive aura, Moran and Salci gave the spaces a refined surface polish, reupholstering the existing furniture and tying together its color scheme to match the soft palette provided by the marble finishes, fireplace, and terrazzo floor. Walls were painted in a muted pink hue, thick patterned green carpets were installed, original floor lamps were swathed in pleated raw silk, and gold-hued fringe detailing was added to furniture throughout. “Fabrics are a nod to that period, but at the same time a little bit more contemporary,” Moran says, describing a look the studio has coined as “Retropolitan,” a mix of evocative historical references and Dimorestudio’s particular brand of charismatic flair. This included a particularly sumptuous floral jacquard by Dedar, which “looks just like a tapestry,” Moran notes.
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In the evening, if you plant yourself on a velvet sofa, you will be able to spot the native Milanese—impeccably suited and bespectacled men, elegantly coiffed ladies sprinkled with jewels—on their migration from La Scala to Gerry’s Bar for their post-opera nightcap. A tradition unchanged since Verdi called the Grand Hotel home, but made all the more glamorous with Dimorestudio’s refresh.
