5 Hertford Street

5 Hertford Street is a private members' club at 2-5 Hertford Street in Mayfair, London, opened in 2012 by Robin Birley. The building runs from a discreet street entrance through a series of drawing rooms and dining rooms, with the nightclub Loulou's in the basement, the restaurant Nico's, and a cigar business, Birley Cigars, attached. Interiors were designed by Rifat Ozbek. The club keeps no public shopfront online: its website is a login page for members plus a guest-information page giving opening hours, contact details and a dress code that requires jackets at all times, permits smart jeans and clean trainers, and bars shorts, sportswear, collarless shirts and sandals. Nothing about fees, categories or selection is published. Reporting describes admission as depending on two letters of recommendation from existing members followed by a short interview with a club secretary, and cites annual subscriptions in the low thousands of pounds. Robin Birley's clubs are separate from the Birley Clubs group owned by Richard Caring, which holds Annabel's.

Cách thức hoạt động

Members and their guests use a single Mayfair house open from early morning until the early hours six days a week, closed Sundays. There is no published joining route on the website; enquiries go to a membership office by telephone or email. Spear's reports that candidates need two letters of recommendation from existing members and a short interview with a club secretary.

Thành viên điển hình

Reported by Spear's as tracing a membership genealogy back to the founding group, described in that account as predominantly English public-school in background, alongside figures from entertainment, business and politics named in press coverage.

5 Hertford Street is the clearest example in this batch of a club that discloses nothing. Its site exists to let members log in; there is no rate card, no membership page and no application form, so every number attached to it is second-hand and the published figures conflict badly: Spear's put the subscription at £1,800 a year, Wikipedia cites £3,500, and other write-ups quote different numbers again for Loulou's specifically. Treat all of them as unverified. The club is social rather than professional: no workspace, no business programming, no stated occupational criterion, and a dress code that assumes evening use. Its practical barrier is not price but the requirement to find two members willing to put their names to an application, which reporting describes as the hard part.

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