Ian Schrager - the king of reinvention

Ian Schrager is a restless perfectionist, a maverick genius who went from re-inventing decadence in the 1970s with New York's Studio 54 nightclub, to creating the very concept of the 'boutique hotel'. By the early Noughties his company, Morgans Hotel Group, was the most famous hotel group in the world, with the Sanderson and St Martins Lane hotels in London, the Delano in Miami, and the Royalton and the Hudson in New York, all notable for their overarching, Philippe Starck design aesthetic: white walls, Alice in Wonderland furniture, a multitude of lamps and a glossy lobby 'scene'. But when Schrager's vernacular became the common parlance of hotels the world over, he grew tired of his empire, selling it for a reputed $400 million in 2005.

Now, at 64, he is back, having formed a surprising alliance with the Marriott Hotel Group, and plans to introduce a new breed of hotel to the world with London's Berners Hotel as one of his test sites. 'I am rejecting designer-orientated hotels, or design-on-steroids as I call it,' Schrager says from the 8,500sq ft, three-floor Manhattan penthouse apartment where he lives with his new wife, Tania Wahlstedt, their four-month-old baby boy Louis, and two daughters from his previous marriage to the former ballerina Rita Noroña (Sophia, 16, and Ava, 13). The building, 40 Bond, a Schrager development, is the first residential project in America by Swiss starchitects Herzog & de Meuron. Comprising 11 storeys of exclusive New York real estate rendered in opaque green glass and burnished copper, all of the 27 apartments were sold before it was completed in 2007. Schrager's own interiors are by the British minimalist John Pawson and his furniture is by French sensualist Christian Liaigre. The apartment, with its wraparound windows, Venetian plaster and discreet Picassos, is a blueprint for Schrager's new design approach. 'I'd like to create a new definition of luxury, to go back to a real simplicity, uncontrived but just as glamorous,' he explains in his thick New York accent (Pawson says that Schrager can sound like someone from Goodfellas).

Hence the deal with Marriott, cut two years ago, to develop an international hotel chain, Editions. Democracy was always part of the Schrager vision; at Studio 54 he delighted in the fact that 'hairdressers were dancing with girls in ball gowns' and that beautiful nobodies plucked from behind the velvet rope (another Schrager invention) could press flesh with celebrity regulars including Andy Warhol, Yves Saint Laurent and Truman Capote. The first fruit of the Marriott/Schrager coalition is the Waikiki Edition hotel in Hawaii, which has fire pits, fairy lights draped over the bar and a sculpture of smashed-up surfboards - Schrager's concept is that each hotel's design should be unique and fit its location.

Next on the agenda is the remodelling of the Berners Hotel in Fitzrovia. The hotel, once home to Virginia Woolf, George Bernard Shaw and Arthur Rimbaud, is undergoing a £62 million refit. It's still too early to show plans, but Schrager is confident that Berners, a listed building, can be renovated without losing its original, faded appeal. 'Berners you can make fresh, beautiful and very glamorous,' he says. Interestingly, it is on the same street as Sanderson, which still retains much of its retro Schrager flavour. Future historians of upscale hotel design will be able to zip between the two and trace the development of the movement (they will then go round the corner to see fellow American André Balazs' take on the form, as he is developing a former fire station into a 33-room boutique hotel in Manchester Square in time for the Olympics).

Schrager's history with London dates back to the late 1970s when, as Studio 54 was raging in New York, he and his more vivacious partner Steve Rubell (who died of an AIDS-related illness in 1989) came over to explore the idea of opening an outpost. At the time the leather-clad boîtes Tramp and Annabel's were popular and no one had tried a cavernous Studio 54-style operation. 'We wanted to open a club in the Young Vic. But we might as well have said Buckingham Palace. There was no way they would give us permission.'

Schrager became a hotelier almost by accident. His garment-maker parents had wanted him to be a lawyer (his father Louis died when Ian was 19 years old, his mother five years later) and he did study law before opening Enchanted Gardens, the precursor to Studio 54, in 1975, having been struck by the length of the queues for clubs in Manhattan. But after three years of Studio 54 being the place where New York's gilded set went to copulate, take drugs and dance to Chic in four inches of glitter, the club was raided and Schrager and Rubell each served 13 months in jail for tax evasion. On their release, they happened upon a faded hotel on Madison Avenue that would become Morgans, the supermodel hangout of the 1980s.

Schrager does not like to dwell on the Studio 54 years. But he's reading Keith Richards' autobiography, Life, and it has given him pause to reflect; as Berry Gordy, the founder of Motown Records, told him, 'If the hunter doesn't tell the story, the lion will.' His daughters certainly want to know about it. 'It's difficult because I didn't handle the success well; there was nothing you could do at night in the 1970s you couldn't walk away from in the morning. I admire the accomplishment at a distance - we were a couple of guys from Brooklyn - but we created a Frankenstein monster that almost destroyed us,' he says.

He seems to consider his other creation, the boutique hotel, with similar revulsion. 'When I was into design it was because I was passionate. Now it's being done by people because they think it's good business, but there's no vision there and because everybody else is doing it, I'm not interested any more.' He relinquished his last stake in the world of high-concept design when he sold his share in the Starck-designed, Julian Schnabel-decorated Gramercy Park Hotel for $20 million in December. That hotel was the death knell of New York ultra-design, just as Sanderson, with its cook-your-own-meal restaurant Spoon+ and pictures hung on the ceiling, was to London. Things change, insists Schrager. 'I lived through when rock stars were the be-all and end-all; then it was artists; then media editors. Now it's the young tech geniuses. Everything has to move on.' But hotels remain a good business. People will always need somewhere to stay. 'I love hotels because you have the physical asset to provide the best experience. You can go to a restaurant, fine; you go to a nightclub, fine; a bar, fine. But in a hotel you can do all that under one roof.'

Still, there's the question of what Schrager's 'new normal' might look like. One clue to the direction is a restaurant a few steps from his apartment, The Smile, whose chef is Melia Marden, daughter of the New York artist Brice Marden. It's quiet and friendly, and the food doesn't pretend to be anything more than simple and highly appetising. It's filled with creative people; no one flaunts their status. While it's listed as a mixed-use general store, café and tattoo parlour, it's really just a basement with a low ceiling and small tables, a rough wood floor and warm vintage lighting.

It's hip but you can't put a definition on it. There are a lot of ideas but it's put together so simply. They've used what was there, plus some other stuff they could afford and that's the idea. You don't have to have fancy materials. What's there is essentially what was there.' This approach is not as easy as it sounds. 'Over-the-top may be out but there's nothing more difficult than simple, every good designer knows that,' says Clifford Pearson of the Architectural Record. But Schrager knows how to capture the imagination. 'At Studio 54 he did it with sex, drugs and rock'n'roll,' says Pearson, 'and with the boutique hotels he created a place for people who wanted to see and be seen. Now there's a market for an upmarket clientele who want really good simplicity.'