Love Thomas becomes Avenue Lifestyle!

I am beyond excited to tell you that I will be blogging from a brand new location from now on, from my very own lifestyle blog Avenue Lifestyle.

When Love, Thomas first entered the blogosphere, it was a joint collaboration between two friends. From opposite sides of the globe, Lauren and I shared a passion for interiors and living a beautiful life. We started Love, Thomas as a way of sharing our ideas and inspiration with each other, but also with the world. Since starting this adventure, I have really developed a love affair with blogging and the design industry, while Lauren has gone on to develop a very successful business in Australia. 

Sharing, writing and living a creative lifestyle has brought me so much joy that I have started studying all sorts of things, from interior design to photography to blogging courses, as a way of fine tuning my creative skills so that I can better my little space on the internet, but also as a professional in a creative industry.

It was at a recent workshop I attended in Hannover, Germany, that everything came together. I was attending Holly Becker's Blogging Your Way Workshop at her home studio with 17 other creative and talented bloggers. The weekend was loaded with positive energy and expert advice on not only growing your blog and business, but believing in yourself too, which is can be the difference between being successful or otherwise. It was the people on that blogging course that encouraged me to believe in myself, my brand and my own specific set of skills. I arrived back home after three days of shooting, shopping and sharing with a spinning head and a fresh design and direction for a new website and blog.

I want to take some time to thank Lauren, my co-blogger partner on Love, Thomas, for starting this adventure with me in the first place and giving me that initial confidence to put my words and ideas out there. She is one of my favourite people in the world, my best friend of more than 10 years. It has been Lauren that has been quietly fuelling my fire from the other side of the world. When I first started talking about AVENUE, she had nothing but excitement and encouragement to offer me.

This is my final post here on Love, Thomas, but I do hope you venture over to Avenue, where I will be posting each week about all sorts of lovely things that I hope will bring you joy and inspiration.

Thank you for reading and following Love, Thomas, and see you on the other side!

Holly

Starck Design at London's St. Martins Lane Hotel

Are you familiar with the work of Philippe Starck? This inventor, creator, architect, designer and artistic director is the creative genius behind design icons produced for major design houses including Kartell, Magis, Fossil, Flos and Driade. He is also behind the witty and theatrical Alice in Wonderland inspired interior of St Martins Lane Hotel in London's West End. I was in London last month and discovered this hip and happening hotel with a few friends. In the foyer, an interesting combination of modern fluorescent elements, dramatic columns and classic chairs meet with oversized and quirky objects atop Portuguese limestone floors. The design of the foyer is a play on proportions to give guests the feeling that they have just stepped into Wonderland.

“Hotels are no longer impersonal transitional venues but living, pleasurable spaces bursting with humour and irony...Every object, every shape, every style must have a meaning, and it is this meaning that influences us every day.” (Philippe Starck). With this, I leave you to discover St. Martins Lane with me.

Starck has designed hotels and restaurants the world over. With each design, he enjoys highlighting its singular pulse, its special vibration, to create a venue in harmony with its environment while lighting its romantic flame. He did this with St Martins Lane London, stimulating the senses with his imaginative interpretation of Wonderland in the modern foyer of St Martins Lane London.

The hotel’s no fuss, modern, white bedrooms are a soothing space to clear the mind and get a good night’s rest. Minimalist meets innovation, with a custom-designed lighting system that allows guests to set the mood in their room with a rainbow of soft coloured lights against an all white backdrop.

Back downstairs, the hotel's restaurant Asia de Cuba is a hotspot for Londeners looking to enjoy a meal with a twist. The restaurant, quite obviously one of the most popular dining venues in the city thanks to a truly unique concept, was buzzing with diners enjoying the restaurant’s signature fusion cuisine in ‘sharing style’. 

The restaurant’s innovative menu combining Asian and Cuban cuisine was a perfect match for Asia de Cuba’s equally impressive decor, with dramatic columns creatively displaying art, plants and books, and pendant lights strung like spiderwebs from the ceiling. The staff were lovely and welcoming, too, which made for a really fun night out. If you are ever in this part of town, be sure to go in and grab yourself a Mohito, which comes served in a mason jar!

If you are in London and looking for a place to stay amongst it all in a vibrant and upscale way, be sure to look up St. Martin's Lane.
Holly

Image credits: 1 St Martins Lane London; 2 & 3 Louise de Miranda of 30s Magazine; 4 St Martins Lane London; 5 Dani Gudith of and cute