By Design: Hugo Toro

Hugo Toro has been in the south of France, where he is working on a still-top-secret hospitality project. He’s been in Rome, too (for a high-end 100-room hotel). And Dubai (about villas and bars). And he’s talking to someone in the United States. His interiors for Gigi – with restaurants in Paris and Ramatuelle – are both festive and chic. In London, he created the sumptuous environs of the Booking Office 1869 restaurant and bar, in the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel, in 2021.

“What an amazing, historic building,” the 33-year-old says of the hotel, which occupies the former Midland Grand Hotel, designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott as a lavish Neo-Gothic fantasy in 1873. “And the station of St Pancras is also the gateway to France – it’s where Eurostar departs from – so I saw this space as a bridge between the two, like Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin.”

With its banquettes and bucket chairs upholstered in the finest découpe fabrics, intricate wood veneer finishes, burnished brass tables, circular chandeliers and dramatic palm trees, with 267 handmade leaves casting shadowy fronds on the ceiling, Toro’s interior is a testament to the golden age of travel brought subtly into the 21st century. “I’m interested in context first and foremost,” he explains. “That’s where I start.”

Toro grew up in Paris with his Mexican mother and French father, a doctor. “They met working at a Club Med in Mexico,” he laughs. He now works from a studio in a renovated apartment in Bonne Nouvelle, and lives near the delightful Buttes-Chaumont Park.

Back in France, his mother filled the house with color. “My Mexican DNA comes out strongly in my work,” he says. But while he has absorbed the vibrant hues of Luis Barragán, and the richly textured fabrics loved by his grandmother, there is also the rigour of Adolf Loos (which seeped in during time spent studying for a masters in architecture), and the experimental influence of Greg Lynn, who taught him in Los Angeles.

“It’s true, I like working with old techniques and 3D modeling,” he says. The London palm trees are a confection of metal and plastic, built from a 3D computer design. “I wanted to use stabilised vegetation, but it just wasn’t possible.”

For those wanting a piece of Toro, there is also a series of furniture, called Amanecer, made in yellow travertine, which he describes as partly a tribute to his mother. “Because there are some pre-Colombian shapes, as well as art deco and Brutalist influences,” he says. “But as I’m afraid of needles and could never have a tattoo, I see these pieces as my tattoos as well. They define my identity.”