Attraction Inns has owned what is now Silk at Edinburgh’s Kingstables for some 16 years. The unit’s had four different identities in that time, including Gaia and, latterly, Stereo, the name it operated under for the last seven years. Now it has a new look and a new name. Jason Caddy reports.
Silk opened last month and, at three-storeys high, it’s quite a spectacle. All roads lead to Attraction Inns’ MD Robert Orr, where credit for the look and feel of Silk is concerned. He says, “I’ve been in the business for over 20 years, and the first big refurbishment I undertook ran £100K and 12 weeks over budget. All the designers really did was take down on paper my ideas and run with them, so I’ve taken it all in house since then, and have a few design awards under my belt.
“What I set out to achieve in Silk was a space that blends both industrial and soft opulence, with a ‘lounge lizard’ feel that wouldn’t look out of place in any major metropolis. But I can’t take all the credit, as I am surrounded by an immensely talented group of people who keep my ideas fresh, and we grow them organically together.”
The smallish entrance belies the three-storey interior, although the main part of the ground floor (apart from the entrance area) was still under construction on my visit. So what’s it like inside?
The walls of the square entrance space are leather padded in long dark columns which run from floor to ceiling. Each is separated by a sliver of pink neon lighting which makes for a warm welcome. The Silk motif – a mirrored butterfly – is fixed to the wall directly in front of you, adjacent to which is the cloakroom. Round the corner is the entrance to the yet unopened floor, and a flight of stairs leading up to what is the largest floor.
This is the heart of Silk, and it looks amazing and screams quality and attention to detail. It’s a long space, with a bar running down the left-hand wall, in front of which is a partition wall with shelving for drinks and archways through to the main dance floor. At either end of the central dance floor are two seating areas – at the far end for the masses, and near end (to the door) a raised area for VIPs.
Several design features standout in here, but the raised VIP area is king. Mushroom-coloured leather banquettes line the walls and the odd peninsula seat creates intimate little areas with low wooden tables, complete with champagne bucket wells. There are also a few high chairs and tables in a corner, and a mirror runs right the way along all the walls in this area, lit from behind with colour-changing LED lighting. Along the back of some of the chairs is also a very effective gold leaf detail – like an ornate mirror frame. The walls have a horizontal stripe pattern, caused by the use of different coloured wood – like layers of soil if you cut the earth in half.
The bar is also interesting, fusing a mixture of materials and textures from padded bar front, brown marble top and tiny mirrored glitter ball tiles forming a strip along the top of the bar front, and studded along the base of the gantry. Above it are several Plasma screens advertising different nights in between music videos.
The dance floor itself is quite spacious and the feature wall is clad in a mixture of oblong white and mirrored tiles, on which are projected a rainbow blotch of colours. There’s a lot going to engage the senses, with state-of-the-art lighting and Mr Orr hasn’t stinted on materials either, so fixtures and fittings ooze a kind of decadence.
The second floor is an equally long space, but half the size of the floor below, narrowing at the far end to a fire exit. The bar is in the same place, to the left, and nestling at the end of it is a DJ booth padded in mottled leather, again in mushroom tones. Opposite the bar is an equally as long section of banquette seating, with tables and stools. Beyond both the bar and the seats is a smaller dance floor, which has shelves for drinks. But the design triumph of this floor has to be the wall-mounted mirrored oblong pieces, encased in a think wooden frame. They stand proud from the wall, and a burnt orange light illuminates the surround. I haven’t seen anything quite like this before.
Once the ground floor is open customers will be able to move freely between all three storeys, with ground floor mainly in use as an overspill. The design, Robert tells me, will be sympathetic to the rest of Silk. It’s obvious that Robert Orr knows his onions as Silk combines high end sophistication with a cool edge, that should ensure that particular address remains on the Capital’s clubbing map for generations to come.