If you missed my last column in Spear’s – a fabulous literary banquet, if I do say so myself – I wrote about Clifford Street, and how it is the new Mount Street, or rather the new old Mount Street, if you get what I mean.
Anyway, being early with these things is as bad as being late with them, and so it was with some annoyance that I noticed, just as the latest issue of Spear’s plopped onto the doormats of the primary, secondary and tertiary residences of more or less every billionaire on earth, that Charles Finch had opened his latest get-rich-quick scheme, Bar Finch, mere feet from Clifford Street’s junction with Cork Street.
It is the sort of neighbourhood restaurant one would want – especially when the locality in question happens to be that patch of paradise bounded by Savile Row and Old Bond Street to the east and west, and by Clifford Street and the Royal Academy to the north and south, respectively.
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My good friends at Perplexity inform me that this urban quadrilateral covers less than half the size of Wembley Stadium, where, to my admittedly scanty knowledge, there is not so much as a single bespoke tailor. I am not saying I could never again leave these charmed eight and a half acres, but with Bar Finch I am sure to go more frequently and linger for longer.
Charles is a chronic romantic, and his restaurant reflects his nostalgia for an age he was just too young to have experienced: a sort of idealised, Anglicised, mid-century Upper East Side.
With its blonde walls hung with perfectly good 20th-century art, velvet barstools and tartan carpet, you can almost imagine Truman Capote and Babe Paley swapping gossip at one of the corner tables. The range of dishes is commendably short – about 12 in total, with one or two seasonal additions each week. As if to compensate for the focused nature of the offer, no fewer than four different menus are brought to the table: à la carte, bar, cocktail and wine.
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Charles was all over it for a fortnight – at one point I half-expected him to shift a campaign bed from his Albany set, just around the corner, and install it behind the bar.
But of course the siren song of business to be done eventually lured him away. It was vital that he be at the Cannes Film Festival, where he spent most of his time in one of the bungalows in the grounds of the Hôtel du Cap. Did I mention that he has just produced a film based on Edith Wharton’s The Custom of the Country?
Then, when he returned bronzed from back-to-back meetings in his cabana at the Eden Roc, he was obliged to go fishing – Charles knows how important it is to maintain a healthy work-life balance. Moreover, he just doesn’t want to be defined by a single profession. There is a slight air of mystery about him, which is probably why I was once asked whether there was any truth in the rumour that he was working for MI6.
Charles is second-generation Hollywood royalty: his father, Peter Finch, won a posthumous Oscar in 1977 for Network. But he stepped out from the shadow of his father’s towering reputation long ago.
To my (again scanty) knowledge, Peter never had a deckshoe brand with what I believe is professionally known as ‘strong ocean-to-open-road lifestyle positioning’. Also unlike his father, he is publisher of a chic cinema magazine called A Rabbit’s Foot. Full disclosure: between 2008 and 2013 I spent five highly amusing years editing his newspaper, Finch’s Quarterly Review.
Finch & Partners, the brand consultancy firm, was his first venture in London about 25 years ago, bringing brands and actors together in a way that was much more imaginative and intelligent than the mere hiring of movie stars for ad campaigns.
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I believe his most impressive coup was to have a pre-cancellation Kevin Spacey commission, produce and star in a short play called The Interrogation of Leo and Lisa, with Thandiwe Newton playing the female lead.
It was performed at the Geneva watch fair to celebrate IWC’s Da Vinci launch at SIHH 2007. Getting a play about the ultimate Renaissance man and his most celebrated work of art was already quite something; having it performed by actual award-winning movie stars was even more so. But to persuade a Swiss watch brand known for robust, large sports watches – not normally associated with highbrow theatregoers – to stage it at a trade fair was an act of genius that was, and remains, utterly incredible to me.
If vast inherited wealth is the best thing to be born with, then charm comes a close second. Charles would probably be quite good at being very rich. He already behaves like a tycoon; he always seems to be in the process of purchasing yet another classic yacht.
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But it is his megaton charm that is his superpower. He is the star of his own Slim Aarons photograph, living his life as if it were a film. In black tie, navy Neapolitan-cut suit or fishing waders, his example makes being in one’s mid-60s not just bearable but aspirational.
To his chagrin he is probably best known as a man who throws superb parties. His Chanel-sponsored pre-Bafta dinner makes the ceremony itself slightly bathetic, almost anticlimactic. His Cannes dinners on the Côte d’Azur, this year sponsored by Montblanc, are the stuff of late-night legend. And even though I have not had the pleasure of attending it, his Oscar dinner in Los Angeles is rivalled only by the Vanity Fair party for its significance.
A veteran of both events once told me: ‘You go to the Vanity Fair party because of the magazine, but you go to Charles’s party because of Charles.’ Not the worst of epitaphs, and a testament to the man’s charisma and generosity of spirit.
This article first appeared in Spear’s Magazine Issue 100. Click here to subscribe
