It was at an off-cuff dinner one night last month that I found myself opposite actress Florence Pugh, as commotion around her new film Don’t Worry Darling hit its peaks. I’d received a non-descript text from Elli Jafari to come to The Standard Hotel’s monthly supper club – messages from whom London’s party set have learnt not to ignore.
Jafari, 45, is the charismatic Iranian-American hotelier who launched the King’s Cross branch of The Standard in 2019. You’ve probably seen her splashed across celebrities’ Instagram stories but had no idea who she was. This month, she was promoted to executive vice-president Europe and Americas of The Standard Hotel Group, she tells me, as we meet in the library-cum lobby over Padrón peppers and rioja.
“I’m very overwhelmed because it’s a lot. But it’s great,” she says. It is a lot: they stretch from the den of debauchery that is The Standard’s New York High Line to the infamous Miami Beach spot. And there are more coming soon. It was at their Ibiza opening this May that she first met Pugh – a trip that saw the actress hit headlines for denying dating actor Will Poulter who was also there. “I had no idea who [Pugh] was at first,” says Jafari. “She started putting my ring on, and I said who is that girl? Why is she grabbing me!” A few months on, they are kissing and planning their next trips abroad.
Jafari was raised in a hosting-happy family in Iran’s capital Tehran, before leaving for San Francisco’s Golden State University at 18 to start her hospitality ascent. First came a gig working for The Oscars’ Governor’s Ball chef Wolfgang Puck (“the godfather of West Coast hospitality,” she says). Then she cut her teeth in noughties high society New York with a three-year stint as General Manager at the storied Le Cirque restaurant in 2006. It’s renowned restaurateur Sirio Maccioni, became her mentor (“He only asked me one question in the interview: are you any good?”).
She is charm personified; even three years after The Standard opened here in the capital, the parties remain the some of the best at London Fashion Week and Frieze Week alike, populated by The Standard Set she has curated (it’s about character, not fame.)
The core team includes upcoming designers like Harris Reed and Chet Lo — both of whom she sees as children, and were given suites in the hotel to turn into ateliers after graduateding from Central Saint Martins — Ferragamo’s creative director Maximilian Davis, Harry Styles’ stylist Harry Lambert, The Crown actor Emma Corrin and “that actor Lewis Capaldi.” Singer, I ask? “Yes! He had a birthday party here a couple of weeks ago. I love him.”
Her trick to crafting the crowd is balance. “Yes, we have the fashion and art people, but also winemakers, chefs. Tom Parry is a good friend. Other people are from investing, banking and art buyers that become private buyers for our friends in fashion. That’s what happens when everyone is under one roof.”
Getting them in, and keeping them happy, is a task she takes on personally as her mentor, Maccioni, taught her. “He taught me that hospitality, food and beverage doesn’t come from the egotistic side of you. You have to understand who your clients are.” At Le Cirque, she explains: “You wouldn’t bother presenting them with a menu, and they never saw the cheque. It was fabulous,” she says.
What Sirio might have thought of her ordering two £5 bottles of “disgusting” Deliveroo rosé for Corrin, Lambert and Reed late one night when the bars had shut during lockdown, she says, doesn’t bear thinking about. “I only realised afterwards it was Emma Corrin! I was mortified. But they still drank it.”
One thing that keeps her up at night is making sure old world service is alive among her employees. “I want the team to understand the core of hospitality. It’s been a revolving door [with staff] in the last 18 months.” The industry was badly hit by the pandemic, but the culture shift in new-gen workers is a bigger issue. “The new generation want their boss’s job in six months. When you get to a leadership role, you need meat on the bones otherwise people around you will suffer, so I say no and they resign – which to me is heart-breaking.”
She had the same reservations for herself before taking on the gig. “I had to ask myself, can I do it? Then I thought of course I can – but it’s important to only take on a role I know I can exceed in.” She shouldn’t worry, as Pugh and co can attest.
