When a hearth tore via Chiltern Firehouse on Valentine’s Day this 12 months, it didn’t simply shutter one among London’s most iconic locations – it left a void within the metropolis’s social soul. The resort’s Laddershed bar had lengthy been a glittering crucible of A-list celebrities, trade titans, cultural tastemakers, and impossibly fashionable out-of-towners. Now, the scene’s coronary heart had stopped beating.
Don McLean as soon as sang “the day the music died” about Buddy Holly’s premature demise in a airplane crash. For London’s elite social gathering circuit, this was the equal. As memes flooded social media – socialites jetting to Chateau Marmont or in search of refuge at Resort Costes – one reality rang clear: Chiltern Firehouse was greater than a venue; it was a motion.
For Kendal Barrett and Anna Howell, the duo behind Chiltern’s meticulously curated visitor record, the hearth marked a second of each private {and professional} disaster. The pair had constructed their reputations behind the velvet rope, rigorously sculpting the vitality of every night time with intuition, discretion, and a masterful understanding of social chemistry. Instantly, that platform was gone.
However relatively than stall, Barrett and Howell pivoted. From the ashes of the Firehouse, KENNA was born.
Curation Over Spectacle
KENNA just isn’t a membership, and even an occasion sequence within the conventional sense. It’s an evolving constellation of invitation-only gatherings – set on rooftops, tucked into basements, staged as one-night takeovers. What binds them isn’t location or luxurious, however a philosophy: curated connection. A time period the pair coined after 5 years orchestrating London’s most coveted social areas.
“We realised the true magic isn’t in exclusivity – it’s in alchemy,” they clarify. “It’s about mixing the precise energies, not simply names.”
These nights aren’t about paparazzi or efficiency. They’re about freedom, friction, and circulate – the permission to play, and the promise of surprising synergy. “It’s much less flash, extra feeling,” Howell says.
A New Social Chapter
Now anchoring a weekly residency on the Broadwick Soho – dubbed by insiders because the “Chiltern pop-up” – Barrett and Howell are as soon as once more setting the tempo of London’s nightlife. Each Thursday, a well-known cross-section of celebrities, creatives, and cultural connectors gathers, drawn by one thing much less tangible than standing: the thrill of belonging.
Although tight-lipped about visitor lists, they’re visibly having fun with their evolution from gatekeepers to architects of expertise. “We’re now not simply opening the door,” says Barrett. “We’re constructing the entire room.”
Their ethos is resonating. In an period of overstimulation and hyper-curation, KENNA presents intimacy with out pretension, exclusivity with out elitism. It’s not only a social gathering – it’s a platform for artistic collision.
From Tables to Discuss Exhibits
Their subsequent chapter? A deeper dive into the minds that fill their rooms. Enter Sure (No) Perhaps, a podcast born at 2AM in dialog with filmmaker Baz Luhrmann. After they requested if he’d be a visitor, he vanished briefly and returned with 4 phrases: “I’ve an concept.”
Now, Sure (No) Perhaps is ready to debut dwell on the inaugural SXSW London this June, with Barrett and Howell as soon as once more curating not simply who’s within the room – however what conversations unfold. The podcast extends their mission: championing authenticity, curiosity, and artistic momentum.
Sure (No) Perhaps at SXSW London:
• Turning into: On Digicam, On Web page, On Goal with YouTuber Jack Edwards and actor Herman Tommeraas
June 4th 2025 | 11:15 AM – 12:00 PM | Christ Church Spitalfields | Tradition Stage
A candid dialog exploring visibility, artistic id, and the facility of exhibiting up authentically – on and offline.
June fifth 2025 | 10:10 AM – 11:00 AM | Christ Church Spitalfields | Tradition Stage
A dwell extension of Sure (No) Perhaps, this discuss focuses on artistic redirection and the instruments that assist artists transfer via the unknown.
The Energy of Presence
For Barrett and Howell, this second is about greater than nightlife – it’s about narrative. Not simply who’s the place, however why. Their story is one among rebirth and redefinition: from stewards of exclusivity to storytellers of a extra related, acutely aware social period.
“We have been taught by the most effective,” they are saying. “However now we’re constructing one thing that’s ours.”
For extra on the newest in tradition, life-style and occasions reads, click on right here.
