Who we are
Who are Mr & Mrs Smith? In addition to the writers, rock stars and restaurant critics on our reviewer panel, here's who makes Mr & Mrs Smith happen:
Managing director James Lohan is one half of the couple behind Mr & Mrs Smith. James’ first company, Atomic, created the infamous Come Dancing parties and club promotions. (One of his London parties, in 1998, was voted ‘number-one place to be in the world’ by FHM.) He built on this success with an events and party planning company in London, producing events for clients such as Finlandia vodka and Wonderbra. He then went on to co-found The White House bar, restaurant and members’ club in Clapham. Launched in March 2000, it is one of London’s hippest establishments. Since the conception of the book, James has visited almost 500 hotels.
Marketing director Tamara Heber-Percy, co-founder of Mr & Mrs Smith, graduated from Oxford with a degree in languages, then left the UK for a year in Brazil, where she launched a new energy drink. Since then, she has worked as a marketing consultant for international brands such as Ericsson, Honda, Unilever and Swissair. Her last role in that field was in business development for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at one of the UK’s top marketing agencies. She left the corporate world in 2002 to head up her own company The County Register – an exclusive introductions agency – and to launch Mr & Mrs Smith.
Publishing director Andrew Grahame launched the country’s first corporate-fashion magazine in 1990. After moving into fashion shows, exhibitions and conferences, he transferred his talents from business clothing to business finance, launching Small Company Investor. He started a promotions company in 1993 with clients such as Sony and Virgin, and after a spell as a restaurant/ bar owner in Chelsea, Andrew decided to try out tourism in 1997, creating the award-winning London Pass and New York Pass, which give visitors access to the cities’ attractions. Andrew co-produced our programme The Smiths' Hotels for 2 for the Discovery network.
Financial director Edward Orr has been working in investment banking, and managing companies in their early stage for more than 10 years. As a result he has had to stay in many hotels across five different continents – and generally, he doesn't like them. This makes him qualified not only to look after the finances of Mr & Mrs Smith but also to have penned one of the team reviews – and he can confirm that Mr & Mrs Smith hotels really are special enough to be a treat, even for the most jaded corporate traveller.
EDITORIAL
Editor-in-chief, Juliet Kinsman, helped develop Smith from a twinkle in James' and Tamara's eyes in 2002. She defected from dancefloors to do-not-disturb signs, having edited music mags in the Nineties and contributing to The Face and Time Out. Running a youth culture website during the pre-millenium dot.com frenzy and working on the BBC's homepage nurtured an understanding of the internet, but now that she shares travel secrets in publications from The Guardian through to Grazia, and having presented The Smiths' Hotels for 2 on the Discovery channel, her heart belongs to hotels. Born in Canada, with stints in Africa, America, Greece and India, Juliet now remains faithful to her home turf of Queen's Park.
Editor Rufus Purdy began his working life dressed as a giant banana (complete with yellow tights), handing flyers to tourists outside Covent Garden tube station. He then graduated to the heights of junior sub-editor at Harper’s Bazaar, where he honed his skills dragging celebrities’ barely literate copy into the realms of acceptability. A spell at Condé Nast Traveller pigeon-holed him for life, and he has since claimed free holidays as travel editor at Psychologies, or on jaunts for The Observer, Elle and The New York Post. Aside from travel, his other passions include an unswerving devotion to Sheffield Wednesday football club.
Deputy editor Lucy Fennings cut her travel teeth early; as daughter of a hotel PR, she visited far-flung flophouses from French châteaux to Ethiopian tukuls. After a year in Dubai (working on Emirates Woman magazine and enjoying the kind of dives that require a wetsuit), Lucy went to Glasgow University to study art, literature and whisky. A stint at Legalease publishing was spent discovering how to be creative with copy about tax, followed quickly by a stint touring Asia, discovering more interesting things. When Mr & Mrs Smith found her, Lucy was deputy chief sub-editor at Harper’s Bazaar, keeping her finger on fashion’s pulse and sharpening her editorial knife on hapless hotel PR copy.
Having worked for Cosmopolitan, Loaded, More, Bliss and New Woman, associate editor, Charlotte Crisp, has partied with celebs in hotel rooms across the globe in the name of journalism and has tapped into her laptop everywhere from a bed of ice in the Arctic Circle to a yacht moored in Monte Carlo. Charlotte was assistant editor of New Woman when she began moonlighting as a Mr & Mrs Smith reviewer; having never gone camping in her life and freely admitting she’s obsessed with fancy-pants hotels, these days her hotel-lust dial set firmly to maximum in the name of Smith duty.
Before joining Mr & Mrs Smith, online editor Anthony Leyton was at The Independent, writing about universities for the Push Guides. As you can imagine, it was a tough task persuading him to exchange league tables for luxury holiday retreats and exchange halls of residence for hip hotels. Anthony has penned pieces for publications both top-drawer (The Telegraph) and top-shelf (Fiesta), and he has had a love of travel ever since he found bullet holes in the walls of a hotel room in New Orleans. He also has too many pets. But that's another tale altogether.
Contributing editor Sophie Dening was chief sub at Harper’s Bazaar for four years, and one of the founder editors of Mr & Mrs Smith. She now writes freelance on UK travel and hotels for Country Living and Country House, and is restaurants editor for Bazaar.
DESIGN, PHOTOGRAPHY AND PRODUCTION
Bloom Design, creators of the Mr & Mrs Smith brand and designers of the book, are one of the UK’s freshest design agencies. Founded in 2001 by three of the youngest heavyweights in the industry, Gavin Blake, Ben White and Harriet Marshall, Bloom is responsible for inspirational brand designs for some of Europe’s and the USA’s leading consumer brand companies. The house style is bold, iconic and distinctive, and their attitude open and irreverent.
Renowned for a creative, yet meticulous approach to his work, Adrian Houston has photographed famous personalities and unusual landscapes, as well as shooting big advertising campaigns. He has photographed faces such as the Dalai Lama, Sir Ranulf Fiennes, Luciano Pavarotti and Jim Carrey, and his images have appeared in Vogue, GQ and The Sunday Times. Adrian has commercial clients throughout the world, and has created his best work in some of the world’s most unexplored locations; the Discovery Channel featured him on their Discovery People series.
Head of operations Laura Mizon spent her younger years living in Spain and, after graduating from Manchester University, returned to the country of her childhood to spend four years at an independent record label in Madrid, promoting the emerging Spanish hip-hop movement. Soon after she joined Mr & Mrs Smith on a freelance basis in 2004, it became clear that Laura was to play a key role in the company; since then she has cultivated a roving existence researching hotels and destinations for its ever-growing collections.
Production executive Jasmine Darby arrived on the Smith scene in the middle of a major office upgrade from the deepest, darkest, depths of Clapham to a much more salubrious station in Chiswick. She graduated from Manchester University with a degree in History of Art in July 2006 and accepted her role at Smith soon after, more than happy to swap the fear of studenty electric-shock nylon sheets for the hope of close contact with Frette bedlinen.
HOTEL COLLECTIONS
Having grown up in the south of Spain, head of hotel collections Katy McCann moved to Madrid after graduating from Manchester University. There she pursued a career in journalism, to become editor of the largest English publication in the city, In Madrid. Drawn back to London by the English weather, she was tracked down by the Mr & Mrs Smith team to help work on the European Collection, which fits in perfectly with her love of travelling, her multilingual skills and her hope of opening up her own hotel some day.
Head of hotel relations Peggy Picano-Nacci was born in Indonesia but grew up in France. Despite her tender-aged appearance, she's a veteran of the hotel industry. The past 15 years has seen her work with two-star hotels through to top-notch luxury hotels earning her an unrivalled understanding of what makes a great boutique hotel tick. A former hotel contractor for Miki Travel in the German and Swiss market, ex-sales manager at The Dorchester and an alumnus of the Small Luxury Hotels of the World team where she was responsible for the French, Spanish and Portuguese member hotels, she has made use of Spanish, English and French lingual skills. But our favourite piece of Peggy trivia? Her father was the lead singer of a successful Seventies band. So who better to have on a staff that prides itself on retreats fit for a rock star?
Hotel collections manager Mary Garvin’s earliest travel memory is driving from her native Brooklyn, NY to Florida packed in sardine-tight for 22 hours in a navy-blue Oldsmobile Classic Cruiser among a month’s worth of luggage, her parents and five siblings – imagine the delight at her first airline upgrade. After graduating from McGill University in Montreal, Mary moved to London where she’s lived since, first pulling pints, then organising company travel at interior design firm, Studio Reed, and most recently sniffing out stylish Smith properties across the globe. One day she hopes to sing Johnny Cash’s ‘I’ve been everywhere, man’ and mean every word. Oh…. Amarillo, Tocopilla, Barranquilla, and Padilla!
PR, MARKETING AND MEMBERSHIP
Head of PR and marketing Aline Keuroghlian has worked in travel for more than 12 years. Stints at Armani and the quirky John Soane Museum helped cultivate a love of stylish things. After university, came several years of guiding high-flying professionals across the Italian countryside for niche tour operator ATG Oxford. This led to her promotion to the role of head of marketing. Now she is putting both her sense and sensibility to good use by working with some of the most beautiful hotels in the world as featured in the Smith collections.
Having been born to Finnish and Dutch parents, PR and marketing executive Sabine Zetteler was always destined to work in an international setting. Her first job was international sales manager at London-based fashion house Belle & Bunty, where she learnt the meaning of hard work, jetting between fashion weeks in Milan, Paris, London and Los Angeles. She then worked for BBC Entertainment & Comedy before emailing her CV to us while on a trip around India. Just a few days after her return, she found herself sitting at a new desk contemplating her next adventure – promoting Mr & Mrs Smith around the world.
Head of relationship marketing Amber Spencer-Holmes may be a Londoner, but she's got her cosmopolitan credentials, having lived in Sydney and Paris before reading French & English at King’s College London. Before joining Spy, this Mrs TuneSmith (her husband is DJ and Smith columnist, Rob Wood), Amber made waves in the music industry running a number of well-respected record labels. Among the many highly successful music products she has launched are the much-loved 'Back to Mine' and 'Bargrooves' compilation series, and, closer to home, the excellent 'Mr & Mrs Smith: Something for the Weekend' CDs from Seamless Recordings.
When marketing and membership executive Daisy Byrne isn’t efficiently looking after the Smith members, she can normally be found running, cycling, riding and generally being all outdoorsy somewhere in the Great British countryside. When she’s not at Smith HQ, Daisy also runs an up-and-coming business empire from her bedroom: communications consultancy FutureWorks. But her favourite place in the world? Paris – for its inspirational joie de vivre, beautiful architecture… oh and the fantastic steak at Le Relais de l'Entrecôte of course.
MUSIC
DJ, journalist and music consultant Rob Wood is the director of Music Concierge, which provides bespoke music services to boutique hotels, venues and brands. He's also responsible for putting together 'Something for the Weekend' compilation albums and writing Mr & Mrs Smith's TuneSmith music page. You can contact him at rob@musicconcierge.co.uk.