What We OfferBusiness event companionship
The client table, the launch and the long gala night, with a composed plus-one
W1 does a great deal of business after six. Design and advertising studios in Fitzrovia unveil work in their own showrooms. Charity galas fill the ballroom at The Landmark. Client dinners take over the private rooms of Charlotte Street most nights of the week. Arriving alone is fine. Arriving with a composed, well briefed guest is often better.
Here, that guest is booked for exactly as long as the occasion lasts. She is there as your companion and conversationalist, nothing more and nothing less, and she is booked by length on the same ladder as everything else: three hours at £700 suits a drinks reception, four hours at £900 a dinner.
Windows for Business evenings
The companions the desk suggests first for this kind of evening. Any other window in the selection can be asked too.
Rooms where the work gets done
The venues repeat. Private dining rooms on Charlotte Street and Great Portland Street for a client dinner of eight. The Punch Room or the Long Bar on Berners Street for drinks after a pitch. The Florence Hall at 66 Portland Place, where the architects' institute holds its evenings. The ballroom at The Landmark for black tie. Fitzrovia and Great Portland Street hold most of them within a ten minute walk, and our reading of Charlotte Street by mood helps match a table to the brief.
How she is introduced
By her first name, and as your guest. Most people ask nothing more; if they do, calling her a friend is true enough, and she handles the rest with ease. She takes no photographs, posts nothing and repeats nothing afterwards. If you would rather she left before the speeches, or joined you only for the dinner that follows, that is simply part of the plan.
A launch is not a dinner
The two call for different people. At a launch or a private view, guests stand, drift and speak to eight people in an hour, so the right companion is quick with names, happy to open a conversation on your behalf and entirely relaxed when left with a stranger while you take a call. At a long table the skill is the opposite: patience, good listening and the sense to let the host's stories land. Tell Clementine which kind of evening it is and she chooses accordingly.
What Clementine asks before a working evening
The answers are passed on before she sets off, so she walks in already knowing the room.
Dress codes as W1 reads them
Lounge suit in Fitzrovia usually means a structured dress or sharp tailoring. A gallery launch allows more colour. Black tie at The Landmark or The Langham means a long dress, and she will ask whether the room leans classic or modern. If an invitation is vague, forward it and she will read it the way the host intended.
Companions at home in a working room
Samanta, in black tailoring with one very good piece of jewellery, is composed enough to settle a nervous table and likes the plan fixed by three. Sonya keeps to five until ten, which is exactly the shape of most receptions, and brings the restful calm a week of meetings asks for. Angelika can talk to an art director about the pictures on the wall and mean every word. Milena answers in single words when that helps and in full, charming paragraphs when it does not. Samanta, Angelika and Milena are all in the statuesque group.
After the last speech
Once the formal evening ends, whatever remains of the booking is yours: a quiet drink at a hotel bar, a walk back along Portland Place, or goodnight at the door. If a dinner is likely to overrun, book four hours rather than three and nobody has to glance at a watch. Durations and prices are on rates; the one verification step is described under booking.
Business evenings, explained
A day is comfortable, since she will want to plan a long dress. A drinks reception can often be arranged the same afternoon.
If your role calls for it, mention it when booking and Clementine will discuss it with you. Discretion is standard either way: nothing is photographed, posted or repeated.
No. The ladder is the same for every booking: three hours for £700, four for £900. Tickets and tables are covered by you or your host.
Venues across Zones 1 and 2, the City and Olympia among them, carry no travel charge. Beyond that boundary, the return cab is costed and agreed in the chat before anything is confirmed.
She will know whatever the brief tells her, and she is good at the kind of questions that let other guests talk about their own work. Nobody expects her to pitch anything.
Read before you go
- 5 min readBeyond the Foodhall: sitting down inside Selfridges between the shopsThe store's dining rooms are the civilised pause in a long shopping afternoon. Where to perch, where to linger, and how a day on Oxford Street is paced with a companion beside you.
- 6 min readArtesian hours: The Langham, where Regent Street turns into Portland PlaceLondon's first grand hotel sits where the shops give way to Portland Place. Three rooms downstairs, one famous bar, and how an evening there is timed from the first glass to the last.
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Describe the plan in a sentence or two. A name, a fee and an arrival time come straight back.