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Wealth Blog | Tyler Brule lights up the crowd

I’d never heard of Salon No 10 before, but that’s hardly surprising since Lan Kwai Fong – which as an area seems to move inexorably south – is not my habitat. Salon No 10 lurks behind a solid uninviting door on the ground floor at Number 10 Arbuthnot Road.

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Tyler Brûlé, editor-in-chief of global affairs magazine Monocle. Photo: SCMP Pictures

I’d never heard of Salon No 10 before, but that’s hardly surprising since Lan Kwai Fong – which as an area seems to move inexorably south – is not my habitat. Salon No 10 lurks behind a solid uninviting door on the ground floor at Number 10 Arbuthnot Road.

The kind of door that suggests you’re only allowed in if the beefy person behind it already knows you. That this was a happening place went without saying, because the invitation was from the global king of cool Tyler Brule.

He who was recently described as a “foreign correspondent turned international aesthete and magazine impresario, whose hyper-curated Monocle empire now includes cafes in London and Tokyo, five retail outposts and a 24-hour radio station.” Not bad for a former hack turned publisher and shopkeeper. Like chefs, most journalists make lousy entrepreneurs, but Tyler’s the exception that proves the rule.  

The FT Weekend columnist was nipping through town enroute to Tokyo, his favourite place. He likes Hong Kong and his eponymous Monocle shop in the trendy Star Street enclave above Queen’s Road East that does very well, mainly due to the brand’s physical absence in China.

But back to No 10. What was this place? 

Described as a “glamorous bar with a very old school gentleman's club feel,” think Jules Verne. You can hire it for private parties on Saturday nights. Otherwise it’s a late night 7pm to 2am bar, but you’d definitely not stumble in unless you knew it was there. And you can smoke, yes smoke, inside the bar area. Or at least lots of people were standing there, fag in hand, whether allowed to or not.

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