At home with the gnomes

It used to be that hanging around in hotel lobbies was considered a fairly seedy activity, indulged in by travelling salesmen and perverts but not by the likes of you and me. All that changed when American hotelier Ian Schrager started creating hotels in the 1980s - first the Morgans in New York, then came the Royalton, the Paramount, also in New York, the Delano in Miami and The Mondrian in Los Angeles. Together with the French designer, Philippe Starck, he created an ambience which was quickly labelled "the boutique hotel" - a place so indubitably trendy, well-designed and quirky, that it makes both guests and locals want to just hang out in the lobby and watch the world go by.

It's been much imitated over this side of the Atlantic but with two recently opened London hotels, Ian Schrager has finally decided to show Europe just what he can do. True to form, both Sanderson, which opened just over two weeks ago and St Martin's Lane, which opened last September, are stuffed full of design ideas and concepts of exactly the kind to set Ian Schrager hotels apart from the gang.

To get a quick crash course, the easiest thing to do is just saunter into either of the two hotel lobbies. The lobby of Sanderson, the brand new urban spa on Berners Street in Fitzrovia, is at once a minimal and a kooky space. Acres of the long opaque drapes which are a Schrager trademark flutter against the walls. The space extends towards the Spoon restaurant, which is headed by the Michelin-starred French chef Alain Ducasse, and a stunning urban garden, which was created in the 1950s by Philip Hicks and is a listed heritage garden. Dotted around the huge floorspace are various bizarre bits of furniture - a Louis XIV concierge table surrounded by Eames chairs and ceramic stools; a fibre-glass sensory deprivation tank in grey and orange; an original Salvador Dali lips sofa and a classic Eero Aarnio hanging bubble chair. There is glass everywhere - tinted, etched Venetian glass in boiled sweet colours - and then there are the portraits. Hung against the minimal white drapes and sometimes hung behind them, barely visible, are 18th-century dog portraits, whimsical, tacky and more suited to a Southend guesthouse than one of the chicest new additions to London's hotel list.

This kind of whimsy can also be spotted in the St Martin's Lane lobby. Here a chic Starck-designed banquette is fringed with gold stools in the shapes of molar teeth, and a massive throne is surrounded by garden gnomes doubling up as tables.

Alice in Wonderland-style massive chess pieces fit in with the huge bulbous vase and outsize revolving yellow glass door, apparently the biggest in London. Schrager, when asked "Why the dog portraits?" reportedly answered "Why not?", while Starck has said of St Martin's Lane: "When you arrive in the lobby you see a lot of different furniture, from the elegant to the bad taste, which is important because when we put three gnomes in a place like this, people understand `OK, relax. We are not here just to be chic.' " Despite their love of clean white and open spaces, neither professes a fondness for minimalism, preferring to concentrate on theatre, self-expression and humour. It is perhaps no coincidence that both have a history in nightclubs in the 1970s - Schrager created Studio 54 and the Palladium with the late Steve Rubell (with whom he also created the Morgans hotel) while Starck did the interiors for La Main Bleue and Les BainsDouches in Paris.

Still, if the thought of all that zaniness puts you in fear of ever getting a good night's sleep, the rooms in the two hotels will put your mind at rest. Both are astonishingly white spaces, notable for their absence of decoration rather than their showtime bravura. Nonetheless, there are quirky elements even here. The rooms at the Sanderson are devoid of internal walls; instead the bathroom is separated from the bedroom with glass which can be coyly concealed with a remotecontrol gauzy pink silk curtain. The silver-leaf bed is free-standing on a rug featuring a poem by Voltaire; the television is surrounded by perspex, and, in keeping with the Sanderson's status as an urban spa, there are sleek Starck-designed aluminium dumbells in each room.

At the St Martin's Lane hotel, the most notable feature of the bedrooms is the lighting. Beside each bed is a large metal dial; twiddle it and the lighting in the room can be adjusted to suit your mood, from pink to green to violet. Perhaps the cleverest part of this is that viewed from outside, the 204 rooms are bathed in numerous different colours creating a mosaic-like wall of light. Then there's the television cabinet in the shape of a cross, the picture of the crown jewels inside the safe and the gloriously solid and sensual Starck-designed bathroom basins.

Still, there can at times be a feeling of Emperor's new clothes about both projects. They're both undoubtedly trendy - there's even an embargo on photos of Sanderson until the glossies have finished slugging it out about who gets first option on photos. Yet at times the truly delightful elements of each hotel can be a little swamped by the, well, rather naff. Each is a fine conversion of an existing building - the St Martin's Lane building doesn't try to hide its office block origins and sits on top of the old, listed Lumiere cinema which Schrager plans to renovate next year, while Sanderson takes its name from the old furnishing fabric company which had its headquarters there. The urban spa, Agua on the first floor of Sanderson is a thoroughly beautiful place.

Yet who could overlook the tackiness of those dog portraits? Or the astonishing Purple Bar where hotel residents must perch on tiny doll's chairs, and stare up between their knees at a bar formed out of vaguely hideous uncut Nero Apsoluto stone? Then there are the chairs with antlers attached, and the crudely carved stools, dotted around both lobbies which can't help but look like a token nod towards ethnicity. Above all there is the policy, which applies to all Schrager hotels, whereby you are subtly reminded that everything you see is for sale - the bed, the dumbells, the clock or the television cabinet. Towelling robes is one thing, but settling down to sleep in a massive salesroom is quite another.

Still, there is something about the sheer ambition, attention to detail and sense of humour of Schrager hotels which doubtlessly works more often than it doesn't. In the rum bar at St Martin's Lane, people waiting for a table at the restaurant Asia de Cuba rest their elbows on tiny tall tables. Like much of Schrager and Starck's work they are out of proportion, bristling like a slightly surreal forest. Just like Starck's renowned lemonsqueezer they stand on long spindly aluminium legs. Yet Starck has saved them from being too Starck, or rather stark, with one simple trick - he's put heaters in them.

St Martin's Lane, 45 St Martin's Lane, London WC2N 4HX. Tel: 0044 207 300 5500. Sanderson, 50 Berners Street, London W1P 4AD. Tel: 0044 207 300 1400