Tihani designs new London Playboy Club

US designer Adam Tihani has been retained to mastermind the new-look Playboy Club when it opens in the West End next year – 20 years after the closure of London’s original Playboy Club.

Tihani is best known for the classy Los Angeles restaurant Spago, where this year’s post-Oscars party for American Beauty was hosted by producers Dreamworks.

The nature of Tihani’s design for Playboy is being kept under wraps, but Ian Payne, head of Ladbroke Casinos, who will run the club, says it will be different from the original 1960s image.

“The new club will have a very modern setting,” he says. As well as bars and dining rooms staffed by Playboy Bunny Girls, it will also feature a casino.

The Bunny Girl outfits – figure-hugging satin corsets, fluffy white tails and floppy ears – will be updated, but essentially the same.

The last London Playboy Club – at one time there were three, the most famous in Park Lane – closed in 1981.