Is Soho House too smoky for New York?

Hip London club Soho House is setting up an outpost in Manhattan. But this shrine to British hedonism is falling foul of a new anti-smoking law

With its smoke-filled bars and boozy reputation, it has become the favourite hang-out of A-list celebrities. But if London's hippest private members' club, Soho House, thought its very British brand of hedonism would be embraced by New York, it has another think coming.

As it prepares to open an offshoot in a sprawling Manhattan warehouse conversion, it looks set to fall foul of a new law banning smoking in all public places across the city. The ruling, the brainchild of New York's conservative mayor, Michael Bloomberg, takes effect on 30 March – 10 days before the launch of the new club, whose members already include Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman and Julianne Moore.

Last night Nick Jones, the owner of Soho House and the husband of the Channel 5 newsreader Kirsty Young, revealed he was hoping to find a loophole letting him dodge the ban. As a private club, he argued, it might actually be exempt once the precise wording of the rule was finalised.

"Things are unclear at the moment, but it appears as if there could be an exemption for private members' clubs," he said. "If the law of the city is that you can't smoke, then you can't smoke. I don't agree with it, and the majority of New Yorkers don't agree, but we'd have to abide by it."

Mr Jones may seem sanguine about the prospect of a smoking ban, but in reality it could be only the first of many hurdles awaiting him. Though renowned as one of the world's most cosmopolitan cities, New York retains a strong puritanical streak reflective of the concerns of "right-thinking" Americans.

Polite society is likely to frown on the arrival of a club whose colourful, occasionally rowdy, exploits often make front-page news in the British tabloids. Only last year, the West End venue was at the centre of a media circus after the two-year-old daughter of the actors Jude Law and Sadie Frost swallowed part of an Ecstasy tablet during a party.

Mr Jones is keen to stress that, while Soho House Manhattan will be every bit as starry as its London counterpart, it will be far from a carbon copy. "What we are doing in New York is different from what we are doing over here," he said. "Drinking is only one aspect of the club. There's wireless internet in all the rooms and a spa. The idea is to create a lifestyle thing, rather than just a boozy club."

Despite Mr Jones's protestations to the contrary, the venue is likely to attract its fair share of press attention when it opens on 10 April. Those signed up include the British directors Sam Mendes and Stephen Daldry. As each person invited to join was asked to nominate up to 50 other prospective candidates, Soho House has taken no time to fill up its initial, 750-strong, membership list. In fact, the idea of being a part of Manhattan's trendy new social set is proving so popular that 300 others are already queueing up.

Nonetheless, for some, more reserved, New Yorkers, the very idea of a private members' club remains anathema. As Alex Kuczynski, the socialite-turned-gossip columnist, wrote in The New York Times last week: "The phrases 'New York' and 'private club' typically conjure up one of two images: white-haired men drowsing over after- noon newspapers and highballs, or the façade of a strip club on which the words appear next to a female silhouette to confer a ham-handed veneer of respectability." It remains to be seen if Soho House can change this.