London is already jammed with private clubs, from royal drinking den Boujis to ever posh Annabel's. But Sacco insists her customers have been pleading with her to open a London branch, because no existing club offers the mix of people—artists, actors, socialites—that is her specialty. She is currently honing her target member list to a diverse group of 1,000 and plans to keep the club strictly private. Members, who'll pay annual dues of $1,000 and up, will be allowed to bring two or three friends, but all other hopefuls, including hotel guests, will be turned away. So what if Prince William declines to join but shows up anyway? "Hmm, something to think about," says Sacco. "But that's kind of rude, even for a prince! It's time for people to commit."
If Bungalow 8 London succeeds, it will largely be due to Sacco's talent as a social wheel-greaser, which she credits to her upbringing in a boisterous family of 10. "You had to raise your voice and fight in line for the bathroom," she says. "And you had to understand that you're not the only person around." After graduating from Johnson & Wales University in Rhode Island, Sacco moved to New York and began working as a hostess at Bouley. She met and fell in love with Gilbert Le Coze, the chef-owner of Le Bernardin. In 1995 he died suddenly from a heart attack, and Sacco hibernated for a while before emerging to cobble together $1.2 million for the successful Lot 61.
Though plenty of titillating celebs-behaving-badly dramas have unfolded in the nooks between Bungalow 8's potted palms (many, such as Nicole Richie's glass-throwing incident, made the tabloids; many more didn't), one of Sacco's fortes is her instinct for knowing how to gently steer a celebrity away from that fifth mojito on a night when there are paparazzi outside the club. It doesn't hurt that, unlike certain 85-pound starlets, Sacco has no trouble holding her liquor. To really knock her over, she says, "it would take a fifth of vodka and an elephant tranquilizer. Size counts."
Some may wonder whether there's actually enough of Sacco to go around these days, as she hops eagerly onto the branding bandwagon. As part of her deal with Morgans, she's creative director at the company's Hard Rock Hotel & Casino property in Vegas, now undergoing a massive expansion (Sacco is responsible for up to four new venues there by 2010, including a poolside space called Bungalow 8 Beach Club). The aforementioned condo project is a new full-service downtown building called District, where Sacco is consulting on the design, the gym and the restaurant; for Eos, the new all-business-class airline, she's involved with everything from in-flight amenities to entertainment. "It seems like a lot, but it's all lifestyle stuff, and it's all so interconnected," she says. "Bungalow 8 will always be my private little jewel. The other things are more franchisable."
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