Boite: Butterfly

SoHo

The F train is late. A Chase branch pops up. A bar opens in a hotel. Most barely merit mention, but the Butterfly, a celebrity-friendly lounge that opened at the Sixty SoHo hotel this spring, is a buzzy exception.

The bar is the work of John McDonald, the veteran restaurateur known for the Lure and MercBar; and Nur Khan, the Zelig-like night life impresario behind the Electric Room and Rose Bar. Together, they have recreated the kind of glammed-up, velvet-roped scene that ruled SoHo (and the meatpacking district) in the early aughts.

The Place

Butterfly is on the second-floor of Sixty SoHo and takes its name from the three large art works by Damien Hirst on the wall, each made up of thousands of iridescent butterflies. Other specimens were sent over by Mr. Hirst himself.

“I had to drill each of those 2,000 butterflies myself,” Mr. Khan said. The rest of the lounge, inspired by the Italian designer Carlo Mollino, is a 12-tone symphony of animal prints, geometric patterns, sofas, settees and discreet booths for necking.