The Decor of Darren Criss’s Hollywood Piano Bar, Tramp Stamp Granny’s, Is the Perfect Balance of "Classy and Trashy"

The Emmy winner and American Crime Story star and his fiancée, Mia Swier, chat about their hip Art Deco haunt and its grit-and-glam design inspiration.

After winning his first-ever Emmy last month for his grizzly role in FX’s The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, actor and singer Darren Criss toasted the career high with an intimate after-the-after-party at his newly minted piano bar in Hollywood: Tramp Stamp Granny’s. “The nice thing about having a bar is that you have this sort of respite from all of the other parties,” he says of the hip Art Deco locale—a labor of love for the star and his fiancée, Mia Swier—a musician, producer, director, and the locale’s “apex” and cofounder. Located on N. Cahuenga Blvd in Hollywood, the watering hole, which touts tongue-in-cheek craft cocktails (“Boob Soup,” “Actress/Waitress/Mattress”) and programming like a “Bis and Dolls” event hosted by Zelda Williams, has attracted a bevy of the couple’s A-list pals since its opening earlier this year, including Ricky Martin, Lea Michele, Hailee Steinfeld, and Jake Gyllenhaal.

The power couple—both former New Yorkers—always wanted to export a bit of Manhattan’s piano bar panache to the West Coast, citing the West Village Prohibition-era mainstay Marie’s Crisis as a direct source of inspiration. “People always ended up at our house, playing guitar and piano,” Criss says. “We were always running out of alcohol, so we figured we should probably start a bar.” The pair linked up with startup titan Danny Massare to help ensure the business’s viability, with Criss enlisting some added star wattage in investors such as composer/lyricist Benj Pasek (La La Land, The Greatest Showman) and Elvis Duran, morning DJ at New York radio station Z100.

When it came time to scout a location, the duo chose the Art Deco bones of the shuttered canteen Grandpa Johnson’s Cocktail Club, previously the Beauty Bar, opting to retain much of the elegant interior, including the marble bar, lighting fixtures, and wood floors. “The concept that I saw was the juxtaposition of elegance and debauchery,” Swier explains of infusing a personal love of the punk rock culture of New York’s Lower East Side, adding elements of glitter and pink neon to create the perfect balance of “classy and trashy.” Her personal design touches include pink glitter tables, which she crafted by “rolling” some of the furniture pieces they inherited in sparkly substances. “I love sequins on everything, and the rose gold color worked really well with our custom neon,” she says. “We were left some silver velvet chairs, which I loved but were in bad shape. With a little Gucci inspiration, I incorporated floral appliqués to bring these into new life.” Swier also installed two-way mirrors in the hallway of the bar’s original back entrance, offering VIP rooms that have the added perk of witnessing all those that come in and out.

The pair also called on their local pals to help realize their full design vision: Criss enlisted his American Horror Story set designer Giovanni Aurilia to create custom window displays (including tattooed mannequins) for the front exterior, while Swier called on her friend Mike Dazé to build a custom piano bar to house Criss’s personal Yamaha and artist Bethany Barton to design a decoupage of the couple’s playbills for an added personal touch. To pay homage to the neighborhood, Mia commissioned local street artist Pasco to create a series of custom works for the walls. The overall outcome is “a bit of New York dirty grit and glam.” “We added our own seasoning, injecting a little bit of glitter and punk rock and irreverence, but the real focal point is the piano, and the people that come to sing around it,” Criss adds. “There’s a simplicity in that—it’s our own little world.”