Flawless Review

Review By Fiona Brewer

That’s right ladies and gentlemen… the Sapphire Bar, formerly known as the hangout of local gangsta and underbelly cameo John Kizon, has had a makeover and has recently reopened as ‘Flawless.’

Now Sapphire Bar was an iconic Subiaco bar and I am going to try and stay as far away as I ccan from comparisons between Flawless and Sapphire Bar.

So what to expect in Flawless? There is a very colourful and contemporary and modern feel about the place, which is not at all like Sapphire… Okay, it’s basically too hard not to compare the two! The new owner Ellie McHenry has tried really hard to try and differentiate the two places, but there’s still just a little too much similarity for my liking.

Here’s a few reasons why Flawless and Sapphire are still similar:

1.LED Lights: Sapphire Bar was re-known for its innovative and very spectacular LED lighting. It was always bright and colourful and had a really clear theme to the place (ironically it was sapphire blue!). Flawless has lent itself to this trend as well. It isn’t exactly the same though: there is a strong indie and colourful feel about the place and the LED lights are absolutely awesome. I’m not a huge fan of the newer design – I think it looks a little clumsy and is trying to be outrageous on purpose ( a little bit like Connies pre-renovation!) – but it works! The new lighting and mood do give it a bit of a younger feel which was very much overdue.

2.Beats and Tunes: For the most part the majority of the music the DJ’s play is the same old commercial stuff they were playing before. It’s not a big criticism but if you want to be a bit different then you really have to set yourself apart. As I mentioned, the Sapphire Bar was very well known and it is going to take a lot for the Flawless to be recognised as ‘Flawless’ rather than ‘The new Sapphire’. They do have “Fabric Fridays” which will see a host of international DJs come and grace the stage but the longevity in this statement is pretty uncertain.

3.It dies: Sapphire Bar was very unpredictable when it came to pulling a crowd but one thing was for sure: it was only good til about 11:00pm and then it died! Flawless held their first ‘gay friendly’ themed night and it was reported to have over 150 attend. The next week only 50 showed up. I’m wondering if the novelty of this place will wear off and the owners will see a decline just as Sapphire did.

4.It’s still dodgy: Sapphire bar was known as the hangout of some of the local Underbelly characters such as notorious John Kizon and Craig Christian (the martial arts expert who slammed a skinny guy through a window in Leederville and killed him but got off on ‘self defence’). The door staff were unnecessarily violent at times but if you wore a short skirt and showed a bit of skin they were nice as pie! Now only a month into reopening as Flawless and half of the street had to be blocked off as there was a brawl between a patron and the head bouncer!

So would I recommend Flawless? I think it’s still a little too early to tell but one thing’s for sure: the place is continually missing the mark. The demographic has changed and it is quite a young crowd but Flawless doesn’t have much to offer compared to Gold Bar or Llama Bar up the road. The staff are all newly employed and have the combined personality and skill level of dry paint. Drink prices are also slightly above average with a house wine costing about $8 and RTD’s in the $14 mark. There’s nothing that really makes you want to stay, so I think Flawless ain’t so flawless and needs to do some real re-evaluation if it wants to relaunch properly.

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