A Sartorial Snapper. May 2012.

Dear Rowley,

So much news and such little ink flowing on my behalf this last week. Without doubt the highlight of the last seven days was the publication of Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up The Bodies: the second in her series of Thomas Cromwell novels after Booker Prize-winning Wolf Hall. You know I’m slightly obsessed with Anne Boleyn so was understandably keen to buy the hardback when I learnt it was all set in the last turbulent year of Anne’s short life. I opened the book on Saturday morning and finished it by lunchtime on Sunday.

The genius of Hilary Mantel is her ability to make Cromwell – one of Tudor England’s most sinister villains – a well-rounded and well-liked character. Her history is superb as is her reading of the many gaps and enigmas posed by primary source texts and letters. I happen to entirely agree with Mantel. Anne Boleyn was a mercurial character: the Great Whore to the Catholics and the bedrock of the Protestant faith to her supporters. I think Mantel was wise to draw a veil over Anne’s guilt or innocence of the treason, incest, witchcraft and adultery that sentenced her to death in 1536.

Though I’d suspect the charges were trumped-up to remove a second wife of Henry VIII incapable of carrying a male child to term or live beyond infancy. As Mantel describes her, Anne Boleyn is a skittish shadow only seen through the corner of the narrator’s eye. She has effectively already lost the game when we first encounter her in Bring Up The Bodies and I find it entirely plausible that Cromwell saw the removal of she and her supporters as the clearing of chess pieces that had already been lost in the game. Do read Bring Up The Bodies Rowley. It’s one of the best novels I’ve ever read about a historical character and quite comparable to Joyce Carol Oates’s Blonde: a masterful novel about the life and death of Marilyn Monroe.

There! You expected the gossip about Savile Row and you get an undergraduate thesis about Tudor fiction. But I don’t consider Bring Up The Bodies Fiction. I think it is closer in spirit to Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood: a creative ‘faction’ retelling of historic events. However, let’s move frivolously away from beheading by a French swordsman on Tower Green, witchcraft and incest. After one hell of a Mexican stand-off between my publishers and I, we finally re-shot the cover for The Perfect Gentleman.  You’ll recall I’d shot a corker with my principal photographer Andy Barnham but it was considered too close in spirit to Savile Row: The Master Tailors of British Bespoke.

You know me Rowley. I bear a grudge and hate to back track when I think the work done is superb. Long story short, Thames & Hudson sent their secret weapon Niki the covers editor to Bloomsbury Towers a couple of weeks ago and we dummied up a couple of alternative covers. I then turned to the man I always do turn to – Guy ‘Dashing Tweeds’ Hills – who agreed to re-shoot the cover as modelled by yours truly…who actually does get out of bed for less than $10,000. Hell, I could be had for the price of a cocktail peanut as you well know Rowley.

So I donned my Huntsman puppy tooth, twinned it with a divine polynesian sea blue waistcoat from Ede & Ravenscroft and stoated over to Guy’s house in Primrose Hill. Guy is of course known as the creative maestro behind Dashing Tweeds and is now collaborating with Comme des Garcons and Converse so he didn’t really need the job. But as a huge favour, he agreed to dust off his Leica and shoot the cover of TPG. What I love about Guy is that he understands light and he spends an hour searching for the perfect shot before we pin it down like a butterfly and shoot the hell out of it until we’ve got a pin sharp image.

Sweet boy that he is, Guy also shot the inside back author’s portrait for me. I do tend to err towards the mean and moody if not an intensity that would do a serial killer proud when posing for a picture. I usually end up with portraits that make people fear they’ll find a kidney on the head board the next morning. Well, Guy and I are old comrades in arms on Savile Row and he knows how to make me smile. So what we got was a softer, more approachable portrait that wouldn’t make children quake, dogs bark and adults back away fingering the Rosary. Do you think it’s a winner darling?

Other jollities of the week included a real Row day visiting tailors Anderson & Sheppard, Huntsman, Henry Poole & Co and Thom Sweeney to play a photo shoot for the Telegraph. I always adore hanging out with the tailors. This shoot is going to be a cracker and will I believe run to coincide with the inaugural London Collections: Men men’s fashion week that Dylan Jones, GQs editor, is fronting. We’ve had men’s fashion days but never a schedule to match the men’s shows in Milan and Paris. So it’s a big deal.

London Collections: Men begins with a cocktail reception hosted by HRH the Prince of Wales on the 14th of June at St. James’s Palace. No, I’m not going, ducks, because I’ve got tickets to see Liza Minnelli at Hampton Court Palace and that’s one queen I won’t stand up. But a couple of weeks ago, Savile Row was in something of a crisis: having been asked by Dylan to put together an event. The chap approached had talked the talk before dropping the catch. So Anda and I had a pow-wow and decided to go back into the events business. I am damned if Savile Row isn’t going to have a fabulous presence at the first London Collections: Men. So we’re putting on a show. I’ll tell you all about it when next I put pen to paper. Until then…

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Having a Ball. May 2012.

Dear Rowley,

I’ve never been to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute ball, have you? It is the one occasion in New York where ball gowns are mandatory and le tout Manhattan comes out to walk the red carpet and renew the vows between fashion and celebrity. This year’s extravaganza was to celebrate the Prada meets Schiaparelli ‘Impossible Conversations’ exhibit. I recall interviewing Mrs Prada for Arena Homme + a thousand years ago. The contradiction was Mrs Ps past as a communist sympathiser and her present as the owner of a billion dollar fashion conglomerate with possibly one of the finest private collections of antique high jewellery.

Mrs Prada made me laugh about the epic battles with her husband Mr Bertelli that I presume she seldom lost. Most amusing was the perspex tube helter skelter tunnel that protruded from her office floor like something off the deck of Titanic that she and her assistants slide down to relieve the post catwalk show stress. I suggested it might be best employed for a bit of  Devil Meets Prada slapstick comedy whereby Mrs P could eject interns. Anyway, I digress when the burning issue of the day was how heinous the fashions were on display this week in New York at the Met Ball.

I’m a terrific fan of Sarah Burton at Alexander McQueen but I do think she ought to have been tarred and feathered for the pink tiered frilly monstrosity she persuaded Florence Welch to parade. There wasn’t a point on that mille feuille that flatted a female body. She looked like a cupcake factory having been outraged by a terrorist bomb. I do believe even the costume designers of Strictly Ballroom  would have turned that silhouette down as a pastiche of a pastiche of appalling taste: terribly passo, darling.

I haven’t seen The Hunger Games having quite enough feral children marauding around the environs of Bloomsbury. But the sight of leading lady Elizabeth Banks wearing a monstrous carbuncle by British-Greek designer Mary Katranzou was enough to frighten small children and panic the cat. The dress/construction was like a cut and shut motor having been soldered together by a dodgy mechanic under the arches in King’s Cross. What a hideous collision of unpalatable patterns and incongruous shapes. I interviewed Miss Katranzou for the BBC a couple of Ascots ago and terribly self-confident she was too. Had I but known what she had in store for womankind, I’d have nipped it in the bud.

And as for the Lady Beyonce! Imagine a blind man playing paint ball with a sequin-loasded gun and a few yards of chiffon. Then ask a blindfolded child to play pin the tail on the donkey with ombre marabou feathers and a glue gun. The ill-advised Givenchy made Cher’s Bob Mackie Oscar dress look positively demure in comparison. I like Beyonce. She’s a game girl and terribly talented. But do you consider it fair for a designer to commit such atrocities with a woman who has given birth not three months previous?

Don’t even get me started on Chloe Sevigny’s Courreges-style shift dress made out of black PVC circles and little else or Mary Kate Olsen who won the Helena Bonham Carter Award for ‘off the slab’ couture. The poor dear looked like a deranged, malnourished lab rat dressed up for halloween. If I have the strength, I will send you pictures of the grave robber fashions at the Met. Poor Alexa Chung, as dressed in bipolar fashion by Marc Jacobs looked as if she was enacting an identity crisis whereby she couldn’t decide whether to be a bondage queen or a nun.

Gwyneth Paltrow has immense style but even she with her macrobiotic diet, gravity-defying body and peachy keen body should have though twice about an apron dress that barely covered her boobs and skimmed the thighs like a scimitar. It quite puts you off your prawn cocktail at Ciao Bella. Speaking of which, La Farmer and I sallied forth into the night this week like two horsemen of the apocalypse to attend a Peter York book launch at Phillips de Pury in Victoria. It was the kind of do where you spot big game such as thrillers from Manilla, maracas from Caracas and Nancy dell Ollio slinking past in inappropriate evening wear sipping Campari and hunting rich men.

I was rather put out to be accosted by a McAlpine, I forget which one. He’d clearly had a few sips and was eyeing me like a schoolboy who was contemplating pulling my pigtails. He was hugger mugger with John ‘Granny Takes a Trip’ Pearce and eyeing me mischievously. Having galvanised himself with another slug of grog, he lurched over, grasped the cuff of my Huntsman suit and said ‘wrong! You unbutton two or none at all’ with all the drunken swagger of Delia after she’d had one over the eight at a football match.

I computed several sharp retorts about relaying his valuable information to my tailor but couldn’t really be bothered. I think the response involved ‘off’ and ‘eff’. Sweaty men with glowing faces and a sense of entitlement are not particularly my bag. Don’t you get fed up of the fault pickers? They employ the lowest form of wit and the baldest sense of attack. Bored me to sobs as La Farmer would say. We resolved to make a quick getaway to Ciao Bella to mop our brows with lashings of Valpoliparrot. I think it is fair to say we rocked it out with immense style. Until next time….

 

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Cha-Cha Heels. May 2012.

Dear Rowley,

Much excitement this week filming a pre-record at the Design Museum’s 20th anniversary exhibition celebrating Christian Louboutin for ITV This Morning. Paying homage to Louboutin’s early years as a best boy backstage at the Follies Bergere, the centrepiece was a cabaret stage with old school shell spotlights illuminating a chorus line of Christian’s heels. The stage was rendered in glossy scarlet to echo Louboutin’s signature red soles and each killer heel was a star in its own right.

Centre stage was the most magical hologram of a ruby rhinestone stiletto that morphed into queen of burlesque Dita von Teese who proceeded to strip to her scanties. As each piece of clothing was removed, it somehow turned to stardust. Having seen Miss Teese up close and personal in the Savoy’s Beaufort Bar, I’ve got to tell you the hologram was entirely to scale.

True to form, our producer Darren had lined-up a good looking, incredibly efficient and creative crew. Once the fashion pack had been booted out, we practically had the place to ourselves to film. I love live interviews so no butterflies there but have a hell of a time learning links. But I’d practised the script the night previously and was pleased to hit my marks, get the lines out and give it some va-va-voom.

Though we didn’t have an interview agreed with Monsieur Louboutin, I did bring him a copy of Fashion at Royal Ascot and inscribed it ‘To Christian, always a favourite at Royal Ascot’. Thanks to director Sam’s charms, we got the interview. Christian was terribly charismatic and really rather inspiring. I had never heard of a designer taking himself to the appropriate climate when sketching for the spring/summer and autumn/winter collections in the spirit of a method actor.

My favourite encounter that day was with Donna Lovegood, the show’s curator. That valiant woman had spent the best part of five hours on her feet in vertiginous Louboutin heels and yet gave us a good hour and a very, very sharp interview showing us such delights as the fetish room where heels were spotlit in the gloom and displayed with photographs taken by the great David Lynch.

I think it was one of the best bits of film I’ve ever done but will have to wait until it’s available on ITVplayer tomorrow to have a good look at leisure. The next morning was an early start for a sad duty: to say goodbye to one of my great mentors Jane Hurring. Jane taught what was quaintly known as textiles at Lady Manners School when I was a GCSE then A-level student. We became fast friends; nipping into Bakewell for the odd tutorial at Aitches over a glass of wine and a cigarette. I wouldn’t be in this racket if it wasn’t for Jane.

Jane was an incredibly elegant, witty and wise woman. We never lost touch and I was thrilled that she attended my Savile Row book launch at the Savoy and subsequently a 40th birthday lunch in Derbyshire before she died. The funeral was a hurrah that Jane herself had directed. Unfortunately, I had to leave immediately after the service had concluded to get the London train so I’d be in town to do the live This Morning studio item the next morning.

I have dedicated The Perfect Gentleman to Jane. It reads ‘To Jane Hurring, a woman of style and substance’. Says it all really. It is frustrating that so many lights such as Jane’s have gone out in recent years. I mean, let’s face it, there are so many people one would happily never wish to see again and yet it is always the radiators rather than the drains who leave too soon.

The studio item for Louboutin with Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield was a winner and I hope it showed that a good time was had by all. This Morning’s green room is always the source of much amusement. I had a brief encounter with Anne Widdecombe who is currently performing a cameo role in the Royal Opera’s La Fille du Regiment. What can one say, Miss Widdecombe has immense presence. Cilla Black was also on the show but I didn’t get chance to say more than hello. It’s a shame because she gave one of the best interviews about her dear friend Tommy Nutter for my Savile Row book.

What other news on the Rialto? While in the steam room devouring the Daily Mail as I invariably do of a morning after a swim, I chanced upon an item in Richard Kay’s social diary. Apparently James Middleton had pitched-up at a party in St. James’s and said somewhat enigmatically to a friend from school that he wasn’t James Middleton. Nor was he ‘that royal fashion man James Sherwood’ who he is apparently mistaken for.

As you know, I use all the techniques of the embalmer’s art to to duel with Father Time but even I will concede that it’s highly unlikely I’d pass for 25 even if viewed from a pew at the back of Westminster Abbey. You’ll recall Master Middleton read the lesson at the wedding of his sister the Duchess of Cambridge. I have gone many times on record to say that James M was the best dressed man in the Abbey so will take this case of mistaken identity as a huge compliment however implausible.

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Women of Power. April 2012.

Dear Rowley,

While working on Anderson & Sheppard’s No 17 Clifford Street shop project, La Farmer and I found ourselves at Theo Fennell’s Fulham Road flagship and a meeting with the leonine Mr Fennell in his lair. Theo is amusing. I recall interviewing him for an FT story about the crucifix enjoying another fashion moment. ‘How did it begin?’ asks I. ‘Well’, replies he, ‘a long, long time ago there was a Jewish lady called Mary…’.

Theo had us in hysterics about a conference he had attended the previous afternoon as guest speaker for an organisation entitled Women of Power. Though this moniker sounds more like something dreamed up by the leader of  a hen party pack destined for a weekend in Magaluf, this cabal comprises ladies in the business sector who describe themselves as ‘WoP’ with no apparent irony. When I was a child, there was a cartoon heroine entitled She-Ra who I always considered the ultimate Woman of Power but I suspect the assembled ladies more resembled Margaret Mountford. 

Theo is intelligent, he has an unique perspective on life but politically correct he is not. One cheeky comment and you could imagine the Women of Power rising as one like Wendy Deng to engage him in a kung-fu battle to the death resembling the last five minutes of a Bruce Lee movie. I believe Theo escaped without incurring the Women of Power’s collective ire and lived to host a charity Strictly Come Dancing competition that weekend in the guise of Bruce Forsythe.

Speaking of television, I decided to unplug the flat screen in Bloomsbury Towers and retire it to the broom cupboard. Incredible, isn’t it, that when we only had three channels there was always something on the  box. Now, courtesy of Sky et al, we have hundreds of channels and absolutely nothing to watch. How can this be? There are notable exceptions such as NBCs Smash - an adult Glee about the making of a Marilyn Monroe musical destined for Broadway – and the odd gem such as Twenty Twelve or Damages.

Last week better half and I watched our first full episode of The Only Way Is Essex. I was absolutely entranced by a latter-day Mae West character called Gemma Collins who – according to the set-up storyline – was dating a boy she suspected might be gay. As she complained to her mother, ‘E tells me I’ve got nice eyes and beautiful skin but he never says he likes my tits or naffink’. Can’t make it up can you? Compared to Gemma, Mae West’s bon mots are worthy of Montaigne.

We also had the misfortune to see half an hour of Britain’s Got Talent. Now I have nothing against Simon Cowell and the other three Horsemen of the Apocalypse who sit in judgement on infants, the mentally ill and representatives of minority groups guaranteed to grab tabloid headlines like a pedophile in the night. But I have vowed never to sit through such cynical, exploitative, mawkish, dishonest, meticulously micro-managed effluence again.

Watching Britain’s Got Talent leaves one feeling dirty and used. The producers sank relatively low when last night’s episode turned into a revival of the Mini Pops in all but name. An eleven year old girl with a sweet but over-sophisticated singing voice was told by Mr Cowell that she had ‘soul’. Her choice of number? One Night Only. Other than Love to Love You Baby or Je t’Aime I’m at a loss to find a less appropriate song for a pre-pubsescent child to sing.

The gurning facial expressions the judges assume when listening to a voice they ‘love 110%’ makes one wish the gruesome foursome would reach for a blood sausage and have done with it.  Amanda Holden cocks her head like a surprised but delighted toy poodle being given an unsolicited belly rub and assumes her ‘YouTube face’. Mr Cowell gives a satisfied smile that makes one suspect Sinitta is up to no good under the judge’s desk. For one horrible second I thought David Walliams – the Peter Lorre de nos jours – was going to say to the little girl ‘you remind me of a young Whitney Houston’.

But the show saved it’s Susan Boyle moment for an angelic nine year old boy called Malakai supported only by single mother Toni Ann who – with sterling support from Ant n’ Dec – hammered home a back story so heart-wrenching that it left us in no doubt this child would score four ‘yes’s’ from the panel even if he’d gone on stage and participated in a voodoo ritual.  Anyway, said child did indeed have the vocal chords of an infant Michael Jackson doing his best Mariah Carey impersonation.

Malakai broke down half way through the performance to be comforted by his Mum and judge Alesha Dixon who – having mimed concern so convincingly she might have been told to charade Schindler’s List as an in one - said he was willing to smile through the tears and try again. Bang on cue, the nine-year old proceeded to perform a pitch perfect eight bars that left the audience weeping, whooping and clucking like a maternity ward.

Most alarming perhaps is the tone of voice Mr Cowell uses when talking to a nine-year old child. His comments were more suitable for the ears of a hard-bitten lounge singer relegated from the big room rather than as comfort for a traumatised child who is, frankly, cannon fodder ticking the box reading ‘cute black kid in the mould of Michael Jackson’. I felt a chill for that child. His career began, and I suspect will end, in tears. Until next time…

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No Dough, No Show! April 2012.

Dear Rowley,

Only in England could Thames Water issue a drought warning during our April rainy season. I just stepped out to the post office and Bloomsbury Square was like a monsoon in Rangoon. I have to venture forth tonight to Hatchards’ annual Authors of the Year drinks reception. It’s a terrific event with no literary agents or publishers allowed on pain of excommunication so I’m taking my friend Timothy Morgan-Owen and his pug Gwendolyn to the party. There’s nothing quite like a friend with four paws to winnow out the wheat from the chaff.

The Hatchards party is terrific fun. Last year there was everyone from Hugo Vickers – author of the definitive Cecil Beaton book – and Philippa  Gregory to Dr Starkey, Antonia Fraser and Nicholas Parsons. Lord only knows who will brave the elements this evening but I am sure it will be a marvellous party. Last night La Farmer hosted a very glamorous event to launch a book and photographic exhibition entitled Dreams of Diamonds. Went Theo Fennell, Peter York, Carol Woolton, Vicki Sarge, Shaun Leane, Maurice Mullen (on whose dimples I rather dote), Harry Fane, Trevor Pickett and Tamara Moussaieff.

As you know, I worked briefly on the Dreams of Diamonds project in its early stages but had to exit for entirely personal reasons. Put me in mind of La Farmer’s friend Janet who in a former life was road manager to John Waters’ muse the drag diva Divine. Do you remember Divine darling? My favourite of his films was Lust in the Dust: a pastiche spaghetti western starring Lainie Kazan and Tab Hunter with Divine playing saloon ‘chantoos’ Rosy Velez in which Miss Kazan sings that immortal number ‘let me take you south of my border (that’s north of my garter)’.

But I digress. When Janet was touring the nigh clubs of sinful cities like Paris, Berlin and Huddersfield, Divine would ask her to pick-up his fee in cash before the show with the words ‘no dough, no show!’ I am thinking about having this motto embroidered on a  sampler and have in recent weeks been putting Divine’s life lesson into practise. I’ve always been terribly grateful to anyone who wants me to write, curate, design or present for them and as a consequence have all the negotiating skills of a new-born kitten. Not any more buster. No dough, no show.

Though I’m longing to tell you about a cabaret project I am working on for Brasserie Zedel, my lips are zipped for now until I get the green light to dust off the bowler hat and darn the fishnets. Suffice to say it isn’t I who will be performing. But the project has allowed me to revisit some wonderful performers who I grew up absolutely adoring such as Mari Wilson and Issy van Randwyck who used to tear it up at Madame JoJo’s at the midnight show. She later starred with Fascinating Aida, performed at the National Theatre in the definitive production of A Little Night Music and released one of my favourite albums of all time.

While we’re ambling down memory lane, I have to tell you how much I’m thrilling to re-read Michael Gross’s fabulous book Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women. It is quite simply one of the sharpest, wittiest looking glasses held up to the fashion and beauty industry. It is a history of modelling and every last supermodel from Dorian Leigh to Linda Evangelista (possibly the two greatest models of all time) agreed to give interviews. Dorian Leigh was Avedon’s muse, Revlon’s Fire & Ice girl and the true inspiration for Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany heroine Holly Golightly.

Dorian was also one of the last grand horizontals. Her friend Carmen dell Orefice said of her, ‘if she wasn’t drinking, she’d probably be with a man’. Her epic battles with Eileen Ford ‘after she’d had a few sips’ are a joy to read. They don’t make ‘em like that any more. When I wrote the Models Close-Up book for David Bailey, I got to script an interview with Dorian but never met the great lady. She died relatively recently and, I’ll bet, she died with her heels on. When Dorian started modelling in the 1940s, the business was still a cottage industry. Nice girls didn’t go into modelling leaving the field clear for Dorian, her sister Suzy Parker, Carmen and Dovima to make fashion history with Avedon, Beaton, Steichen and Penn.

I’m having so much fun at the moment it is positively indecent. I bumped into super duper fashion journalist Francesca Fearon at the Dreams of Diamonds party who made much of not seeing me since the animals went in two-by-two to the Ark. Where had I been? It’s interesting, isn’t it, that when you step out of a relatively closed world such as fashion journalism it is assumed one has somehow been cast down from Paradise. Quite the reverse as it happens.

The Suzy Menkes, Hilary Alexander, Francesca Fearon and Avril Groom generation are the last of the great fashion journalists. Like I, they came up BB (before blog) in an era when reports from Milan or Paris were telephoned in to copy takers and mobile phones were science fiction. Technology has not been our friend. Information is spewed out like an anorexic’s dinner in vast quantities on t’Internet and quality writing is a casualty of this brave new world. I also blame the advertising dollar that makes even broadsheet newspapers dance to their tune. I find it sad that the global fashion brands use financial leverage to force good coverage out of what should be impartial expert witnesses. Nostalgia ‘aint what it used to be.

 

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