The Gold Rush. May 2013.

Dear Rowley,

So the Love Gold London magpie has reported for duty in Cannes, or Juan les Pins to be precise, and is billeted at the Ambassadeurs hotel where all of the models in tomorrow’s amfAR Ultimate Gold runway show are staying. I always think modelling must be a lonely life for a teenager particularly if they’re blessed with good genes but little confidence. I had a peek at the fittings for the show this afternoon and it did strike me that models are the silent movie stars of our age. It must be so frustrating never to have a voice. You’d be so tempted to throw a teenage strop and say ‘I’m not wearing that’ knowing full well you are at the mercy of the stylist.

Fortunately for the amfAR models, this show is styled by Carine Roitfeld’s team and all of the gowns have been designed at her behest. Apparently it was Madame Roitfeld who chose gold as the theme of the show over a year ago when she styled last year’s extravaganza. The inspiration for the gold runway show is Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra and the creative team have produced a look book illustrated by Lula of Elizabeth circa Cat on a Hot Tin Roof modelling the gold dresses made for the show.

Having had a clandestine rifle through the rails this afternoon my money for best in show is on McQueen’s gold fil coupé dress that actually reminds me of Claudette Colbert’s Cleopatra. I adored the gold beaded Burberry trench with a solid metal fish scale cape and Chanel’s gold tweed suit is the sort of high fashion piece you wish the Duchess of Cambridge could wear if she wasn’t restricted to British designers. For sheer goddam Croisette glamour I’d choose Armani’s gold shantung siren dress and for insouciant elegance Lanvin’s draped sequin tunic that screams of Liza in Studio 54. 

Did I mention that all of the dresses are auctioned as a single lot at the end of the night? Mind you this is the kind of auction that includes VIP passes to all the Oscar parties next year and a signed Warhol of Elizabeth Taylor so I’m not expecting there to be a dearth of manicured hands lifting to bid for such an outstanding collection. Note to self, lay off the dry sherry or I’ll have to sell a kidney to pay for auction prizes.

The thrill of sneaking into the amfAR fittings this afternoon was being able to get up close and personal with the hardware that’s being sent down the runway tomorrow at the Hotel du Cap. My favourite pieces by a mile are Wright & Teague’s gold arm and leg embellishments. I can’t call them bracelets and neither can I call them braces. I will snap a photograph tomorrow at the show for you. The pieces I managed to photograph today include a truly sensational Anndra Neen solid gold cage evening bag, Kimberley McDonald’s bracelets and two sets of 18ct yellow gold cuffs set with white diamonds.

There is so much more for me to show you but it will have to wait until we’re ‘live’ at the show tomorrow which, incidentally, starts at 6pm with the red carpet and model photo call then eases into an after party that apparently ends twelve hours’ hence. The evening hasn’t been terribly glamorous so far because – wouldn’t you know it – the heavens opened from about 5pm preventing me from exploring the glamour of Juan les Pins by day or the fleshpots of Nice by night. Still, it is only cocktail hour so there’s always time.

Did I tell you Nick Rhodes was on the Heathrow flight to Nice? Apparently Duran Duran are performing tomorrow evening as is Shirley Bassey. The Dame is a local with an apartment in Monaco and I am sure she has it written into a contract somewhere that no A-list event with Gold in the title can be allowed to happen anywhere in the civilised world unless she gives a Royal Command Performance of you know what.

Dame Shirley reminds me of an amusing tale when she last played London’s Royal Festival Hall. I was going with a gaggle of friends from the Soho bar days and we bumped into an incredibly macho man called Troy in the foyer bar who used to be something of a heartthrob in the environs of Old Compton Street back in the day. When asked what he was doing at a Bassey concert, he replied in his gruffest voice, ‘I’m a friend of Shirley’ to which my friend Lee replied ‘we’re all friends of Shirley darling’. Too funny.

You should see the invitation for tomorrow night. That’s not just a figure of speech. You really should. Imagine Willy Wonka’s golden ticket then multiply it a thousand. I was nearly blinded by the bling when I opened the envelope and started looking for my acceptance speech. There’s the cocktail, the dinner, the runway show, the infamous auction then the after party. It will be the party equivalent of running the Grand National and I fear many will fall at Beecher’s Brook. I sincerely hope I’m not one of them.

Until next time…

 

 

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Pale & Interesting. May 2013.

Dear Rowley,

I’ve been keeping rather a hawk’s eye watch on the Cannes Film Festival in advance of the amfAR show and dinner next week. As you know it is aeons ago since I last reported on the women’s runway collections for the FT but I’ve got to say Cannes has made me think that fashion is a subject of fascination again. At Cannes there was a marked absence of heinous digital print that looks like a cross between a Damien Hirst splatter painting and something unpleasant you’d spy down a microscope in a petri dish.

Gone too are pointless details: explosions of ruffles placed at the most unflattering points on a woman’s body, maternity wear peplums, cutaway necklines that defy dignity and experiments in asymmetry that would have had Madame Vionnet reaching for the sal volatile. There’s a cleansing of the palette that isn’t leading us back to minimalism but does say something entirely new and entirely now. I call it a strong modesty first seen when elfish, elegant Carey Mulligan chose an edgy black knee-length Balenciaga for the Met Ball this year embellished by a single gold safety pin brooch: the sole concession to the Punk: From Chaos to Couture exhibition theme.

The Met was just the prelude for Mulligan’s appearance at Cannes. Nothing could prepare for the purity and beauty of the blush pink silk Dior Couture dress she wore for the premier of The Great Gatsby. I haven’t seen the movie yet but the trailer and stills promise that Mulligan’s Prada-clad Daisy Buchanan will make as profound a fashion moment as Mia Farrow in the 1974 film. But back to that Dior. I have huge respect for John Galliano’s dreamlike work as creative director of Dior but Raf Simons’ work for the house is a game-changer.

Mulligan’s Dior dress combined delicacy and superb construction; falling to the red carpet from a halter neckline, fitted at the waist and hips then fanning out into a perfectly proportioned train. With hair undressed and only Tiffany diamond drop earrings and a line bracelet as embellishment, Mulligan looked ethereal, elegant and, most importantly, at ease with her age and the age. Nicole Kidman, a member of the 66th Cannes Film Festival jury, showed the artistry of Raf Simons at the Gatsby premier and why he is the new master of modern couture.

Kidman’s Dior was a pretty sugar pink silk ballerina line cut as a high bustier, nipped into the waist then gently falling to mid-calf in a pretty bell-shaped silhouette. The dress was overlaid with a filigree layer of embroidered, beaded floral openwork in a colour drift from powder pastel to neon. The hot coral flowers that danced along the hem of the dress were picked up in a pair of eye-popping neon stilettos. Not a jewel touched the bare arms or neck but Kidman’s upswept hair showed off delicate solitaire diamond studs.

Emma Watson confirmed the new mood of strength and subtlety when she arrived in Cannes yesterday to promote Sofia Coppola’s Bling Ring. There was a fascinating shot of her posing on the Croisette wearing a wine coloured Christopher Kane mini dress smiling knowingly in front of the banks of cameras: a young woman in command of her career who needs neither plunging necklines nor status jewels to sell her ‘brand’ . Interesting too that Watson wore not a single jewel at the premier that night allowing her black sequin and ivory silk Chanel column dress to shine.

In comparison model du jour Cara Delevingne looked distinctly retrospective modelling a black lace Burberry red carpet dress and Chopard diamond necklace, drop earrings and ring. The hair and make-up was Jerry Hall circa 1979 and rather too heavy for such a lovely young face. She reminded me of Ingrid Thulin in the last scene of Visconti’s The Damned. Delevingne had clearly been briefed to pose with hand on shoulder to show ring, necklace and earrings in a single shot: inadvertently showing off her latest finger tattoo. Next to Mulligan, Watson and Kidman, Delevingne appeared strangely old-fashioned.

Cannes is catnip for designers because, unlike the Oscars, all the stars are in town for the duration so it’s a marathon of day and evening dress culminating in the amfAR evening at the Hotel du Cap. It also looks like rather fun in comparison to the Oscars and Met Ball in New York. The latter always strikes me as a rather stressful affair. Fashion and film collide on the red carpet and nobody seems to be having a particularly amusing time. The dress code is dictated by Vogue editor Anna Wintour who in the case of Punk: From Chaos to Couture this year chose to ignore the theme entirely leaving her guests who’d made the effort looking rather foolish.

That said, I adored the insanity of Sarah Jessica Parker’s Giles graffiti ball gown accessorised with a Philip Treacy feathered mohican headpiece and Vogue editor-at-large Hamish Bowles. Madonna pitched up wearing a Givenchy couture tweed shorts suit, ripped fishnets, support stocking and a black nylon Bettie Page wig. Though 10 out of 10 for effort, comparisons with Hilary – ex Dragon’s Den – Devey were forthcoming. As Georges says in La Cage Aux Folles ’there comes a time in every Salome’s life when she cannot afford to drop the seventh veil’.

Until next time…

 

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Aide Memoir. May 2013.

Dear Rowley,

Old friends not only remind you how far you’ve come. They also remind one of who you were before it all got quite so serious. I mention this because one of my bosom buddies Anthony is briefly back in town. He came to Bloomsbury Towers a couple of days ago and we drifted of for tea at the British Museum. ‘How are you darling?’ says he. ‘Wonderful’ says I. Quick as a flash he says ‘me neither’ and there we are back in the early 90s where we first met.

For my first full year in London I  was an MA undergraduate in fashion journalism at St Martins. We’ll save that back alley off memory lane for another letter. Suffice to say little time was spent there and at one point I found myself  doing work experience at Tatler by day and hustling as a Soho cocktail waiter by night at The Yard. Talk about life’s rich pageant. Anyway, it was behind the bar at The Yard that Anthony and I met. Soh0 then was really rather fascinating. The Colony Rooms and The French were still bringing in the louche old lags while the gay bars boomed and the glamour centred on the Groucho and the Atlantic Bar. Every night without fail we’d cash-up at The Yard, slug back a salutary G&T and be out until God only knows when living on tips and cocktail peanuts.

Anthony was always destined to be a fashion designer and his dream came true: working at Armani and Versace in Milan and finally migrating to New York. When I  earned my spurs and reported on the runway shows for the Financial Times I’d stay with Anthony at his apartment off the Corso Buenos Aires in Milan. Perhaps it is a mercy there weren’t any photographs of that time. I do remember it was a bitter winter so it must have been the Spring/Summer shows and I’d bought an ankle length chocolate brown greatcoat from Zara. That was the year I found Mutinelli (Milan’s oldest hat shop) and took to wearing flat caps. I must have looked like a camp Bill Sykes.

Anthony and I remained close no matter how many air miles separated us. We holidayed together at my parents’ apartment n Menorca several times in the days when you had to count out your cash and budget for the fortnight because there weren’t any cash points. That dates us. We were so broke at the end of one particularly fabulous vacation that we even contemplated ordering up a storm at the bar where all the waiters wore roller skates then doing a runner down several flights of stairs knowing pursuit was futile.

A some stage – I don’t recall the date – Anthony was posted to Treviso in Italy to work at Benetton’s talent factory Fabrica. Our Yard compadre Lee and I flew out to spend a couple of summers in Treviso with Anthony. As you know Treviso is only a whistle stop on the train to Venice and somehow Anthony had the use of an attic apartment at the top of a palazzo overlooking the Rialto Bridge. That was the summer when I had the most godawful toothache and couldn’t pantomime agony sufficiently in the Venetian pharmacists to score the correct drugs. So I decided to medicate with a shot of brandy every time we came across a cafe in Venice. I’m sure you know the rest. Anthony and I ended up on the balcony of the Hotel des Bains on the Lido doing a passable impression of the last five frames of Death in Venice.

That Rialto apartment and the nights in Treviso were magic for both of us. I do recall Anthony had made an artwork for his apartment called Never Ever Again. It was simply that: the phrase box framed in various colour ways. I had a series of three of these pieces hanging in my old apartment in Clapham. I’d love to have them again. In retrospect a lot was said in those three words.

Like all old friends Anthony and I have had our Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? moments. Ours was played out on Fire Island and the less said about that little escapade the better. While that memory has faded others sparkle like crystal such as the times when I’d be reporting from Pitti Uomo in Florence and Anthony would hop a train from Treviso to join the fun and games. We attended Sibilla’s bal en tete in the Boboli Gardens after the Gianfranco Ferre party at Palazzo Pitti and somehow ended the evening at the American Consul’s townhouse drinking cognac and doing Evita impersonations on the balcony overlooking the Lungarno. Speaking of Pitti are you going next month?

I could write a book about my friendship with Anthony and might just do that.I haven’t even mentioned Tokyo when he flew out to work with me on the Savile Row London Cut exhibition at the British Ambassador’s Residence. Remind me the next time we meet to tell you all about Anthony’s speech at my 30th birthday lunch. We were both rather refreshed and the first line didn’t entire;y come out correctly. I think it was something about having me over the bar at The Yard when I think he meant to say having met me behind the bar at The Yard. Of course now this would all be captured for posterity and posted on YouTube. I much prefer to keep it all in the memory bank.

How the hell 40 snuck up behind us I will never know but it was really rather wonderful celebrating over dinner at Bob Bob Ricard only a rickshaw ride away from where it all began at The Yard. God bless us and all who sail with us. Off to ITV at 8.30am this morning to film a Great Gatsby fashion and fine jewels piece with Holly and Philip on This Morning. Do have a butchers if you’re loitering next to the flatscreen at noon. Until next time…

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Cannes Can. May 2013.

Dear Rowley,

Couldn’t you just die for the French Riviera? I fell in love with the Cote d’Azur aged five when I first saw Cary Grant’s dashing jewel thief and Grace Kelly’s American heiress play cat and mouse in Hitchcock’s To Catch A Thief in 1955. I’m referring to the TV repeat, I hasten to add, not the premier. To Catch A Thief is that rare Alfred Hitchcock film that doesn’t have an undercurrent of darkness, mania and murder.

The director saturates the screen with light and colour and captures the French Riviera as a Raoul Dufy come to life. I will never forget the scene when Frances (Kelly) is sunbathing a the Cannes Beach Club on the Croisette, with the palatial Carlton Hotel as backcloth, and first spies John Robie (Grant). Grace Kelly sits poised like a leopardess staring from behind cat’s eye shades and Grant is at his most debonair. They are surrounded by beautiful people as brown as berries and toned like thoroughbreds in beachwear that belonged in a Horst fashion plate. Frankly darling, Scarborough was never the same again.

Though Edith Head dressed Grace Kelly like a dream in Rear Window, she was like a butterfly caught in the claustrophobic apartment belonging to Jimmy Stewart. In Thief Kelly is dressed for the Croisette, the ballroom, the coast road to Monte Carlo and hilltop villas above Nice and never looked lovelier. Kelly’s character is defined by her refusal to wear jewellery except for a garland design diamond festoon necklace when, in Head’s white chiffon goddess dress, she tries to seduce retired cat burglar Robie. She does of course wear jewels with an audacious strapless gold lame Louis XVI-style crinoline for the climactic masquerade ball scene of which more anon.

For all my mooning over the Cote d’Azur in To Catch A Thief I never did get to Cannes. No, I don’t want pity. There were a couple of press trips to Monaco over the years and last summer’s sojourn in Nice. But I haven’t as yet sported a striped Breton sweater on the Croisette like Cary. Perhaps you’ve guessed where this is going. A couple of years ago, La Farmer invited Vogue’s Jewellery Editor Carol Woolton and I on a diamond expedition to South Africa and Botswana for De Beers. Since christened Carry On Up the Chobe, the trip saw us hurled down open mines, charged by elephants in Chobe National Park and our bones shaken in light aircrafts held together by Bostick. I couldn’t have liked it more.

Most hilarity was had at the Chobe Game Reserve – the mis-en-scene of Elizabeth Taylor’s second wedding to Richard Burton – where hazards included grilled crocodile steaks on the running buffet, black mambas in the bushes  and a family of tame warthogs roaming free in the grounds. I remember saying to La Farmer, ‘Imagine leaving the door to your cabana open and waking to find one of those snuffling round the hem of your muumuu’. Anyway, I digress. The American press contingent on the Botswana trip was led by the remarkable Sally Morrison who has had a million lives not least working with Harvey Weinstein and Elizabeth Taylor as well as De Beers.

Both Sally and La Farmer are now allied to the World Gold Council and invited me to write a new column this year for Love Gold. If you’re as much as a magpie as me, you’ll adore Love Gold, Rowley. The first ditty went up on www.lovegold.com this week. Let me know what you think. The layouts are fantastic, don’t you think?  I was chatting to a PR girlfriend last week and likened the move from print to digital journalism to 1920s Hollywood when the silent movie stars had to adapt to the talkies or watch their careers fade. I don’t think newspapers – or god forbid books – will ever die but don’t want to be the Norma Desmond of the digital world swooping round in a turban saying ‘I am big, it’s the papers that got small’.

Anyway, long story short (too late!) Love Gold is sponsoring the annual amfAR fashion show, dinner and auction at the Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc in Cannes. The event is 20-years old and has become the hottest ticket during the Cannes Film Festival. To say I was thrilled to be asked to attend this year is rather like saying Elizabeth Taylor had a passing interest in jewellery. So before the month’s out you should be getting a letter or two from the Croisette. I do hope there will be time to don a pair of lemon Orlebar Brown swimming trunks in homage to Grace and Cary and hit the Cannes Beach Club for an afternoon.

Carine Roitfeld and Naomi Campbell are the hostesses with mostest for the 2013 Cinema Against AIDS gala and will style the fashion show as a tribute to amfAR Queen Mother Elizabeth Taylor – the first Hollywood superstar to shine the spotlight on AIDS awareness – with gold gowns from Dior, Tom Ford, Gucci, Armani, Vuitton, McQueen and Burberry. Let’s hope Sharon Stone will be on hand again this year to help auction the gowns at the gala dinner styled by Roberto Cavalli. Having never been to the Hôtel du Cap, I don’t care whether I’m seated next to the hat check girl on the big night. I’m just thrilled to be asked. Until next time…

 

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24 Hours of Elegance. April 2013.

Dear Rowley,

I had an intriguing invitation a couple of weeks ago to speak at the White Palace in Belgrade for the annual 24 Hours of Elegance event dedicated to all things luxurious. The three-day event is co-hosted by the Crown Prince and Princess of Serbia and takes place in September. The organiser had seen the London Cut exhibition in Florence and asked me to give a talk about the trio of Thames & Hudson books and curate a photographic exhibition of royal portraits from Savile Row, Fashion at Royal Ascot and The Perfect Gent. The Balkans have always held a fascination for me; not least reading about the ‘Black Duchesses’ of Montenegro who introduced necromancy to the Romanov court and helped precipitate the Russian Revolution. What I will introduce to Serbia remains to be seen.

The Royal St James’s book project has opened doors that I’ve longed to peer behind such as Lancaster House: the London townhouse of the Dukes of Sutherland built in the early 19th century for the Duke of York that stands in the precincts of St James’s Palace next to Clarence House. Lancaster House is essentially the most magnificent three-bedroom property in London. The lion’s share of the property is taken-up by the grand hall and soaring staircases leading up to a suite of staterooms and long galleries. The modest interconnecting bedrooms are hidden behind unobtrusive doorways on the first floor leaving as much space as possible for entertaining on the most lavish scale. 

The first floor staterooms in Lancaster House rival Buckingham Palace and the most famous comment on their splendour has a young Queen Victoria telling the Duchess of Sutherland  ’I have come from my house to your palace’. How one would have loved to have seen the expression on The Queen’s face or heard the inflection in her voice to assess whether she was being complimentary or catty. While we were waiting to be shown around Lancaster House, Freya and I were invited to sit and wait in the cavernous grand hall. Without 500 ladies in Worth crinolines waiting to be handed up the stairs and announced it felt incredibly empty. Isn’t it curious how modern body conscious clothing seems somehow mean and inadequate in such surroundings? These rooms were built to accommodate extravagant costume.

As the sun shines at last on London I have the yen to travel again. So it was pleasing to be invited to Paris by Fiona and Owen (Dowal Walker) to visit a perfume house in the latter stages of being revived. It was founded in 1799 and the story is absolute magic. I’ll tell you all about it after the launch but not a moment before. Suffice to say there are links to Brummell, Nelson, Wellington, George IV and – later – to what Queen Victoria would christen ‘the Royal Mob’. This being a day trip we were back in Blighty in good time to hare across town for Hatchards’ annual Authors of the Year party. The first person I bumped into was Ben Pentreath the dashing architect who has the shop next to Maggie Owen’s off Lamb’s Conduit Street. Ben’s book English Decoration was a raging success and he was surrounded by a gaggle of admirers.

I got into a conversation with a young editor who restored my faith in the under-30s. Totally anti-PC, she was fed up of unsolicited manuscripts about obscure minority groups and was longing to find novels underpinned by a lack of sentimentality in the spirit of my heroes Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh. I came away from Hatchards feeling rather invigorated that the genteel, gentle world of the book is still alive, well and to be cherished. Not once was there a ‘whiter print?’ conversation or a doom-ladened prognosis that we’ll all be on tablets before too long.

The day after the Hatchards party, my Thames & Hudson editor Lucas got in touch to discuss the next project. I’ve had a very good run of one book per year since Savile Row. I’d very much like a new T&H title on the go for publication in 2014 and – thanks to Hatchards – feel invigorated to pick-up the Corfu novel again, get it finished then send it out to my readers. I’m 20,000 words in but it  needs a lot of work. Still, until the sun shone three days ago I’d been walking round looking for large stones to do a Virginia Woolf off Waterloo Bridge. Now Spring appears to have sprung people are finally admitting JUST how ghastly the past months have been for us Brits.

To celebrate the Rites of Spring, the Sherwood Massive convened for the first time since last October at a long table outside Ciao Bella. Came La Farmer and Mr Bowering, Simon, Judith, Shaun and Vicki. We arrived at 7.30pm and left at midnight having set the world bang to rights, laughed like drains and consumed sufficient Valpoliparrot to float HMS Victory. There is nothing quite like old friends to lift the spirits and cheer the soul. The spirit of adventure gripped the table at one point and we discussed a road trip that began with Vienna and ended with a plan to descend en mass on Istambul. Can you imagine the not-so-secret seven getting preposterous on the Bosphorus?

 

 

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