Terribly sad to read of Sir Henry Cecil’s death. He was bar none the most elegantly dressed man at Royal Ascot. We’d often tip top hats when I was en route to eviscerate fascinators in the Royal Enclosure and he to collect yet another cup in the Parade Ring. The thrice-married trainer was one of the last of the dandies in the true sense of the word: an understated but impossibly glamorous man who met triumph and disaster with wry but inscrutable smile. The Royal Meeting won’t be the same without he or the Duke of Edinburgh this year.

You’ll be relieved to hear that the Royal St. James’s book is now well on the way to completion. I should be able to come up for oxygen in early July. Researching the book has made me develop an awful crush on St James’s Palace. It is such a curious anomaly: a Tudor palace whose construction between 1531-6 coincided with Henry VIIIs second marriage to Anne Boleyn. I’ve been trying desperately to prove the modest, minor palace was built for Anne. She spent the night of her coronation there in 1533 and a fireplace in the Tapestry Room is decorated by the initials H&A entwined in a lovers’ knot.

By 1540 when Holbein was commanded to decorate the ceiling of the Chapel Royal in St. James’s Palace, Anne’s decapitated body had lain beneath the flagstones of St Peter ad Vincula (St Peter in Chains) within the precincts of the Tower of London for four years. It is Anne of Cleves’s arms that decorate the Chapel as do those of her unfortunate successor Catherine Howard. St. James’s Palace is thus an architectural echo of Henry VIIIs marriages and thus a sacred place for me in London.

Don’t you absolutely adore Mark Wallinger’s White Horse sculpture outside the British Council offices on The Mall? Apparently the piece, made from resin and marble, is modelled from a 3D white light scan. I can’t help but think that’s cheating – particularly in the company of the great equestrian statues in Trafalgar Square – but doubtless the new art establishment will tell me this is progress. It’s all about the idea these days rather than the execution. Let’s hope the nations surgeons don’t adopt the same philosophy.

Whenever writing a book I do tend to seek amusement as far away as possible from the subject I’m researching hence Better Half and I going to see Behind the Candelabra: the Liberace biopic that was the toast of the Cannes Film Festival. Director Stephen Soderbergh does a brilliant job evoking the kitsch, Technicolor land that taste forgot inhabited by Liberace and his boyfriend Scott played by Matt Damon.

Those too young to remember Liberace might find it hard to believe that the bouffant hair, rhinestone-encrusted white fox capes, sequin suits, Little Lord Fauntleroy cravats and hideous gold rings sported by the pianist aren’t remotely exaggerated. Nor is the star’s entrance on the Las Vegas stage in the back of a white limousine driven by Scott wearing a rhinestone chauffeur’s uniform straight out of a 70s gay porn movie. 

Soderbergh is pitiless with Douglas whose Liberace is as wizened and repulsive as Nosferatu. Without toupee or bathrobe, Douglas’s Liberace is quite simply stomach-churning when putting the moves on Damon. Their first love scene (and I hesitate to use the phrase) had the entire cinema reaching for the sal volatile as did the graphic plastic surgery scenes when Scott is sliced-up by Rob Lowe’s Dr Feelgood to resemble the young Liberace. Behind the Candelabra is, in short, a gay horror movie played for laughs.

Rob Lowe is outstanding as the real-life doctor who operated under the influence of vodka stingers and hooked his patients on the California Diet of amphetamines and booze. And to Douglas’s credit, he never entirely lost the sympathy of the audience who saw his Liberace as a monstrous cartoon rather than a rather sinister human being. It was Damon’s Scott that queered the moral compass.

Matt Damon is twenty years older than Scott was when Liberace first pounced. True, Scott was complicit and stayed with the star as long as 18k gold bracelets, coyote fur chubbies and facelifts were forthcoming. But if Scott had been played by a sixteen year old we’d have clearly been in Jimmy Savile territory: an unpleasant, predatory man in fancy dress preying on twinks.

The physical comedy of Damon in rhinestone g-string swimwear and gold pool-side slippers distracted from a rather grim and sordid truth. What was behind the candelabra? A greedy hustler and a seedy old man. Liberace’s private life didn’t bear scrutiny for anyone other than the morbidly curious. Who’s next? Siegfried and Roy?

My last photograph is of Duck Island Cottage. A house has existed on this site since the reign of William III in 1698 as a retreat for the Keeper of the King’s Birds in St. James’s Park. As you know, St James’s is the oldest royal park in London and has been a home for rare and exotic birds since James I drained what was marshlands and landscaped the land in the early 1600s. After St. James’s Palace, my ideal home in London would have to be Duck Island Cottage.

It’s the 60th anniversary of Her Majesty’s Coronation and in the absence of an invitation to Westminster Abbey to sing a hymn and wave a flag I’ve spent the day in the company of a large brown bear. I was introduced to the bear in question a couple of months ago when the rather lovely Fiona and Owen of Dowal Walker fame invited me to Paris to become acquainted with a long dormant British perfume house called Atkinsons.

As you know I’d dug rather deep last year to discover the great British luxury goods houses still trading today for my Perfect Gent Thames & Hudson book. I must have dashed like a dervish a million times past Ferragamo on Old Bond Street en route to Cecconi’s and never even bothered to look up at No 24: a golden rule when looking for London’s history. Well, long story short I was having a watch repaired on the 4th floor of Tiffany opposite Ferragamo and was enchanted with the beauty of the building opposite.

It was a mad mix of Neo Gothic and Art Deco architecture with carved, painted and gilded heraldic motifs soaring up to the roof from which a rather incongruous spire protruded. On closer inspection I saw the name Atkinsons scrolled above the Burlington Gardens facade with the dates 1799 and 1926. I thought little more of the Atkinsons Building until that day trip to Paris with Fiona. The stories I discovered made me want to go back to The Perfect Gentleman and pen a new chapter.

Now I’ve heard a few tall tales in my time whereby brands have a handful of urban myths and lots of chutzpah that they spin together and relaunch a dodo. What the new owners of Atkinsons had was company ledgers, antique packaging, formula books and press cuttings dating back to the early 1800s that told a terribly romantic tale. 18-year old James Atkinson travelled from Cumberland to London in 1799 to seek his fortune. He took premises at 44 Gerrard Street in Soho and produced a best-seller: a rose-scented hair pomade made with bear grease.

James chained a live bear outside his Soho premises that became a mascot for the beaux and bucks of the era: none more influential than Mr Brummell. Brummell’s patronage of Atkinsons set the fashion followed by the Prince of Wales, Wellington, Byron and Nelson. We know Brummell banished the powdered wig in favour of natural, windblown heroic hair and famously didn’t wear perfume so the fact that Atkinsons didn’t try to link the Beau to its early Eau de Cologne had the ring of truth about it.

Atkinsons have the documents that prove James’s English Eau de Cologne earned him the title Perfumer to the Court of St James’s in 1832 when Prinny had become King George IV. The ledgers then record the Coronation Bouquet made for Queen Victoria in 1840 and successive private blends made for Empress Sissi of Austria, BIsmarck, Queen Alexandra and Queen Mary. There in the records were brilliant brand names such as The Odd Felllow’s Bouquet (a favourite of Lawrence of Arabia) and Fashion Decree worn by the divine Sarah Bernhardt.

I was given a preview of the new collection of fragrances on the Paris trip and asked if I’d delve deeper into the company’s past to potentially host a London launch. The 19th century history was solid gold so I wanted to find evidence that the company kept its lustre in the 20th century. I was fascinated to discover that Virginia Woolf included Atkinsons at 24 Old Bond Street in Mrs Dalloway’s whimsical shopping trip described in the eponymous novel. I also found it rather marvellous that Atkinsons was one of the first companies to employ Queen Mother of floristry Constance Spry to dress their windows.

Just as I saw echoes of Thomas Hawke (founder of Gieves & Hawkes in 1771) in the story of James Atkinson, so I drew comparisons with Savile Row in the rapid decline of once great businesses such as Atkinsons in the aftermath of World War Two. Luxury goods are an inevitable casualty of war and perfume houses such as Atkinsons couldn’t continue to trade at a comparable level when ingredients were in shorter supply than demand.

Post World War Two, Atkinsons was sold to successive licenses and the Atkinsons Bear went into hibernation. I absolutely adore being on a team when new territories are being chartered. I last had that feeling of thrill when working on Anderson & Sheppard’s new venture at No 17 Clifford Street. As you know perfume is a passion of mine but I hardly my subject for a PhD. So when Atkinsons asked me to tell their story at the London launch I was thrilled and daunted in equal measures.

We did the London presentation yesterday in the Haymarket Hotel’s Shooting Gallery over breakfast, lunch and afternoon tea sittings. I felt like I was back in Vaudeville, darling, doing three shows a day. My nerves always strike two to three weeks before a presentation but come the day I always resort to the Judy Garland protocol: ‘plant your feet apart, put your hands on your hips and sing, goddammit’.

Without crowing like an Aesop’s Fable, I think it was all rather fun. The room looked fabulous; dressed as it was as a visual history of James Atkinson with rather fabulous installations that set the scene for each of the new perfumes – or juices as they are apparently known in the trade. You’ll be pleased to hear I laid off the juice the night before the presentation and didn’t even sink a celebratory Bellini after the last show. God forbid I’m growing up at last.

When Carine Roitfeld promises a ‘beyond over the top and beyond one of a kind collection that will go down in history and never be available again’ she isn’t just whistling Dixie. The audience at amfAR’s 20th anniversary gala auction at the Hôtel du Cap were treated to an orgy of gold that could have costumed one of Cecil B. DeMille’s Biblical epics and a spectacular collection of contemporary gold jewellery commissioned by Love Gold. As I told you in my last letter, Riotfeld had invited designers such as Lanvin, Michael Kors, Tom Ford, Vionnet, Christian Dior, Emilio Pucci and Giambattista Valli to create one-off golden gowns for her 38-piece Ultimate Gold Collection Fashion Show to be auctioned as a single lot on the night of 1000 stars in Cannes.

Only a truly great stylist can spin layer-upon-layer of gold into looks that do justice to the gowns and the jewels. So opulent were some of the dresses that only the purest, strongest jewellery design could compete. Unsurprisingly the cuff proved to be the victorious piece of jewellery when allowed to shine on bare arms. Hilat’s 24k yellow gold knot cuff was outstanding as modelled by Toni Garrn in a liquid gold Vionnet asymmetric dress falling from one shoulder with a split skirt floating like the petals of a gilded flower.

There was a collective swoon as gap-toothed lovely Jessica Hart danced down the runway in a darling Giambattista Valli floral lamé mini prom dress and Hoorsenbuhs 18k yellow gold bar bracelet while Marine Deleeuw shimmered in a Michael Kors gold goddess dress and House of Waris 18k yellow gold cuffs. The Waris cuffs, christened ‘Love Between the Shadow and Soul’, were crafted in a layered honeycomb of 18k yellow gold giving sculptural depth and dimension.

Riotfeld played an arpeggio with tones of gold that allowed exceptional jewels to take centre stage. Eddie Borgo’s punk-inspired 18k yellow gold cuffs – a cage of interwoven studded and spiked circlets – was more than equal to Versace’s va-va-voom gold and silver fringe mini dress modelled by Izabel Goulart. In contrast Rick Owens’ dull gold column dress worn by Lisa Verberight was the perfect foil for Wright & Teague’s outstanding African tribal-inspired golden armlets. A personal favourite piece was Chanel’s sharp, chic gold bouclé pencil skirt suit accessorised with Anndra Neen’s utterly desirable 18k gold cage clutch purse.

This being ‘fashion’, there were moments of wild abandon when less was clearly a bore for Riotfeld and she took gold to the max. Anna Dello Russo made a cameo appearance whirling like a dervish in Pucci’s silk brocade belted mini dress sending Pucci designer Peter Dundas into paroxysms of glee. Dello Russo rocked gold Tom Ford gladiator boots, a pillbox hat and gold shades that entirely eclipsed the gold, diamond and emerald Bulgari Serpenti watch/bracelets on her wrist. With so much madness in on outfit, one couldn’t have been more surprised if Riotfeld had coiled a real serpent round Dello Russo’s wrist.

Karlie Kloss was the calm after Hurricane Dello Russo when she wafted between the front row tables in a serene hooded Maharani gown designed by Tarun Tahiliani; Azva’s 24k gold, diamond and pearl Seven Flowers necklace draped as a regal headpiece in her upswept chignon. When gemstones did appear in the Ultimate Gold Collection they were employed as accents to compliment complex gold work. A light scattering of diamonds adorned Ofira’s 18k yellow gold leaf motif bracelet (worn by Lily Donaldson in Gucci’s floor-length show stopper) while sliced diamond windowpanes embellished Coomi’s 20k Aztec-inspired bangle modelled by Katharina Damm wearing L’Wren Scott’s brocade cocktail dress.

The finale saw a full line-up of the golden girls on the amfAR stage as Sharon Stone made her inimitable entrance to auction the dresses. The speech bubble above her head would have read ‘I used to be snow white but I drifted’. Vamping like Mae West in I’m No Angel, Miss Stone intoned ‘the winner will get to take home all of these beautiful dresses, all of these suits…and not one of these models’. Despite offering to throw-in her Cavalli dress and go home in a tablecloth (not for the first time apparently), the Ultimate Gold Collection auction winner spared Miss Stone’s blushes and won the lot for a hammer price of 1.2 million Euros. The grand total on the night was $25 million.

Where one can go either spiritually, financially or geographically after a $25 million gala dinner and auction? It seemed all 900 guests decided to accept amfAR’s invitation to the midnight after party in the Eden Roc pavilion. I took the starlit walk across the Hôtel du Cap gardens and thanks to the Love Gold Massive was whisked through to the VIP rooms overlooking the poolside terrace. In the great tradition of the Hôtel du Cap’s glamorous past, what happened at the Eden Roc stays at the Eden Roc. Suffice to say I didn’t end up being thrown overboard from Roberto Cavalli’s yacht or dragged screenplay in hand away from Harvey Weinstein’s table yowling ‘this one’s going to make you’.

The Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc has been the mise-en-scène for the most enchanted evenings in the history of the Cannes Film Festival and none more so than amfAR’s 20th anniversary gala. The promenade that slopes from the hotel’s perch on an Antibes hillside to the Eden Roc pavilion touching the Mediterranean sea is haunted by legendary lovers Rita Hayworth and Aly Khan and Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton who honeymooned here. F. Scott Fitzgerald immortalised the Hôtel du Cap in Tender is the Night and Picasso drew inspiration from summers in residence at this pale, palatial Napoleon III chateau.

The Hôtel reminded me of George Bernard Shaw’s quip about San Simeon: ‘the kind of place God would have built if he’d had the money’. You would have to have a heart of stone or a face full of Botox not to beam with pleasure on first stepping out on the Hôtel du Cap terrace. 900 guests in full evening dress posed out on the promenade overlooking the azure coastline sipping champagne and smoking the occasional illicit cigarette as if invited to cocktails by Sott and Zelda almost a century ago.

Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of Fitzgerald’s elegiac jazz novel The Great Gatsby opened the 66th Cannes Film Festival. His leading man Leonardo DiCaprio was amfAR’s star guest who prowled the hotel’s tropical gardens in an immaculate tuxedo like a latter day Gary Cooper. In a haze of late summer sunshine and Moët & Chandon, the stars seemed like a mirage of Hollywood past. Dita von Teese was the image of 50s Elizabeth Taylor in a black velvet Ulyana Sergeenko cocktail dress. Jessica Chastain peered from underneath a cascade of titian hair like Rita Hayworth as Gilda and the peerlessly elegant Marchesa-clad Nicole Kidman was still in character as Grace Kelly whom she plays in an upcoming biopic.

I’ve already swooned over Goldie Hawn – as effervescent as an echo of Marion Davies – and de facto hostess of the evening Sharon Stone who is born to play Mae West when Luhrmann turns his talents to her story. Couldn’t take my eyes off Miss Stone all evening. She vamped it, camped it and defied her 55-years with an ‘I’m Still Here’ sashay that was regal, sexy and superb. The theme for this year’s amfAR gala was of course gold and Miss Stone nailed it in white bias cut Cavalli with a gilded serpent snaking its way down her backless gown and sinuous rose gold and diamond de Grisogono chandelier earrings.

Giovanna Battaglia won best in show wearing a floor-length Schiaparelli pink kaftan cinched at the neck with a gold Bulgari collar with upswept hair decorated by a cornet of gold roses. Battaglia was reminiscent of Cannes legend the Begum Aga Khan as played by Merle Oberon. Unbeknown to the guests, Battaglia would later execute a quick change to walk in the Ultimate Gold Collection Fashion Show curated by über stylist Carine Roitfeld as the centrepiece of amfAR’s now legendary auction with Sharon Stone as self-appointed mistress of ceremonies.

It was an open secret that Roitfeld had commandeered supermodels Karolina Kurkova, Lily Donaldson, Jessica Hart, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley and Karlie Kloss to walk 38 golden gowns made especially for the event by the royal family of fashion including Chanel, Prada, Valentino, Gucci, Marc Jacobs and Versace. No wonder the lion’s share of ladies chose to interpret the gold theme with 18k jewels rather than compete with the runway extravaganza modelled by the world’s most beautiful women.

Dinner was served in a monolithic pavilion decorated by Roberto Cavalli that hid in the 22-acre tropical gardens of the Hôtel du Cap. It was bordering on surreal to join the conga line of guests including Kristin Scott Thomas, Kylie Minogue, Janet Jackson and Goga  Ashkenazi snaking towards the pavilion while a jazz band played and guests vied to pose astride a one-of-a-kind Azzure custom motorcycle commissioned by Redemption Choppers for the 20th anniversary amfAR auction.

With 20-years’ experience in the high rolling auction game, amfAR knows how to raise the collective blood pressure and loosen purse strings. No fool they, a tsunami of champagne flowed and food was kept strictly to supermodel rations. This being a gathering of the French Riviera’s wealthiest residents and stars of the Cannes Film Festival, auction prices went as sky high as Marilyn’s skirt in The Seven Year Itch. Before the first course was served an Osar Weekend at the Beverly Hills Hotel with invitations to all the A-list parties sold for $1.5 million. Subsequent prizes went from the sublime (a week at Donna Karan’s Parrot Cay paradise) to the ridiculous (a journey into space with Leonardo DiCaprio on board Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactica). A signed Andy Warhol Liz lithograph (1964) paid homage to amfAR patron saint the late Elizabeth Taylor.

Though Miss Stone owns the amfAR auction, she was aided and abetted by Harvey Weinstein, Kenneth Cole, Heidi Klum, Adrien Brody, Nicole Kidman and flamboyant auctioneer Simon de Pury. The Ultimate Gold Collection was heralded when the divine Dame Shirley Bassey took to the stage and whipped the audience into a frenzy with a magnificent rendition of Goldfinger followed by the gay national anthem I Am What I Am.  I was still having post-Bassey heart palpitations when the runway show began. Until next time…

Quite the thrill that the Pink Panther struck again at the 66th Cannes Film Festival this week. The first hit was a million dollars of Chopard diamonds from a Novotel safe in Cannes. To paraphrase Lady Bracknell, to lose $1 million in diamonds may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose them in a Novotel is tragic. The second heist was rather more magnifique after a Cary Grant fashion. De Grisogono celebrated 20 years in the business with a runway show at the devastatingly chic Hotel du Cap and when the models returned the jewels to one of the hotel’s suites, a diamond and emerald necklace worth $2.6 million had vanished like smoke up the Vatican chimney.

No, you weren’t the first person to  surmise that my invitation to the amfAR gala at the Hotel du Cap last night was a mere front and I have in fact been the light fingered scourge of the Riviera: the Cat of the Cap d’Antibes. You clearly have an overactive imagination though, do admit, the jewels on display last night would have tempted a nun to kick a hole in a stained glass window. In London jewels only come out of the family vault for weddings and coronations. In Cannes the tiara’s set before you order your first noisette.

It is quite bizarre finding oneself in black tie while the sun is still beating down but that’s the drill when amfAR’s red carpet arrival time is 5.30pm. How to describe the mayhem en route to the Hotel du Cap? The roads from Juan les Pins to Antibes were cordoned off, fleets of cars were backed up like a Mafia funeral and you couldn’t get past security without having your fingers inked and an iris scan. I shared a car the size of a Black Maria with Gary and Bonnie Wright. Bonnie has youth on her side and form on the red carpet so had the smarts to wear a floor-length Prada and effortlessly chic gold cascade Wright & Teague earrings that struck the right balance between glamour and insouciance.

The same could not be said of couture clad gilded lilies made-up for high definition TV cameras . There’s something of the Stepford Wives about the hourglass beaded evening dresses, hair as hard as plexiglass and faces smooth as a CGI graphic with the only sign of life the light dancing through the diamonds hanging like chandeliers from their lobes. Not a few Medusa eyes turned on Bonnie who breezed down the red carpet looking fresh as dew without having to resort to the embalmer’s art.

Certain stars know how to dress for Cannes. Goldie Hawn is one of them. I had a terrific pitch at the end of the red carpet as Goldie dollied-up wearing a voluminous canary yellow caftan, gold strappy sandals, kooky shades and a bejewelled gold Xenia Warrior Princess cuff around her upper arm. How she’s managed to smuggle her Laugh In looks past the 1960s is beyond comprehension but I suspect a happy marriage and large family is the clincher.  Compared to Goldie, a lot of the red carpet FemBots young enough to be her granddaughters looked jaded.

Not a few of the ladies on the amfAR guest list must have rued the day they were tattooed. Even veiled with chiffon, inked skin looks about as elegant as a barcode on a packet of Waitrose pork loin. Many had chosen skintight, floor length gowns that they’d been poured into and the stylist had forgotten to say when. The amfAR gala is a marathon and the ladies who dressed for the photo opportunity must have looked at Goldie Hawn and conceded that mother really does know best.

There is something over and above sinister men in black muttering into headsets that announces the arrival of a Star. When Leonardo DiCaprio took the long walk from the hotel to the Champagne terrace guests parted like the Red Sea then eddied around him bobbing up and down like overexcited seal pups. Mr DiCaprio’s arrival was nothing compared to Sharon Stone’s entrance. The Queen of the amfAR auction manifested herself in a floor length white Roberto Cavalli falling into a regal train that required a black-clad bearer to follow her around like a Nubian slave.

Miss Stone has become the self-appointed successor to Elizabeth Taylor at the annual amfAR dinners. Well, it’s between she and Harvey Weinstein though I suspect Sharon looks rather better in the frocks and the rocks. I was rather in awe of Sharon Stone and have been ever since her performance as Ginger in Casino who explains a custom-made case filled with $2 million dollars’ worth of Bulgari jewels to her on-screen daughter with the line ‘because Daddy loves Mummy very much’. Miss Stone is a sexy-dirty-classy star of a vintage not seen since Ava Gardner, Rita Hayworth and Lauren Bacall. Why isn’t she working? Why don’t I write her a screenplay?

2013 is the amfAR gala’s 20th anniversary so we all knew it was going to be quite the event. The dinner was a seated catered affair for 900 in the landscaped grounds of the Hotel du Cap with placements designed by Roberto Cavalli. Tables were $10,000 a plate for those who had to pay. Shirley Bassey and Duran Duran entertained and the auction was hosted by various members of the A-list Hollywood audience. I haven’t even begun about the runway show ‘curated’ by Carine Roitfeld or the gold jewels on show that actually brought me to Cannes. Can you bear to wait until my next letter? I need a G&T and bed in Bloomsbury Towers. Until next time…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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?