1:45 P.M. British Fashion Council Tent on the King's Road: Betty Jackson
We actually have to run—"Betty" (see, no surname; I'm a natural at this fashion stuff ) has the temerity to start only half an hour late and by the time we get in, our seats have been given away and some poor Marie Claire underling is ousted to make room for me. Mind you, I can hardly be bothered—I associate "Betty" with beige cowl-neck jumpers, boring as anything. But I'm in for a shock: once the girls start down the catwalk (still doing the same silly knee-lifts, like baby giraffes learning to walk; obviously not just a Paul Smith thing) I'm transfixed. I love these clothes. Like, love them. Grownup boho in bright spring greens, faded grape and aubergine. Funky tweed suits appliqued with flowers, soft jersey dresses and a fabulous green leather coat that I almost leap from my seat and wrestle from the model's back. Excuse me, what 's going on? But, ah! Here it is! Mr. beige cowl-neck jumper, we 've been expecting you. Oh, and here 's another. And one more—admittedly brown, this time, but what is brown if not beige, only worse?
3:25 P.M. Park Lane Hotel: Temperley
A dash across town only to find they're "running late," so we go for a cup of tea. Or at least we try. We hover at the entrance to the gilt-ridden tearoom, entirely ignored, while other fashion people bank up behind us. Finally we 're led to a table, but when the waiter approaches a table of Vogue staff before us, Liz yells, "We were here first." Alas, he pays us no heed. (God, fashion is so bitchy.)
Then to the crammed art deco ballroom where I've never seen such a concentration of fabulous handbags. On our seats, our first goody bag of the day—Diptych shower gel—has "disappeared." A spare is found, which Marie graciously offers to me. I accept. I have no shame.
The music starts, it 's all very French, accordions and chanteuses—but right behind me is a man with a MASSIVE bunch of flowers and for the entire show all I can hear is the rustling of cellophane.
And down the black marble catwalk they come, pretty party frock after pretty party frock after pretty party frock. Lots of black and pink satin, with circles of jet beading, creating a doily effect. Soft wrapover tops and flared ballerina skirts in Belle Epoque prints, then comes a fresh wave of doily-covered party frocks and I realize I'm a teeny bit bored. Jaded already? (I really am a natural.)
Alice Temperley emerges to take her bow and for my rustling friend with the flowers, this is his moment: he surges towards the stage, but Alice skips away like a startled faun and the rustler falls back, looking foolish.
By now I'm unsettled, confused even. I'd always thought Fashion was a big joke played on ordinary people, that when Anna Wintour leads a standing ovation of a show featuring girls wearing only snorkels and gold lamé knickers, that it 's a big "Let's make fun of the nonfashion peasants" conspiracy. But so far, everything I've seen has been disappointingly wearable.
4:35 P.M. British Fashion Council Tent on the King's Road: Gharani Strok
Now this is much more like it. The atmosphere is very buzzy, dry ice swirling, people wandering around drinking mini-Moët bottles through straws and extreme seating disarray. And I've hit goody bag paydirt! A Phillo corsage, a Filofax, a Pucci-style makeup bag filled with I Coloniali products and—prize of prizes—two Krispy Kreme doughnuts, apparently one of the most addictive substances on the planet. At a promotion in Ohio, when they wouldn't give a teenage boy any more free doughnuts (he 'd already had about sixteen), he attacked the staff.
The lights dim, Shaft-style seventies music starts and the first girl clopping down the catwalk is in a sliver of glitter and a pink hooker's fur coat, followed by a girl in a bikini, a black fur coat and high knee boots. Mucho sparkly disco wear and very Studio 54— everything is slashed to the waist, front and back, and we see our first nipple of the day. Then our second. Then our third. It 's a veritable knocker-fest with dresses "accidentally" sliding off shoulders and down to the waist and coats being worn with nothing underneath except knickers. Almost everything is totally unwearable— exactly what I'd been expecting.
Afterwards, everyone is terribly sniffy about it. Someone says the clothes looked like they'd been run up by students in some back room. All show and no substance, says someone else. Well, I thought, hugging my goody bag closer, I liked it.
6 P.M. The Mermaid Theatre, Blackfriars: Boudicca
En route, I eat a Krispy Kreme, and although extremely pleasing— delicious, in fact—it doesn't plunge me into a week-long doughnut binge. Maybe after the Ohio incident they removed the addictive component?
We 're now running an hour late, but never mind: I have high hopes for Boudicca. Alexander McQueen described them as "brave." "Brave" usually being a euphemism for "mental."
When they finally let us in the smell hits me: damp earth. The stage is covered in scrubby, muddy grass and weeds (all real); it smells like a sports day. Some of the seats are in the "field" and as I watch fashion ladies get mired by their spiky heels in the mud, I fear for the models.
And here we go! The first girl out looks like she works with nuclear waste—wearing a baggy black boiler-suit with a hood that covers her entire face, but in lovely floaty fabric: what Darth Vader might wear for a romantic dinner. Then comes a similar rigout in white plastic with a beekeeper's veil, followed by a hooded sou'wester and matching over-trousers—that a mackerel fisherman would wear in a force eight gale—but in a purple, metallic see-through fabric. Next, a gorgeous white fur coat, except that someone has taken green gaffer tape and wound it round and round the girl's shoulders and upper body. Post-apocalypse headbands, French Foreign Legion hats, Lawrence of Arabia veils, lots of glaring faces—when you can see them—and swampy hair: very warrior girl. Clothes that will have people stuttering in disgust, "And I'm meant to wear that to Sainsbury's, am I?" But it 's affecting and exciting and if it 's toned down a little (a lot?), you wouldn't be laughed at in the street.
7:25 P.M. British Fashion Council Tent on the King's Road: Clements Riberio
Finally get to the bottom of the models' silly walks—it 's so their legs will look thin for the photographers. Well, that makes sense because they look like tree trunks ordinarily. Er . . .
As soon as they start picking their ridiculous way down the catwalk, I'm in an agony of longing. A model with plaits swirled around her ears like two Danish pastries passes in a circus-print fifties-style shirt-waister. Then a model with hair like a brioche, wearing a tweed suit trimmed with spangles. And a model with hair like a batch loaf in a petrol blue coat, patterned with lilac triangles. There are little felt pixie hats, net face coverers dotted with what looks like Smarties and excellent two-toned shoes with bold, big-top stripes. (The theme is a circus one.) It 's fun, cheery and knucklegnawingly beautiful. All too soon, it 's over and everyone is off to parties—there 's one at Hugo Boss, another at Fendi—but I'm exhausted from all that yearning, I have to go home and lie down.
First published in Marie Claire, September 2004
Action!
Film sets are exciting places. There 's the chance of clocking (hopefully) famous actors without their makeup on, or of seeing stars slipping into another star's caravan for sexual jiggerypokery. There 's even the opportunity to feel part of the creation of something wonderful, if you're that way inclined. But what most people don't realize is that the best thing about film sets is the onset catering.
Food is central to the cinematic process, and the catering is as much for the massive team of techies (cameramen, soundmen, etc.) as for the actors. Long, intense days spent under boiling hot lights, doing the same thing over and over and over again until it 's right— if they didn't get regular nosh, they'd be hitting the deck like Victorian ladies who'd been flashed at.
I happen to be furnished with this insider knowledge because when a film was made of my novel Watermelon and I got to visit the set, I was given the choice of—get this—three delicious hot lunches, and when I couldn't choose between banoffi or apple crumble and custard for dessert, they gave me both. Then midafternoon, there was the moth
er of all tea breaks. You've never seen anything like it: hordes of techies and extras, desperate for a sugar kick, descended on the catering shed where cake and biscuits were being dispatched like famine relief at a Red Cross feeding station. The catering team were barely able to tear the cellophane off the boxes of biscuits and cake to keep pace with demand. And such high-quality confectionery! Chocolate Swiss rolls, Battenburg, fruit cake and the big tins of chocolate bikkies that only ever normally appear at Christmastime. You know the ones I mean—they contain at least two biscuits individually covered in gold foil. (One is usually mint cream and the other orange cream, which I find a bit of a letdown, but still.)
So when news reached me that one of France 's best-known filmmakers (Christian Clavier) was going to make a—French—film of another of my novels (this time Last Chance Saloon), my first thought was not of winning the Palme d 'Or at Cannes but of what I'd get fed when I visited the set. If an Irish catering crew could manage to pull off such delicious nosh, just think of what the French and their culinary skill would produce. Foie gras all the way, was the conclusion of everyone I spoke to. Boeuf bourguignon, crème brulée, tart tatins, crêpes, cheeses so powerful they could almost sing and dance . . . Excited? Bien sur!
Finally the food-filled mist dispersed and I realized what an honor it was to have a book chosen to be made into a French film. As an intellectual friend said, "Everyone knows the French make the best films in the world."
And although I agree, to my shame I am woefully ignorant of French film. This is because
a) I am not French.
b) Er . . . um . . . Actually I've no other excuse.
But I've seen enough to conclude that they are mostly about beautiful pouty girls called Solange, wearing extremely red lipstick, brazenly parading around in their pelt and having sex at the drop of a chapeau (hard to believe that France was a Catholic country, how come they escaped the guilt?), while men called Serge, wearing black polo necks, slim-fitting trousers and unfeasible sideburns, pace the bedroom, smoking millions of fags. The films always seem to be shot in extremely depressing bluish light and dialogue is sparse but meaningful. "L'amour est mort." "La vie, la mort—quel difference?"
Er, oui, exactement . . .
Suddenly I was wondering why they'd picked Last Chance Saloon. For starters it 's a comedy and I wasn't aware of many funny French films. I know those Monsieur Hulot yokes are classified as comedies but they're as funny as being savaged by a rabid dog. But just a minute, everyone said, what about Amelie? That was funny. (It was.) And Delicatessen, that was funny too. (It was.) And as Himself said, the French might make loads of light-hearted stuff that we never see. What do we know about what they do in the privacy of their own country?
Then, you know, once I thought about it, I realized there 's a fair bit of sex in Last Chance Saloon. And one of the characters, Tara, smokes a lot—and is on an eternal quest to find genuine long-last lipstick. And although it 's a comedy, it 's a comedy about a young man who gets cancer. Plenty of opportunity to muse on la vie versus la mort. Yes, I was beginning to understand.
So off myself and Himself went to France (any excuse) and showed up at a massive film studio in a Parisian suburb. They'd said we could come at any time of the day but we didn't want to pre sume we were invited for lunch, so we calculated that the optimum arrival time would be around four P.M. This is the hour when workers of the world unite by downing their tools and having a Chunky Kit Kat and a can of lilt (or local equivalent).
But when we arrived, filming was still under way, so, through cables and monitors and tons of people, we picked our way onto the set—when all of a sudden I nearly keeled over with shock. The actress playing Katherine looked exactly as I had imagined her when I wrote her: very beautiful in a pure, innocent sort of way. It was the spookiest feeling—for a moment it felt like I had conjured her up, that she was only real because I'd imagined her. And the actress playing Tara was "my" Tara, she totally embodied her spirit. As for the man playing the book's egomaniac actor, Lorcan Larkin, he 'd had his name changed to Leo (not too many French Lorcans, I suppose) and his long red hair was now short and dark. But swaggering about in a long leather coat and cowboy boots, he managed to be both sexy and repellent, just as I'd always visualized him.
I stood in the shadows, watching the scene, and I had a second shock—I knew this! The dialogue was exactly as I had written it. (But in French.) This might seem like a total no-brainer but actually, very often, all a film adaptation has in common with the source book is the title.
The spirit of my book had been captured exactly—even the smaller characters were perfect. It was all very moving, and to my mortification I began to cry. Luckily not in a big, shoulder-shaking extravaganza of emotion—I didn't make a complete gom of myself— just in an eye-filling, discreet-sniffy kind of way. Bad enough, though.
Then the director yelled "Coupe!" (no really, she did, it was gorgeous—so French) and the glad-handing began. When we 'd bonjoured ourselves blue in the face, the long-awaited moment finally arrived: we were offered "refreshments." Himself and myself exchanged a flicker. Easy now. No dribbling. No running. Act nonchalant. But to our phenomenal surprise, all there was to eat were sweets. French sweets, which meant, of course, that they were superior to any other sweets, but nothing like the gourmet 's smorgasbord we 'd fantasized about.
Sometime later, in the back of the taxi, as we drove away, Himself said, "There 's just one thing I don't understand."
"The food?" I said. "I know!"
"Not the food. I just don't understand how none of the girls got their kit off." Then he thought about it further. "You know what? None of them were even smoking!"
He was right and I was seized by a sudden, dreadful suspicion— no lovely food, no nudity, no Gauloises—had all of this been a big elaborate hoax? A reality TV con job?
After several seconds of stricken silence, Himself said, like a drowning man clutching an armband, "Tara's lipstick was very red, though."
Yes, I agreed, Tara's lipstick had been very red. Extremely red. Possibly the reddest lipstick I'd ever seen.
And, at that, we cheered up and started talking about what we 'd have for our dinner.
First published in Cara, February 2004
I Shop, Therefore I Am
If you like to shop there is nowhere in the world like New York. You can get everything there. Here are some highlights from a recent trip.
First stop: Saks Fifth Avenue
We had to run the gauntlet of the cosmetics hall before getting to the lifts at the back.
Himself took a nervous look at the over-fragrant melee—at the marauding gangs of sharp-suited types, lying in wait with bottles of Nu, ready to spray us, at the white-coated skin therapists, ready to ambush us with their special offers—and looked terrified.
"Just put your head down and run," I said. "And whatever you do, don't make eye contact with any of them."
I launched myself into the fray, Himself on my heels. "Stay low, stay low!" I urged, but the inevitable happened. "Christ! I got hit," he yelped.
"How bad?" I asked.
He sniffed himself. "Paul Smith for women. Not too bad."
We kept going, while all around us voices babbled a cacophony of temptations. Hey gorgeous, wanna try our new spring shades. Over here, over here, spend seventy-five dollars and get a free lipstick. Never mind them, what about us, our dinky travel kits are just in. But we're showcasing our new concealer, it'll change your LIFE . . .
Finally we reached the lifts at the back. "Jesus," he said, wiping the sweat from his brow. "It 's like a Moroccan souk."
How I got barred from Miu Miu
There are many posh shops in New York and the staff are not pleasant. At least not to me. I was given some advice by a regular— "look evil and bored." Waft. Display no positive emotion. Above all, don't make a fool of yourself.
With Himself, my sister and my friend Anne-Marie in tow, we entered Miu Miu, where the first thing I saw wa
s my favorite pair of boots—I was actually wearing a pair—at half price. Caught up in a fifty-percent-off frenzy, I decided to buy a new pair but first I had to check the size of the ones I was wearing. So I straightened my leg and stuck my foot up for Himself to see what it said on my sole. As he held my ankle at face height (he 's tall), I felt myself losing my balance and began that hopping, arm-windmilling thing people do—usually just before someone offstage throws in a bag of ballbearings. My sister grabbed hold of me, but unfortunately also fell victim to the waves of unbalance, then Anne-Marie tried to reverticalize us, but she too got caught up in the vortex. We hovered between balance and falling for a few tortuous seconds, then Himself intervened, but the combined weight of the three of us was too much and, in slow motion, in a tangle of limbs and coats and handbags, all four of us toppled to the floor. Oh my God, I'm lying on the floor in Miu Miu.