More parties, and some observations about black dresses and post-colonial literature

I went to a couple more parties last night, and have observations both fashionable and literary.

As far as the eye could see were women in little black dresses, almost no colour at all. A woman in a red suit, and an utterly delightful 14-year-old in a gold dress, broke up the gloom. One literary agent was wearing a black dress with gold shoes, but how ordinary everyone looked. I say that because in a crowd of people, one LBD looks much like any other and without some very strong interest such as cut, or a stand-out piece of jewellery, you really don't focus on what anyone is wearing, because it has turned into a uniform.

The first party was held at the October Gallery by my literary agents, A.P Watt. There, as ever, one of the nicest men in Britain, Philip Pullman, the film of whose children's novel Northern Lights renamed The Golden Compass opens this week, starring Nicole Kidman. I asked him if he was happy with it, and he said he was, particularly with Kidman. But already in America and Canada Catholic fundamentalists are organising a boycott of the film, claiming that it will lead young, impressionable souls to atheism. Normally, these boycotts backfire, but the worry is that because it is a family film, the campaign may well do a lot of damage. It opens this week so go and see it if you don't like Puritan busybodies and want to put their noses out of joint.

Five minutes walk away in some cavernous space in Bloomsbury, was the Guardian First Book Prize, won this year by Ethiopian-American Dinaw Mengestu. You can read an extract, here. And a Washington Post interview with him here.

On leaving, we were handed goodie bags with a silver-wrapped copy of each shortlisted book, and mine was A Golden Age by Tahmima Anam. I can't help but be struck by the numbers of novels set during civil wars and the births of nations that are being published right now, as history bears down so hard upon us, penetrating our inner lives.

Thought for the day

No elegance is possible without perfume. Coco Chanel

** Wild Fig and Cassis, the shower gel and/or body lotion, please

Freedom of expression

From the Guardian today

Nearly two years after the internationally acclaimed author Orhan Pamuk narrowly escaped imprisonment for statements that were thought to "insult Turkishness", the publisher of a British writer goes on trial today accused of the same charge.

Ragip Zarakolu is facing up to three years in prison for publishing a book - promoting reconciliation between Turks and Armenians - by George Jerjian, a writer living in London.

Jerjian's book, The Truth Will Set Us Free, which was translated into Turkish in 2005, chronicles the life of his Armenian grandmother who survived the early 20th century massacres of Armenians thanks to an Ottoman soldier. The historical account has prompted as much controversy among the Armenian diaspora, not least in the US, as it has in Turkey.

. . .

But while Turkish diplomats admit the contentious law has probably done more damage to Ankara's efforts to join the EU than any other single piece of legislation, observers say there has been little headway made over reforming the spirit and letter of the law.

In a climate of unabated nationalism, state prosecutors and police officials continue to level charges against artists, musicians and writers perceived to publicly denigrate Turkishness.

I assume that PEN and Index on Censorship will shortly be launching campaigns against these assaults on freedom of expression.

Meetings with maestros

I went to a party last night and was introduced to a woman,who, I was told, was a make-up artist. This turned out to be akin to being told, this is Saul Bellow, he's a novelist, or this is Christian Dior, he's a dress designer, or this is Nelson Mandela, he's a politician. For Mary Greenwell is not a make-up artist, she is the make-up artist, whose celebrity clients include Uma Thurman, Cate Blanchet, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Winslet, Keira Knightly, Kate Moss and Gisele Bundchen.

She began her career in Paris in the 80s working with Christy Turlington, Stephanie Seymour, Tatiana Patitz, Linda Evangelista and Cindy Crawford. By 1985 she was working for all five Vogues on a weekly basis and created the no make-up look we all work so hard to achieve. Today she runs a course where for £1000 you will be taught how to do your own make-up but last night she was tired and wanted to sit down, so in exchange for keeping her company on the sofa instead of making bright chit-chat standing on my high heels, I received a half hour ruthless re-appraisal of my make-up, writing down the new rules and products on the back of the invitation while balancing a glass of champagne on my knee.

Look, where make-up is concerned I genuinely thought I was at the top of my game. She shockingly told me that there are women who won't wear foundation because it is 'dishonest' ie it covers flaws. Yes? You don't want your flaws concealed? But it seems I was using the wrong type of foundation, the wrong shade of blush, an insufficiently volumising mascara, was applying my lipstick wrongly on the lower lip. She took out her make-up bag and redid me. Then she jabbed at three or four points on my face around the jaw and upper lip and told me what Botox would do and gave me the number of her botox man. The idea lurks in a corner of my mind like a little curled up kitten, sleeping.

Meanwhile I am off to buy several new products, chief of which will be Chanel lipstick in Silhouette and Chanel's Teint innocence in cream to powder formula instead of the liquid I'm using right now.

Short news round-up

(think we'd forgotten?)

Lisa Armstrong in the Times today has an interview with Karl Lagerfeld

Predictably, he likes the notion of despot, indeed, has fostered it, adopting a uniform of white shirt (he has more than 1,000, mostly from Hilditch & Key), drainpipe trousers, frock coat, white ponytail, omnipresent sunglasses and a carapace of rings (he has hundreds) that garland his knuckles like armour. What he dislikes about going to Germany, which he does as rarely as he visits Britain, is the Teutonic habit of calling him Karli, or Karlchen. Anyone would think he preferred his more common nickname of Kaiser Karl.

The Kaiser persona is so recognisable that it has become a Hallowe’en staple in New York; recently Roberto Cavalli attended a party in Lagerfeld fancy dress. “An act of courage, no?” retorts Lagerfeld. “His silhouette is a little . . . just say I think I look better.” Since his dramatic weight loss seven years ago (he says that he keeps in shape by foxtrotting with Oscar de la Renta), The Look can border on the demonic or, on milder days, on the vestments of a malevolent Dickensian priest – “defrocked” as he puts it with relish.

Also in the Times, is a piece on the 30 things every woman must have in their wardrobe

I have 20 of those items, lacking, among other things, a crisp white shirt, a blazer and kirby grips. But I do have a cocktail ring, in fact I have two.

Thought for the day

There is a mysterious stillness and intimacy of a woman doing her hair and making up which attracts me. Pedro Almodovar

Happy Chanukah and all the other festivals of light

Chanukah's first candle is lit tonight

Here are some already lit

The Thoughtful Dresser Poll - which nationality?

The Thoughtful Dresser poll asks which are the best dressed women in the world - American, British, French, Italian, Japanese or Russian (in alphabetical order and with apologies for those countries not included.) Vote on the right

Beautiful shirts in literature

Dave Hill quotes Daisy in The Great Gatsby on the appeal of a beautiful shirt

Recovering himself in a minute he opened for us two hulking patent cabinets which held his massed suits and dressing-gowns and ties, and his shirts, piled like bricks in stacks a dozen high.

Can you dress well at any size? Poll results

The Thoughtful Dresser poll this week asked the question whether it is possible to dress well at any size. The results - 67 per cent said yes, only 32 per cent said not at my mall - show that most of you believe that style does indeed come from within. However a simple push button poll of this kind does not do justice to the complexity of the question.

The first thing to say is that being catwalk size is little guarantee of good taste. You can have Kate Moss' body and still look a mess if you have no eye for colour. Still, if you are size 0 and wealthy you can have a stylist do it for you, and every department store these days will have an in-house service to help you shop.

proportion

The first problem anyone above the so-called normal size range will confront is finding something to buy in the first place. The UK size range found in most high street shops is 8-14 (US 4-10) though of course the actual size of clothes will vary from store to store with a Top Shop 12 being considerably smaller than a Jaeger 12 because they size from a much younger fitting model. For purposes of disclosure, I'm in the top end of that range. I couldn't get into a Top Shop 14 but I do fit a 14 from M&S and Jaeger. This means that theoretically I should be able to walk into any high street shop and buy what I want. But take yesterday, when I saw a dress I rather wanted to try in Zara. There were plenty on the rack but they were all small and medium; when I asked a salesgirl for a large, she said they had sold out. Because the larger sizes always do (thought it is the opposite situation at M&S, I've frequently been told.)

good legs

Now if you are outside that 'normal' range life will become much more difficult. M&S' regular range goes up to size 22 and its Plus range to size 28 , increasingly on-line companies are getting much better at carrying a wide range of sizes, but if you want a choice of clothes, you'd better live in the USA. Gap and Banana Republic, both brands that I rate for style, go up several sizes. Until it opens its doors at the old Dickens and Jones building on Regent Street in 2008, we in Britain have never had access to Banana Republic, and their online site does not ship internationally. We've had Gap for several years, but recently, having bought a pair of jeans in their Friendship Heights branch in Washington, I asked in the flagship Oxford Street store if they had another pair. I was told that the stock was somewhat different, and one of the differences being that they did not sell larger sizes in Europe. Ask any plus size expatriate about buying clothes in France where no-one appears ever to gain any weight, and you will be told to go west, young woman, to America.

attitude!

As for clothes above say, size 22, there are fewer opportunities outside the US, fewer still at the higher end. Italian women will not stand for being badly dressed, and so it is Italy which has produced some of the better designer clothes in large seizes, such as Marina Rinaldi, one of MaxMara's labels. But it goes without saying that a larger woman will never be able to wear any of the major houses: no Chanel, no McQueen, no Dior, no Philip Lim, no Lanvin. Armani Collezioni goes up to UK 18, but I don't think its younger line, Emporio Armani does. Whenever I see Suzy Menkes, she seems to be wearing the expandable Issey Miyake Pleats Please or the now sadly defunct label Jean Muir.

That is not to say that larger woman do not look fabulous, or as the Manolo would say, superfantastic, of course they do, but it is my observation that larger women who look amazing generally have the characteristic of having bodies in proportion. It is far easier to look good if you are an hourglass than if you are a pear. Dressing really well is having clothes that fit you properly. In my case, a pear, (or as Trinny and Susannah now tell me, a skittle,) with a pronounced waist, big hips and narrow shoulders, I take a larger size in trousers than in tops, and dresses and jackets are often tight around the bum and loose on the shoulders and under the arms. Not a good look.

the right shoes

I have also noticed that larger women who are tall, and who carry the weight on their shoulders, chests and stomachs but who still have great legs, can look more elegant than the petite woman who carries it on her stomach, hips and thighs.

Nonetheless, having said all of this, it is the truth that if you can find something to buy, and if what you buy fits properly, it is the woman with the strong sense of inner style, with the iron self-confidence of a Beth Ditto, with the insistence that she will be seen, the woman who knows colour, who understands accessories, who has a sure feel for fabric and who will have no truck with the fascist nonsense that fashion is not for big girls, who will outshone the size 10 woman in an oatmeal fleece, beige drawstring trousers and Crocs.

UPDATE

My sister telephones to point out that one of the most heartening experiences is being at the gym and seeing a woman with a perfect, toned body and then watching the transformation in the changing room when she covers it up with boring, badly fitting clothes.

Thought for the day

Fashion is a craft, and an expression of a period of time, but it is not an art. Bill Blass

The importance of good hairdressing

The poll on whether you can dress well at any size closes early tomorrow, and I will be disclosing my own views on this subject.

Meanwhile I'm off to the hairdresser's. When I was talking to Louise Chunn about the mutton question, she remarked that she thought my hair was so much better than when she was commissioning me back in the 90s, when she was women's page editor of the Guardian. I think that the one thing you should really throw money at as you get older is the best possible hairdressing you can afford. The salon I go to, Richard Ward, does the make-overs for Trinny and Susannah, and indeed my own team of Mario (colour) and Roger (cut) do the hair of Trinny and Susannah themselves. The key to colour as you get older and greyer is to soften it and bring it in line with your changing skin tone. The original colour of my hair was dark brown, it's now warmer and redder and I rarely go a week without someone asking me where I have it done. Roger has also persuaded me of the importance of a more structured cut and of not doing the whole Anna Wintour thing and having a signature look, but changing it with the seasons. See my cousin's guest post on the matter of changing one's hairstyle.

It costs an absolute fortune and I must buy fewer clothes, but you wear your hair 24/7 and you can't say that of a dress.

Consumerism

In the Guardian today Madeleine Bunting writes:

[US psychologist Tim Kasser] argues that our hyperconsumerism is a response to insecurity, a maladaptive type of coping mechanism. Over the past few decades, the sources of insecurity have multiplied: in addition to the manipulation long practised by advertising, there are new sources of insecurity in highly competitive market economies, ranging from identity (who am I and where do I belong?) to basics (who will look after me in my old age?). This relationship between materialism and insecurity helps explain why countries as diverse as the US and China are deeply materialistic; they are places of endemic insecurity.

The brilliance of this economic system built on insecurity is that it is self-reinforcing. The more insecure you are, the more materialistic; the more materialistic, the more insecure. As Kasser has shown, materialistic values (which are on the increase among teenagers on both sides of the Atlantic) make you more anxious, more vulnerable to depression and less cooperative. Studies show that people know what the real sources of lasting human fulfilment are - good relationships, self-acceptance, community feeling - but they face a formidable alliance of political and economic interests that have a vested interest in distracting them from that insight to ensure they work longer hours and spend more money.

My mother, being the youngest of six children, the oldest three born in the region of Kiev, was proud to be one of the few children in her class to wear shoes to school, having all those older brothers and sisters in work bringing wages into the household. Later in life she would become a world-class shopper. It is my observation that those who have known poverty take pleasure in luxury.

Shopping may well fill the God-shaped hole in our lives, but it may also be that some of us have a highly developed aesthetic, and just like nice things.

UPDATE
Norm adds:

One thing the merry-making Madeleine fails to reflect on is what her own contribution is to getting people to feel insecure. I mean, when did you last read a column by her that cheered you up? Hmmm... come to think of it, I suppose some of them might have, unintentionally.

Anyway, remember: don't hang yourself in the stairwell; you can always buy something.

The Great Mutton Debate reaches a climax

old age pensioner waiting for bus with cat food in string bag

Regular readers will recollect that a recurring theme of this blog has been the vexed question of what you could away with wearing over the age of 50. See The Great Mutton Debate in the labels for the other pieces

The debate has now entered the pages of the Guardian where I have written a piece drawing on the discussion here and with quotes from yourselves, good readers.

There are also reflections on the matter from Alexander Shulman, editor of UK Vogue, and Louise Chunn, former women's page editor of the Guardian, former editor of UK In Style, and now editor of Good Housekeeping:

I asked two fashion editors, each over the age of 50, how we could dress well without looking ridiculous. Alexandra Shulman, editor of Vogue, turned 50 in November. "I didn't do a wardrobe edit the moment I turned 50," she says. "I really believe it's how the individual looks and feels. I happen to think that you are hugely helped if you have great legs as you get older, and if you have a sure sense of style there's no reason to get into a navy suit. The danger is that you have to tread a middle ground between looking boring and a bit tragic. If you don't watch out, you can wind up like the fairy on top of the Christmas tree, but on the other hand you don't want to be in a black shift for the rest of your life."
. . .
"You don't want to show too much flesh," [Louise Chunn] says. "It's just not as firm and luscious as it was. The other day I went to an awards ceremony, a black-tie do and, in spite of my fairly rigorous fitness regime, at 51, my arms are not that hot. I wore a Burberry lamé trenchcoat over a dress and didn't take the coat off. Too much flesh makes you look a bit desperate -like you're not acknowledging that you look older - though decolletage is fine. I'm also not keen on seeing people's knees. A really short skirt with no tights is crazy. Why would you risk it?"

You can read the full piece here

On another note, I had dinner last night with some friends, one of whom was 40 this year, will be 41 next month. She arrived at the restaurant looking absolutely sensational, wearing a short camel skirt over thick patterned black tights and black suede boots, and a camel coloured long-sleeved v neck sweater. The whole outfit (which was from Gap, by the way) worked so well because the shortness of the skirt and the sexiness of the suede boots was offset by the quirkiness of the tights and the lady-like classic colours of the skirt and sweater. You couldn't get it more right. I on the other hand was in a funk because I had unwittingly matched black and silver shoes with a black and gold bag. Doh!

UPDATE
This story has been picked up by the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, here, for those of you who speak Italian

Thought for the day

It is eleven years since I have seen my figure in a glass. The last reflection I saw there was so disagreeable, I resolved to spare myself such mortifications for the future. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu 1689-1762

London Menswear Sample Sale

The Designer Warehouse menswear sample sale kicks off at Kings Cross 10 am this Friday, 7 December for three days. Knock them out on the terraces at the Emirates Stadium in your RAF Simons overcoat.

The Vienna Vegetable Orchestra again, and more

I have spent the weekend thinking about the Vienna Vegetable Orchestra after watching several of their concerts on Youtube. Once the orchestra members have gone to the market, bought, and prepared their fresh vegetables, the sound they produce is similar to music produced in societies that make their own instruments. For what struck me was not that they are playing Mozart on mange tout, but rather they are recapitulating the original first process of making music using tools, that is independent of the human voice.


In my childhood, we primary school children would be taken for walks in Calderstones Park in a crocodile and would stop to pick blades of grass and put to them to our mouths and make them sing. A violin must have its origins in a gourd. Music surely begins as vegetable matter.

The urge in human nature to creativity is its most inspiring and touching quality. The mind's capacity for curiosity and invention, its elastic reshaping of reality, is our god-like property. I contrasted the Vienna Vegetable Orchestra with the demands for the prosecution, and even execution of a Liverpool schoolteacher in Sudan for allowing her pupils to name a teddy bear Mohammad. This is a mind converging on a single thought, playing it repetitively, like a single note or an angry vein throbbing in the forehead.

When I woke up this morning a kind reader had sent me a link to an Australian ad for a brand of beer called Victoria Bitter, in which a conductor and orchestra had been assembled to play a brief piece of music on empty bottles. This exhilarating clip here,



and a longer one below showing the making of the commercial, with interviews with the ad agency who dreamed it up, the conductor and the members of Melbourne Symphony Orchestra who played it, reminds us that play is not confined to what you do on with an instrument. Which should all do more of it.

Thought for the day

There may be talk of a comet, or a burning mountain, or some such bagatelle; but to me a modest woman dressed out in all her finery, is the most tremendous object in the whole of creation. Oliver Goldsmith

Hamish Bowles

When The Devil Wears Prada came out, I asked a certain person in the fashion world how it had gone down at US Vogue. 'Hamish Bowles told me he'd been to see it,' she told me, 'and he said of the Stanley Tucci character, why are they laughing? This is my life.'


The Times today has a long interview with Hamish Bowles, Vogue's 'European editor at large'

“He’s pure genius,” observes the photographer Mario Testino, who credits Bowles with transforming him from a Peruvian “beach bum” during their bonding at Harpers & Queen in the mid-Eighties. “He has the makings of a Diana Vreeland; he has the sharpest eye there is.” Unlike Vreeland, though, Bowles doesn’t over-compensate for a lack of self-assurance by being a grand diva. While he embraces the style of Cecil Beaton, Stephen Tennant and the other “Bright Young Things”, he is no snob and finds little need to appear posher than he is. He observes his various orbits – whether it be fashion or society – in an unusually inclusive way. He is often the centre of attention – not because he desires to be, but because he is genuinely the epicentre of fashion, decor and society in New York, London, Paris or, for that matter, Jaipur and Tangier. Flitting around town in lavender Gucci patent-leather loafers, Bowles – wearing his neo-Edwardian suits with a mean waist – appears frail as a sparrow, but he has a tough interior (you have to be steely to survive at Vogue).

You can hardly see him – let alone find room to sit – in his Vogue office in New York. It is a veritable rainforest of Country Life and foreign decor magazines, endless press releases, scouting pictures, and years of notebooks filled with lightning sketches of what he’s viewed on fashion runways. There are pyramids of fashion monographs, a library of books on the floor, and a white Preen mother-of-pearl sequin dress in the midst of it all. What little decor there is consists of a blown-up reproduction of a 1934 Cecil Beaton watercolour of Elsie de Wolfe and a paper collage portrait of himself swinging his quilted Chanel bag, a goodbye present from his days at Harpers & Queen. “I find pristine desks to be downright antiseptic and disquieting,” harrumphs Bowles, who admits that Wintour “would be pretty alarmed” at the sight of his office. “You tend to go to her. Despite what people may think, the door is always open.” Besides, adds Wintour, “I’m not sure there’s room in there for me.”

Thought for the day

It's always the badly dressed people who are the most interesting. Jean-Paul Gaultier