Diana: The Movie

Over on this side of the pond, dear readers, we remain in thrall to the latest testimony of Mohammed al Fayed at the Diana inquest.

My friend George Szirtes has written the scenario for a forthcoming blockbuster based on the Harrods owner's penetrating insights into the British Establishment (I particularly enjoyed his rejoinder to the judge who asked if he had any evidence - 'How can I have evidence? There is a ring of steel around the security services.'

20.02.08 : FRANKENSTEIN, DRACULA AND THE WOLFMAN

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The Mohamed Fayed story has gone down in history as a mixture of pathos and comedy. I can't entirely resist the comedy element. Particularly this, of course:

The murder was, he said, the result of an audacious plot hatched by Prince Philip, who was not only a member of the Frankenstein family but also the real ruler of Britain and a crypto-Nazi. Philip was assisted by his son Prince Charles, Mr Al Fayed claimed; they were the two principal royal plotters, the senior male members of what he called a "Dracula family".

Hard to resist the conjunction, that is, of Frankenstein being a member of the Dracula family. Then there is the 'Crocodile Princess'. It's good. It's very good, but he hasn't gone far enough in my opinion. It's a missed opportunity. Here, after all, is a horror movie to trump all previous horror movies such as King Kong vs Godzilla and Frankenstein meets The Wolfman.


Scenario:

Prince Philip (Frankenstein) is plotting with Prince Charles (Dracula) - OK, I know even the Daily Mail has got so far, but are too thick to go on - the murder of innocent naive American tourist, Diana (played by Tuesday Weld).

He enlists the help of the Queen (Bride of Frankenstein, natch), Rupert Murdoch (The Creature from the Black Lagoon) and a nauseating butler (The Blob).

Alistair Campbell (The Wolfman) persuades Tony Blair (Child of the Damned) to arrange an accident employing the driver, Henri Paul (The Alien) of Diana and Dodi (Jack Nicholson) to drive into bright flashlights operated by Russell Brand (The Mummy) on 'The Night of the Living Dead'.

Paparazzi (Zombies) enter and eat everything in sight.

Dracula marries The Crocodile Princess and she gives birth to Captain Hook.

It's a winner. Ridley? Wes? Abbott and Costello?...

Deception

One of the advantages of having a soi disant relationship with the media, is that you do get to know about what the press cannot, for various reasons (usually legal) report. So from time to time one hears things that are not in the public domain but for which the the word is so firmly out, that it's only a matter of time before it goes mainstream. Charles and Diana's marriage being on the rocks, was one such story I remember hearing, as early as the late 80s.

You go along for years thinking that certain fabulous women in their fifties and sixties look fabulous because of a combination of personal, beauty, lucky genes, good diet, exercise, facials, and make-up artists, and believe that if only you could put the same dedication into your appearance as they do, why, you too could look - not as good, but a bit as good.

And then you find out that all is an illusion. Facelifts, botox, fillers. They have all had it done. Do I blame them? No, I don't. If your career is dependent on how you look, then you do what you must do. And we can stop beating ourselves up because we don't look like that. For unless we're prepared to go under the knife, the fact is, we won't. I hope I have made myself clear.

Beauty awards

The Telegraph's beauty editor hands out her annual awards.

In the past year I have also convinced by this, which has replaced the ruinously expensive Eve Lom cleanser in my bathroom:

For taking it off, my Best Cleanser prize must go to Liz Earle's Cleanse & Polish Hot Cloth Cleanser (£10.25, lizearle.com). If there is a beauty secret to let you in on, this is it.

Beauty editors and models rave about it and I've been hooked ever since I first tried it. It's a simple, creamy lotion, containing almond milk, rosemary and eucalyptus, which you apply with your fingers and take off with a wet muslin cloth.

It removes all your make-up and the cloth gives you a gentle exfoliation. Furthermore, it's pretty cheap. Friends says that it's helped with everything from acne to mild eczema.

Strictly speaking, it's not new this year but it's easier to get hold of thanks to a new shop opening in London (53 Duke of York Square, Kings Road, SW3) and is available in selected John Lewis stores.

And here's something I didn't know about

The gong for Best Lash Enhancer goes to Lancôme's Hypnôse Strass topcoat (£19.50), which is currently flying off make-up counters.

The thought of adding a shiny layer on top of mascara sounds WAG-ish, but it's a subtle way of giving lashes some va-va-voom for a big night out. In fact, dozens of celebrities were spotted having it added by make-up artists at the Baftas last week. Expect a raft of copycat products.

All hail Anya!

Anya Hindmarch speaks!

The designer and maker of all my bag purchases in the past 18 months explains all:

My bags are about craftsmanship. If I could be allowed just one from my extensive collection, it would be my bespoke Ebury that has a lovely message inscribed inside from my husband and children. And I want my children to pass it down. My mother gave me one of her Gucci cast-offs when I was 16 and it made me feel fantastic. The power of that handbag was the impetus for my business. I was planning to go to university, but went to Italy and found a bag that I thought women would like. I sent it to Harpers and Queen, they placed it in the magazine and I ended up selling 500.

If I had to describe the brand in three words, they would be: British, humorous and bespoke. It’s still very connected to London, where it started in 1993. I am British and proud to be so, plus you absorb so much of what is around you. When I started, I spent time in Hackney, alongside leather and metalworkers, so it’s really part of the brand’s DNA. What I like is the feeling that anything can happen in London.

It is very frustrating when you see a copy of one of your bags. So much hard work has gone into each one. Often we can take 15 or 16 attempts to get an angle right. That said, when I saw my first copy on Canal Street in New York, there was a moment of “Yes! We’ve made it”, quickly followed by: “What creeps, you’ve stolen my idea.”

Thought for the day

Shoes are the first adult machines we are given to master. Nicholson Baker

Not perfect, but she brightened things up

I have an alibi, Mr Fayed

crocodile wife

Emporio Armani

New York Paris London Milan

I asked last week which of the global centres was the most fashion forward. I was referring of course to the collections, not street style. Not many of you ventured an opinion but those that did voted for Paris.

For my money, Italy is ahead of the rest when it comes to beautiful, wearable, womanly clothes: just look at Armani, Valentino and Alberta Ferretti.

New York is close behind for clothes for the working woman.

But it is London and Paris that are streets ahead in terms of innovation and determining trends. And Paris takes London's greatest designers - Galliano, McQueen and synthesises the traditions of British tailoiing and British eccentricity and street style, with Parisian chic and couture skills. That's what makes Paris Paris. The world epicentre of fashion.

Comfort make-up

Never have I heard the this experience described so accurately before.

You know how it is. You’re pregnant with your second child, you’ve got the first one howling at your hip, you haven’t brushed your hair and you may well be wearing yesterday’s pants and, whoa – you bump into an ex-boyfriend. He has his arm slung casually over the shoulder of some slip of a thing, all skinny jeans and floppy spaghetti bra-straps. They’ve clearly spent the morning in bed. You, on the other hand, haven’t slept properly for a year, and have the kind of bra straps that would hold up the Severn Bridge.

. . .

You can almost hear him saying it: “Honestly, babe, she never looked like that when I was going out with her.” You fancy you hear her giggle.

Just you wait, you seethe under your breath, just you wait, and then suddenly you feel utterly deflated. You catch a glimpse of yourself in a shop mirror and before you know it, you’re in SpaceNK and talking to a lady with eyelash extensions. You want something for under the eyes, a cream to get rid of wrinkles, maybe some mascara, blusher and, yes, a lipstick, definitely a lipstick. Nothing gives you a lift like lipstick, does it? You don’t even ask for prices. Twenty minutes later you leave almost £100 lighter, clutching a bag of tricks you know you’ll never use but which, magically, makes you feel better.

Comfort make-up. It’s a lot like comfort eating, only more expensive and less fattening. And no one does it better than Laura Mercier.

Thought for the day

Fantastic garbs succeed each other, like monster devouring monster in a dream. Thomas Carlyle

Give me that dress

Alberta Ferretti, AW08

Jessica is fooling around behind your back

a propos of nothing II

Patrick Dempsey is the new face of Versace

Dressing in tribes

Utterly fascinating piece about how we dress in tribes

There is a scene in Monty Python's Life of Brian where the eponymous hero addresses a vast crowd of devoted followers who have mistaken him for the Messiah. 'You are all individuals,' he shouts. 'Yes,' they reply with one voice. 'We are all individuals.'

It is the sort of joke that delights Dutch photographer Ari Versluis, who has spent the last 14 years documenting the disconnection between our human desire to feel unique while also belonging to a greater whole. Since 1994, he and his stylist, Ellie Uyttenbroek, have travelled the world seeking to document the dress codes of different social and cultural groups. What they discovered was a series of modern fashion tribes - people who dress the same, often without even realising it.

Thought for the day

Clothes are never a frivolity: they always mean something, and that something is to a large extent outside the control of our conscious minds. James Laver

Madame Gres - the couturier time forgot

My piece in today's Telegraph about Madame Gres

For many years I had heard the name Madame Grès and thought I knew who she was, for it conjured an image of one of the indefatigable Mayfair dressmakers who, from the 1930s to the 1950s, ran up copies of French fashions for well-dressed Englishwomen without the budget for the originals. But Madame Grès was the original, a Paris couturière to rival Lanvin and Chanel, once as famous as both of them. In her time she dressed Marlene Dietrich, the socialite Nan Kempner, Jacqueline Onassis and Barbra Streisand. That she is now forgotten, and her house merely a name in license held by a Swiss company, is a lesson in the difficulties of charting a course into the fashion history books.

Madame Grès photographed by Diane Arbus for 'Harper’s Bazaar'

All clothes at some point take on the appearance of fancy dress before they are reincorporated into fashion again, but not hers. Looking at the dresses she made in the 1930s, one is struck not by their modernity but also by their timelessness. Influenced by the ideals of classicism, she made evening gowns that sculpted the human form, using techniques practised only by herself, a specialist skill known as draping, quite distinct from tailoring.

Why is she not better known? As a new book, Madame Grès: Sphinx of Fashion, reveals there were several reasons: because she made some disastrous business choices; because for the first part of her career she designed under another name and had to rebuild her reputation during the difficult circumstances of the German occupation; and because she never courted publicity. Working in complete solitude, she was 'more Garbo than Garbo', according to the fashion journalist Cathryn Horn. Only in the aftermath of her death and the bizarre revelations about her fate - she died penniless, forgotten, the announcement of her death suppressed by her daughter - did she come again to public attention.

Observer review

Vivien Kovaks comes from a family of 'mice-people', Jewish-Hungarian immigrants who arrived in 1938 and are simply grateful to England for giving them refuge. This is a novel about identity and belonging. There is nothing lightweight about its themes and yet it is so artfully constructed that you barely feel you're reading it at all, so fluid and addictive is the plot. But like all the best books, the serious ideas it raises stay with you for a long time afterwards.
. . .

This is a wonderful, tightly written novel that charts one woman's emotional life while weaving in politics, history and morality. It does not come to any easy conclusions: the murderous Sandor is no less of a monster than his silently raging but impotent brother Ervin, who is sleepwalking through life. Ultimately, though, Sandor's defence does not wash; by choosing a path of violence and revenge, he descends to the depths of the fascists he hates.

Grant does not hit you over the head with politics, though. She transports you to another era and into another woman's life so gently and effortlessly that it is not until the end of the book that you realise the points she is making are universal and timeless. This novel is above all a quiet masterclass in the perils of hypocrisy. No man is all good or all bad. And a decent suit can make you overlook a lot.

more

Scotsman interview

There's an interview with me in today's Scotsman newspaper, in which, among other topics, I speak of the readers of this blog:

Grant, who has been interested in clothes all her life, last October even started a blog, thethoughtfuldresser.blogspot.com, as a forum for intelligent discussion. It is subtitled: "Because you can't have depths without surfaces."

But isn't it dangerous, taking fashion seriously? Doesn't she run the risk of being dismissed as frivolous. Is it any sillier than talking about football, a topic near and dear to men's hearts? "Yes, it's identical. And the world wouldn't cease to exist if football ceased to exist; you can live without it, but you can't live without clothes.

"In terms of living without fashion, it's very difficult to find any society which has suppressed the interest in dress and clothing. The Puritans tried it for ten years – a complete failure. So they go to America and try to do it there and again it's a failure. It must be a deep human instinct to adorn the body, to change it through clothing. I would say that it's as central to our nature as a desire for art.

"I wanted to write about clothes the way women think about clothes. It's not the case that if we write about clothes we might as well write chick lit. Judith Krantz wrote the very first books that really talked about labels. She was good at portraying how people got dressed and what they wore at a given moment. I felt it was possible to incorporate that into literary fiction. I felt it was a subject generally neglected by male writers in the 20th century, because it's not manly. But we all wear clothes and most women are interested in them. In this novel clothes are at the centre of absolutely everything and at the heart of the book. It's asking questions about survival and how clothes affect a multitude of situations."

. . .

Her next project is a non-fiction book exploring why clothes matter and why we care about what we wear. To that end, her blog is partly a research tool. Via the comments section, Grant has discovered her readership comprises a highbrow crowd, women who work in embassies, in politics, even someone using a Nasa log-in. This doesn't surprise me at all, being an intelligent, fashion-curious gal myself. I can't wait to read this as-yet-unwritten book. In the meantime, I'll console myself with Grant's backlist.

read the rest

Daily Telegraph review

Naked we come into the world, and naked we leave it. Linda Grant, whose career spans both prize-winning fiction and journalism about fashion, has written a novel about the way clothes can offer a new beginning, even in the face of bereavement.

	Transformers: clothes maketh the woman

Vivien, her heroine, has lost both her husband and her father in one year. Dumpy and despondent, she passes by the boutique where Eunice, her Uncle Sandor's ex-mistress, is having a closing-down sale.

Her encounter with Eunice - and her discovery of her tapes of Uncle Sandor's memoirs - lead to an account of her past.

This includes her relationship with her immigrant Hungarian parents and her wicked Uncle Sandor - a rogue inspired by the slum landlord Peter Rachman, whom her father loathes, and forbids her to see: "My parents had brought me up to be a mouse. Out of gratitude to England, which gave them refuge, they chose to be mice-people, and this condition… was what they hoped for me too. And whatever Uncle Sandor was, he was no mouse."

This vivid, enjoyable and consistently unexpected novel is like Anita Brookner with sex.

Amanda Craig in the Daily Telegraph

Made in Italy?

In Harvey Nichols yesterday with my sister we came across the Alberta Ferretti dress I hope to have copied.

It's a stunning dress but, as my sister pointed out on close examination of it, do we really want to pay £895 for a garment whose side seam is puckered from under the sleeve to the bottom of the hem? And would one put up with that if one was having it made by a dressmaker?