My other blog

I have started another blog, its name is Buchmendel, after the Stefan Zweig short-story and I will be posting occasional passages from books I am reading.

Here is the first entry, from Bruno Shulz's story, Tailors' Dummies'

'Carried on their shoulders, a silent, immobile lady had entered the room, a lady of oakum and canvas, with a black wooden knob instead of a head. But when stood in the corner, between the door and the stove, that silent woman became mistress of the situation. Standing motionless in her corner, she supervised the girls' advances and wooings as they knelt before her, fitting fragments of a dress marked with white basting thread. They waited with attention, and patience on the silent idol, which was difficult to please. That moloch was inexorable as only a female moloch can be, and sent them back to work again and again, and they, thin and spindly, like wooden spools from which thread is unwound and as mobile, manipulated with noisy scissors into its colourful mass, whirred the sewing machine, treading its pedal with one cheap patent-leathered foot, while around them grew a heap of cuttings, of motley rags and pieces, like husks and chaff spat out by two fussy and prodigal parrots. The curved jaw of the scissors tapped open like the beaks of those exotic birds.'

Grow up!

our girl

For a year I have been banging the same drum: that we have to stop buying cheap throwaway high street clothes and invest in fewer, more expensive pieces. And I have been saying Jaeger Jaeger Jaeger (and Cos). In the past week I've seen pictures of Sarah Brown, the wife of our prime minister, and Anne Enright, winner of the Booker this year, in this season's Jaeger jacket with shoulder detail.

Now here is the Times with more of the same:

The sector of the fashion high street once unflatteringly called middle market has lost its flabby lack of focus and identity, and been given a fierce shot of retail Botox. It’s been upgraded and rebranded as something called Affordable Luxury or Masstige (that’s prestige for the masses; desirable things for everyone, not just the rich), and it’s meant to appeal to women, rather than girls, who appreciate youthful but don’t do teenage. Belinda Earl, Jaeger’s top woman, who has transformed the label into a fashion must-have and recently kicked off London Fashion Week with Jaeger’s first international catwalk show, is one of the movement’s forerunners.

“Today’s consumer is very discerning,” Earl explains. “Because of the huge amount of fashion information available through the internet, weekly glossies and TV, she’s aware of trends but wants them interpreted in a way that flatters her shape and is right for her lifestyle.” The ailing Jaeger label, bought by Harold Tillman in 2002, has been completely revitalised by Earl, who was wooed from Debenhams (where she negotiated the Designers at Debenhams ranges). “Our customer shops with her hands and wants quality fabrics that feel good to touch and against her skin.” Items such as the cashmere poncho and printed silk shirt have rapidly become contemporary classics at Jaeger. Since Earl joined, the number of stores has risen from 89 to 120. As a company, it has gone from losing £3 million a year to last year’s profit of £70.6 million. “When I arrived at Jaeger, I did lots of research and focus groups with our customers. They told me, ‘You must do this. There is nothing for us out there.’”

Thought for the day

Youth is the time of getting, middle age of improving, and old age of spending. Anne Bradsteet

Everything's coming up Carla

Madame Sarkozy in Dior, Mrs Brown in Jaeger

The Guardian today goes Carla crazy, including my own brief observations on The Gaze.

The gaze

Just look at the man-trapping stare that Carla Bruni has triumphantly brought to Britain. Show us how it's done, Carla.

As a basic foundation one needs to be ravishingly beautiful with large, lash-fringed eyes above a slightly parted mouth. If you lack the gorgeousness, you might resemble that deranged fan in the Stephen King novel Misery, who kidnaps a famous writer and amputates his foot.

If you direct all your attention at a man, you need to have a face that commands attention.

The Gaze tells an unlikely story, which men fall for every time. Witness Prince Philip in his gilded coach yesterday, as Carla turned on the 10,000-watt radiance. He sits back, as if hit by a stun gun. The Gaze says, "You, my darling desiccated duke, you, you could make me happy. Everything you say and do absorbs me. Look, I am smiling. And why? Because you are so witty, so handsome, so debonair in your overcoat. So what, you are married? Wives are easily disposed of."

In the Gaze, the face is mainly immobile. It is unnecessary to speak. The face speaks. The recipient of the Gaze interprets its language: my God, she fancies me! Then, alarmingly, the Gaze turns off, or away.

The sun is put out. The Gaze is directed to someone else. Yet how can that be, when it is me she loves?

Try practising the Gaze in front of a mirror, or on your pets. Take a good look at the goldfish. When you try this at home you'll find you're more likely to resemble a carp than Carla.
Linda Grant

Thought for the day

'Why don't you write books people can read?' Nora Joyce, to her husband James

The Manolo discusses the dialectical contradiction of the designer shoes.

Specifically my designer shoes

Joy to an old man's heart

Lilibet, is that you?

Matchy matchy bags

According to Sky News, while Gordon and Nicolas are visiting the Emirates Stadium (with Arsene Wenger translating between the two of them) Sarah and Carla are having lunch at Lancaster House to discuss world poverty. It says.

Better suited, height-wise (and Nicolas explains his other advantages)
Meanwhile our prime minister demonstrates his command of the French kiss

That banquet at Windsor Castle, brought to you from a footman's mobile phone, with guest appearance by Ingrid Bergman and assorted Nazis

Today is National No Make-Up Day!

Once you've stopped laughing, here are some prominent women on the subject

Beverley Knight

I don't wear it every day but I really enjoy putting on make-up. If I could use only one product, it would be mascara. My big eyes love it.

Joan Bakewell

I've been wearing make-up for 50 years now. I'd be bereft without my lipstick. I wear orangey-brown shades as I've got rather sallow skin. Make-up isn't hugely important to me but it's always a surprise how much difference it makes.

Susan Greenfield

I carry blusher - the very pale pink kind - with me wherever I go. It's the quickest thing to change how you look and really lightens my face.

Jane Seymour

No matter what I'm doing, I always wear mascara.

Katherine Whitehorn

Make-up for older women is one thing we have over the men - we don't go bald and we can avoid the awful pallor of age. A decent fake tan two or three times a week can stop you looking like a lump of lard hung up for the birds, and concealers deal with those odd brown bits that turn out not to be exploded coffee grounds after all.

Paula Radcliffe

The one piece of make-up I just can't do without is black Lancôme mascara.

Lady Antonia Fraser

I'm like Marie Antoinette - I wear make-up with great pleasure. I've been wearing my nice pink lipstick since I was 16. Back then it it was something by Rimmel called, I think, Pink Plumb Beautiful. If I'm at home writing I'll put on a little. I look depressing without it.

Sheherazade Goldsmith

I use black eyeliner inside both eyelids. I can't live without Becca Shimmering Skin Perfector in Pearl. It makes my skin glow.

Ann Widdecombe

Goodness me, there's no make-up I simply couldn't live without. When I'm working I wear foundation, lipstick and eye shadow. No mascara. But I couldn't tell you what make or even what colour they are.

Giorgio Armani - Holy Grail

Thought for the day

Any girl can be glamorous. All you have to do is stand still and look stupid. Hedy Lamarr*

*Avant garde composer George Antheil, a son of German immigrants and neighbor of Lamarr, had experimented with automated control of instruments. Together, he and Lamarr submitted the idea of a Secret Communication System in June 1941. On 11 August 1942, U.S. Patent 2,292,387 was granted to Antheil and Hedy Kiesler Markey. This early version of frequency hopping used a piano roll to change between 88 frequencies and was intended to make radio-guided torpedoes harder for enemies to detect or jam.

The idea was impractical, ahead of its time, and not feasible due to the state of mechanical technology in 1942. It was not implemented in the USA until 1962, when it was used by U.S. military ships during a blockade of Cuba,^[4] after the patent had expired. Neither Lamarr nor Antheil (who died in 1959) made any money from the patent. Perhaps due to this lag in development, the patent was little-known until 1997, when the Electronic Frontier Foundation gave Lamarr an award for this contribution.^[1]

Lamarr's and Antheil's frequency-hopping idea serves as a basis for modern spread-spectrum communication technology used in devices ranging from cordless telephones to WiFi Internet connections, namely CDMA.^[5] Similar patents had been granted to others earlier, like in Germany in 1935 to Telefunken engineers Paul Kotowski and Kurt Dannehl who also received U.S. Patent 2,158,662 and U.S. Patent 2,211,132 in 1939 and 1940.

Lamarr wanted to join the National Inventors Council, but she was told that she could better help the war effort by using her celebrity status to sell War Bonds. She once raised $7,000,000 at just one event.

Hedy Lamarr

Thought for the day

As she had not hope of raising herself to the rank of a beauty, her only chance was bringing others down to her level. Emily Eden

Shoes versus bags

Bags have been getting a bad rap these days for being overpriced. Buy shoes instead! we are told.

Today I went to the V&A for a private view of the jewels which will be on exhibit in the the new William and Judith Bollinger jewellery Gallery which is opening on 24 May. I lugged home a catalogue, a press pack and a copy of Grazia to read on the tube. The receptacle in which these items were contained, along with my wallet, lipstick, compact, keys, mobile phone, was my Anya Hindmarch cream Carker. The same bag took me though three weeks in Australia, frequently having to bear the load of my lap top as well, when the airline refused my carry-on and consigned it to the hold.

The Carker still looks as mint as when I got it, eighteen months ago. So here's a question, what pair of designer shoes, worn day after day after day, would still be wearable a year after you bought them?

The cream Carker was the It bag of AW06, but it's a classic (it's been around since the mid-90s). I imagine I'll still be using it in a decade or even two decades. Of which shoes can one say that?

The quality of shoes

I mentioned last week that I had bought a pair of Dolce & Gabbana shoes. I wore them for the first time on Thursday. When I got home the leather on the soles was pitted and worn away. I was going to take them back to Harvey Nichols for a refund but first went into my excellent local shoe repairers for an opinion. They told me that the shoes were not designed to be worn before having rubber soles put on them if you were going to wear them in the street, rather than carpet, and if it rained, and that L.K. Bennet shoes apparently contain a warning to have them resoled before wearing them. I said this seemed like something out of Alice and Wonderland, and picking up my £300 Dolce & Gabbana shoes he said, well, you see they use cheap, thin leather.

Thought for the day

(has been photoshopped)

This Englishwoman is so refined
She has no bosom and no behind

Stevie Smith

Clive Owen on being the new face of Lancome

Resting after discovering the potato

“I would argue that this whole thing is not about vanity,” says Owen practically. “This is not plastic surgery, Botox or make-up, it’s just skin creams and aftershaves. I’m not standing up there saying, ‘I’m great and I’m so sexy and cool, and that’s why I am doing this.’ It’s more to do with acknowledging the way that the whole products-for-men thing is changing. Most guys I know do use moisturiser. In theatre and film, looking after your face is a pretty normal thing. It’s just business.”

Buying vintage: The pros and cons

Personally, my days of buying vintage are long behind me. In my early twenties everything I wore came from the second hand clothes boutiques in Kensington High Street antique market or Portobello Road, or, when I moved to Vancouver, a shop called Joe's Old Clothes. I would swan around the windy university campuses in 1930s bias cut evening dresses worn with Mary Quant purple opaque tights bought at Liberty, with no thought to occasion-appropriate and didn't own a single pair of jeans. I still dislike trousers and prefer dresses to anything else.

Here's a piece in which sort-of famous people give their tips on buying vintage:

'This Ossie Clark top is the first designer item I ever bought. I was 18 when I got it on the King's Road in London, and since then both my mum and my daughter Leah have tried to nick it from me. I stole it back eventually. Isn't it amazing that three generations of my family have worn it, and it's never gone out of style?'

'I found a handkerchief in the pocket of a pair of second-hand trousers, which really made me realise that I was wearing a dead man's trousers. Old clothes do have a kind of aura of death, but a good wash usually sorts them out.'

Thought for the day

I had always looked on my beauty as a curse, because I was regarded as a whore, rather than an actress. Now at least I understand that my beauty was a blessing. It was my lack of understanding the way to merchandise it that was the curse. Louise Brooks

apropos of nothing

Clive Owen - the new face of Lancome

On not being able to leave the house

“The hardest thing to sell at the moment is a black kitten heel,” says Rebecca Farrar-Hockley, the buying and creative director of Kurt Geiger. According to her, a shoe boom is nigh, spurred on by It-bag fatigue and pared-down ready-to-wear.

Incredibly useful article about shopping in Paris

. . . and how to look like a Parisian. Here

I was in Paris in September and the key to looking like a Frenchwoman is scarves. Artfully tied.

Do you want to look old?

I have a piece in today's Telegraph about a new book about to come out in the UK but which has already courted controversy in the US, Charla Krupp's 'How Not To Look Old.'

In the 1950s and 1960s there was a craze in America for a procedure called rhinoplasty, in which a cosmetic surgeon broke the patient's nose to give her a new, always smaller, one. Little upturned ski-slope noses sat on faces they did not fit, but they had solved an age-old problem: how not to look Jewish in Wasp America. When Charla Krupp published her how-to manual in America at the beginning of this year, entitled How Not To Look Old, there was something of a furore in the press. Krupp argued that, since older women were discriminated against, the best way they could deal with the issue was not by tackling the discrimination politically, but by changing the way they look. As she pointed out in the New York Times, 'There was a book on how not to look Jewish. It was called The Preppy Handbook and it was a bestseller.'

Tight jawline!

But Krupp's book touched a raw nerve in the American media. 'Age management' is the essence of her thesis. 'Until age becomes a non-issue,' she writes, 'I don't think it's particularly smart for women to advertise their age… As Christie Brinkley said in her CoverGirl commercials, "I love being the age I am, I just don't want to look it." No one wants to "look it", because of age profiling and the fear of being outed. Why does anyone, besides your doctor, need to know your age anyway?'

To the feminist baby-boomer generation it was an outrage, for they (and that includes me) were the first to challenge every assumption about women's lives from contraception to menopause. To a politically correct American media, Krupp's book was as shocking as suggesting that Barack Obama use bleaching agents to lighten his skin; and yet during the presidential race Hillary Clinton has been proudly promoting feminist values with a face that looks suspiciously stiffened by Botox and a glare of forensic scrutiny about her appearance that her Republican rival, John McCain, aged 72, has evaded. For the reality for many of those outraged women is that in a highly competitive workforce and a culture in which celebrities are never seen to age - where all the role models have had face-lifts and a 50-year-old looks 35 - it is hard to get a job when you resemble the age on your birth certificate.

The baby-boomers' unique selling point has always been youth. We are a generation born, we believed, to be young and stay younger forever, as if ageing were a lifestyle choice for our parents, a more conservative generation who longed for Crimplene dresses and set hair. But, though the generation born after the war and up to the early 1960s has rewritten most of the rules about how to behave over 40, watching iconic figures such as Twiggy age and become the face of Marks & Spencer's with-it granny look has been extraordinarily unnerving. Sir Paul McCartney's perennially bad hair-dye job, and Mick Jagger's wrinkled visage beneath his own light-brown locks, remind us that there is no real Dorian Gray option, short of the surgeon's knife.

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