Einstein on clothes

Dressed by mother

The world, or rather a highly exclusive part of it, had to come to Einstein if it wanted an audience. And come it did. The most famous names of the era, like Max Planck, Rabindranath Tagore, Heinrich Mann, Chaim Weizmann and Käthe Kollwitz, made the pilgrimage to Caputh to see Einstein, and some were shocked to find him warmly greeting them barefoot and in his sailing shirt. (When Elsa Einstein complained about his informality, Einstein said, "If they want to see me, here I am. If they want to see my clothes, they can look in my closet.")

From here via here

The Clothes On Their Backs: US publication

The Clothes On Their Backs will be published in the US by Scribner in February. I will be joining on that list Annie Proulx, Don DeLillo, John Le Carre, Hanif Kureishi and up and coming writers like Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Details of further international editions (Dutch and Czech rights have also been sold) are available here

India

And many more, here

I love Simon Doonan

I don't see how anybody could disagree with that statement. Here he is on his brilliant career:

But then Doonan, who is in his mid-50s, has long led a fabulous life. As a Reading boy turned window-dresser turned creative director of Barneys and celebrated newspaper columnist, he has documented many of his adventures in two memoirs, the second of which, Beautiful People, is the inspiration for a new television series. The book recounts Doonan's escape from Reading, accompanied by his best friend Biddie, in pursuit of the elusive beautiful people of London - and beyond. He says that the series has done "a magnificent job. They preserved a lot of essential elements, and the message of looking for the beautiful people, but here they are all along."

Doonan got his first sniff of the high life in John Lewis in Reading. This was a summer job taken after leaving the local cork factory, which, he says, "was hideous, because these insects used to crawl out of the cork, and I thought working in a shop would be better - you could get all dressed up and not get covered in insects". After university he returned to the store and contemplated his next move. "Biddie was in soft furnishings and I was in clocks and watches and we thought, we have to get the fuck out of Dodge."

Still, John Lewis had taught him a great deal and introduced him to the world of window-dressing. "I especially loved the dress fabric windows," he recalls with glee. "That's something you don't see much any more because people don't make their own clothes now, but back then they would have a birch log and a piece of fabric over it like that," he wafts his hands in the air, "and they would pull up each fabric like that, and nylon it so it was invisibly suspended. And then you'd throw a pair of pinking shears on the floor, and a little fan of patterns just to remind people what the hell it is they're supposed to be looking at. I wish we sold dress fabrics at Barneys so I could do that!"

To the floor, again

Looking at the SS09 shows, it's clear that the maxi dress continues for a third year. The maxi dresses which appeared on the runways the summer before last were too much like the maxi dresses of the 70s for me to feel comfortable wearing them a second time round, but this seasons they're evolving away from the frills and tiers. Here's Cavalli's take.

Interesting that as long makes a return in daywear it dies away in eveningwear

Wrapping up warm

Reguluar readers will recollect that in August I bought an Armani coat. My thinking at the time was that either a) I would get shortlisted for the Booker which comes with a guaranteed £2,500 or b) I would not get shortlisted for the Booker and the coat would be my consoloation. Either way, the universe would provide. And it did. US rights have just been sold and I'll have more information about that in the next day or two.

The day of Princess Diana's funeral I bought a MaxMara coat which I wore to death. Unless you live in LA, a really good winter coat is probably the best wardrobe investment because you'll wear it every day. I see now that this has become a trend in credit crunch chic:

And what better investment to make than a winter coat? If you like to justify your purchases on a pounds-to-number-of-times-worn ratio, a quality coat is as good as gold, especially as it's the item most people will see you in from October to March. As my otherwise fearsomely frugal grandmother - a Great Depression survivor - used to say: "Always spend money on a good mattress, shoes and coat."

According to Bridget Cosgrave, buying director of the Matches boutiques, we're paying heed to such advice. Coats from timeless brands such as Maxmara, and classics with a statement-making twist, like Burberry Prorsum's Prussian-blue cashmere trench (£1,750; matchesfashion.com), are already the season's big sellers. "People are investing in pieces that are luxurious, but that you can get lots of wear from - old classics that have been updated with fresh detailing and on-trend fits," she says. "You can't go wrong with a belted trench or a pea coat with military detailing."

Ah yes, the classic pea coat is emerging as the style of the season at every end of the price spectrum - from Alexander McQueen to Topshop. But with the trend for "slower" fashion and the (re)emergence of those high-end chains that were unmoved by the recent cheap-chic trend - including Jigsaw, Jaeger and Reiss - it's no surprise that the fashion editors' favourite pea coat is from Whistles. "Our cropped pea coat is our fastest-selling coat ever," says Whistles spokeswoman Fleur Askey.

Fashion does the job

The excellent charity Dressed for Success is a dead simple idea. Women have good clothes which for one reason or another they don't wear any more. Other women are trying to get a job but have nothing they can wear for the interview. Put the two together:

The women who walk through the doors of Dressed for Success find themselves there for all sorts of reasons. “I’ve dressed 17-year-old girls straight out of foster-care programmes, as well as a woman who was 65 and had been out of work for 15 years,” says Joanna, a volunteer. Juliet, who has been volunteering since closing her children’s clothing shop on Walton Street, agrees. “Women who have been out of the working loop for a while think everything will have moved on, that it’s going to be terrifying. And don’t I know the feeling?” she says. “They feel like a mummy who has been through the mill, and it’s just too frightening to go back.”

There are those simply looking for their first break, such as Colette, an asylum seeker and single mother in her late twenties from Burundi surviving on £100 a week in benefits, who went to Dress for Success before an interview for a job at the NHS. “I looked a mess. I couldn’t afford to buy clothes. But they gave me a suit and taught me how to wear high heels, and when I went back to the interview, one of the managers didn’t recognise me.” She also got the job.

School leavers and young single mothers need a special kind of encouragement. “Many of them have never worn a suit before,” says Eleanor, another volunteer. “When they see themselves in one, they suddenly go from a schoolgirl to a worker.”

And there's a very nice incentive to donate:

STYLE READER OFFER
From October 8 to October 22, Harvey Nichols is working with Dress for Success and Style to collect as many clothes for the charity as possible. Bring in your old designer dresses, coats and suits to the Harvey Nichols stores in Dublin, Manchester, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Leeds or Knightsbridge, or the new store in Bristol, and you’ll receive a voucher for 15% off your next purchase*. There are new collections arriving daily and, with your good deed done, you’ll have earned that gorgeous new Lanvin silk trench coat, the Jil Sander coat dress you’ve had your eye on, or those Jonathan Kelsey over-the-knee leather boots you simply must have.

I will definitely be taking them up on this and going through my wardrobe for all those, I'm sure I'll wear this again at some point, items.

Canonical Jewish books

The ultimate guide to the books that every Jew needs to own. My choice

Quidditch at Vassar

In my day we did drugs

London Fashion Week and to Milan

A slide show of highlights from all the collections, here

That's Richard Nichol, above. What did I tell you about sleeveless jackets?

Meanwhile Milan Fashion Week opened with, sit down hold on to a stable surface, ask for brandy if necessary, the Elena Miro show. Elena Miro designs for plus size.

I personally don't like her collection, but see what you think.

Sleeves: Decoding what the designers are saying

'Yes, of course we know that middle aged women want to cover up their arms, but that is not our problem. For the past few years we have been designing sleeveless dresses because that is what is we want to design. The fact that many women can't wear these dresses is of no consequence. We do not wish to sell to these women because we do not want them to wear our clothes. We realise that we are losing a huge revenue from this clientele, but although we are financially on the brink of ruin, we are artists not business people. We prefer not to make a profit and go under rather than compromise our artistic vision and make dresses with sleeves. No sleeves. Sorry. We are not really sorry. We just don't care what you want. We are directional people, you should want what we tell you to want and if you can't wear it, well, you are not our market.

'For Spring/Summer 09 we are introducing jackets without sleeves. Autumn/Winter 09, shoes without soles. '

Harry Remembers Slogans

A couple of weeks ago I had dinner with some new acquaintances. It was a very pleasant evening and in the course of the conversation (which did not include the subject of long sleeved evening dresses) , it transpired that they were old friends of Katherine Hamnett. A name , I suggested , that doesn’t come up that often nowadays.
I was curious to know if she was still in business. Indeed she is. I gather most of her business is web –based ( this is the link)
I recalled her campaigning for organic cotton, and her anti nuclear stance in the eighties. Her web-site shows that her campaigning continues with vigour. Including Concentrated Solar Power, which I confess is news to me.

Of course I remember most vividly her encounter with Margaret Thatcher in the 80’s when she was famously photographed with the T –shirt that boldly proclaimed ‘No to Pershing’. A coup of a very high order. And an understanding of the dynamics of slogan T –shirts that nobody has bettered.

Ms Hamnett is still marketing similar shirts. But it occurred to me that I don’t see any slogans on the streets any more.
Shirts often seem to be ‘decorated ‘ with type, but it’s usually decoration with no content.
I asked my daughter and a friend ( 20) whether I was missing something. Apparently I’m not. The slogans they are aware of came from the likes of Topshop and are merely modish cultural references. Even if they appeared to have some content they were explicitly superficial and, as is often the case nowadays, ironic.

I don’t believe I am lamenting the demise of the slogan so much as I am bothered by the absence of seriousness and originality. Which has been elbowed out of the way by the trivial and a form of consumer idolatry ( half the population are apparently fulfilled by turning themselves into walking billboards for Diesel and Abercrombie and Fitch and their ilk).

But then…. who am I to talk?
Way back , in early teenager-hood , I was a big fan of satire, exemplified by the esteemed magazine Private Eye. They produced their own merchandise and I coveted it. I saved my pennies and bought a t shirt by mail order. They were amongst the first ( as far as I am aware ) to create such cultural artefacts.
When it arrived my joy was unconfined. In big black type it proudly proclaimed: 'Death to Sir Albert Strume'. I thought it was hilarious . (Sir Albert was , of course, entirely fictitious.)

At the earliest opportunity I wore it when I next played tennis.
After half an hour the club secretary ( a diminutive woman with massive thighs and a powerful forehand) appeared on the court in a state of high officiousness and promptly ordered me off. It wasn’t just that I was in contravention of club rules , but she was visibly agitated and outraged.
I had no idea it would be so provocative.
And of course I was delighted that it was.

Upcoming appearances

I'll be doing several events between now and the end of the year, including appearances at the Vancouver and Toronto literary festivals in late October. My main website has all the details.

A resolution and a wrecked back

Thank you for your very many suggestions. I hope anyone in my predicament has been following and taking notes.

Yesterday morning I received a useful email from a fashion editor I'd been talking to at the Anya Hindmarch press day who said that she thought the point was not buying a fabulous new dress for the occasion but putting together an outfit that worked for the occasion, parts of which will be televised. She gave some some tips about black, why not to wear it but how to offset it if you do (with gold). On that basis I went to my final stop, Liberty ,yesterday. There were only a handful of long dresses and while a couple had sleeves they were heavily beaded, cost thousands and not my kind of thing.

What they also had were several of the kinds of jackets I'd been thinking of, so I determined that I will wear my sea green MaxMara dress. There were a couple of lovely Dries van Noten jackets, though very expensive, and I was prepared to consider them. But when I got to the Issey Miyake Pleats Please section, I found a very simple but beautifully cut and structured black jacket at only £200. And which I could wear with anything. I bought that jacket, but decided I would go and take a look at the Issey Miyake Pleats Please shop off Bond Street to see if they have it in any other colours. Found it was closed for renovation until Monday, so I will go back then.

At home, I put together the dress with the jacket and a gold, jade and labradorite statement necklace. It looked sensational. As my friend R. in Istanbul, said, during an hour long phone conversation last night, the jacket would be even better in dark green. Anya Hindmarch is very kindly lending me the sample of next season's gold python clutch for the evening. So at present we have a theme of sea green black and gold which I think is simple but sophisticated (and all good colours for me.)

So I'm done. My back is totally wrecked from walking around for four hours in high-heeled boots on Wednesday, I don't want to see another shop for a long long time - at least, oh, four or five days? And that was starting with a dress I already have. The day of the prize 14 October, I'll post pictures of the whole outfit.

The only two pleasures of the past two days have been Anya's press day which was basically girls in a sweetshop (and I've ordered that python clutch for next summer) and, the sudden upsurge in interest by US publishers in The Clothes On Their Backs. For US readers, I will have more to report next week.

Dark at the end of the tunnel

At Browns: 'There is a huge demand by our customers for evening dresses with sleeves which we can't meet because we haven't got the stock. The designers aren't making them.'

At Donna Karan: 'Anything with sleeves sells out the day it comes in in the larger sizes.’

At Harvey Nichols/Harrods/Alberta Ferretti: 'No. Nothing. Only have left in in XS. Sold out. Don't stock. Have you tried . . .'

At the press day for Anya Hindmarch SS09 (three fashion editors): 'Black tie is a nightmare if you want sleeves.'

Jaeger: new readers start here

Jaeger is a brand which is 125 years old. It started out making woollen underwear (George Bernard Shaw said he looked like a radish in his) but by the 30s had branched out into fashion and established the Regent Street flagship store it still occupies. By the 60s Jaeger was a byword for very good quality beautiful clothes and its junior label, Young Jaeger had ad campaigns modelled by Jean Shrimpton and shot by David Bailey. Many fashion houses went under in the 70s, Jaeger survived, but its clothes were in a word, frumpy. They were clothes your mother wore, if your mother liked understated, boring beige elegance. By the turn of this decade Jaeger was essentially a brand for old ladies.

Just before it was sold to its present owner, Chairman of the British Fashion Council, Harold Tillman, it divested itself of its US standalone stores, and took on designer Bella Freud who injected some youth into the label. By the summer of 2006, with a new CEO, Belinda Earle at the helm, who had turned around the department store Debenhams by introducing line-ups with designers like Jasper Conran, Julien McDonald, and Ben de Lisi, it had take stock of what it was producing and discovered that it had lost its DNA. It was making beige and pastel polyester sacks.

It divided the company into three labels: Jaeger London, Jaeger Black (high-end conservative investment dressing) and Jaeger Collection, the continuation of what it had been doing for the last couple of decades so as not to lose its existing customer base. Jaeger London is what I will be talking about here.

It was the summer of 2006 that I started noticing a black tunic dress with little bobbles at the hem. Anya Hindmarch was wearing it and when I asked her where it was from, she said with a blush Jaeger though she had 'had to fall over several zimmer frames to reach it.' The dress was featured in the fashion victim's bible, Grazia. Alexandra Shulman, editor of Vogue, mentioned Jaeger to me, and finally I saw Hillary Alexander, the Telegraph's fashion editor, wearing a Jaeger dress with a MaxMara jacket at a party at the V&A. (She was wearing the same dress at Jaeger's show on Monday.)

This was when I bought my first Jaeger dress.

Last February Jaeger London held its first ever show at London Fashion Week and it was a sensation. The clothes started arriving in the shops in the middle of August and most are now in. I have been steadily buying several pieces and they form the mainstay of my wardrobe. On Monday Jaeger held its second show, and the reviews were all raves. This is down to the vision of Belinda Earle and the design talent of Karen Boyd who had a label with Helen Storey in the 80s.

What is it I like about Jaeger? Two things:

- I have been convinced for a year now that over a certain age, and in this economy, it's better to buy a smaller number of well made garments than loads of cheap of-the-moment items from Zara and H&M. Jaeger prices at the lower end of the designer price-range, so within reach and they have excellent sales

- Jaeger designs edgy clothes for older women, by older, I mean over 35-40, which they recognise to be their market. Belinda Earle told me that the mantra for their customer is fit and flatter, but we're the generations which were wearing mini skirts in the 60s or body con bandage dresses in the 80s. We don't want to look like our mothers. We want to go forward with style.

Sitting on the second row on Monday, directly behind Erin O'Connor, and two of the Jagger girls, you understood that Jaeger's mission to throw off its frumpy associations were complete. Kate Moss wears Jaeger and now Lizzie Jagger does too. The coat I nearly bought was worn by Shirley Bassey and Erin O'Connor, over fifty years apart in age.

I understand that in the next year Jaeger will be expanding internationally and into partnerships with US department stores. So if you're in the US and can't yet get your hands on this brand, I'm really sorry, because as the US economy staggers from disaster to disaster with worrying consequences for all of us, it's nice for us over here to be a bit proud to be British.

London Fashion Week: Jaeger

London Fashion Week started on Sunday and I have been a bit out of the loop because of the previous week's excitement but I wouldn't miss Jaeger's second catwalk show in its 125 year history, particularly as my Autumn/Winter wardrobe is dominated by what I saw at the February show.

LFW shows take place in a marquee in front of the Natural History Museum in Kensington. There's a champagne bar while you're waiting to go in and what struck me was how many women in the crowd were wearing Jaeger. Now it's only polite to wear the designer to the show, but the crowd were fashion journalists who dash from one collection to the next and it's hard to see how they could change between shows. I was wearing this top, and I must have seen it on seven or eight other women.


Most gratifying of all was sighting Mary Portas, the woman who masterminded the transformation of Harvey Nicks, wearing a coat-dress I have waiting in the wardrobe to be worn. She wore hers as a mini dress, with bare legs. I'll be wearing mine over a skinny rib sweater and wide leg trousers, as soon as it gets cold enough.


One Jaeger wearer is Sarah Brown, the Prime Minister's wife, who wore Jaeger at a party she hosted last night at 10 Downing Street to celebrate the launch of fashion week.

I had ten minutes or so with Alexandra Shulman to discuss my Booker Prize dress, and we agreed that the sleeves issue is a total nightmare. You might think that being editor of Vogue you would no longer have such problems. You would be wrong. I was stunned by one of the disasters she recounted to me.

Took my seat on the second row and immediately about twenty snappers came and started shoving their lenses into my face, and how nice, I thought that the fashion world recognises literary excellence, until I realised I was sitting behind Erin O'Connor and two of the Jagger girls. O'Connor was wearing this coat, which I had nearly bought but finally went for the Armani instead, and seeing it on her, I am very glad I didn't. It would have destroyed it for me. I am not quite the same shape or size or height as Erin O'Connor.


The key to the show was colour - dragee shades, which I love, stronger than pastels- and sleeves - floaty, handkerchief sleeves on maxi dresses and tops, Incredibly clever of the Jaeger people to work out that we will wear maxi-dresses, but not if they're halter neck.


You can see the whole show here, but first on my list to buy next summer is this top



I'm incredibly pleased that in Britain we have a range which is priced at the low end of designer with such strong quirky style. I wonder if the fact that Jaeger is producing such beautiful wearable clothes is down to the fact that its designer, Karen Boyd, looks like this:

I have that scarf
and yes, that's my neck to the left of Erin's head.

Oh what am I going to wear Pt 2

This afternoon I went to the Jaeger SS09 show at London Fashion Week and managed to snatch ten minutes beforehand with Alexandra Shulman, editor of Vogue, in which I talked her through my what-am-I-going-to-wear issues. I shan't divulge the content of a private conversation, all I can say is, my view that it was pointless to go looking for an evening dress with sleeves was confirmed.

More on Jaeger tomorrow

Edward Stiechen for Vogue

Justine Picardie writes:

The pictures, taken during Steichen's 14-year reign at Vogue and Vanity Fair, when he was dubbed 'America's court portraitist', reveal themselves as the prototypes for the work of Mario Testino and Annie Leibovitz: for they are intended to flatter, rather than reveal imperfection; to encapsulate heroism and intensify iconic status; in other words, to make the rich and famous look like even more gilded versions of themselves.

The wrong stripes

Science has now vindicated what we always knew: vertical stripes make you look fatter. But note the final sentence.

. . . women’s bodies are, by their very nature, curvy things. Stripes are straight. If you put a straight vertical stripe on a curvy bottom, the line of the stripe will be distorted by the body beneath – which will serve only to accentuate the bulge.

The same is not nearly so true of horizontal stripes, which is why hooped tights occasionally make a comeback, whereas vertically striped ones, as favoured by Mary Quant in the Sixties, are consigned to the history books.

In truth, stripes in general are not particularly flattering to the fuller figure. Geometric patterns and organic shapes, on the other hand, work very well, breaking up the surface area covered and confusing the eye into believing it smaller. But the awful truth remains: being fat makes you look fat, and no amount of fabric, can ever truly conceal it.