It's all in the accessories

Harry and his son and girlfriend are en route back to Britain, touching down later this morning.

Which means that I can afford to smile at these pictures of the queen in trousers, an unexpected sight - note the two scarves detail

A little more news from Mumbai

Harry's son is still in hospital and still not well enough to return to Britain.

If you are in the UK please take note of this organisation for future reference. Had we know about it this time last week things would have been considerably easier for everyone

To introduce an entirely unexpected fashion note, I'm pleased to say that a care package of small treats is being taken out by none other than Ossie Clark designer Avsh Alom Gur, who designed my Booker dress, and who is going to India tomorrow to source beading and embroidery for his next collection

Also he will be dressing me for this:

Literature continues to be an exciting category at the South Bank Show Awards with nominee Child 44, the serious crime novel by Tom Rob Smith, going up against the absorbing exploration of the notorious Road House murder case of 1860 in The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale. The Clothes on Their Backs by Linda Grant – a beautifully detailed character study and poignant family history – is also nominated.

Post Mumbai

I am not feeling very much like writing about fashion at the moment.

To all regular readers, I'm sorry for the suspension of this site. My thoughts are absorbed with other things and as the week goes on there is a lot to do.

Vocabulary

An Irish friend this weekend mentioned that when she was younger she met several members of the IRA, who were immediately recognisable, she noted for their 'coldness and arrogance'. These two characteristics I suspect, are what you need to make a terrorist. For while millions have grievances, often legitimate grievances, it takes a specific type to turn that grievance into a plan to execute in cold blood civilians on a large scale. The numbers, in fact, are very small, though their impact immense.

On the news the terms 'militant' and 'terrorist' have been used interchangeably. As George Szirtes points out,

People who deliberately focus on civilians are simply murderers. If they do so for a political purpose they are terrorists and murderers. Not militants. Not an army. They are murderers with a vastly inflated opinion of their own honour and righteousness. which also makes them hypocrites.

Mumbai Update 3

The Guardian has published the following account of Harry's son and girlfriend's ordeal in Mumbai. It is incredibly harrowing reading and even worse than I thought.

For Will Pike and his girlfriend, Kelly Doyle, a night in the Taj Mahal hotel was meant to be a treat to round off a two-week holiday in India.

Instead it ended with Will, 28, lying in a Mumbai hospital intensive care bed, his back broken in an attempt to escape the bullets and choking smoke by climbing down an improvised rope made from bedsheets, curtains and hotel towels.

They had checked in at 6pm after arriving from Goa, ventured out to the Leopold café - later to become the first place in the city to be attacked - then returned to their room intending to go down to the bar. As they got ready, the sound of explosions echoed up from the lobby: the terrorists were bursting into the hotel, throwing grenades and firing automatic weapons.

For five hours, the couple, from Camden in north London, cowered in their room, listening to the sound of approaching gunshots while the terrorists roamed the corridors, apparently firing at their fellow hostages.

read on

Mumbai update

Thanks to all readers who sent Harry their good wishes and thoughts, which he has read. The situation is as follows: his son and his son's girlfriend were on the final night of a two-week holiday in India. After a couple of weeks on the beach they decided to blow the budget on one night in a luxury hotel in Mumbai before flying out the following day. Unfortunately they chose the Taj Mahal.

After hearing gunshots in the hallway outside, they barricaded themselves in their room for seven hours until a fire on the floors above them and grenade in the next room compelled them to try to leave through a third floor window, using knotted bed linen. Unfortunately Harry's son fell and has multiple fractures. An operation on Thursday was successful but it will be a long road to recovery. Harry has now managed to get to Mumbai, arriving this morning.

On a personal level I am stunned at the minimal help offered by the Foreign Office, British Airways and his phone company (who had blocked calls to India and then said it would take 24 hours to unblock them). The practical support he has received has come through a network of friends who have been able to provide essential contacts in India, including doctors and Mumbai families.

The Thoughtful Dresser: The Book

Publication is late February. You can pre-order now


I hope to have further information about a US edition soon

Mumbai: alert

Thoughtful Dresser contributor Harry Fenton's son and girlfriend were staying in the Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai during the ongoing terrorist attacks. His son has been seriously injured. Harry is going to Mumbai later today. Any helpful information will be gratefully received

UPDATE I had always been under the impression that if you were in this situation you rang the Foreign Office number the BBC gave out and everything kicked in, including BA sorting out your flights. As I have now discovered, you ring the number, and someone gives you another number which no-one answers. You're on your own.

UPDATE Thanks to all readers who have sent their messages to Harry which he's read and which are greatly appreciated. Things have been ironed out now and he'll be on his way to Mumbai in a few hours. We should have more to report in a day or two.

The big men's creche on Regent Street

Egged on at the weekend by my sister and nephew who were laughing at my Iron Age iPod Nano, I went and bought an iPod Touch (at John Lewis, of course, home of middle-class, middle-aged electronics).

I am absolutely thrilled to bits with this piece of kit, but could not set up my main email account on it so I took in to the Apple store on Regent Store. It only took two tech support guys an hour and twenty minutes to set up my email during which I had plenty of time to observe that I was standing in a vast men's creche. All along Regent Street and Oxford Street women were shopping, having dropped their men off at a place where there were lots of toys to play with and play-leaders who would teach them how to use them.

Were these men shopping No! Shopping is a girl's activity, they were . . . well, what were they doing? I believe Harry has been known to frequent the Apple store, so perhaps he can tell us.

Harry Buys an Iron

Well, of course I already had one. But whilst recently struggling to get a sharp crease on a shirt sleeve it occurred to me that maybe the iron I was using was really not very good. Like the majority of our household appliances I fondly imagined that it was bought , my memory unreliably suggested, in a vague period called ‘a couple of years ago’. Which of course was wildly inaccurate. So maybe the iron was underperforming because of old age ( though why that should be the case I can’t imagine)

This domestic reverie prompted a recollection of a conversation I once had in Milan. I was in the company of a stylish ( well, obviously) creative director ( advertising not fashion).
Older than me, and with a degree of gravitas and that ‘not quite beard’ look that is quite difficult to carry off. A charming and quite taciturn chap.
I had worked with him for a while, so we knew each other.
Which is the kind of qualification I need to make before I say that I, a man, dared to ask him, a man, about clothes. ( This is an unusual conversational area for older males to venture into).
How, I asked , do Italian men always manage to look so stylish and well turned out? I went on: Italian men seem to gravitate toward what I see as being classic, almost anglo clothes. Tweed jackets ( which indeed Paolo was wearing) and nothing faddish . Understated and stylish, but managing to make the average Brit wearing similar clothes appear scruffy by comparison.
We were in a very recherché enoteca. As a solo visitor I would not even have noticed this tiny establishment. A small dark wood panelled room filled with wine bottles. A few stools. And rammed with Italian bourgeoisie quaffing a glass of wine at the end of the working day. Stylish to a man ( and woman).
His answer was very simple. We buy, he said , good quality clothes. Not many. Each season a new jacket , a coat, or trousers. That are well made, and fit. And then , he said, (rather pointedly I felt), we look after them. He admitted that he didn’t have an enormous wardrobe , but everything in it was immaculate.

So that was the difference! My thoughts immediately turned to my wardrobe. With many less than immaculate items that had seen better days. But which I was still inclined to pull out and wear because of some undisciplined notion that they still passed muster.
Well, the wardrobe remains full of sentimentally preserved schmatte. But I do make more of an effort to have the right creases in my shirts nowadays .

How to behave in a recession: haggling

I am the world's most unsuccessful haggler. I just want to hand over my money and get out of there. I have never asked for a better price (or an airline upgrade, for that matter) and got one. With the exception of the rug bazaar in Isfahan, Iran, where if you offered to pay the asking price they would make you a higher offer out of habit.

And so I am delighted to see this piece in which the author suffers a series of failures:

Nearby, John Lewis is full of customers in anoraks staring at rails of anoraks, but still I scent blood. It was reported last week that the store's sales are down 9.7% on last year. In the rug department, a man detaches himself from a silent group of salesmen. I express interest in a beautiful, pale pink rug with a big flower on it. It is £500. Will he take an offer? I heard sales were down; in fact, the sales in this particular store were down 9.1% last week. "We are not a concession store," the man replies. "We do not accept offers. The price is the price." I feel as if they will talk about me in rugs when I am gone. And, for the first time ever, I feel sad in John Lewis.

Selfridges is stuffed full of shoppers too. They are everywhere, like materialistic bacteria, grabbing handbags, stroking shoes. I ask for 25% off bags in Dior and Gucci. "No. Never. No," the women say. The lovely bags are whisked away, as if the grubby discount seeker will soil their perfection. So I corner Peppe in the Vivienne Westwood concession. "If I see anything I like," I say politely, gesturing at all the Westwoods, "would you be able to knock anything off? Maybe 20%?" "No," he says. 10%? "No." 5%? "No." It isn't acceptable to bargain in the UK," he says. "Try Italy."

"Haggling is just another form of negotiating," says clinical psychologist Cecelia d'Felice. "If you go in with the feeling that this is a difficult negotiation that will cause you embarrassment and loss of face if you fail, you will feel rejected if you do fail." And so? "Don't take a firm position, such as 'I want 20% off'," she says, "because they will immediately assume a firm position to combat it and you will be in conflict." And conflict, she says, breeds shame.

"Follow your interests instead," she suggests. "See it as a chat. 'Isn't this a nice dress? Has it been in long? I can't afford it. What a shame.'" She pauses. "Establish a narrative and build a relationship with them. Then you will have common ground you can cover." The British are, apparently, lousy negotiators. "We are so trained not to lose face and our society is so geared up to everything being right or wrong that we don't understand that it is fun to play games. And women in our society are supposed to give everything away in our role as nurturers. We are looked down on if we ask for more."

"

The man who saved Parisian couture

Lelong evening dresses from 1946. Which unknown designer in his employ might have designed them?

This is my piece from the Telegraph about Lucien Lelong, who stood up to the occupying German forces and saved Paris from being moved to Berlin:

Paris struggled on, but when war was declared on 3 September 1939 the couture houses closed down, some for ever. Mainbocher and Schiaparelli left for America. Vionnet never reopened. Lelong was now president of the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture and, after the invasion, it was his job to negotiate with the occupying German regime. The Nazis wanted to move Paris lock, stock and barrel to Berlin by any means, including violence. On 20 July 1940 five Nazi officers arrived at the headquarters of the Chambre Syndicale on an 'inspection'; five days later they broke into the building and requisitioned the archive.

Under the Nazi plan the Paris ateliers would be moved to Germany or Austria, where they would train a new generation of German dressmakers. The designers would also be moved. Within a generation, the Nazis expected, couture would be German, not French. It was a breathtakingly arrogant ambition to believe that they could appropriate a whole industry.

Lelong pointed out that the plan was unworkable. French fashion was dependent on thousands of skilled artisans in tiny ateliers, each specialising in one small detail of finish, such as embroidery. The skills, he explained, were unteachable. You could not transfer them, and it took decades to reach the necessary levels of craftsmanship. The intransigence of the Germans was nothing compared with that of French couture. Lelong asserted the right of each country to produce its own fashion and argued that it was their home environment that allowed the workers to do what they did. The Nazis backed down and returned the archive, and Lelong negotiated to keep a supply of fabric that would maintain production. The only fall-back the occupiers had was to conscript into the army its labour force. They started by demanding 80 per cent; Lelong got it down to five per cent.

Initially, after the liberation, there were murmurs that Lelong had been a collaborator, though it was Chanel who had spent the war living with a German officer. His case came to trial, but he was acquitted. The judge ruled that Lelong had co-operated only minimally with the Nazis to save France's cultural heritage and the jobs of its workers.

In which it turns out I have something in common with Hitler

A movie must

Earlier this week I had a piece in the Guardian about Israeli cinema. There is absolutely nothing, not even the US elections, more guaranteed to induce flame wars on the internet than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Nonetheless I am going to stick my neck out and commend to British readers a film which opens here nationwide, today, Waltz with Bashir.

The film which has had outstanding reviews across the board, is a documentary in the form of an animated graphic novel about the events which occurred in 1982 during the Lebanon war when Christian Phalangists aided by the Israeli army who turned a blind eye, entered the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camp and murdered 2500 Palestinians to avenge the assassination of their own leader.

Ari Folman's film is seen through the eyes of himself and his friends, men now in their forties, married with children and careers, attempting to look back at their nineteen year old selves, 25 years ago.

The film is primarily about memory, the recovery of suppressed trauma and personal responsibility. It's an anti-war film, and it understands that all wars are fought by young men, and all wars are really rock and roll wars.

The distributors, Artificial Eye, have taken a huge gamble on this film, hoping to attract across the board critical acclaim (it has) and a large audience for a subtitled film.

I urge you to go and see it if you can. You won't be disappointed

How to be British 101

Here in Britain there is a reality tv programme (note not tv show or program) called Strictly Come Dancing. In it, celebs pair up with real ballroom dancers to learn how to dance and to compete to beat all the other celebs and their partners.

Each week, viewers call in to say who they want evicted from the show. The bottom two are then voted out by a panel of judges.

In this series we have BBC chief political correspondent, John Sergeant, described by Jeremy Paxman (click for clip of Sergeant doing the tango) as having 'a face like a wet weekend.' John cannot dance. John just entered for a bit of fun. But John's utter ineptitude on the dancefloor has endeared him to to the nation, who each week vote to keep him in and themselves entertained. Last week a vexed actress called Cherie Lunghi was voted off, despite working her socks off while John lounged around, according to one of the judges reading the Guardian.

Cherie was upset, the judges were livid. True talent and hard work were going unrewarded because of the British public's love of a loser.

John decide that he was in danger of winning and he better resign from the programme (try saying, 'Oh jeez, I think I might win this sucker, I'd better step down' in an American accent.)

At once there was an outcry. 2000 viewes complained to the BBC. Jeremy Paxman on newsnight complained that democracy itself was in peril, as have many bloggers

Democracy is the right of the public to reward failure.

And that, my dear transatlantic cousins, is how to be British.

ps It has been whispered that John pulled out because he was booked to go on a cruise and had not expected his stint on the programme would go on so long.




he has a bit of a reputation for being accident prone

Some words on how to behave in the current economy

Over at the Bag Snobs, Kelly wonders if she should buy a Banana Republic Bag which looks to be a knockoff of a Balenciaga.

OK, the Banana one does not have the cool stingray medallion but is that really worth $835? I mean, to be perfectly honest, the Banana clutch is nice and cleanly made. But am I so much a snob that I can't "lower myself" to using a Banana Republic bag? I mean, I wear the clothes

, I have this orange silk dress that gets more compliments than I ever did for any of my Balenciaga dresses. In the end, I could not get myself to compromise, not even to the extent of getting the actual Balenciaga knowing that the other one is out there. The difference is slight yet it is separated by a vast pretension that I cannot bridge.

Several readers point out that it is more likely to be a knock off of the Anya Hindmarch Lautner (I have one of those) but some who signs herself RC responds:

who do you think you are esp at times like this when people can't afford basic needs anymore? "lower yourself" because you were considering a BR product?? you should be thankful that we even click on your site so that you can get your monthly income to be wasted on your stupid HIGH END bags or do you use your husbands money. i cant tell.

To this, mq cb, whose moniker I recognise from comments over here, adds what I regard as a definitive rejoinder:

OK, this is a bit much. You may not agree with Kelly but she was honest and as it's her site and it's a free country, she's at liberty to give her opinion on a purchase that she was considering making. This decision affects no one other than her and her family. So why be abusive? If you don't like what she says, then click away. No one forces you to come here.

And on the subject of what a client of mine recently called with masterful understatement the "current challenging economic climate", it's up to each of us to decide how we respond. I see no reason why your rationale for making a particular purchase should not be decided by the same criteria that should always have applied: whether you can afford the item and whether you want it at that price. What does anyone else have to do with it?

You may consider that people are having trouble with meeting "basic needs", but there is a vast difference between what constitutes a "basic need" in the US and affluent West and that which might apply elsewhere in the world. Some people have never been able to meet their basic needs. Maybe I am thoroughly selfish, but I have never once considered not buying something because in India, there are children whose parents can't afford to allow them to attend school, or elsewhere people are starving. Why should it make any more of a difference that someone who never considered themselves poor before may now have difficulty buying petrol and instead may have to take the bus or suddenly can't afford a cellphone?

You could look at it the other way and say, buy the bag and take a cab home and at least you make sure that it is more likely that the sales assistant and the cabbie keep their jobs a while longer. Or not, as you please. Once you've paid your taxes, and made whatever donations to charities you consider appropriate (including perhaps those ones that supply food and/or schooling to those who can not afford it), whatever else you do is up to you. To me, a more relevant consideration is whether you get into debt because of how you spend such that you become a burden to others, than whether your spending offends someone who has less disposable income than you do since I don't really see why it's any of their business in the first place.

In the end, however and whatever you spend, a little more generosity of spirit and tolerance for each other's differences can not go amiss, don't you think?

To which I have nothing much to add, except that the last time I looked (and contrary from what you might be led to believe by Fox News), I live in a capitalist society which is based on consumer spending, and if everyone suddenly stops spending, then large numbers are thrown out of work.

The Clothes On Their Backs - US edition released

You can now buy the US edition of The Clothes On Their Backs in trade paperback


or hardback


Just click on the links and it will take you straight there

Teenagers save the economy

For several days there's been a story, first anecdotal, then gathering evidence, that in the current economic mess women my age have stopped shopping but the under 25s continue to do so with the same reckless abandon.

Sarah Mower in the Telegraph has a piece on thios, separating the non-spending women from the girls. Basically, if you want to buy wet look leggings, you're still roaming the high street. If you're looking for classics, you're at home:

The latest retail figures show how the generational guillotine falls. Asos, the second-biggest UK online fashion retailer, which sells branded fashion to under-25s, has just reported its sales up 68 per cent in the last seven weeks. Next, the bellwether of safe, middle-aged taste, and owner of Britain’s largest online business, by contrast, is down 4.4 per cent, and planning redundancies.

Sir Philip Green of Arcadia Group, in his last results, noted the same divide opening up between the young and middle-aged brands he owns: while Bhs, Dorothy Perkins and Burton have slowed down, Topshop and Topman, arguably the country’s best-tuned fashion vehicle for girls and boys, was streaking ahead.

Should there be any lingering doubt about which side of the gap you stand on, I suggest a simple test: take a look at wet-look leggings and react. Every fibre of an adult female’s being (not to mention thighs) will scream “No!” at the very thought, but if you’re 15 to 20-ish, “absolutely!”

Asos (alone) sold 2,000 pairs of them last week and can barely keep the things in stock. And if you’re in that bracket, why not go for skin-tight leather trousers, rock Ts and super-micro-mini prom dresses into the bargain? And the multicoloured false eyelashes, hair pieces, over-the-knee socks, trilby’s and giant plastic glasses frames for going out. And while we’re on the subject, let’s not forget the boyfriends: without the skinny Topman suits and winkle-pickers, they’re dead.

The spectacle of youth spending on such fashion insanities is guaranteed to drive adults to fits of disapproval and covert envy. But it could be argued that these young people are unwittingly behaving like the exemplary New Keynesians. As they pour their pocket money, baby-sitting earnings and student loans into the tills of Topshop, H&M, American Apparel and Urban Outfitters, perhaps we should see them not as spendthrift twits but as public-spirited youngsters doing their bit to keep the economy moving. Long shot, I agree, but in these upside-down days, worth a passing thought.

Gentlemen! How to dress like Obama

A step by step guide, here to dressing like a President

Rachel-lite

While I know, of course, that Rachel Green is a spoilt Long Island Jewish fictional character in a television series called Friends, and Jennifer Aniston is a Greek-American actress living in Los Angeles, in my heart of hearts I do not really believe that Jen is not playing herself. Because that would mean that Rachel does not exist. Which makes Jen's current situation so disheartening.

As Rachel Johnson (who I like) says:

OMG, you have to check out the catfight between Jennifer Aniston and Angelina Jolie. It all started when Ange told The New York Times that she had fallen in love with Brad Pitt on the set of Mr & Mrs Smith in 2004, when he was supposed to be totally married to Jen. So now Aniston’s gone for Jolie’s jugular and the latest is: Brad’s so annoyed that he called his ex and chewed her out.

Yes, I know that it all sounds very Jerry Springer but it may be useful at this point to recall the actual words that Aniston used to cause this headline-grabbing three-way stropathon.

What Aniston said was: “There was stuff printed there that was definitely from a time when I was unaware that it was happening. I felt those details were a little inappropriate to discuss. That stuff about how she couldn’t wait to get to work every day? That was really uncool.”

Well, here’s the outrage, in my humble opinion. A woman six years younger with huge pouty lips takes your man, because she can, leaving you to face 40 alone and childless . . . and “a little inappropriate” and “uncool” is the best you can come up with, Jen? Oh dear.

I would have said that the situation called for some full-fat, industrial strength, venti-sized bitching. What you gave it was small, skinny and decaff, and that got me really worried that maybe - my voice drops to a concerned whisper - you’re not really that okay after all.