Friday 7^th January 2011

I’ll tell you what I’ve bought later. New frockage. There’s been a bit of a tragedy re: Harris Tweed at Topshop, otherwise success: a freshening of the wardrobe from the injection of a few new pieces, just a very few, really only one or two, or perhaps…

I’ve also bought something else. Some utter folly. Not in a sale. I don’t know that I’ll be able to bring myself to tell you about it. It moves and is black.

For thirty-five years, since arriving in London at the age of 18, I’ve hacked at the sales face. In those days they used to start mid-January. I’d be there, first in the queue at Browns, South Molton Street, for the Saturday opening. I had the Wendy Dagworthy black overcoat with the velvet collar, the tiny, tiny Paul Howie heather-mixture suit with the turquoise lining. They were at the bottom of Long Acre in fact. That was very late sale and only £40, 70% slash if I remember correctly. I wore it to the private couture show at St Laurent in Paris in February 1979.  Much gawping by emaciated French horror ladies.

You won’t believe it but this year, pre-sales, I thought: Has the time come to buy full price? But then I saw a superb little summer suit in the new collection at Prada – grey with a gorgeous sheen, lovely grain in the fabric: £1600.

Absolutely unthinkable. I could spend that and buy nothing else. Some people would. But no, there’s just got to be sconti (that’s the Italian for discount).

I’ve always homed straight in, without a glance at the price tags, on the most expensive thing in the shop. From my very first entrance into one – think of that, there must have been a first time – that’s what I’ve done.  But never bought it, never.

When I was young  – don’t try to follow my logic – I used to worry that contemporaries would get rich and suddenly axe me to the ground with their cast-iron chic. As a student I had certain advantages, just that teeny bit more money owing to certain funds. Once the others started working, I was sure they would overtake. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not claiming to have been faultlessly frocked. Anyway, I was wrong. Some were established in frockage from university days or before – Robert Nevil, Eddie Sedgewick. Others later got rich but their frockage altered little. Have you noticed, is it right? –  people are really dressed much the same all their lives, unless they become Royalty or First Lady when usually there’s someone else working them behind the scenes.

Where am I drifting?  Is it something about people not changing much, and money acquired during life not changing them, not fundamentally. A tendency to frockage will be apparent in a teenager regardless of funds. Those destined to rout out designer goods will do so from adolescence. Which brings me back to the Sales and why I go on with them, now when it’s not strictly necessary.

Oh to have 60 million! Lord Arrowby, my part-time love interest, is always complaining that I talk too much about money. The lottery!

But it wouldn’t do. It would be deadly. You’d end up like Robin Smallmeal, loathed Poor Little Rich Gay and Head of Landfill in this country or whatever (although only on about £400,000 a year), deadened by money, condemned to soulless spending, goods heaping up on the counter while the Bentley waits at the curb, only twenty minutes allotted to the task. Massivebury Manor Mansion itself was acquired in such a way. You can always throw it away and get another one. Which is what he did. Massivebury will be tipped into a landfill pit, unless we can save it.

No, there must be drama in the acquisition of goods, a sense of by the skin of the teeth, of a miracle, as when that gorgeous petrol-sheen Prada coat (only Red though) appeared from nowhere in last year’s sale. I’d been down the rack inch by inch and it wasn’t there before.

I always home in on the most expensive thing in the shop. But I never buy it. I wait – until it has been reduced.