Thursday 3rd March 2011

We had Harry Rollo’s party. It was fab and there was a huge name present. But it must wait…

What about John Galliano? Let it be a lesson to us. Yes, Poor Little Rich Gays can go badly bad. Like King Lear, I mutter to myself many times a day: ‘I will not be mad, I will not be mad….’ when a stain won’t come out or just now, I’m back from an International Gathering of Poor Little Rich Gays and I put my name sticker (don’t ask) on my suede jacket and it’s left a mark plus a bit of glue that won’t come off and that’s the jacket (half price from £700 at The Library) that had to be sent back to Japan to from whence it came after hours of me raving down the phone to the Library kitchens (that’s the sales team) because I dropped an oily lettuce leaf on it and nothing but nothing would get the mark out and Jeeves of Belgravia raised objections in volumes to the suggestion of cleaning it- so it was air-freighted to Japan.

And came back clean!

Oh yes, all that could have turned me racist. It’s the strain, the grappling to conjure from the air, with or without money, the detail, no detail left unturned or not re-done. How can you forget that grey trouser suit by Galliano worn by Prin Diana for that lunch at the Connaught with Raine, Countess Spencer? What a  breathless bloom of perfection! It was a man’s cloth, with an edging on the lapel – not a frill, not a fringe, but something indescribable and completely new. A tiny thing really, not to last, but thrilling.

Where does it come from – the poison? For that’s what it is. Grab at whatever’s to hand. Smash, punch, say the worst you can think of, no limits, unconfined. Is it engendered, an  unfortunate by-product of the fragile creativity, or is it there anyway?