Sunday 19th February 2012

London Fashion Week: last evening, Aunt Lavinia, Cousin Lavinia and I foregather in the drafty, stony, pillared entrance hall of the Institute of Civil Engineers for the Alice Temperley Show. Press everywhere. Some wild but unknown greatnesses are singled out for graphing, are placed and graphed. Waves do not quite break: the photographers rear, are about to raise their cameras above their heads for an assault, but do not. Cousin Barley comes and we are ushered privately up the grand staircase and into the vast baroque saloon where the show is to take place. Hilary Alexander, the fashion editor of the Graph (formerly) is under lights and being filmed. Photographers and arc lamps, not yet switched on, are banked 30 feet to the ceiling at one end of the room. More gain, not all highly frocked; quite a few model husbands, handsome, young and rich. The sense of a hatchet, or steel axe, polished and looming, getting bigger and bigger. No charm, nobody is going to make allowances. Suddenly Pêches des Geldoff is manifest: before her an absolute onslaught of flash-bulbs, whirring machinery and aggression: that’s the photographers, shouting.  Then Minnie Driver: the same. Now the room is full: some ladies promised seats find them gone and have to stand. ‘Don’t worry,’ they say to the publicity assistant but you can be sure they will never darken the doors of AT again.

Without warning, although late, the lights thump down: music looms and booms, then the glaring arc lights, then aliens parading the frockage. So for 15 minutes: gold, lace, black webbing on cream, net, fur, encrustations of jewels: Russian Orthodox, Slavic , Cossack. Rich and wondrous. Terrifying. Money’s lathe is like a circular saw approaching on a gantry; also  the savagery of the ephemeral, the primitive heartless outburst of glory. The minute it’s over the room drains; some sprint. On, on to the next show. Pêches des Geldoff is seen downstairs, fetching her coat from the cloakroom, stripped of paparazzi, alone.

Build-Up to the Alice Temperley Show: This One was Selected for Special Graphing

The Gathering Scene: Greatness Beginning to Swell and Build at the Alice Temperley Show

Hilary Alexander Before the Cameras Pre-Alice Temperley Show

Pêches des Geldoff Nearly Blasted by Her Own Greatness: She Gains Her Place: Front Row Alice Temperley Show

Minnie Driver Gains the Alice Temperley Show

Alice Temperley: Cossack Magic

An Evening Dress by Alice Temperley About to Come Off the Catwalk

Lace, Leather and Fur: Alice Temperley Day Outfit

An Evening Dress Goes Forth

Classic Day Outfit: Alice Temperley

Pêches des Geldoff en train de bord from the Alice Temperley Show: She Waits in the Lobby for Her Car