Wednesday 6th January 2010
I can’t quite begin my narration (but I really do promise not to digress forever) because certain readers have been suggesting that clothes shopping is a waste of time.
Are they quite well? Simon Limpney might say.
I won’t have it. Do you remember that awful banking crisis in September 2008? How little we’ve mentioned that here and its after-effects! Last Spring, the first fine day, after months and months of reining in, I sprang forth myself like the first blossom and surged across the park to The Library to look at the new season’s frockage. Then on to Harrods where I had three or four assistants trotting up and down the stairs and out into the street, all various astonishing species of forward queen in thrilling outfits, looking for a white shirt with black edging which was in the window. It was found and cost £294, by Neil Barrett, and I was going to buy it, so much had I blossomed, but, in the changing suite, it turned out to be baggy and sacky, which I can’t bear.
Clothes go deep. That’s why that TV prog where Trinny and Susannah boosted depressed housewives through frockage was so true and good. Shopping the same. For some, such as Lord Arrowby and myself, it is solitude (How Lord Arrowby does shop, and so boldly, for one so governmental and stern!), but there are always characters and adventures. Yesterday I had marvellous confidential banter with staff at Harrods: one, short with remarkably round, shiny, bald head, at first obsequious in the Eastern manner, but soon total bitch about the poverty of the season (I mean the clothes, which are poor, as we shall see). That young man at The Library with the shoulder length hair (partly Asian, I should say) and a slow fizzing smile is a living work of art.
Then, between the shops, are the buildings. Our London is full of buildings, some, even after 30 years, you feel you have never seen before. Yesterday, coming away from The Library in the gloaming, the Brompton Oratory (do you know it? Extraordinary 17th century Italian Baroque style facade, quite alien in London) looked for some reason flat as if it were a drawing that had been shaded in.
Shopping is salutary and bracing and like life. There are the moments of unexpected inspiration, boldness, joy and rightness, the more frequent passages of quavering uncertainty fading into exhaustion and defeat.
I hope that when I am gone they will put up a little plaque in Basil Street, which forms a Via Dolorosa, Beata et Spem between Harrods and H Nicks: ‘Here Toiled, at Sale Time for Fifty (or however many I am given) Years, Adrian Edge, Shopper and Queen.’
It is enough.
Back to my narration. These January Sales (by no means over yet)… If you are yet to shop, be warned. Very little on offer. Black, black, black, then, huge excitement, grey. Even brown banished for fear of too much variety. It’s the recession. Chronic caution, very small stock, all aimed at boring Euro market which has already picked clean, it would appear.
But the January Sales are often less rewarding than the Summer. Too many people snapping up.
But you never know. Never give up. Never let go.
So at Harrods, I got a white shirt by Balenciaga – exquisite thing. £100. Half price. Now here’s a pearl: the sizes had come out too small in the manufacture, hence in the sale. So the 16 was quite slim. I normally have 15 and 3/4. Don’t be put off if the sizes are too big in the sale. If you’re me, you can tell at a glance if a garment is likely to fit. Acquire this genius.
At Prada concession in Harrods, it was bitter and barren. Common little black trousers. ‘I’ve already got these,’ I shrieked. Well, not the common ones, of course. Got a lilac shirt. Soft, slightly shiny, thick material – hope to love it. Hope it won’t be dull. £100.Half price.
Then on to Prada itself in Sloane Street, where struck lucky. Shoes, just right. Billions, but half price. You must have Prada shoes. I bought some cheaper in the summer, Pied a Terre. Already falling to bits.
AND, another pearl, I made an unexpected purchase and smashed my budget.
As we know, Poor Little Rich Gays must have Designer Goods (come back for the next twenty years to find out why). How to get them, with no money? Theft? It has been known. The greatest hope is the sales – but even so you must smash forth from your budget.
I was lucky. There was a space-age Spring mini coat in the Prada Red line. Very mysterious grey sheen. Not quite silk, not quite techno fabric. Also lightly padded but shapely. But only 46 left. The assistant said ‘No more’ but just at that moment a pert, pinched middle-aged woman came by with side-of-beef man in tow she was obviously trying to do something about and picked out coat in bigger size. It was there all the time! Agonising moments while side-of-beef contemplates it, then at last it is abandoned and I swoop. While I am trying it on and swanning in front of the mirror, hot, rough, male sex couple express admiration – for coat, not me.
So I was blessed in the sales this January.
Now, I really am going on too long but quickly, another pearl. I rather came adrift with a cream cardy at Zara but only £40. The trouble: I’m in mourning for a cream jumper by Johann Christian Bach (not really but German designer with three names. Yellow label. Got ‘Powell’ or ‘Poel’ in it) I had from The Library three years ago which was destroyed by washing. PEARL: never try to replace lost garments. They will never come again. That’s that.
FINAL PEARL: there are some interesting shirts by Jil Sander at H Nicks on the ground floor – white with black, grey or blue edging. Might be reduced further. Worth lurking. Quite slim. Not usual Jil Sander middle-aged horror sacks. Also decorative shirts by D and G (I don’t know whether you can take D and G) which might come down more – they’re in the basement.
Keep rifling through the racks of reduced goods, tense, fraught, thorough, nit-picking but heart still somehow open for a revelation of frockage. I mean, you never know what you might find.
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I know what you mean. I have the same thrill when I open the catalogues – they come in the post and I save them up thru the week and then go mad at the weekend. Land’s End, Littlewoods Direct, Boden …
Brompton Oratory – temple of frockage
What a magnificent range! The Gay Mother’s got a chic little cerise mac from Boden
I was quite forgetting – the masculine bravura of skirts to be seen at…
Don’t even get me started on the half price shoes in Prada! Popped in on Saturday to see how much new collection had arrived and there, lo and beyold, my new black chelsea boots – mainline collection not usually in sale – on the 50% markdown shelf! Only bought at end of November, not yet worn! And very little new season. Viet, my assistant, tells me the good stuff is at least another two weeks away. Am absolutely only shopping in early February and mid-to-late August this year to take full advantage of new seasons!
What grandeur and greatness! And what an opp for a scene! I find that huge sweep of veal-coloured carpet in the Prada shops the perfect setting for declamations and denouncements of almost any nature.
I’ve not told you of the time, about four years ago, when I was in the Bond Street Prada wearing my Prada mac (the one before the one before last) bought some time before. I looked down – ag and horror! A button missing. In those days the buttons had ‘Prada’ engraved on them. That was the worst of it. Quite irreplaceable. I loathe, loathe, loathe labels and logo on frockage. Absolutely won’t buy if on, but in this case…so discreet. But I thought: At least I’m in Prada. I can immediately demand another. Opp for a drama in the midst of that vast expanse of veal. Then I looked again and there was the button, on the floor, the veal carpet showing it up perfectly.
Speaking of acquiring the absolutely newest, new season, you must await my forthcoming entry on the lady I met last Saturday at the Multis. There’s nothing she doesn’t know.
And don’t you just find the sheer depth of the Bond Street store perfect for an impromptu catwalk display of one’s new this or that? Not like Gucci, where you must scurry past handbags to descend into menswear via dreadul carpeted stairs! No opportunity for declamations of any kind!
I’m continually in Prada for some screw or another (so glad they’ve finally done away with the leather labels for jeans, apparently you are to remove before washing but I never realised, hence always a screw missing as I drag a pair from the machine a laver!).
I’m afraid I’ve not taken Gucci for some years now. I’ve struck them off. I can’t believe you self-laver!
I don’t but I like to appear grounded at least sometimes! You’re right, never much to look at that one would actually wear, unless you’re about to appear in a Madonna video, although I like to laugh discreetly at some of the clientele. All Bugatti Veyrons and beer bellies!
More on the hot, rough, male sex couple please?
Brutes! Huge chests, bulging arms, dark glasses, military haircuts
You must share some more of your pearls re: coming designers. You could be, for Poor Little Rich Gays, on frockage, what Rufus Pitman is on fume
Brutes: bulging, chests borne before, dark glasses, military haircuts, hardly bothering with clothes
Meanwhile, down on the former homosexual street of shame known as Jermyn Street, Hilditch and Key are offering a dozen white hankies for £14. Other colours too, for the nostalgic. And Fortnums are half-price on their violet creams.
The Gay Mother loves violet creams. I’ll rush to get some for her. The Multis love Jermyn and all their shirts come from there. They have dozens and dozens.
Can we have a comment please from Mr Edge about the various types of winter clothing that are being worn in London during the cold weather. To me it is not glamorous furs, but anoraks and hiking boots worn with suits, and there is nothing quite like a hiking boot to show up a cheap suit’s true colours. But then that’s just my opinion.
Do not be timid. You blaze with truth. Nothing worse that cheap suit tails poking out from beneath sky-blue anorak. And those awful hiking boots, in which no hiking ever done. You strike to the core of what’s wrong with modern men’s frockage as well – never lifts beyond ‘practical’ and ‘comfortable’. Not the point at all. I’ve seen many women adorning this cold weather with fur capes – utterly new. But where are the fur trimmings for men? Rufus Pitman, novelist, critic and perfume expert, had a splendid overcoat with a real mink collar, by Joseph Abboud, I think. Anyway bought in New York. Now that was years ago. But he was seen last winter in Zurich, where I went because Harry Rollo was promoting an ice-eating contest, in brilliant mountain tweeds, with Sherlock Holmes overtones. This is how it should be done. Half these men probably don’t even possess a proper overcoat. How can the Government allow this? What is Lord Arrowby going to do about it?