Thursday 24th September 2009<\/p>\n
It’s been a long and cruel wait. I’ve promised and promised the Nicole Farhi Show. It happened last Sunday. And now it’s Thursday.<\/p>\n
It was through a relation of Aunt Lavinia’s that I got in. She was at Glyndebourne, if you recall, and loudly condemned poor nearby Smallmeal’s style of picnic. Aunt Lavinia has a voice that would curdle the blood of a beagle. So not a gay connection, which is a shame. Because there is a gay mafia and, if you’re thinking of turning gay, the poss of belonging to it and\u00a0swishing through all sorts of doors that are closed to the straight might sway your decision. You could even pretend to be gay, if you were to find your desires not co-operating.<\/p>\n
I suppose that’s how I met Smallmeal. How else would someone like me rise to such heights as the head of landfill in this country (or whatever)? And be received at Massivebury.<\/p>\n
I have only once before been\u00a0to a fashion show. It was in 1979, the couture show at Yves St Laurent in Paris, on the strength of very dubious merely photographic (and one-way at that)\u00a0acquaintance with the\u00a0number three in that organisation. It was after lunch. I wore a tiny suitlette in heather mixture with\u00a0turquoise lining from Howie. Do you remember Howie? Bottom of Long\u00a0Acre (that’s London, England). It was \u00a340 (in the sale). Glared at by horrid French bitch\/matrons at the salon, who were going to buy the frockage, all distinguished by greasy hair and\u00a0skin disease (cruel but true). Afterwards we went round (this man was called Andre, I think, and lived in the Avenue President Kennedy, had a bonne; sixty if a day; I assume now dead) to some ecole to fetch a kitchen (it was school coming-out time)\u00a0with whom he then fucked off to his country res, leaving me alone in Paris for the weekend with the rheumy-eyed relentless bonne who had been ordered to provide no more service.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Only then did I realise I’d been lured to Paris under false… the couture show was the bait.\u00a0 And found wanting.<\/p>\n
But I digress. Aunt Lavinia shows up at the Royal Opera House, where the show to take place in the Paul Hamlyn Hall, in amazing get-up – brown boots, trilby hat, tweed jacket, foaming chiffon scarf. ‘It’s the country look,’ she boomed. ‘I’ve heard it’s in.’\u00a0 We foregather in the foyer and I hear her saying to a man from the Mail on Sunday, ‘The country look\u00a0 – it’s in.’<\/p>\n
So now it will be. Just you wait.<\/p>\n
We go up early to absolute prime balcony seats and look down as all the greatnesses assemble.\u00a0 Etonnant. Merveilleux . (No accents today. Sorry). Man in\u00a0black plastic trousers and half a jacket in silver and red brocade (other half just not there),\u00a0an extraordinary little tottering dolly-bird, borderline human, no expression, \u00a0in tight, tight, tiny, tiny dress and vast hat clamped to head like plate of melting ice-cream. She got graphed, which I suppose was the point.\u00a0 Young man in blue suit and white shirt with huge collar extending way beyond the suit like a sea-shell, carrying enormous shiny bright blue holdall. Then the editor of Grazia<\/em>. Honed, sculpted, she\u00a0gets right across the floor to her seat in about two strides.\u00a0 Finally Susy Menkes herself – do you know her?\u00a0 She is the most powerful fashion journalist of all. I’m not quite sure why. Famous for her pompadour – a great forward roll of front hair. Well, I’m sorry to say she did not look at all well – puffy and her coiffure in decline. Sat with knees apart in purple mac thing.<\/p>\n But I rather liked that – most important person at fashion show couldn’t give a damn.<\/p>\n Don’t think I’m mocking.\u00a0 It was all\u00a0 festive, crazy and delightful in quite an unexpected way.\u00a0 The Nicole Farhi Spring\/Summer collection for 2010 was shown and much admired. It took about twenty minutes.<\/p>\n But the real show was the audience<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Thursday 24th September 2009 It’s been a long and cruel wait. I’ve promised and promised the Nicole Farhi Show. It happened last Sunday. And now it’s Thursday. It was through a relation of Aunt Lavinia’s that I got in. She was at Glyndebourne, if you recall, and loudly condemned poor nearby Smallmeal’s style of picnic. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adrain-edge"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=424"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":425,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424\/revisions\/425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}