HE SAID SHE SAID: THE CAT'S MEOW

 “I have often thought that in my next life, I would like to come back as Choupette, (Karla Lagerfeld’s) extremely beautiful and bourgeois cat, who has two maids, a chef, a personal hairdresser and many diamond necklaces.” - Anna Wintour

Men's Fall 2012: Brief Notes

1. Balmain has ‘fast fashion’ written all over its banality. The entire thing is humourlessly dull, and completely vulgar, which is the opposite of luxury.
2. Comme des Garçons's Manga Prince has all the whimsical creativity of Howl’s Moving Castle. It's hardly Joan Jet (as one important critic noted - has she never been to Japan?), and only cartoon gothic.
3. Lovely paisley puffa and the very oddly joyous collection by Kean Etro. Some of it looks heavy, but then it’s Fall after all.
4. Dries Van Noten is nice but not at his usual high standard. Fine interpretation of the print story.
5. Givenchy looks like it was styled entirely from a Factory Outlet and will soon appear at a Top Shop bargain bin. A couple of cute glittery white shirts, hardly new, and nothing inspiring.
6. Jean Paul Gaultier – don’t waste the three minutes clicking through this.
7. I like Dolce & Gabanna: It's straight out of a Visconti film (I'm thinking The Leopard) and curiously, it's not so very different from the theatre that Prada is doing.
8. Gucci was quite good, perhaps one of their best in recent memory (and I'm talking the last five years at least).
9. I loved Missoni for all the same reasons that I love Bottega Veneta - because I always do.
10. Insane for the first half of Rick Owens. Perfect proportions. And then the costumes came out.
11. Total refinement of proportion, volume and colours at Lanvin. Simplly perfect.
12. Hermès is effortless, unforced yet never boring; More than its women's collection, the men's truly says all there is to say about what the house represents.

Weekend Reading List: Flight

Even as you read this, I'm probably on a plane off for the long National Day weekend. I've packed all the stories I printed last Thursday in the office and put them in a blue Prada folder. I packed those in first with my pouch of sun care stuff (Clarins and Sisley), along with the two books I'm reading. Then I chucked in my Capri sandals and zebra print pony belt and a bottle of Coramandel and then I left, feeling heavy-hearted and slightly sad.I'm already in the middle of the the long-awaited (seven years, to be precise) Alan Hollinghurst novel, The Stranger's Child, which is exactly what I like (that means 'country house') - it's like Henry James, Jane Austen, Edith Wharton and - mostly - E M Forster modernised. It reminds me of Howard's End, and Maurice, with a pinch of Brideshead Revisited. It's glorious and I'm savouring it like a delicious, late meal. I read that it had come out in June in the announcements that it made this year's Booker Prize longlist. Critics and punters are speculating that it will win. This would be Hollinghurst's second Booker Prize, if so. His last book, The Line of Beauty won in 2004.
The call from Kinokuniya Liang Court came when I was in the cocoon of EN's beautiful car. In the rain, in the carpark behind Hilton. We were laughing at the pictures in my iPhone. I don't know much about cars but EN's car was palpably beautiful; it feels like you're inside a Kelly bag, with its tan leather interior and white top stitching. It's a deja vu moment. I've been in a car like this before, talking for hours, in just this carpark, in another rainstorm ages ago. So many things happened, in so many cars which circled, and stalled and went nowhere. The magical time in the car, with the radio on, and the aimless cozy chatter is like a bubble that couldn't stand the test of reality. You can't stay in the car forever, and so the bubble bursts, and you're there on the sidewalk with the rain in your face.Kinokuniya wanted to know if I still wanted their last copy of The Stranger's Child; I said I bought the book at Harris already. I hope a lovely young person buys that copy and becomes inspired like me.
It was raining sheets that morning; I had to pick my way out carefully in my sandals around the puddles from the cargo lift floor to the road so EN could pick me up for lunch. I saw the flash of EN's white smile when he saw me huddled under the Burberry umbrella as he zoomed past to the traffic light to make the U-turn for me and that lit me up, even though my toes were all wet by now and the new sandals ruined beyond repair. He didn't know I saw his smile.
What R said about me at the dinner at the Killiney Road S11 is true - I do love a challenge. The best way to make me do something is probably to say I can't, or won't. One of the things I printed out to read was Getting Bin Laden, by Nicholas Schmidle, about the ambush and killing of Bin Laden that night in Abbotabad. It's 17 pages long, and I find it fascinating. Did someone say I wouldn't like terrorist stories? The food, incidentally, was unexpectedly good; but it was damn hot. R and Mr B were both wearing skull pendants. R's was lime green plastic, and Mr B's was white gold with diamond eyes.
The other things I printed out: Alex Ross's essay Deceptive Picture on Oscar Wilde's writing of Dorian Gray, and Jackie O, Working Girl by Greg Lawrence, on the icon as an editor. Jackie O had a literary side, did you know? It wasn't always sunglasses and champagne.The other book I'm reading is The Classical World by Robin Lane Fox (I love Robin Lane Fox!). I'm at the chapter on Pericles - I told you, not everything's about sunglasses and champagne.

strong

Vanessa Redgrave, 73, by Bruce Weber.

Old People

Susan!Jane!V Magazine gets on the Old People case... Commmendable, but I'm really not sure about the wigs and that cap!
Sigourney!

Debo!

Deborah Vivien Freeman Mitford Cavendish, 90, the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, at home at Chatsworth.She's grandmother of Stella Tennant, of course."Darling Paddy,
Stella came. We had to be together in a photo for Vogue's 90th birthday come Christmas. So one Mario Testino, famous photographer, came in a helicopter with a crew of makeup, hairdresser, “fashion editor”, etc from London.
I've got a really beautiful dress, grand evening, given me by Oscar de la Renta, so that was my kit. They bound Stella's legs, up to where they join her body, in tartan. A Union Jack flag hung from her waist & her top was what my father would have called meaningless.
Hair skewbald/piebald, all colours & stuck up in bits. THEN they produced “shoes” with 6 inch heels. More stilts - she could hardly put one foot in front of the other, wobbling & toppling.
We looked just like that Grandville drawing of a giraffe dancing with a little monkey. I was the monkey.
Much love
Debo
(Letter from In Tearing Haste: Letters Between Deborah Devonshire and Patrick Leigh Fermor)

"My Grandmother can carry anything off" - Stella Tennant

One Dress Seven Covers

This gold disco dress by Balmain has garnered seven covers this season...It has to be said, though, that they are not such important covers......And have given rise to some questionable pictures...The German Vogue one looks the best, I think...And the Anna Dello Russo one silliest...

Weekend Reading List

My friend HHH gave me a copy of Electric Youth, my first, somewhere between drinking a large carrot and orange juice in the basement of the Paragon, and drinking a large Mosburger iced tea in the basement of Takashimaya. In between we looked at Bally shoes and Zegna sunglasses, Lego bricks and wooden picture frames, a gold Cartier pendant in the shape of a screw ("It's a pendant for a top!" I said) and a Bulgari gold chain that's just the right length. It's my first Electric Youth, a large-format collectible, as it is one of 1,000 copies, and comes with a medium sized swim trunk in navy blue printed over with tiny silver stars. This latter I've stowed away in the drawer where I keep my briefs and shorts, still in its plastic bag. The magazine I cracked open that night and greedily skimmed through. This occasional, limited publication by American Apparel, part Tiger Beat, part Bel Ami, is an interesting concept on first encounter, but I quite quickly wearied of it, and before I turned the last page, was bored.Part of HHH's routine of an afternoon is a stroll through Kinokuniya , alighting with feathery quickness on this and that magazine, dipping into the fresh glossy pages, very much like those sparrows downstairs flitting and dipping and pecking on this and that all along the shop houses of Chander Road. This afternoon, after a protracted chat with a young lady at the magazines section, about essentially nothing really, he led us to the fashion books section, where we stood a long time looking at every page of the new Jurgen Teller book; I felt like a horse standing in its stable. This is where I bought David Downton's Masters of Fashion Illustration which is simply a must have, and Paul Morand's The Allure of Chanel (with illustrations by Karl Lagerfeld), which appears to be a transcript of a long conversation with Mademoiselle herself. It's fascinating of course, she does say so many eccentric things.MC gave me a book (we had dim sum at The Cathay overlooking Handy Road) because he said that the title reminded him of me - Memories of my Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. What can he mean? In it, he wrote: "Stay every bit as silly, unpredictable and wonderful as you've always been. Love, M".
Silly? Yes, undoubtedly. Unpredictable? Surely not. I'm one of the most predictable people ever.

Now Burning: Diptyque Lilas

For the rainy nights, I'm now burning Diptyque's Lilas (Lilac) candle. It's indolent and sweet, yet crisp and fresh. And though it's floral, it's not heavy, touched as it is by a green note. I bought this the last time I was in Paris, and I remember taking a taxi down the Boulevard Saint Germain from the Bon Marche and then walking back to the apartment on rue du Seine. I bought a fan-shaped banana and Nutella crepe from a streetcart and ate it greedily, the Diptyque paper bag heavy with perfumed treasures.
On that note, and still thinking perfumed candles, Tom Ford is now making candles.
HHH said: "I wish he would make underwear!" Which left me wondering if he would wanted to buy and wear Tom Ford underwear or was anticipating the underwear ads. It's quite ambiguous, you have to agree.

He Said She Said

"The great danger for an American woman married to a Frenchman is to become too French. To assimilate too much of another nationality weakens you. Though on the surface I might not seem to be 100 percent American, I have tried to remain as shaggy inside as possible." - Pauline de Rothschild (1908-1976), style iconIn the 1950s, Mrs de Rothschild purchased a set of antique Chinese wallpaper from a cash-strapped young widow. She papered her Paris bedroom with it - her husband lived across town throughout their nearly 22-year marriage - and its verdant exoticism dominated an iconic photo of the baroness by Horst.
Reclining was Mrs de Rothschild's favored position.

When not greeting guests from bed, she rested her lanky 5-foot-9 frame on Billy Baldwin's ground-hugging slipper chair, reportedly developed with her shapely extremities in mind. Philippe de Rothschild once called his wife ''a glorious piece of woman, long-legged, deep-breasted.''Her personal tastes were quite simple. On her floors, for example, she liked the peppery scent of wax mixed with a bit of turpentine. On her person, she often wore a man's cologne - West Indian Extract of Limes.

Khaki and Beige and Camel

This is the colour of the earthy moment in fashion. Heart.Cabat Bag: I've come to associate Bottega Veneta with this taupe-khaki. It has a rumpled, un-glitzy luxury.Celine Boot: Many labels sent out all-beige collections for fall, including my favourite Chloe.Vogue Italia September: Prada coat of course (with matching dog). Another picture to add to the unfortunately titled book Dogs In Vogue. I'm sure the humour is completely unintended.Chanel Nail Colour in Particuliere, which is like a mushroom soup colour - this kills me. I can't bear to feature the trio of khaki varnishes (yes, they are so nice) they launched for Fashion Night Out because they are for Fashion Night Out!Daria: In fast fashion khaki.Beige: There is a 2008 perfume in their Les Exclusif line but the original (which the new one in no way resembles) was from 1940. Of course Chanel was there first, as always!

Weekend Reading List: Yours and Mine

I had a long discussion with J about the interesting long feature in Saturday's Straits Times about sex education in Singapore. It's pretty interesting to hear her views, as J is a teacher, as well as a devout Christian. I'm pleased to hear that, at least in her school, what I think are the two most crucial categories on this topic are routinely covered: The legal aspects (age of consent, rape, etc) as well as the medical aspects (STDs, etc). My view is that schools should not confuse the debate by bringing in religion and morals. They should simply stick to the facts. R does not read the papers, 'Actually, I've stopped buying mainstream broadsheets for a while now; I only read them online
I'm hoping that R is reading the Tash Aw book The Harmony Silk Factory that I gave him that night we visited his cosy Tanglin Halt flat, the book that KO said he couldn't read because it was too boring, and which I finished in two sittings. People are so hard to please. I find I'm always giving books to people who won't read them. Maybe the solution is to not give books. HHH messaged me: "W is out. I must tell you the W layout is not nice! I bought it before I headed out to Sentosa, and I flipped through it immediately u know! I just cannot wait."
BG said that he saw Princess Caroline (below) at Kinokuniya when he was shopping for books this afternoon.BG: "She's here to support her daughter Charlotte Casiraghi for YOG. Not bluffing. Only I know it's her. She's dressed very European and looks shabby, so you will like. She is dressed like you would to meet Vincent the drycleaner. I bought Sacred Hearts (Sarah Dunant) about noble nuns in 1570 Ferrara. Another one called Rossetti Letter (Christi Phillips) about a courtesan in Renaissance Venice, am I not classic?"As for myself, I plowed methodically through Vogue (HHH made me buy it, quite against my better judgement), all 668 pages of it. It's like a very heavy brochure for the Vogue event Fashion Night Out and 'stories' promoting this shopping festival keeps cropping up, in every section, every few pages. The Halle Berry cover story is unutterably dull and she says lots of sanctimonious rubbish. On the cover (by Mario Testino) she looks very smug, like she just booked a masseur for 3pm. Two fashion spreads are interesting: Peter Lindbergh's Checks and The City about plaids and tweeds shot on the streets in NYC, and Raymond Meier's Monsters Inc on fur bags and boots. I read the short piece written by HRH Prince of Wales (about recycling wool) and the fluff piece (it seemed mostly about her riding habit by Gucci) on Charlotte Casiraghi.And then I'm thinking who I can give it to already; I certainly don't want to keep it.

A Backward Glance

Those innocent days:
Walter Albini
Ted Lapidus
Krizia
Guy Laroche
Maud Frizon
Charles Jourdan

Long Live McQueen

Robert Polet, the president and chief executive of Gucci Group, announced that the Alexander McQueen label will continue after the designer’s death last week. The fall 2010 McQueen collection will be shown during Paris Fashion Week in March as scheduled. Gucci Group plans to continue to finance the brand.
François-Henri Pinault, the chairman and chief executive of PPR, the parent company of Gucci Group, said, “This is the best tribute we could offer to Lee.”
Gucci Group, has owned the Alexander McQueen label since December 2000.

And That's All!

"Anna Wintour wants designers to schedule their shows during these three days. It has bad consequences for many, many people involved in the shows, from stylists to models to hairdressers. It's absolutely crazy. She's welcome in Milan but if she only comes for a fleeting visit, perhaps it would be better if she stayed at home."
- Mario Boselli, President of the Italian Fashion Chamber

For the Chinese New Year overhaul, I was at the salon for a record four hours, from 2.30pm till slightly over 6.30pm. Ben has been doing my hair for over a decade, and pure genius (I can't say enough good things about Ben who is talented, stylish and kind any encounter with him improves one); But that makes him the busiest man standing on any given day, not to mention during festive periods. The boys and girls at the salon are all super sweet and sooo nice, but still. One does feel quite marooned at the chair and somewhat like a zoo animal as sundry people come and peer at you (all this is kindly meant, to be sure) and you need to be all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed even whilst your hair is all up in cling film or you're wearing a cushion-like silver plastic cap. It's defeating.
This is what I overheard at the salon:
M: "Am I alone in thinking that a lot of editors and magazine journalists here take their so-called image more seriously than their jobs? Seriously... I wanted to yank the arm off one at an event - she was so carrying on like she was Meryl in The Devil Wears Prada. Such a twit!"
J: "There are seriously TOO MANY Anna Wintours in Singapore. I don't know why the world thinks Anna Wintour is so special... They only need to come to Singapore to realise they are a dime a dozen in SPH.
M: "Her highness and her Andre Leon Talley doppelganger... I wanted to slap her!"
J: "They should just invite all the Anna Wintours here, then Milan won't have to shorten their fashion week ler!"
F: "This new editor might be a very stylish woman in person, you have to admit that she is stylish, but it does not show in her work. Just look at the magazine."
C: "I was in Milan when I heard that Alexander McQueen died and my first thought was... why couldn't it be Marc Jacobs?"
J: "Did you know that Mrs Jacobs is now designing a line of swimwear?"
As a treat, I also heard a TOP photographer say that things are going swimmingly now because working with the editors now is like being in a "think tank" where they all share ideas.
Now, that, my dears, is quite an idea.

Lady GaGa

Born quite plain and dull, Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta is now world-famous as Lady GaGa, age 23 (she appears a good deal older). With only two albums and two tours under her belt, pop’s latest blonde obsession has been drawing the inevitable comparisons to Madonna. The similarities are all there: The infectious, if banal, music; The incadescent videos that has secured her her audience; The abrasive fame-seeking; The controversial sexuality; And most importantly, the heavy reliance on artful guises.
But unlike Madonna, GaGa just isn’t sexy. Madonna, whatever her dramatic transformations, was essentially about sex. On the other hand, GaGa’s immaculate conceptions are asexual, curiously genderless: Madonna might have been like a virgin, but GaGa could be a man. In sites such as ladygagaisaman.com, the internet is rife with ‘evidence’ of her alleged real gender. She may writhe with lubricious nubility in her videos but in truth, they smack of the overdressed (and overproduced) sexuality of a transvestite revue, no different than what you can see in glitzy bars on Patpong. To make this point clear, observe: Beyonce in the Video Phone video oozes sex – GaGa, featured in the same video (and styled similarly) – looks like a faded imitation of a real woman. Madonna, untill recently, before she developed those ball-breaking biceps and Men’s Health abs, only wanted to be pretty; She was variously boy-toy, a white geisha, the new Marilyn, and finally, a princess in her manor. Madonna made herself over to incarnate sex, on and off screen, and all her ‘transformations’ underscored her sexual self.
On the other hand, in appearances outside of the digital construct of a video, GaGa is a bit of a gargoyle. Costumed to disturb and to conceal, GaGa draws attention not to her sex, but to her complete artifice – there’s little that is real that you can see: The hair is pure polyester, often obscured by ridiculous cartwheel hats; The face is a mask of makeup, the eyes, erstwhile windows of the soul, hidden by contact lenses, sunglasses, butterfly eyelashes, rhinestone and glitter; The costumes disguise the true contours of her body; The shoes are hoofs. This is designer drag. It’s not meant to be attractive or seductive. It wants you to step back, in admiration or in fear, but certainly not in lust. (In her iconography, GaGa draws heavily from the style of Vogue Italia Fashion Editor Anna Piaggi, more than her cited sources Freddy Mercury and David Bowie.) In these mysterious getups, Poker Face seeks to obscure, even as she steps resolutely into the limelight. Whereas the Material Girl always sought to reveal, to expose, to open her heart, her mouth, and her knees, The Fame Monster giggles and makes cryptic pronouncements, detached, disengaged. Artifice is never sexy, and her irony distances.
Sure GaGa is wacky and fun, but it is heartless fun – a perfect reflection of our times. In the self-absorbed age of Twitter and youtube, anyone can be famous, whether talented or a total fraud: You only need to scream louder, be more outrageous, and you will find an audience. And this new ‘Fame’ is GaGa’s theme. It’s thus fitting that GaGa has become the technology world’s new diva, signed up with Polaroid (as “creative director”) to reinvent the instant film camera – the instant film for the instant star.
GaGa’s appeal lies in her infectious optimism; She’s uplifting in that she makes you want to dress up, buy stuff, colour your hair and party like it’s 1999 – just what you need to escape the distressed world economy, the daily televised natural disasters, virulent diseases, global warming and the grim realities of reality TV. Society’s marginalised love her because she’s a freak, unafraid to make a mockery of herself. It takes courage to be different, to stand out, to be ugly, and GaGa lifts the torch for individualism, and the right to be loved, and watched and adulated no matter how outlandish, or how much a misfit.
GaGa is good for the world economy, in her unabashed fascination for, and her rabid consumption of, all things novel and glittery. She will be known for making over the fashion industry by freeing it from the notion of having to produce ‘sexy’. Fashion can finally move forward from the Britney corset tops and low-slung hot pants, the display of navel, and cleavage front and rear. It means fashion can finally move away from the stasis of the cliched red carpet cling-film spaghetti-strap mermaid gown and the lushly curled hair. And that’s why the fashion industry has embraced her so whole-heartedly – GaGa’s makeovers lead fashion out of those looks pre-approved by gossip rags into creativity and imagination. Gaga is more influential than Anna Wintour at least: Her Bad Romance video, in which she flounces about in Alexander McQueen, has been viewed 30 million times in just over a month, whereas Vogue magazine typically sells about 1.2 million magazines a month.

For the rest of us, GaGa has bestowed on us nothing less than freedom to just be ourselves.

(Written for 8 Days)

Steven Appleby

I've loved steven appleby's illustrations since the 1980s when I first discovered his work in Tatler (UK). Mr Appleby is still one of Britain's established cartoonists and his works appear regularly in The Guardian and The Sunday Telegraph. He is the creator of the serial Small Birds Singing, as well as Captain Star. His books include Steven Appleby's Normal Life, Antmen Carry Away My Thoughts As Soon As I Think Them, The Secret Thoughts of Men and Alien Invasion.
Can someone buy these for me?

Excuses, Excuses

Guess what Michael Roberts is shooting next? Guess, guess, guess! No prizes for guessing right: Ms Roberts rang in the new year shooting a clutch of Brazilian newcomers Alex Portela, Vinicius Piccoli, and Samuel Vieira, at an apartment in Ipanema (wearing biginis, what else?). As you can see from the polaroids (what a waste of polaroids!), they were as bored as she. Can anything be more banal?