DAVID BOWIE TEARS X KATE MOSS DE GOURNAY

Loella: Hetty Hetty Hetteeeeee. Kate Moss. Have you seen her toilet?

Hetty: You're drunk

Loella: Shadddup. Tell the truth.

Hetty: Just because I am in London doesn't mean I've had a bath at Kate's.

Loella: Pity. Look, LISTEN TO ME. She said the funniest thing in Architectural Digest.

        Kate said, "An enemy looks best in the half light..." Isn't that poetic?

        She paints wallpaper with the Chinese. She holds dinner parties in

        her bath tub. Her boyfriend is a photographer. Again. And you know what Hetty?

Hetty:  What for God's sake?

Loella:  She is a poetic POETESS. An actual poet like Jim Morrison or Keats or Stevie!

Hetty:  I hate to break this to you Loella but I read that article and she was talking 

        about Anemones. Anemones at dusk. Anemones at dawn. An...Enn. Enema.

        An, Emmmm. Money. It's sticky isn't it? All those vowels in one flower.

        Something like that is super hard to pronounce after 4 dirty martinis I know.

Loella:  Oh. But I just made a list of my enemies and bought a stack of candles and 

         sent out the invites. The party was going to be like her "Beautiful and the Damned"

         Birthday updated with this thing about evil people in the twilight of my bathroom.

Hetty:   Shall I come over anyway?

Loella:  I think you better...I was really very very drunk and I started painting the walls.

         Now, in the dawn light it doesn't really look like De Gournay AT ALL. 

         Grey metallic is super hard to pull off. It look's like Edie Sedgwick's mascara on a BIG scale.

         My walls are crying David Bowie tears. 

Hetty:   Loella I told you to stick to the expensive Top Shop flapper dress and the silver    

         Rimmel eye shadow in heavy metal Bitch Goddess. A touch of Kate, darling

         just a touch.

Loella:  Bloody Kate. I fucking love her so much. I LOOOOOOVE HER.

Hetty:   I know Loella, I know. She has a tremendous amount to answer for.

WHERE DID THE TIME GO?

We left our heroines hanging by a silk stocking.

How rude!

But honestly the details are a bit too sordid. 

March 31st. I call Hetty's "car" dealer. You know what I'm talking about and he says in a Brixton accent "Stop getting high on your own supply. Hetty has cut off your powder fund. I got more serious clients to deal wiv. But the lolly jar is shut. Don't call me again."

I was never the druggy type but all those years scraping hummus off tiny corduroy pinafores wore me down and I needed my Bryan Jones and Anita moment. My God did I have it.

They found me on the floor of The White Cube Gallery where the Channel 4 TV crew thought I was a performance artist that stayed the night on purpose. It was 9am and I was still wearing a feather boa and the Stella yoga outfit that I thought was cool for evening, but looked a great deal like an infant romper. In pale eggplant.

I had gone to the opening thinking I would meet Jarvis Cocker and he would understand me immediately. Hence the norm-core luxe yoga statement. Nothing remotely adventurous happened. A curator with a mean mouth found me in a foetal position sucking on a catalogue and singing like Bjork.

I came home in an ambulance feeling like a bruised vegetable.

It just goes to show....

You can only drink so much Pommery, before hitting the harder stuff.

Packing for rehab was actually the poshest thing ever! Hetty lent me her favourite ice blue N.Peal cashmere twinset that she only wears to The Priory and a new pair of Emma Hope velvet sneakers. So comforting. 

And in there I actually met a guy who looked just like Jarvis except he was a Portuguese film director. He was sad that I had to leave.

But there are the children....school starts in a week and so does life. Hetty and I are still close. She quite likes having me on the other side of the globe, far far away from her shoe collection.

HOME SWEET BLOODY HOME

Sucking a martini olive Hetty sat at the bar at the Bulgari in an ice blue velvet dress.

A man with green eyes and a distressed denim face was staring at her. It made her think about the Diesel show that was on the next day. The Russian suddenly blocked her view.

"Hehtttee, I must leave."

She looked up and realised some sort of oligarch emergency was at hand and this was her cue. Christmas! London beckoned. She put her pale pink finger tips to her Cartier choker as a gesture of thanks and...well, the relief was pretty total.

Hetty's head was full to the brim with fluff, coloured fur and diamonds. Italy. It's so sensual that Hetty often feels the need to suck on a lemon and have a very cold shower upon returning home. She is a bit of a Puritan at heart. Packing. Bolting. Zooming. Home.

The sorbet pink front door at Primrose Hill never looked better. Mister Chips snarled in greeting on a silk slipper chair and Hetty noticed a foreign piece of battered vintage floral luggage in the polished black and white tiled hall. Suddenly the palest face she had ever seen streaked with runny electric blue mascara was staring at her from under a damp veil of tangled brown hair.

"Loella!...."I mean say what?"

"Hetty I have run away from home"

"Jesus"

"Yes"

"The children?"

"Steiner day camp, Somerset."

"Almost husband?"

"Rogering a redhead as we speak..."

"Shall I open some Krug...?"

"Correct."

THE PINK SHOE DIARIES

Hetty's men. Oh the poor little lost tribe. They get NOTHING during London Fashion Week.

Not a cocktail. Nor a bra-text. Nor an aubade on the pillow at Claridges. ZILCH.

The girl is just too busy. She almost broke her ankle running to ERDEM and her canary yellow Repetto ballet flats are pretty much pulp. Why didn't she buy a third pair for stealth?

So it's hot pink kitten heels and breathless encounters with the HUNDREDS of major pieces that need to be in her life and I get the occasional whimpering phone call.

"just...can't...continue...need to go home to Mummy and chew on the edge of a large square crumpet."

Well, Hetty...you admirers feel the same way. Men will never understand why women walk over broken glass to look at clothes.

Hetty wears Emma Hope kitten heels available here http://www.emmahope.co.uk/

TINSEL AFTER CHRISTMAS IS LIKE.... PINK AFTER VALENTINES...TOTALLY NECESSARY

How was your Valentine's Day?

Hetty's celadon green drawing room looks like a funeral parlour. She gave all her red roses to me but still has a small horticultural display of pale pink and white.

Almost husband gave me a slap on the arse and a weak smile.

So I am wearing pink ALL WEEK to shame him. Naughty silly almost husband. 

But, alas, he does cook the best omelette outside the eleventh.

ALWAYS THE BRIDESMAID

Hetty has a busy season. She is opening a spring gardening show in Somerset. She has been asked by no less than four houses to be the patroness of a new-born handbag. All of them in pastel buffed leather. Her mother wants her to help redecorate her writer's nook inside her conservatory. Wait I am just drawing breath. And...and Hetty is a bridesmaid elect for no less than three important weddings. I sense this is slightly boring news to the more Bohemian readers but there is an upside.

Hetty now has a wardrobe, a separate Chinoiserie armoire, decimated solely to bridesmaid dresses. And eventually she tires of them.

For the wedding of the Hon. Prunella Fonseca Augustine Greeves, Hetty has chosen the new super plenty, lacy, floral, mini mini Mischief dress by Zimmermann. And she probably will make mischief whilst donning it... but I am asking her (this time) please not to swim in the ornamental pond or dance wearing the remains of the carved swan ice sculpture. Hetty is very popular for being well dressed and nonchalant. In the interim I am biting my unpainted nails to the stump. Please...darling impetuous Hetty, do try to make your dark shadow child of a friend a tiny bit happy. Be good and return this confection to it's spiritual home. The polar extreme opposite of a dappled society wedding: King Street Newtown on a Sunday afternoon.

ADORE A FEDORA

Hetty is a bit of a hat person. Startled looking women need hats to make their trembling features look slightly more deliberate. Hetty stole her first Borsalino hat from a man she faintly disliked, then on a spring day threw it into the Thames. Hetty is a bit skittish about the energy of certain garments.

In her hand painted hallway she hangs more hats than Indian miniatures.

One needs a disguise for a quick getaway.

She only wears a broad brimmed black fedora on the following occasions:

After smoking a thin cigar

To court or after a funeral

To a metal concert (she is mortified by loud music of any kind but obliges Loella)

Listening to "LOW" her favourite arty album because it's not the sequin Bowie

On Mondays. Especially Mondays.

When having lunch with indiscreet models (rare)

Or their husbands (frequent)

On being painted in a formal sitting.

Dashing to Fortnums for more lapsang souchong.

When reading a Bronte novel aloud to Mister Chips.

In a Penhaligons Lily of the Valley oil bath.

In silk pyjamas.

Otherwise hardly at all really.

GIVING CUPID THE BOOT

Make do and mend. Be clever with economical clothes and accessories. Fake it till you make it. 

Blah Blah Blah. 

No.

I can economise all year but on Valentine's Day and three weeks before my birthday I can't stand another Made in China moment of sartorial thrift.

This year I need something punk-proof. Something smack down elegant.

Something....French. And I saw them. THE BOOT FROM HELL in the window at Dior. Speed dial Helena Bonham Carter. The art nouveau damask. The pointy, just the right side of 80s toes...The funny little square heel.

And I know I will look like the most expensive Goth on earth. But wasn't that the point? Someone up there in couture heaven likes me. 

DEJECTION AND SHOPPING, HETTY STYLE

Hetty is depressed.

She is not fully indigo but perhaps just baby blue tinged with a tincture of violet. And when Hetty gets like this (which is usually about three times a year between the major collections) she does tend to scoff Anges de Sucre artisan patisserie marshmallows and rationalise major purchases on Net-a-Porter. Net-a-Porter is sort of like Hetty's Zara. So while her father might be mortified by the dip in the Asian markets overnight, Hetty's stocks are definitely her wardrobe. And that's an economy that is always burgeoning.

Last night she snapped out of her gloom and fell in love. Forget the duvet padded meatball shaped bomber jackets at the New York shows. Hetty likes fluff, froth and whimsy. And, given her mood, it had to be blue.

Hello prissy baby doll dress by Giambattista Valli, it matches the silk upholstery on her Empire chairs. It sort of reminds her of Sweden. And it makes her want to take her hair two tones closer to buttercup to suit the mood. Then add mesh and suede slippers by Emma Hope and a waft of L'heure Bleu by Guerlain. I get stoned just thinking about how Hetty's sitting room smells when she gets in a powder puff tempest but at least, for now, the mood is lifting. She always was a bit of a Valli girl.

FERRY VERSUS PERRY

Hetty made up this game. It's called hypothetical sex. The only time we speak of l'amour is hypothetically and that suits me.

The phone rings. Hetty starts without even saying hello...so typical.

"You sleep with someone really famous and get to keep one item of clothing from their wardrobe the morning after. Stolen or given. Who and what and why?"

She hangs up.

I stop and think. It doesn't take long.

Speed dial Hetty.

"Grayson Perry."

"No."

"Yeah."

"Not Jarvis, you always mumble filthy things about him...."

"I don't want his clothes, I only want a lock of his damp beige hair..."

"So Grayson? Page boy bob, crazed lust for justice, sardonic epithets...what's your point? Do you want one of his urns? That's not in the game Loella."

"No Hetty, the fuck is for the frock. I want a really super naff baby pastel Peter Pan collar hoop skirt monstrosity. I can wear it when I go to the next political uprising action thing with Vivienne Westwood. I want it because then I can be double drag...a femme dressed as a man dressed as a woman. Hetty are you still there?"

"Mmmmm, you are so high brow Lo. The Frieze art fair has really gotten to you I fear...."

She's right I'm really pretentious when it comes to sex with the famous.

"Who are you sleeping with?"

"None of your business."

"Hypothetically silly...."

"Oh GOD don't be THICK child, it's always Bryan...."

"But Hetty you have a complete Tory uncle complex, tell me why, bore me again. I'm going to carve his name on your tombstone.."

I made sure I was comfortably seated because I knew Hetty had a LOT to say about Bryan Ferry. Too much really....

"Because...no chest hair. And because ALSO it's really really HARD to imagine him without Crolla boxers. You know I am very fond of a remote gaze over my shoulder and into the middle distance. Also I have ALWAY'S wanted to know if his forelock tickles and also the silence.  So hushed! It would be like being molested in a bank vault I think....and I don't imagine he'd say much except very polite and encouraging  things like "splendid" and "rather nice" and then, you know, after I agreed to  sign the waiver, and finished my glass of Perrier Jouet I could just let my cocktail dress drop to the Persian carpet, think of England, Scotland and hopefully Wales and then after all of that... His sheets would smell like Sicilian lemons and there would Penhaligons bath oil to wash away all the SIN and Sulka bath robes and in the morning while he purrs in the gloom I would walk into his massive Palladian dressing room and try on tuxedos in nothing but a pair of black silk high heels. So Helmut Newton. I want to sniff his cravats. I want to run my hands deep inside his silk coat pockets. Patent leather dancing shoes. French soap. Midnight blue Pantherella socks for God's sake! His clothes ARE the sex, if you see my point..."

"Yeah" but I am nose yawning....

I am exhausted. I just had a virtual three way with Hetty, Bryan and um, I am dressed like Little Bo Peep. But somehow I don't feel dirty. Hetty is so pathologically tasteful and hey, hypothetically speaking, my naked proletarian posterior might end up on an urn.

Grayson if you are reading this....I would still respect you in the morning. Utterly.

Now hand over that bonnet!!!

MIU MIU JUST ISN'T MOI MOI ANY MORE MORE

Does it take a lifetime to get over posh shit? For me it took about fifteen minutes in Singapore. It started with that shoe. The white patent leather big blue buckle Mary Jane from Miu Miu. I tracked that shoe from Hetty's polaroids in Milan to a shop window in Sydney to a steamy side walk in Singapore and then... and then THE FALL.

I have always been a tiny bit scared of Miu Miu. Because the clothes have this sick inbuilt irony of Lolita Luxe: the carelessness of youth weighted down by the cost of adulthood. Luxury is meant to make you immune to the shabby crumbs of existence. It's a wearable wedge, yet unlike lace in restoration England, it is not accompanied by social and legal regulation or a sumptuary tax. And hey isn't it great that, post 1789, fashion is a democracy? I can legally wear red velvet, gold buttons and lacy cuffs? Fast forward to the liberty of now... Anyone can wear rich people clothing. But can I? Miuccia Prada said herself (in a very recent interview) that her clothes are not within reach of the average boho and we should all wear vintage if we can't afford Prada and her kinky little sister label. Let them eat polyester! Or Zara, even.

But how long can I live with my peasant nose pressed up against the glass and how good is the cake?

The Little House on the prairie blouse and the nubbly wool skirt I dribbled over in Sydney was identical to the outfit I saw in triplicate in Singapore twenty eight hours later and I actually did an audible nose yawn the third time I saw it. Suddenly the globalised repetition started to make Miu Miu look like a uniform in a Japanese cookie chain. Meh Meh.

The shoes. I still want those silly white shoes. I bet Courtney Love has three pairs. 

And perhaps I really could afford them if  I skip a mortgage payment and a kundalini yoga subscription.

Hetty thinks I'm just a tiny bit bitter.  She is right of course. I mean I still trawl 1st dibs for the pleated Miu Miu skirt with the lipstick lips. A fashionista version of ROSEBUD. 

But all I really want from my favourite "can't quite reach it" label is a tiny but less cynicism in the packaging and the windows and the collections themselves. Luxury is meant to be the anti high street but it operates in such a similar way. There is nothing jumble sale or bespoke about it. Get in line, get your size and get out. Till next season.

Fashion is a currency but clothes aren't bank notes. Luxury needs absurdity. The eccentric flourish. Dare I say variety? That touch that makes you look RICH and CLEVER. Get Bjork on board or something, right? Meantime... I am in the ghetto of vintage, wearing dresses that smell like your Granny. But you can't find them anywhere in the world except my boudoir bebe. As usual the revolution is going to start... in my pants.

JUST OUT OF BED WITH KATE MOSS

My nanny owns a pair of boots that belonged to Jamie Hince before he was Mister Moss. She asked for them after a gig and he said, yeah. I own some Hungarian polished cotton pyjamas that look like what Kate wore to Turkey before her Easy Jet Vodka slugging “thing” and it’s not quite the same, is it? My Kate wears stripey pyjamas and a handbag and looks like she ‘s having a sausage sandwich with Cole Porter. I fast track the trend and wear them on school run and just look like Helena Bonham Carter, except a bit shorter and with more knots. Someone has to be having fun. Expensive, photogenic, potentially illegal fun. My drug history is limited to two balls of hashish the size of a small rabbit dropping over a forty year time span. But... I wear pyjamas everyday and surely that is wicked enough.

LOELLA THE EIGHTIES TRAGIC

When I can’t sleep I look at clothes on the internet. Rayon 80s does 40s secretary dresses on Etsy and vintage 1980s dresses by Yves Saint Laurent. The clothes I laughed at when I was a cynical postpunk. Clothes from the era of “Working Girl” and Reagan fund raisers in Dallas. 

Wearing 80s has to look “knowing”. It can’t look you are going to a school reunion dressed as ‘Susan’ and it can’t look like your sartorial imagination died in second year university. Hello Nigella. So I look for 80s clothes that look deliberate and jarring or insipid to the point of resembling a fundamentalist Christian cult wife. In Paris I saw a dress just like this. Wheat coloured with cream polkdots and little epaulets on the cheaply cut shoulders. Snapped up for forty euro. It made me feel like a smug 24 year old stylist. And isn’t that a bit sad? Dressing in a naff way to look younger because “CHIC”, especially Marc Bohan era chic, is the most ageing thing of all! 

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SIGNS YOU'RE AN EIGHTIES TRAGIC:

•  Smoky eye makeup (day and night)

• Red shoes

• Lace tights with leather

• Anything black really

• Cardigans with floral dresses

• Hair ribbons

• Clip on pearl earrings

• A leopard skin collar

• Bright green gloves

• Pumps and jeans

• That little cross around your atheist neck

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