Jil Sander bag

This is the bag I bought at the Hong Kong outlet. It's from the Raf Simons SS07 line and the bagsnobs liked it then. The one I got is silver. Simple, small, chic, minimalist.

I might not have mentioned that in another outlet I got a 'Marni' necklace and Sarah negotiated a chunk knocked off the price for me. And a yoga t-shirt (like I do yoga). And Aesop handcream, which, after intense discussion with Sarah over iced coffee, we agreed was the best.

Home

At 5.30 am Hong Kong time I got in a taxi and drove through the darkened city, and saw, for the first time - undistracted by the soaring illuminated towers - the port. I was reminded of those old pictures of three-masted schooners densely rocking on a tide, but the spires were not sails, rather the cranes of the docks, loading the manufactured goods of China and setting them out on their container ships to the rest of the world. For here was the epicentre of fashion: not the Paris or Milan atelier, not the St Martin's graduate in his Shoreditch studio, but what comes of the reality of all those dreams. Hard commerce. And I could not help but think how distracted we are in Europe with the wrong political preoccupations, while under our noses a whole new superpower has sprung into life out of our needs and wants and desires. Ruthless, with not a democratic bone its collective body, all America's tarnished idealism (its Founding Fathers, its constitution, its will to happiness) is absent; trade is its DNA.

On the 13 hour flight, I finished Richard Ford's Independence Day and could have knocked my head against a wall for not reading it sooner: a hymn to suburban America, the philosophy of real estate and why there is always dignity in finding another man a home. I watched Elizabeth: The Golden Age (dire) and The Assassination of Jesse James (ponderous, but beautifully scripted and acted, another examination of American myth), three episodes of Kath and Kim, and three episodes of Extras.



I return to the new issue of UK Vogue with a piece by me on the emotional wrench of throwing things away, and on the cover, Victoria Beckham, whom Nick Kent has partially managed to convey as if she the subject of a Cecil Beaton between-the-wars society girl. Alexandra Shulman (vogue.com has a video of Alex talking about the decision to feature her) has written a definitive appraisal of her: her helpless urge to succeed, hints at her insecurity, an essentially suburban marriage, her teenage desire to always have the right thing: her shoes are always too big because she gets catwalk samples from the shoes, and has to stuff them with tissues. Trying too hard, not pretty enough, never thin enough for the mental picture inside her head, she's the triumph of the will: an oddity, a girl with nothing going for her except her determination that, knocked down, she will always arise and live to dress another day.

Hong Kong: The Shops

A few weeks ago I asked if any reader of this site wanted to take me shopping in Hong Kong during my one-day stop-over and by great good fortune I got a reply from Sarah Wyatt, who grew up in the city and knows it like the back of her hand. This morning she came to the hotel with a bag full of Hong Kong gifts, including a small silk bag she made herself. An artist, mother of two and thoughtful dresser, Sarah took me on a tour of the city that only an extreme insider could offer.

We got a cab and headed off for an anonymous high rise office building in an anonymous suburb, or rather it seemed like an office building, but wasn't. On every floor were outlet stores, where they sell the unsold stock from the previous season: not just fashion but toys, interiors, you name it. We ascended in the lift to the 25th floor to the Joyce warehouse. Inside? Alexander McQueen. Dries van Noten. Issey Mayake. Jil Sander. Chloe. Marni. I only end the list there because frankly I can't remember any more, so dizzying was the sight of all those designers. Menswear, womenswear, bags, shoes, jewellery. The tags showed a descending list of prices, over a period of several months into the future, so if you can hold your nerve and wait two months, it will be even cheaper still. I bought a small silver Jil Sander bag at 75% off and an Etro scarf. I was tempted by a McQueen bag, but in the end the colour wasn't quite right.
Then we went down ten floors or so to another outlet, even larger: Armani. Pal Zileri. I couldn't take it all in. All this is real stuff, no fakes here.

Next we got a cab to Central District, and one of the most crowded, humid and polluted spots on earth, where stunningly beautiful women carrying every designer bag known to the accessories department of Barneys surged along in blacks, grey and other neutrals. Juxtaposition of wealth and intense urban jostle. Quick Vietnamese lunch in a kind of alley full of tables with hundreds of people eating, smoking, densely humanly many.

A block away, we go to a shop that sells second-hand designer bags, Chanel 2:55's, Hermes Birkins. In Hong Kong women discard their It bags every season. The owner was interviewed and asked if he sold fakes, they try, he said, but never get away with it. Across the street we climb some rundown stairs, ring a bell, a man answers, lets us into a little outer room. He pulls the sleeve of a red kimono and out of it pops a key on a string, he opens the next door and in we walk into an Aladdin's cave of designer fake bags. I won't buy fakes, I don't approve of fakes, but as Sarah points out., some of these bags are being made in the same factories and on the same machines as the originals: because as we now all know, a Prada bag isn't made in Italy, it's made in China. I see a fake Anya Hindmarch Elrod, similar apart from the lining which is fabric, not suede, and it still doesn't have the same production qualities. But the place is full of satisfied customers who come back over and over again, and will do, until the store is raided by the police.

Out on the street I am suddenly overcome by the pollution, can hardly breathe. Some people are wearing facemasks. So we ascend the longest escalator in the world, a moving walkway that takes us up and up through the sides of a densely inhabited hill and come to an area called Soho, narrow lanes of small shops and cafes, more European than anything I've seen so far. Sarah shows me some of the Hong Kong designers. Then I see something absolutely fascinating. A clutch made of the same silver distressed leather that Anya Hindmarch has been using for the past two or three seasons, and using the same leather-covered magnetic snaps except this is is not a fake, not even a copy: it's a bag by a Hong Kong designer who simply has access to the same materials. The bag has a sensational red silk lining and I would have bought it on the spot had it not been ruined by a garish cheap-looking gold fastening which is completely the wrong colour for the bag.

As Sarah points out, if the designers are using Chinese factories to make their products, then inevitably some of the materials will end up out of the designers hands, and later I will see fabrics I recognise being used to made dresses with the labels of Hong Kong designers.

We finished up at Shanghai Tang. My head was full of everything Sarah had told me about the ambiguous world of designer production, of what is real and what is not, and how they can overlap. And also the history of Hong Kong, its government, its relation to the mainland, its economy and its architecture. I told her that she would make a fantastic tour guide for anyone who wanted to see a Hong Kong unavailable to to those with a guide book. She was the most fascinating, informed and warm shopping companion. If anyone would like to engage Sarah's services for a similar trip, let me know and I'll pass on her details. I told her she should charge. It will be worth every penny.

If it's Thursday it must be Hong Kong

After the most hectic two and a half weeks of my life, involving scary flights on 20 seater prop planes to the place where the sun comes up first in the world and across the horizon is the International Date Line, I finally flew from Auckland to Sydney to Hong Kong where I stepped off the plane into the most extraordinary place in the world, surely? It makes Manhattan look like a sleepy village in the Cotswolds. Visibly gasping as the taxi drove me to my hotel, Le Meridien Cyberport, I felt like a child in primary school with eyes like saucers.

After my overnight in Singapore, I have spent some time thinking about South-East Asia and its extraordinary dynamism, energy and its rampant capitalism. I have no idea what to say about it, except to absorb, absorb absorb. At 10 am Thoughtful Dresser reader Sarah will take me shopping.

Two small recommendations: Richard Ford's Independence Day, gently urged on me over breakfast in Adelaide by David Malouf, and which absorbed me on the journey from Auckland to Hong Kong; and a skin-care range new to me called Ultraceuticals, which was in the Qantas business class amenity bag. I thought the moisturiser and SPF30 sun screen were exceptionally good. It's available in SE Asia, parts of the US and Canada, but not Europe, annoyingly, and Sydney duty free only had $AUS$200 packs containing the full range, and weren't allowed to sell individual products.

Meanwhile The Clothes On Their Backs, only out a month, is already reprinting, and was, apparently, last week's most mentioned book in the Australian media. Normal service resumes on Momday. After I've been to the hairdresser's.

The Ossie Clark revival

From a public computer at Melbourne airport en route to New Zealand I bring you this long piece I have been working on for several months on the revival of Ossie Clark, which appears in today's Guardian

Seven minutes. This is all the unknown designer Avsh Alom Gur and his backer Marc Worth have - seven minutes to convince the arbiters of fashion of the comeback of the century, the revival of a defunct label and a dead name: Ossie Clark. The fashion press and the buyers are on the front row, watching with chilly eyes the product of four months' work, presented on the etiolated forms of teenage Latvian models robed in a yellow dress, a turquoise snakeskin suit and an organza pierrot blouse.

The models step on and off revolving metal plinths and rotate to a soundtrack of Jefferson Airplane's LSD anthem White Rabbit - a tribute to the 60s or, perhaps, to Clark's drug addiction. There is the silence of ennui, then a sudden, frenzied heads-down as the fashion press make notes. A long pause as the last model disappears. The designer runs through the two rooms to take his bow, and the audience briefly applaud, scramble to their feet and into taxis. It's on to the next show, which is Jasper Conran.

London Fashion Week is not one long cocktail party; it is an impatient wait for shows that are running late, and other shows that are running late because the last one ran late, and nothing can start before the key editors and buyers arrive. And nothing exemplifies the reality of Fashion Week more than the brevity of these shows and the terrifying and final speed of the verdict. No time for thought, reflection, a second look. It's all in the momentary impression, the practised eye. The Ossie Clark collection, one of the week's hottest tickets, was launched at the Serpentine Gallery on a day that began with high hopes and ended with the threat of legal action by Clark's two sons.

Hello world

My apologies for the lack of activity on this site. I arrived in Melbourne yesterday morning from Adelaide and did two bookshop readings, thanks to those readers who attended, particularly the lady from Budapest - it was a pleasure to meet you. I very much enjoyed the observation by a a member of the audience at Readings who said that in New York in the 1960s, when a Jewish woman reached 50 she was awarded a fur coat. And with that carapace around her shoulders, she demonstrated her status. We need to find a modern-day equivalent of the mink.

Meanwhile, those of you of a literary disposition may believe that writers are lovely, sensitive souls. After seven full days in the company of some of the most important writers in the world, I can tell you that the clash of egos, the arrogance, the selfishness, insecurity, the anxiety about pecking orders, is a sight to behold.

I can say no more, but if you are interested in reading authors whose private personalities actually match up to their prose, try here.

Great minds

A group of Jewish schoolgirls in London boycotted an examination requiring them to answer questions on Shakespeare, whom they believed, based on the portrayal of Shylock in Merchant of Venice, was anti-semitic.

Addressing this charge in the Telegraph, Daniel Hannan dismisses the accusation, thus:

No, of course he wasn’t. His universalism, his grandeur, the wholeness of his understanding, makes such questions meaningless. Shakespeare cannot be confined by any set of beliefs: his genius always bursts out, putting both sides of a case far more eloquently than any other advocate. When you try and conscript him to a narrow cause, you make yourself look narrow. Shakespeare’s canon will broaden your experience more than your experience can ever broaden it.

But argues that Shylock has been, perhaps, the greatest source of trouble for the Jews:

. . . on balance, I’m with the pupils at Yesodey Hatorah Senior Girls School. Shylock, precisely because of the depth of his character, precisely because his motives are made comprehensible, is the most dangerous archetype of the malevolent Jew ever created. He’s not just a nasty piece of work; he possesses the character traits that anti-Semites have projected onto Jews down the ages. He is greedy, legalistic, clever and lacking in compassion: a schemer who secretly loathes the Christians he lends money to.

I feel awkward every time I watch the play, as many gentiles do. I can only imagine how much more uneasy I would feel if I were Jewish. Harold Bloom, perhaps the most dedicated Shakespearean of our age, is beguiled by the play, and by the ambiguities of Shylock in particular; yet he well recognises how much it has worsened the lot of European Jewry. “Shakespeare’s persuasiveness has its unfortunate aspects; The Merchant of Venice may have been more of an incitement to anti-Semitism than The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, though less than the Gospel of John. We pay a price for what we gain from Shakespeare”.

And this seems to be the nub of a contemporary problem: that great, not narrow minds, can take positions of high moral grandeur, dismissive of the consequences for others.

Draped in despair but keeping up appearances

From this weekend's The Australian

THE last complete sentence my mother uttered before her death was said in a whisper, her hand shakily pointing towards my sister's neck: "I like your necklace." Following this utterance her speech centre failed, then everything else failed, and she died.

I grew up in a family where appearances mattered. My grandparents on both sides were Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe, decanted from a remote area of Polish farmland into the English class system, and they believed in a series of maxims, such as, "The only thing worse than being skint is looking as if you're skint", and most significantly, "Only the rich can afford cheap shoes".

So I have never taken to the idea that clothes, shoes, handbags, hairdressing, manicures are part of the realm of the superficial, the trivial. That the high-minded woman should care little for what she wears. For we are clothed almost 24 hours of the day and, like it or not, we are looked at and judged. It came to me a few years ago that you cannot have depths without surfaces, it's a physical impossibility, and how the two cohere is what makes life interesting. There shouldn't be shame in being interested in fashion.

read on

Further Australia/New Zealand events and dates

My main website now has details of all the forthcoming events on this Australia/New Zealand tour

Orchard Road, Singapore

I was supposed to be staying at a gracious old hotel slightly off the main drag, s I was alarmed when the driver who met me with a name sign at the airport took me to an entirely different hotel. Was it possible that I had jumped the limo of another Linda Grant? But a woman from the desk came out and gave me a faxed itinerary with the change of venue. The hotel is more like an airport than a lodging, but I cannot help but notice that outside it is Gucci, Prada and much else. In fact I seem to be right in the centre of shopping mile.

And having eaten a late Vietnamese lunch down by the river , and done masterclass to some fascinating writing students, and met a banker turned poet, and had a late Italian dinner, and got some sleep, and after a tv interview coming up at 9 am and a bunch of newspaper interviews afterwards, I examine the shops before leaving for the airport for the next leg of my journey: Singapore to Melbourne to Adelaide.

I hadn't realised Singapore was so much fun, and had not realised how many Singaporeans have English as their mother tongue. Someone really should write the great Singapore novel

Handcream update

Creme de le Mer handcream at Heathrow Duty free is £51. In the US its normal price is $70. I didn't get it.

They didn't have LOccitaine. I agree with others about Ahava, but I don't like the strong smell and you can't get it at duty free. So in the end I got Clarins. £13. I agree it's an excellent handcream, and it has an SPF. But it also has a slightly medicinal smell which I find off-putting. But beggars can't be choosers. £51 for handcream at Heathrow, $70 at Saks.

Singapore event tonight

Details here

In which Saudi Arabia proves itself to be unexpectedly egalitarian

Usually it is women whose immodest dress and flirtatious manner is condemned as leading impressionable men to commit acts of sexual violence.

Saudi Arabia, however has rounded up 57 young men accused of wearing immodest dress, hanging round shopping malls and flirting. And loitering with the intent to buy red roses.

Saudi men arrested for 'flirting'

Relations between the sexes outside marriage is against the law

Prosecutors in Saudi Arabia have begun investigating 57 young men who were arrested on Thursday for flirting with girls at shopping centres in Mecca.

The men are accused of wearing indecent clothes, playing loud music and dancing in order to attract the attention of girls, the Saudi Gazette reported.

They were arrested following a request of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.

The mutaween enforce Saudi Arabia's conservative brand of Islam, Wahhabism.

Earlier in the month, the authorities enforced a ban on the sale of red roses and other symbols used in many countries to mark Valentine's Day.

The ban is partly because of the connection with a "pagan Christian holiday", and also because the festival itself is seen as encouraging relations between the sexes outside marriage, punishable by law in the kingdom.

The Prosecution and Investigation Commission said it had received reports of such "bad" behaviour by 57 young men at a number of shopping centres in the holy city of Mecca, the Saudi Gazette said.

The guardians of some of the men defended their actions, however, saying they would regularly get together at the weekend to have fun without ever violating laws governing the segregation of the sexes, it added.

Creme de la Mer handcream

US price $70

UK price £60 (approx $120)

Duty free would be minus 17.5% circa £49 (approx $98)

Oh, land of the free, home of the brave and the unlined.

Hand-cream: readers, please recommend

I am nearly out of my ruinously expensive Creme de la Mer hand-cream and if there's one thing I like to have on long-haul flights it's plenty of hand-cream. So I need to make a purchase at Heathrow duty free on Monday morning, and will accept recommendations.

If you know a fabulous drug store brand only available in the US, do tell, others may take advantage where I cannot.

Smocks - what are they good for?

I nipped down to Jaeger this morning to try on this top, thinking that I might be in need of a cool loose top on my travels.

Who exactly do smocks suit? Not me, and not most of the Jaeger customers, according to the intelligent and helpful saleswoman. 'Most of our ladies find that smocks make them look quite big,' she said.

I went to Cos and found a rather good navy coat, which I'll be travelling in. Click on the hyperlink and check out their SS08 collection on the video. Cos, for my American readers, is the upmarket arm of H&M, only available in the UK, Belgium, Germany and Denmark. Ha! And soon we'll have Banana Republic (20 March) and if ever we get Zappos, that'll be the end of those New York shopping weekends.

Not fashion

Joan Smith, who covered the Yorkshire Ripper murders in the early 80s, has an outstanding and lengthy analysis in the Guardian today on the sex trade and the Ipswich murders:

To begin with, it seemed as though nothing had changed since the 70s when Sutcliffe's murders unleashed a torrent of insensitive headlines about the women he preyed on in the red light districts of Leeds, Bradford, Huddersfield and Manchester. The Sun's "Fears for vice girls" on November 16 2006 was followed the next day by the same paper's "Fears for hookers", while the Times joined in on December 5 with "Ripper murder strikes fear into vice girls".

But public attitudes to women in the sex industry have changed, as the press quickly discovered. In Ipswich and elsewhere, people were outraged by TV and radio bulletins that baldly announced five "prostitutes" had been murdered in Suffolk. Many people are uncomfortable when the word is used in headlines as though it's no different from "teacher" or "dentist"; the dead women were daughters, mothers and girlfriends but their whole lives were being defined by something they had embarked on out of absolute desperation. "As soon as it became a national story, it became apparent that the language used to describe the women was inappropriate," says a journalist who went to Ipswich when the third body was found. "Everybody knew one of the victims or had been to school with one of them."

That yeti look, again

MaxMara AW08 - do the designers know something we don't? Or haven't they heard of global warming?

On the road

From early Monday I am on a three-week book tour of Singapore, Adelaide, Melbourne, various places in New Zealand, culminating in a one-day shopping trip in Hong Kong. (Thank you, Sarah.) Details of the events will be going up on my main website in the next day or two.

I will be maintaining this site, but it will be more of a travel diary. No thought for the day, I'm afraid, or polls.

In the meantime, I'm pleased to say that I have just signed a contract with my publisher to write a non-fiction book about our relationship with clothes. The provisional title was Why Clothes Matter, but my editor has come up with a better name: The Thoughtful Dresser. Now why didn't I think of that? Publication is scheduled for this time next year.

I hope to meet some of you in Singapore, Australia and New Zealand. In the meantime, keep checking in.

Thought for the day

in memoriam: Gemma Adams, Tania Nichol, Anette Nichols, Anneli Alderton, Paula Clennell

'"My dear, I had to laugh," she said. "D'you know what a man said to me the other day? It's funny, he said, have you ever thought that a girl's clothes cost more than the girl inside them?' 'What a swine of a man, ' I said. 'Yes, that's what I told him,' Maudie said. That isn't the way to talk,' I said. And he said, "Well, it's true, isn't it? You can get a very nice girl for five pounds. a very nice girl indeed; you can even get a very nice girl for nothing if you know how to go about it. But you can't get a very nice costume for five pounds. To say nothing of underclothes, shoes etcetera, and so on." And then I had to laugh, because after all it's true, isn't it? People are much cheaper than things.' Jean Rhys