Me and the emerald necklace

Laurel spray made for Empress Josephine

This is a piece I did for the Telegraph on the new jewellery gallery which is about to open at the V&A. I'm going to the private view next week - champagne, canapes and staring at tiaras. And where are you now, moths?

Chadour-Sampson takes out what looks like an ordinary plastic bag (though it's conservation-grade plastic) and opens it to reveal an emerald and diamond necklace and earrings: the Beauharnais emeralds, given by Napoleon to his adopted daughter, Stéphanie de Beauharnais, on her marriage in 1806 to the heir to the Grand Duke of Baden, and probably made by Nitot & Fils of Paris. It was about this time that jewellers began to develop open-back settings, which allowed more light through the stones. The simplicity of the setting, the square-cut and pendant emeralds surrounded by diamonds and connected by chains of diamonds and emeralds, must have been an early form of minimalism. Clasping it to my neck, I regret that I am not fit enough to make a run for it down the stone steps.

Cameos (the Victorian equivalent of keeping a picture of your loved one on your mobile phone), lockets containing strands of your nearest and dearest's hair (dead or alive) and jet mourning jewellery were all characteristics of 19th-century decorative jewellery, though it still incorporated religious motifs such as crosses. By the 1860s the trade had been transformed by mechanisation. Jewellery went mass-market with gold-plated base metals and machine-made chains, and was now worn by all classes. Inevitably, the simplicity of great - and easily copied - sets like the Beauharnais emeralds had to give way to jewels as works of art in themselves, such as a spectacular art-nouveau orchid of gold enamel, rubies and diamonds, designed to be worn in the hair, which has the slightly sinister fin-de-siècle decadence of the symbolist painters. At the turn of the last century the tiara became a fashion item, and no longer the preserve of royalty and aristocracy. Cartier was the leader in the making of tiaras, such as the piece made for Alexandra Comnène for her marriage in 1913 to Robert Everts, a diplomat, with cabochon rubies - early examples of synthetic stones, supplied by Comnène herself

Karen Cole dress report

I ordered this dress on Thursday. On the plus side it arrived by special delivery the following morning (shame I was away). On the minus, it was not very well packaged: in a plastic bag then shoved in a jiffy bag so it was extremely creased. The dress is as shown, a heavy knit jersey. It fell very well but there was cling, around the stomach. It like no cling there at all. I also felt that the v of the neck was a little wide and low as shown above. The big disappointment is that it wasn't the colour I wanted,; I was looking for a dark navy, a few shades under black. I would call this French navy. It looked good on, but my overall feeling was, not special enough for the price and not the right colour, so back it goes.

And so farewell, moths

Victory is ours.

Happy birthday

To all of my friends who are celebrating today, the famous and the not-so-famous:

It might not be what Ben-Gurion had in mind, but that’s what there is.

זה מה יש

What an unpleasant week, but Barbie is Jewish

Moths, builders, flu, too-short dresses . . .

However this piece of old news made me smile:

Although Barbie may seem to be an Aryan ideal, the doll was the brainchild of a Jewish woman named Ruth Handler. San Francisco filmmaker Tiffany Shlain, founder of the Webby awards, considers Handler's role in creating Barbie one of pop culture's great ironies and explores that notion in her new film, "The Tribe: An Unorthodox, Unauthorized History of the Jewish People and the Barbie Doll ... in About 15 Minutes," written with her husband, UC Berkeley Professor Ken Goldberg. The film, narrated by Peter Coyote, premieres Saturday at a sold-out screening at Herbst Theatre. It will also screen at the Sundance Film Festival in January.

The short of it

Every year I buy a fairly simple cheap summer dress, the kind of dress you can lounge around in on a hot day and not feel you look like a mess. Not a special dress, just an okay summer dress you don't mind spilling a glass of white wine all over. M&S always has a good supply.

So last week I ordered this



It arrived this afternoon and I was very pleasantly surprised It was a great colour, had a shocking pink cotton lining and was a perfect fit, in all but one respect. Unlike the picture, it comes above the knee. And when you sit down above the knee is mid-thigh. Now I am 5'5" which means I am taller than than model. How can that be?

And when will this madness end, I ask, as I pack it up for return?

Judith Krantz.

I am still ill, When I get better I'll be writing a piece on Judith Krantz. Share your thoughts if you have any.

The great unstriped

Every single year the fashion pages tell us that this year the big story is nautical chic, and every single year it isn't in the shops and no-one is wearing it.

I am not having a nice time

I went to bed on Sunday night with most of the cupboards cleared out, but with considerable mess all over the place. I woke up on Monday morning with viral flu, the symptoms of which I will draw a veil over, but required several trips to the bathroom.

An email from a friend arrives this morning:

I saw on your blog that you have moths - lots of sympathy, we had them SO badly year before last... they munched loads of my jumpers, and C's, and the silk linings of M's suits, and hung out in the carpets and the piano felts too....

I know you will have had loads of advice but anyway, we found that what worked for us - other than a big clearout, lots of drycleaning (and stashing clothes in rotation in the freezer), was to get a company called Terminex to come in twice, and they sprayed the flat from top to bottom, esp curtains, carpets, sofas, but also the insides of wardrobes and chests of drawers, under beds, etc etc, with really strong insecticide (they wear masks, it's not the kind of stuff you would handle yourself). We had to go out for a few hours each time for them to do the work, but it really did work - the moths haven't come back as far as we can see.

I am sleeping, and talking to a friend on the phone who is going to the dinner with the Queen on board HMS Invincible (a work thing) about the definitiuon of cocktail. I say it's knee length, the Palace says ankle-length. So in lieu of any fashiony posts you can discuss that.

Hiroshima

Short of burning the house down to get rid of the moths, the present course of action is as extensive as it can go. The loft conversion in this house has cupboards all around the eaves, into which I have crammed many many years of accumulated junk. The moth larvae have set up house here.

I have spent the past three days clearing this out, sorting out and hauling about fifty black bags down the 35 stairs to be stashed in the front garden from where I hope to persuade a young man with a van to take it to the dump.

I have found: letters dating back to the mid-70s that were yesterday's version of email, files, old magazines, large sets of my mother's Royal Albert dinner and tea services, tarnished silver, a suitcase full of clothes I last wore in the early 80s, when, without my understanding it at the time, I must have been actually thin.

A love letter to my father, not from my mother.

But mostly, just dusty moth-infested rubbish. And however long I keep going, there is always another box.

More fumigation. More vaccuming. And on Thursday the carpet cleaners are coming.

Lesson: Do not store old carpets.

Naked self-interest

I just want to mention that as part of the mammoth clean-out operation that awaits me today, I will be taking about 20 items to the dry-cleaners and buying a lot more moth death ray spray and a lot more insecticide, which of course means I can't buy any new clothes. Unless you ordered something from Pure Cashmere from the link above and I get 12 per cent of whatever you spend. Or 22 per cent if you're a new customer. Don't you need a pashmina? But, you know, no pressure.

How to look your best

This simple, straightforward set of rules is so basic and obvious that they scarecly need stating, but taken toegther they seem to me to represent the Ten (actually Six) Commandments of dressing, and as such, should be taped to the inside of every woman's wardrobe:

Top styling tips

The second you put a limb into a piece of clothing, you should feel good about wearing it. Throw away anything you haven't worn for more than three years. Never buy clothes you need to be slim to fit into. Every outfit should have one "wow" factor item, be it belt, shoes or a piece of jewellery. Never buy clothes that wear you: people should notice you first, not what you are wearing. Buy jeans to suit your figure, rather than the jeans of the season.

The root of all evil is

. . . a cupboard at the top of the stairs containing an old rug, which has formed a sort of moth Waitrose, aisles and aisles of delicious things to eat. I now have to clean out the whole thing. The floor is covered with larvae.

On the plus side, they don't seem to have got into the wardrobe. I hope.

UPDATE
Having had the most disgusting morning putting half-eaten stuff and other stuff covered in larvae into bin bags, and having found a half-eaten vintage coat from the early 50s which a friend gave me in 1985, my cleaner has arrived and is going over the carpet inch by inch with a vacuum cleaner, crevice tool and insecticide. Next week the carpet cleaners are coming.

I have to go to the gym now and have my trainer make me pick up heavy things. Lovely. Then home to find out if this is the new mayor of London, as predicted by all the news media.

UPDATE UPDATE
After I spent four hours this morning clearing out the cupboard, spraying moth killer and laying down insecticide, and my cleaner spent five hours vacuuming, this evening the moths are still there, on the walls and ceiling in the hall.

I have had an email . . .

Greetings --

just a quick note of commiseration! it's a testament to the laxity of my cleaner that oh, god, nearly a year ago last november, i noticed some bald patches in a rug I'd bought at John Lewis (normally very reliable in all things) and when i turned it over, it was teeming with larvae and suchlike. it took me ages and ages to get rid of the damn things, using some of the same products I see you've got. unlike you, i'm not smart enough to store woolens in bags so ended up tossing a few things, though nothing quite as mind boggling as the rug itself! i'm not at all squeamish about bugs (rodents are another story) but I was grossed out. moths are so persistent, too.
and just when I thought it was safe, I saw one flying round the room the other night. Luckily, so far, seems to be a solo flight. But the shorter version is just to say perservere and I feel for you!

Flashback

The Story of the Supremes, an upcoming V&A exhibition of the performance costumes of the seminal girl-group, makes it pretty clear that it's not just Marge Simpson that Amy Winehouse is channelling. The beehives and the beestung lips, the doll-like get-ups and the larger-than-life voices: it's there in grainy black-and-white stills of Diana and co from the early 1960s, and in a million grainy YouTube clips of Amy circa 2008. Winehouse uses the retro image to position herself in a roll call of female singing icons dating back to Ross and beyond, and distance herself from the world of contemporary throwaway pop. But no amount of hairspray can disguise how much the pop world has changed in four and a half decades: while the Story of the Supremes tells an old-fashioned tale, from the first album cover with its Woolworths pearls to the days of Bob Mackie gowns, the Amy show has been all about downfall, not rise. If the Story of the Supremes is about how to construct female fame, Winehouse, vulnerable in her overexposed body and unsteady on her five-inch heels, is about how vulnerable female stars really are.

Guardian

Update on evil

The location of the moth infestation has been isolated to the hall carpet at the top of the stairs. They are breeding in the place where the carpet meets the wall and subsequently massing into the bedroom where there is a scrumptious banquet of cashmere and other items..

The following actions have been taken:

1. With my moth genocide kit I first sprayed clouds of deadly moth exterminator about.
2. Next I sprayed the walls and carpet with insecticide
3. Next I hoovered up a lot of dead and dying moths and applied a crevice tool to the carpet
4. Then I set down traps, which are little open cages with a sticky strip on them dosed in something which attracts male moths in the hopes of some high class nookie, But actually kills them. The females fly about uselessly with no moth Mr Darcy to impregnate them, like characters out of Bridget Jones or Sex in the City.

The result today is that there are lot of dead moths in the traps and lying around on the carpet and no signs as yet of any live ones.

But our enemies are legion and they are cunning and cruel. I do not believe we have reached VE day yet.

Voting

Today we have elections. In London we are voting for mayor and for the London assembly. It was my intention from the outset to keep politics firmly to the margins of this site, so that everyone is welcome who has an interest in the things that interest me.

So I won't say anything about my strong distrust of the incumbent mayor, or my revulsion for his main opponent . But if we think democracy isn't worth leaving the house for in London, who are we to chide others for stealing it?

The meme thing

I've been tagged by Charles Lambert to do this:

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

So:

'No-one could resist the valiant girl who, having staked all she had on one throw, watched her dream disappear. She was among the young women visitors to Royallieu who spent their time devising new pranks to amuse Etienne Blalsan. For instance there was the memorable May night when Capel and his friends decided to make an entrance at Etienne's in disguise.'

That's from Chanel, by Edmonde Charles-Roux

I now tag Indigo Alison, Thumbelina Fashonista, 16 Going on 60, Bookslut, An American in London

Jaeger Autumn Winter press show

Early in February I saw Jaeger's first catwalk show in their 125 year history, and wondered if it was too edgy for the audience it was supposed to serve. This morning I saw the collection at their press view. A magazine editor I had shared a car with in February told me that it would be toned down to make a 'selling collection', and so it was.

Seeing the pieces separately, on hangers, and not on six feet eight size 0 models was a completely different kettle of fish. Some items, like the trailing fringes, had been considerably shorted and some of the catwalk pieces will go into the stores in only small numbers.

The core of what I saw was really high standard wool tailoring: a funnel-neck coat dress with gold buttons which I will definitely buy, a double-breasted coat with the same buttons and even a cape. Very strong, very wearable pieces which don't look as though they will date. There were also beautiful bias cut maxi dresses, with sleeves and a stunning velvet dress.

You can see the gold button detailing here, on a black wool skirt, and the fringing. Now imagine those buttons on wearable coats and the fringing cut back 50 per cent.

Trousers, what shape?

Harvey Nicks buyer says:

"If someone asks 'what's on trend?' I don't know what to say. There are no rules. You have to learn your own style. You can wear short, midi or maxi now. Trousers can be wide, skinny, cropped, flared, high-waisted or hipster. They're all 'right'. That's the exciting thing."

Meanwhile, in another part of the forest. . .

Selfridges press release

Selfridges shoe department is experiencing a big increase in sales of vertiginous heels following the striking pictures of Gwyneth Paltrow strutting down the red carpet wearing the highest of heels in the past few weeks. Gwyneth’s new look has seen her teetering round in an array of show stopping shoes with gravity defying heels resulting in a real surge in customer interest.

Heel heights have reached a staggering 7 inches at Selfridges this season with brands such as Balenciaga, Pierre Hardy, Nina Ricci, Christian Louboutin and Yves Saint Laurent delivering the most show stopping styles.

“This season we are selling the highest and most incredible shoes I’ve ever seen. Not for the faint hearted, fetish heels offer the wearer an extreme, attention grabbing look, these are definitely taxi shoes! Alexander Mc Queen’s Languid court shoes with a cigarette heel have been particularly popular due to their elegant timeless silhouette which contrasts beautifully with the very modern square toe.”

Sebastian Manes: Selfridges’ Director of Accessories

Selfridges has seen a massive increase in sales of ‘fetish’ super-high heels over the past week alone with 35 % more pairs being sold. Customers are over looking how challenging 7 inch heels are to manoeuvre about easily in and rather are focusing on the incredible effect they have on lengthening and slimming one’s legs. The extreme appearance of fetish heels means that the foot becomes a real focus of your look, particularly in very adorned styles which have been de rigueur this season.