Smile corner

'There is a real vulgarity in the way women dress at the moment," purrs Roberto Cavalli, stubbing out his cigarette in a turtle-shaped gold ashtray and reaching into his green, lizard-skin manbag for a cigar. "They show off too much and try too hard. They don't understand where the line is between sexy and vulgar. I know where that line is."

	King of the world: Roberto Cavalli with Celia Walden

I expected many things from the 64-year-old Italian designer - lover of leopard-print and creator of red-carpet dresses that stay up against all the laws of physics - but not this. Remember the slashed, lime chiffon number worn by Victoria Beckham to her own Full Length and Fabulous ball?

There are many words to describe it: understated is not one of them. But then we are in Cavalli world - a floating parallel universe where the senses are assaulted by a frenzy of satiny animal prints, gilt, mahogany and orchids.

and on and on, a pleasure to read

What are these people on about?

Apparently the designers are pushing the cruise collections because global warming means we no longer have a winter. So that's why sales of shearlings have collapsed and why you can't see one in the shops and Joseph doesn't stock them any more . . .

You can no longer always tell what you are looking at," said Liz Walker, executive fashion editor at Marie Claire. "A winter fashion show may have no coats or sweaters, and the only thing that reminds you it's a summer show is if you see a girl in bikini."It's definitely to do with climate change. Ten years ago you knew you were going to have to shoot coats and sweaters in Russia or Iceland, but nobody wants those clothes anymore.

Some ebay items

Since my moth catastrophe I have been doing some serious wardrobe pruning and have decided to sell a few items, two Anya Hindmarch bags and one Nicole Farhi jacket which is a bit big.

You can see the listings for each item here:

Anya Hindmarch Cooper
Anya Hindmarch Whistler
Nicole Farhi navy swing jacket

Please note, none of these items have been infested by moths, but a Brora green cashmere cardie was.

Bank holiday Monday

An appeal to my readers

A friend of mine has been sending me some wonderful emails on the perils of menswear. He has written about the male mutton-dressed-as-lamb conundrum, and the difficulties of 'smart-casual' in the business environment - a sea of boring men in pressed jeans and polo shirts. Not to mention his early teenage forays into clothes buying in Swinging London.

I have invited him to come over as an occasional guest contributor. Among his long list of increasingly feeble excuses has been his contention that no-one would be interested.

So do we have any takers for a column from a well-dressed but cool Englishman of a certain age?

Record your responses below and I'll pass them on.

UPDATE
The gentleman in question has moved an inch or two, having sent me a list of possible pseudonyms, but has now pissed off abroad for a few days. I will update you when I hear more. All I can say is, it will be worth the wait.

So tell me . . .

Betty Jackson says:

'I still think that clothes look better on thin people. I'm sorry, that's the truth. They look better in a size eight and ten than they do in a 16 and 18.'

Do we disagree?

It's not a love story

Ripped off from Norm, who spotted it first, this very telling insight from David Baddiel, about Jane Austen, summing up my disgust at the recent biopic (not to mention the increasingly Mills and Boonish quality of film adaptations of her work.

I first read Austen as a teenager, given Nothanger Abbey as an O level set text. I did not much enjoy it, unable to appreciate at such a young age, what Baddiel so effectively describes. I am not, like Norm, a Janeite, but Baddiel's assessment of her as the firs modernist, will take me back there, right now:

However, the great writer who has really been portrayed this way most frequently in recent times is one who hasn't yet been visited by the jaunty Gallifrean: Jane Austen. Both in the film Becoming Jane and the TV movie Miss Austen Regrets, Austen was depicted as a waspish cynical tomboy, clever with words if not so clever with men: a sort of Regency Sue Perkins. In the TV movie, there was a greater stab at complexity, as the character grew bitter with age - an Elizabeth Bennett who never nabs Mr Darcy - but in both there was, I would hazard, an incipient underlying sexism, based on the notion that Austen's work was underpinned by her own failures in love.

Because here's the thing about Jane Austen. She was a very great genius. She is possibly the greatest genius in the history of English literature, arguably greater than Shakespeare. And her achievement is not that much to do with love, although that was her subject matter. It's to do with technique. Before her there are three strands in English fiction: the somewhat mental, directly-reader-addressing semi-oral romps of Nashe and Sterne and Fielding; the sensationalist Gothic work of Horace Walpole and Ann Radcliffe; and the romances of Eliza Haywood and Fanny Burney.

However great these writers are, none could be read now and considered modern. When Austen gets into her stride, which she does very quickly with Sense and Sensibility, suddenly, you have all the key modern realist devices: ironic narration; controlled point of view; structural unity; transparency of focus; ensemble characterisation; fixed arenas of time and place; and, most importantly, the giving-up of the fantastical in favour of a notion that art should represent life as it is actually lived in all its wonderful ordinariness. She is the first person, as John Updike put it: “to give the mundane its beautiful due”, and her work leads to Updike as much as it does to George Eliot.

I have no idea how a mainly home-educated rector's daughter came by all that, but I know that imagining her as a kind of acerbic spinster flattens out this genius. It becomes all about the subject matter and not at all about the huge creative advance her work represents.

Gay or grey

Let me very firmly indeed declare myself on the side of the author, here:

I look dreadful with both white hair and blonde hair. I am a dark-haired woman. And so shall remain.

And there's the rub. Women will admire Anna Ford and the rest of the glamorous grey brigade, but they will hesitate to follow suit. We don't want to go grey because of ageist prejudice, but the guilty secret is that many of us are scared we haven't got the cheekbones or the chutzpah to carry it off. My suspicion - and OK, it's deeply unsisterly - is that some women are happy to turn silver because they know they still look hot; it's not so much authentic ageing as a subtle assertion of superiority.

The other problem about grey hair is that it is such a high-maintenance option. You don't have to get your roots retouched every five minutes, but if you want to stay fabulous, the rest of your grooming has to rise exponentially. Flawlessly styled hair, immaculate clothes and perfect make-up are indispensable, as is a trim figure.

What French women do differently

When I was sixteen I was packed off for the summer to a kibbutz. Me and agricultural labour are not a match made in heaven, nor the spartan socialism of daily life. One hot morning, and every morning got hotter than the next, I was walking along a lane-type arrangement holding a small scythe to hack away the dead leaves in a banana plantation when I raised my arm for some reason. The kibbutz girl next to me screamed. Oh, she cried, you are bald.

I was supposed to have looked like this

apart from the red sequinned dress and the clutch, obviously.

Susannah Frankel, in the Indie, writes:

It is the stuff of legend that European women the chic, beach-loving French in particular are less likely to remove underarm hair than their British counterparts, who are, also famously, considered not to be as comfortable in their own skin. Given that France is a country where beauticians will wax eyebrows, top lip, chin, nostrils (yes, nostrils) in the blink of an eye, this is not just an oversight. Instead, while hair on legs and, indeed, pretty much anywhere apart from the head might be considered unsightly, armpits are left just as nature intended.

Hemlines

As Jess Cartner-Morley points out

Wearing calf-length is this season’s way of telling the world you read Vogue. It is so very fashionable that you won’t even see it in the shops yet, because this is next season’s trend. The trouble with fashion, of course, is that it is so very often at cross-purposes with old-fashioned notions like Looking Nice. (You will notice that Anna Wintour, though presumably well aware that calf-length is quite the dernier cri, does not go near it with a bargepole.)

Useful idiots

A man I know, a man not unknown to military manoeuvres on the battlefield, a man who, in fact received a battlefield promotion during the Yom Kippur War, tells me that he too has moths in his house.

His moths are on the lower level, and he says that to ensure that they do not ascend the stairs and eat his Gieves and Hawkes jackets, he has given them a small carpet to eat.

For if we give Germany Czechoslovakia and Poland, they'll leave France alone, won't they?

Patricia Field for M&S

'Wait till Carrie finds out what she's wearing next'

I wasn't able to make the M&S A/W08 launch yesterday but here's news of it

Marks & Spencers announced today that they have signed a deal with trend-setting Sex and the City stylist, Patricia Field to sell a one-off 35 piece fashion range. This is due to launch mid October and will be available from 10 M&S stores, online and with selected pieces going to a further 50 stores across the U.K and several stores abroad. Of her collaboration with M&S, Field said that she “wanted to be involved with a brand who really understood women of all ages”. This retailer has always lived up to the maxim of ‘being all things to all women’ and in these uncertain times they’re going to have to try as hard as ever to deliver that.

Actual M&S outfit available this Autumn

For those in Monaco this summer

'Linen kaftans and dresses and jewelled leather sandals were invented in the land of the mummies to suit the needs of the people based on climate and on social status.
Today kaftans are a must have accessory for covering up at the beach and leather bejewelled sandals help protect against scorched soles of the feet, when leaving sun chairs in search of refreshments. Linen dresses; trousers, tops and tunics are currently filling up the high street waiting to be purchased by holidaymakers, or Brits who believe that their summer has not been the two sunshine filled weeks in May.
'To celebrate Ancient Egyptian women, including their attire, the Principality of Monaco will this summer host the largest Egyptian exhibition ever to be staged in Europe, the Reines D’Egypte. The exhibition will be the first to focus on the female pharaohs, wives, mothers and daughters who influenced three thousand years of Egyptian history, including exhibits on Cleopatra, Hatshepsut, Nefertiti and Nefertari.
'More than 250 superb antiquities and works of art will go on display at the Grimaldi Forum between the 12th July and the 10th September 2008.'

Clothes origami

Word of the Plume Cocoon dress is all over the shop.

Thinking the same thing at the same time

The largest number of comments ever received on this site is the discussion on scarves. It seems like everyone is thinking about them.

Now the Telegraph has two pieces about the economy of having things made bespoke, an even greater rejection of the throwaway culture of cheap clothes. It argues that buying bespoke is the way to go during an economic downturn, the sartorial equivalent of 'only the rich can afford cheap shoes.'

"It may seem contradictory that people want a more specialised service when talk is of less disposable income," says Lauretta Roberts, editor of the fashion industry magazine Drapers. "But it does seem to go that way: we trade up in a downturn.

"Buying bespoke is about finding your own style and investing in it, rather than falling prey to every trend. It becomes about spending wisely and not wasting money."

During the good times of the past decade, the idea of having something custom-made was eschewed in favour of fast, throwaway fashion. But now frivolous spending on cheap clothes feels wrong - not to mention ecologically unsound - and our appetite for unique, well-made replacements is growing.

"There is a huge backlash against mass production and anything that suffers sameness," says Marian Salzman, a New York-based trendspotter. "Thus one-of-a-kind has great status. Bespoke makes us feel like we're enjoying a good life. It's the new special."

This woman had this dress designed and made for her. Personally I think it's bloody awful but if she likes it, and feels good in it, and it fits, that's the main thing.

On the recommendation of the Manolo

I am awestruck.

For the past couple of the weeks, the Manolo has meaning to recommend to you The Clothes on Their Backs, the latest novel from the Manolo’s good friend Linda Grant.

The reason the Manolo recommends this book to you is not just because Linda Grant is the friend, but because The Clothes on the Backs is among the best things the Manolo has read in many years.

There are many reasons the Manolo loves this book, one of the most important of which is that our friend Linda does such the masterful job of demonstrating one of the Manolo’s core beliefs: that the clothes we choose to wear say volumes about us, not just about that which we choose to reveal, but also that which we attempt to conceal.

Linda Grant’s memorable characters wear memorable clothes that aptly reflect their status, their personalities, their era, and their internal condition. And so, if you love clothes and you love shoes, and are prepared to think about them in complex and meaningful ways, you will find this book very satisfying.

But, beyond this narrative facility with fashion, the Manolo especially loves the Clothes on their Backs because there is real life in this book–messy, complex, disappointing, sometimes difficult, sometimes glorious life–our preconceptions are overthrown, moral clarity is difficult to come by, and, just as in real life, things rarely go as we would have wished. In the end, however, the message comes through, you cannot shirk life, you can only live it.

So, you must buy The Clothes on Their Backs and read about Uncle Sandor and Vivien, and their clothes, and their lives, for in all ways this novel has to it the ring of authentic truth.

'It never will be clear as long as she's explaining it'

Courtesy of George Szirtes, the following. Sublime.

Don't

Pale denim is back. This is what it will look like on you.

The male mutton

In a feature on the divine Nicky Haslam, whom I once sat next to at a New Statesman lunch, of all places, this observation:

But in real terms, 'mutton' is much more of an issue for men (mutton dressed as ram, perhaps?). Women have lived in fear of committing this premier fashion sin for generations. This has left us extremely well-equipped to do and wear whatever the hell we want, without looking daft or inciting judgment. We know how to get away with stuff.

Men don't. Men - who have only recently been introduced to the possibilities of metro-sexuality, of Beckham-endorsed experimentation with challenging fashion statements, of expensive denim and He-vage (man cleavage, achieved with especially deep V-neck T-shirts) - are not yet aware that an extremely fine line divides these thrilling, liberating styles from age-enhancing daftness. They don't know how to age these brand-new looks, how to carry them off into their thirties and beyond. See 33-year-old Beckham's over-plucked eyebrows and too-tanned skin; the contrast between 35-year-old Jude Law's thinning hair and his army jackets. And Russell Brand, who at 32 should start rethinking his signature silhouette quite soon, because his hips are perhaps no longer as lithe, and his arse no longer as trim, as his super-skinny jeans require (and the kaftans aren't distracting us). These boys are a couple of years and a couple of bad denim choices away from Tony Blair and Jeremy Clarkson in jeans status. Or Richard Madeley, in weekend garb.

On the face

Deja pseu in the comments sums up to the letter my views on cheap face creams:

Every time I've tried the new Olay "wonder cream" du jour, it's sat on top of my skin like a sticky film.

I did not start using a moisturiser until I was in my early thirties for this very reason. Every cheap cream I tried made me want to wash my face as soon as I put it on. Then one day Shiseido launched in Canada, where I was living, with a machiney thing that took a picture of your skin and told you the rate at which you were ageing. Needless to say, I bought the entire range. It was apparent that one of the big differences between cheap and expensive creams was/is the formulation rather than the contents.

I have used a variety of brands since then, and every excursion into the budget ranges including Boots No 7 has produced exactly the same sensation of wanting to wash my face because they don't seem to be absorbed by my skin.

I no longer now buy anything without consulting first with Mary Greenwell, so a week or two ago I asked her to recommend a lighter weight summer night cream. She is a big fan of Chanel and she told me to try HydraMax+. I found the fluid formula to be perfect for summer, and that's what I'm now using. Do I believe that it will give me younger firmer skin? No. I just want it to do the business of supplying moisture.