Canonical Jewish books

The ultimate guide to the books that every Jew needs to own. My choice

Quidditch at Vassar

In my day we did drugs

London Fashion Week and to Milan

A slide show of highlights from all the collections, here

That's Richard Nichol, above. What did I tell you about sleeveless jackets?

Meanwhile Milan Fashion Week opened with, sit down hold on to a stable surface, ask for brandy if necessary, the Elena Miro show. Elena Miro designs for plus size.

I personally don't like her collection, but see what you think.

Sleeves: Decoding what the designers are saying

'Yes, of course we know that middle aged women want to cover up their arms, but that is not our problem. For the past few years we have been designing sleeveless dresses because that is what is we want to design. The fact that many women can't wear these dresses is of no consequence. We do not wish to sell to these women because we do not want them to wear our clothes. We realise that we are losing a huge revenue from this clientele, but although we are financially on the brink of ruin, we are artists not business people. We prefer not to make a profit and go under rather than compromise our artistic vision and make dresses with sleeves. No sleeves. Sorry. We are not really sorry. We just don't care what you want. We are directional people, you should want what we tell you to want and if you can't wear it, well, you are not our market.

'For Spring/Summer 09 we are introducing jackets without sleeves. Autumn/Winter 09, shoes without soles. '

Harry Remembers Slogans

A couple of weeks ago I had dinner with some new acquaintances. It was a very pleasant evening and in the course of the conversation (which did not include the subject of long sleeved evening dresses) , it transpired that they were old friends of Katherine Hamnett. A name , I suggested , that doesn’t come up that often nowadays.
I was curious to know if she was still in business. Indeed she is. I gather most of her business is web –based ( this is the link)
I recalled her campaigning for organic cotton, and her anti nuclear stance in the eighties. Her web-site shows that her campaigning continues with vigour. Including Concentrated Solar Power, which I confess is news to me.

Of course I remember most vividly her encounter with Margaret Thatcher in the 80’s when she was famously photographed with the T –shirt that boldly proclaimed ‘No to Pershing’. A coup of a very high order. And an understanding of the dynamics of slogan T –shirts that nobody has bettered.

Ms Hamnett is still marketing similar shirts. But it occurred to me that I don’t see any slogans on the streets any more.
Shirts often seem to be ‘decorated ‘ with type, but it’s usually decoration with no content.
I asked my daughter and a friend ( 20) whether I was missing something. Apparently I’m not. The slogans they are aware of came from the likes of Topshop and are merely modish cultural references. Even if they appeared to have some content they were explicitly superficial and, as is often the case nowadays, ironic.

I don’t believe I am lamenting the demise of the slogan so much as I am bothered by the absence of seriousness and originality. Which has been elbowed out of the way by the trivial and a form of consumer idolatry ( half the population are apparently fulfilled by turning themselves into walking billboards for Diesel and Abercrombie and Fitch and their ilk).

But then…. who am I to talk?
Way back , in early teenager-hood , I was a big fan of satire, exemplified by the esteemed magazine Private Eye. They produced their own merchandise and I coveted it. I saved my pennies and bought a t shirt by mail order. They were amongst the first ( as far as I am aware ) to create such cultural artefacts.
When it arrived my joy was unconfined. In big black type it proudly proclaimed: 'Death to Sir Albert Strume'. I thought it was hilarious . (Sir Albert was , of course, entirely fictitious.)

At the earliest opportunity I wore it when I next played tennis.
After half an hour the club secretary ( a diminutive woman with massive thighs and a powerful forehand) appeared on the court in a state of high officiousness and promptly ordered me off. It wasn’t just that I was in contravention of club rules , but she was visibly agitated and outraged.
I had no idea it would be so provocative.
And of course I was delighted that it was.

Upcoming appearances

I'll be doing several events between now and the end of the year, including appearances at the Vancouver and Toronto literary festivals in late October. My main website has all the details.

A resolution and a wrecked back

Thank you for your very many suggestions. I hope anyone in my predicament has been following and taking notes.

Yesterday morning I received a useful email from a fashion editor I'd been talking to at the Anya Hindmarch press day who said that she thought the point was not buying a fabulous new dress for the occasion but putting together an outfit that worked for the occasion, parts of which will be televised. She gave some some tips about black, why not to wear it but how to offset it if you do (with gold). On that basis I went to my final stop, Liberty ,yesterday. There were only a handful of long dresses and while a couple had sleeves they were heavily beaded, cost thousands and not my kind of thing.

What they also had were several of the kinds of jackets I'd been thinking of, so I determined that I will wear my sea green MaxMara dress. There were a couple of lovely Dries van Noten jackets, though very expensive, and I was prepared to consider them. But when I got to the Issey Miyake Pleats Please section, I found a very simple but beautifully cut and structured black jacket at only £200. And which I could wear with anything. I bought that jacket, but decided I would go and take a look at the Issey Miyake Pleats Please shop off Bond Street to see if they have it in any other colours. Found it was closed for renovation until Monday, so I will go back then.

At home, I put together the dress with the jacket and a gold, jade and labradorite statement necklace. It looked sensational. As my friend R. in Istanbul, said, during an hour long phone conversation last night, the jacket would be even better in dark green. Anya Hindmarch is very kindly lending me the sample of next season's gold python clutch for the evening. So at present we have a theme of sea green black and gold which I think is simple but sophisticated (and all good colours for me.)

So I'm done. My back is totally wrecked from walking around for four hours in high-heeled boots on Wednesday, I don't want to see another shop for a long long time - at least, oh, four or five days? And that was starting with a dress I already have. The day of the prize 14 October, I'll post pictures of the whole outfit.

The only two pleasures of the past two days have been Anya's press day which was basically girls in a sweetshop (and I've ordered that python clutch for next summer) and, the sudden upsurge in interest by US publishers in The Clothes On Their Backs. For US readers, I will have more to report next week.

Dark at the end of the tunnel

At Browns: 'There is a huge demand by our customers for evening dresses with sleeves which we can't meet because we haven't got the stock. The designers aren't making them.'

At Donna Karan: 'Anything with sleeves sells out the day it comes in in the larger sizes.’

At Harvey Nichols/Harrods/Alberta Ferretti: 'No. Nothing. Only have left in in XS. Sold out. Don't stock. Have you tried . . .'

At the press day for Anya Hindmarch SS09 (three fashion editors): 'Black tie is a nightmare if you want sleeves.'

Jaeger: new readers start here

Jaeger is a brand which is 125 years old. It started out making woollen underwear (George Bernard Shaw said he looked like a radish in his) but by the 30s had branched out into fashion and established the Regent Street flagship store it still occupies. By the 60s Jaeger was a byword for very good quality beautiful clothes and its junior label, Young Jaeger had ad campaigns modelled by Jean Shrimpton and shot by David Bailey. Many fashion houses went under in the 70s, Jaeger survived, but its clothes were in a word, frumpy. They were clothes your mother wore, if your mother liked understated, boring beige elegance. By the turn of this decade Jaeger was essentially a brand for old ladies.

Just before it was sold to its present owner, Chairman of the British Fashion Council, Harold Tillman, it divested itself of its US standalone stores, and took on designer Bella Freud who injected some youth into the label. By the summer of 2006, with a new CEO, Belinda Earle at the helm, who had turned around the department store Debenhams by introducing line-ups with designers like Jasper Conran, Julien McDonald, and Ben de Lisi, it had take stock of what it was producing and discovered that it had lost its DNA. It was making beige and pastel polyester sacks.

It divided the company into three labels: Jaeger London, Jaeger Black (high-end conservative investment dressing) and Jaeger Collection, the continuation of what it had been doing for the last couple of decades so as not to lose its existing customer base. Jaeger London is what I will be talking about here.

It was the summer of 2006 that I started noticing a black tunic dress with little bobbles at the hem. Anya Hindmarch was wearing it and when I asked her where it was from, she said with a blush Jaeger though she had 'had to fall over several zimmer frames to reach it.' The dress was featured in the fashion victim's bible, Grazia. Alexandra Shulman, editor of Vogue, mentioned Jaeger to me, and finally I saw Hillary Alexander, the Telegraph's fashion editor, wearing a Jaeger dress with a MaxMara jacket at a party at the V&A. (She was wearing the same dress at Jaeger's show on Monday.)

This was when I bought my first Jaeger dress.

Last February Jaeger London held its first ever show at London Fashion Week and it was a sensation. The clothes started arriving in the shops in the middle of August and most are now in. I have been steadily buying several pieces and they form the mainstay of my wardrobe. On Monday Jaeger held its second show, and the reviews were all raves. This is down to the vision of Belinda Earle and the design talent of Karen Boyd who had a label with Helen Storey in the 80s.

What is it I like about Jaeger? Two things:

- I have been convinced for a year now that over a certain age, and in this economy, it's better to buy a smaller number of well made garments than loads of cheap of-the-moment items from Zara and H&M. Jaeger prices at the lower end of the designer price-range, so within reach and they have excellent sales

- Jaeger designs edgy clothes for older women, by older, I mean over 35-40, which they recognise to be their market. Belinda Earle told me that the mantra for their customer is fit and flatter, but we're the generations which were wearing mini skirts in the 60s or body con bandage dresses in the 80s. We don't want to look like our mothers. We want to go forward with style.

Sitting on the second row on Monday, directly behind Erin O'Connor, and two of the Jagger girls, you understood that Jaeger's mission to throw off its frumpy associations were complete. Kate Moss wears Jaeger and now Lizzie Jagger does too. The coat I nearly bought was worn by Shirley Bassey and Erin O'Connor, over fifty years apart in age.

I understand that in the next year Jaeger will be expanding internationally and into partnerships with US department stores. So if you're in the US and can't yet get your hands on this brand, I'm really sorry, because as the US economy staggers from disaster to disaster with worrying consequences for all of us, it's nice for us over here to be a bit proud to be British.

London Fashion Week: Jaeger

London Fashion Week started on Sunday and I have been a bit out of the loop because of the previous week's excitement but I wouldn't miss Jaeger's second catwalk show in its 125 year history, particularly as my Autumn/Winter wardrobe is dominated by what I saw at the February show.

LFW shows take place in a marquee in front of the Natural History Museum in Kensington. There's a champagne bar while you're waiting to go in and what struck me was how many women in the crowd were wearing Jaeger. Now it's only polite to wear the designer to the show, but the crowd were fashion journalists who dash from one collection to the next and it's hard to see how they could change between shows. I was wearing this top, and I must have seen it on seven or eight other women.


Most gratifying of all was sighting Mary Portas, the woman who masterminded the transformation of Harvey Nicks, wearing a coat-dress I have waiting in the wardrobe to be worn. She wore hers as a mini dress, with bare legs. I'll be wearing mine over a skinny rib sweater and wide leg trousers, as soon as it gets cold enough.


One Jaeger wearer is Sarah Brown, the Prime Minister's wife, who wore Jaeger at a party she hosted last night at 10 Downing Street to celebrate the launch of fashion week.

I had ten minutes or so with Alexandra Shulman to discuss my Booker Prize dress, and we agreed that the sleeves issue is a total nightmare. You might think that being editor of Vogue you would no longer have such problems. You would be wrong. I was stunned by one of the disasters she recounted to me.

Took my seat on the second row and immediately about twenty snappers came and started shoving their lenses into my face, and how nice, I thought that the fashion world recognises literary excellence, until I realised I was sitting behind Erin O'Connor and two of the Jagger girls. O'Connor was wearing this coat, which I had nearly bought but finally went for the Armani instead, and seeing it on her, I am very glad I didn't. It would have destroyed it for me. I am not quite the same shape or size or height as Erin O'Connor.


The key to the show was colour - dragee shades, which I love, stronger than pastels- and sleeves - floaty, handkerchief sleeves on maxi dresses and tops, Incredibly clever of the Jaeger people to work out that we will wear maxi-dresses, but not if they're halter neck.


You can see the whole show here, but first on my list to buy next summer is this top



I'm incredibly pleased that in Britain we have a range which is priced at the low end of designer with such strong quirky style. I wonder if the fact that Jaeger is producing such beautiful wearable clothes is down to the fact that its designer, Karen Boyd, looks like this:

I have that scarf
and yes, that's my neck to the left of Erin's head.

Oh what am I going to wear Pt 2

This afternoon I went to the Jaeger SS09 show at London Fashion Week and managed to snatch ten minutes beforehand with Alexandra Shulman, editor of Vogue, in which I talked her through my what-am-I-going-to-wear issues. I shan't divulge the content of a private conversation, all I can say is, my view that it was pointless to go looking for an evening dress with sleeves was confirmed.

More on Jaeger tomorrow

Edward Stiechen for Vogue

Justine Picardie writes:

The pictures, taken during Steichen's 14-year reign at Vogue and Vanity Fair, when he was dubbed 'America's court portraitist', reveal themselves as the prototypes for the work of Mario Testino and Annie Leibovitz: for they are intended to flatter, rather than reveal imperfection; to encapsulate heroism and intensify iconic status; in other words, to make the rich and famous look like even more gilded versions of themselves.

The wrong stripes

Science has now vindicated what we always knew: vertical stripes make you look fatter. But note the final sentence.

. . . women’s bodies are, by their very nature, curvy things. Stripes are straight. If you put a straight vertical stripe on a curvy bottom, the line of the stripe will be distorted by the body beneath – which will serve only to accentuate the bulge.

The same is not nearly so true of horizontal stripes, which is why hooped tights occasionally make a comeback, whereas vertically striped ones, as favoured by Mary Quant in the Sixties, are consigned to the history books.

In truth, stripes in general are not particularly flattering to the fuller figure. Geometric patterns and organic shapes, on the other hand, work very well, breaking up the surface area covered and confusing the eye into believing it smaller. But the awful truth remains: being fat makes you look fat, and no amount of fabric, can ever truly conceal it.

Oh what shall I wear?

For the Booker Prize black tie dinner on October 14, I am toying with wearing a sea green MaxMara long dress which I've had for years but only found one occasion to wear. I have the bag, I have the shoes, but the dress is sleeveless and I must have something to cover my arms, and what shall it be?

Looking in Selfridge's all I can find are those beaded Caroline Charles jackets which I find a bit matronly. Someone suggests a shrug, which I always think look they've been designed for babies. I don't like the shrunken look. Someone else mentions a wrap, but how do you eat dinner with a shawl tied round your shoulders, and won't it just fall off? You can wind up looking like a crazy old lady with a shawl tied akimbo around your shoulders.

£695 just to cover your arms

At last, the New York shows

Michael Kors

In all the excitement I have completely missed the big stories of the week, that sciency thing that happened on Wednesday, and the New York collections.

Jess Cartner-Morley in the Guardian has the summing-up:

What this means in terms of steering the direction of fashion is that femininity - in its American form as wholesome, healthsome and sunshine-bright, rather than the European incarnation as complicated, mysterious, troublesome and flouncy - once again rules the catwalk. The seeds of androgyny and sci-fi futurism sown in so many of last season's influential shows have fallen on unfriendly ground here. There was a clear sartorial divide, this week, among the show audiences who parade around the venue between pre sentations: while the Europeans are embracing sharp black tailoring and challenging trouser shapes, the Americans are all about an uptown citrus shift (think Cindy) or a cute floral leavened with a black belt (pure Michelle).

Books and frocks, my two favourite things.

I had been sitting on the knowledge of the Booker shortlisting since last Wednesday, unable to tell anyone but a few close friends. The Booker people let your publisher know in advance so they can organise reprints and have stock ready to go into the bookshops. To his credit, when I told Harry, his first question was: what are you going to wear. That boy gets more metrosexual by the minute. It will be manscara next.

One person I did let into my confidence was Anya Hindmarch who 'gifted' as the saying goes in fashion PR a gold clutch. Yay, Anya, thank you. Saturday was taken up with buying a dress for the grand party at the V&A on the night of the shortlist announcement. Eventually I got this from Jaeger which I had admired many times but always assumed it was the wrong shape for me. Two very bossy young German sales assistants insisted I tried it on, and - well, what do you know? So I succumbed to the matching necklace, too.

On Tuesday, at the hairdressers, I happened into L.K. Bennett, and found a pair of very high heels which were oddly quite comfortable. I'll not be previewing my October 14 wardrobe, but for the moment, I'm thinking of a MaxMara long dress I've only worn once, with something to cover the arms, as yet unbought.

More on all of this later.

Someone in the comments said that the Booker was only bettered by the Nobel, and I think that's probably true. It is the international literary prize that has the most attention from the media. It is not open to American writers, but then the Pulitzer is only open to US citizens and the National Book Award is only open to books published in the US, which rules out many writers, such as myself, who have had difficulty getting a US deal. Regular readers will recollect that I posted a rejection letter from one major house which raved about the book but said it was 'too British' for the American readers. There has, in the past few months, been a huge upswing in Anglophilia in the US. This I'm sure can be only reason why, in the twenty-four hours after the shortlist announcement, eleven major American publishers contacted my agent to ask if they could be sent copies to consider.

There is an import edition currently available on Amazon.com with a 2-4week delivery time , but anyone abroad who'd like to order would do better with the Book Depository, which offers books at Amazon.uk prices but free delivery worldwide and has several fulfilment centres in the US.

This is a wonderful shortlist to be on (sorry, Sir Salman, I'm sure your time will come) and I'm particularly thrilled to share the list with the wonderful and funny Sebastian Barry and the great Indian writer Amitav Ghosh. Someone remarked on the fact that I am the only woman on the shortlist. It is ten years since this was last the case and sixteen since an all-male shortlist caused such outrage that it led to the creation of the Orange Prize. One lamentable exclusion was a short and extraordinary book by the Australian writer Helen Garner. It's called The Spare Room and was described by Peter Carey as the 'perfect book'.

So five weeks to go until the big night. Several people have raised questions about the press photos. here's the thing, any day now I must get round to contacting all those papers which took flattering pics of me over the years and ask them to delete the ones that are nearly a decade old and replace them with ones of me looking older and wiser.

I'd particularly like to commend that newspaper of record the International Herald Tribune for knocking five years of my age.

For the record, this remains my favourite picture of myself. It's six years old but it looks like me, and it is me. It was taken by one of my closest friends, more used to photographing warlords with the latest must-have AK47. I asked him if he would do mendacious flattery but he said not for love nor money, no.
Of course that was before Roger sorted out my fringe.

NOTE: The Jaeger dress isn't the one I'll be wearing at the black tie dinner on the 14th October, it's the one I wore at the shortlist party at the V&A on Tuesday night.

Harry Contemplates Modernity

For some men, skin care and grooming goes beyond a quick shave. In fact, some men – both "metrosexuals" and the simply fastidious – have long followed a strict cleanse, tone and moisturise routine. And now, a new beauty must-have tailored specifically for 'im Indoors has arrived.

The article in Tuesday’s Independent is referring to the launch of YSL’s Touche Eclat for Men.
( read it here)

I don’t know about ‘must have’. For me it’s more a case of must try to understand exactly what it is they are talking about.
I thought I would refer to this feature before the Thoughtful Dresser brought it to my attention. She regards my ignorance of male cosmetics ( that’s probably the wrong term) as quite neanderthal.
I am not quite sure why I remain in a state of ignorance. Way back in the late 60’s I was an early adopter. Well, at least as far as hair was concerned. Tame, a hair conditioner, was for me an utterly radical discovery. ( This was in the days when it was assumed we all had dandruff because the only shampoos in our house were ‘medicated’) And then came Cossack hair spray for men. A black and red canister with the silhouette of a charging Cossack. It didn’t exactly transform my life but it did help keep the mod hair cut in place. I thought it was rather sophisticated. My father, however, found my use of it just a little bit questionable.
Anyhow YSL’s new product launch reminds me that I really should investigate the two Clinique products that TTD has brought to my attention. Apparently I should be using them regularly.
I guess it may be time to get modern all over again.
And I know modern will mean no more pictures of Cossacks.


Note: My searches have not found a picture of the male version of the product. So I have put the wrong picture in rather than a photo of an investment banker (which is what the Independent used.)

Get a load of

this

Normal service will be resumed as soon as all the fuss dies down

Harry Mentions Handbags

I notice that the Thoughtful Dresser hasn’t mentioned handbags recently.
I am stepping outside my comfort zone by venturing into this territory. I know little about the current mania for these rather expensive accessories.
However, on my recent trip to Paris I stayed with my old friend James. He has been resident there for ten years and offers consultancy to a number of businesses who require intelligent marketing input from an urbane Brit with several languages and a wealth of experience.
In comparing notes on each other’s current pre-occupations he informed me that he had recently been retained by an LA based brand, Romanek, purveyors of high fashion handbags.
I have to confess that this is a name that I wasn’t familiar with.
Anyhow, he e- mailed me recently and amongst other things told me that the new Romanek web site is up and running. And in the spirit of returning a favour I am drawing it to your attention.
I believe that the Thoughtful Dresser favours Anya Hindmarch.
But I gather that the Romanek ‘Rockstar’ ( above) is often to be seen at glitzy functions. And the Thoughtful Dresser will be attending a very prestigious one in a few weeks time. Congratulations from Harry.

The Booker Prize shortlist

. . . . is announced.

The Secret Scripture - Sebastian Barry

The Sea of Poppies - Amitav Ghosh Murray

The Clothes on Their Backs - Linda Grant

The Northern Clemency - Philip Hensher

A Fraction of The Whole - Steve Toltz

The White Tiger - Aravind Adiga

The shortlisted authors were informed last Wednesday as keen-eyed readers of this site might have worked out.

All shortlisted authors will be doing a reading at the South Bank Centre in London 13 October. Details here