Morning:
8°c
As the financial markets dip up and down, anything feels possible and suddenly life seems very harsh. There is, however, an antidote, guaranteed to keep you laughing like a maniac through the doom and gloom — keep an eye on what the fashion industry is doing.
Ever calm in a crisis, Planet Fashion can be relied upon to encourage us all to throw caution to the wind and spend, spend, spend. Of course they can't say it outright — that would be silly — so they have to pretend that they're at least giving a nod to propriety. Hence hundreds of earnest, well-meaning magazine pronouncements about the importance of possessing “heritage items” and the ultimate capsule wardrobe.
Investment dressing, they would have us believe, has never been more crucial. This is all secret code for one message: whatever you do, don't stop buying stuff.
But buyer, beware credit-crunch chic. For we are about to bear witness to all manner of bonkers suggestions which involve spending money supposedly in order to save it.
In light of this week's events, one fashion editor counsels “finishing your outfit off with diamonds” (she advocates £1,800 Coleman Douglas earrings). And why not cope with impending pecuniary disaster by opting for diffusion lines and cruise collections instead of haute couture? At Elle magazine, they advise a £180 blouse by K for Karl Lagerfeld. Instead of what? A £500 blouse? This is not a defiance of the credit crunch, this is the spirit of Marie Antoinette.
I have to say, though: I love it. My guilty conscience only stretches to Marks and Spencer's lately, where I nervously bought two £25 blouses last week. This counts as patriotism not consumerism. With more austerity looming, I have never felt such an urgent need to salivate over beautiful, unaffordable luxuries. And fashion always responds to moments of crisis by going in completely the opposite direction. After the Second World War, Christian Dior launched the New Look in the face of widespread poverty. His designs were so overblown and sumptuous that they caused outrage. But Dior knew what people were hungry for — fantasy and escape.
For the same reason, women in post-Communist countries have always worn their body weight in frosted lipstick and electric blue eyeliner. Indeed, if Russian women ever stop being so competitively high-maintenance, it will be a sign that life in their homeland has truly improved and that they don't need to cheer themselves up with their looks any more. (I can't wait to see the ladies of Londongrad up their game in the current crisis.) When you have known misery, glamour is your brave face.
Fashion is a compensation for life's other disappointments — and we will need its improbable excesses all the more in the months to come. I salute Sir Philip Green's call to arms in the face of one per cent high street losses this week: “People are going to go shopping. The world is not going to stop.”
Maybe, perversely, the fashionistas are the responsible ones. By behaving as if nothing serious has actually happened, they prevent fear and panic from escalating and allow the markets to stabilise at their own pace. Let me just fish
that Tiffany's catalogue out of the recycling box.
Nicole gives us grey power
You need a magnifying glass to see it but apparently Nicole Kidman's grey hair caused raised eyebrows at the Annual Women in Hollywood Tribute in Beverly Hills this week. Obviously she's had little time to get to the hairdresser, what with the small detail of having a three-month-old baby. Or maybe it's intentional? For some months I, too, have been cultivating the dye-free “silver fox” coiffure as seen on Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada. My attempt is born of curiosity. What does my real hair look like? Unfortunately, at this early stage it looks as if the answer is a Brillo pad. As Nicole must know only too well, the big problem with going grey is the growing-out stage. The effect is distinctively badger-like. But patience, Nicole, patience! We will be foxes yet.
My Booker (very) shortlist
One week to go to the Booker Prize and my lifelong quest to engage fully with the process remains unfulfilled. Every year I intend to read all the books on the list and every year I fail. How do the Booker judges do it? Hardeep Singh Kohli has said that he intends to read all six books on the shortlist at least three times.
All power to him. Meanwhile, I burn with desire to make indignant and pompous protestations about the winner — but how can I when I have only managed to read a third of the list?
So far fortune is smiling on me, though — the two that I have read, by Linda Grant and Aravind Adiga, are currently in Ladbrokes' top two spots for the prize. I can feel my self-righteous streak twitching already.
