Tonight:
4°c
Hands up who worked last Friday? Karl Lagerfeld, for one. While most designers were still sunning themselves in Mauritius, Lagerfeld was up bright and early for a bracing new year's interview with Evan Davis for the Today programme. This is how you stay at the top of your game: by working while the competition plays.
One day I hope to switch on Top Gear and find Miuccia Prada forcing Jeremy Clarkson to defend the cost of yet another pointless luxury car. But I don't think it will happen in my lifetime. Until then, as the recession deepens, the fashion industry will bear the brunt of our opprobrium as it always does. Asked to justify the cost of a Chanel handbag, Lagerfeld was joyously unrepentant, in the way that only a man in charge of the world's most luxurious luxury brand can be. "If you want only things you can afford, it is boring. It's great to see things you may not buy because you don't have the money. It's very ugly to think they shouldn't exist because you cannot buy them."
The world is divided into two camps: those who see expensive handbags as the root of all evil ("it's overpriced baubles comme ça that have got us into debt in the first place") and those who see their beauty as a force of good. Obviously I am biased, but I don't think the world need become an ugly place, just because ugly things are happening. For don't we need beauty more than ever? I can't afford a Chanel handbag either, but the small ray of hope that I might do, if I work hard, keeps me going. These days, we all need our dreams to cling to: four wheeled, gilt chained or otherwise.
Every fashionable Londoner worth her second home in Suffolk knows that, in addition to the Aga and the log fire, the one item she needs to blend in with the locals is a pair of Hunter wellies. So after spending part of my Christmas buried deep in the Yorkshire countryside, I was interested to learn that real country folk wouldn't be seen dead in them. "Townies' wellies," my brother-in-law sniffed disdainfully, "and don't even start me on the coloured ones." Hmm - just as well I hadn't packed my red pair. Note to townies: if you want to make like a fully-fledged member of the country set, ditch the Hunters for Argylls. They might not be as flattering on the leg, but they're "the strongest boots on the farm", apparently, and everybody wears them. So now you know.
Being Scottish, I like nothing more than a hearty New Year's greeting, as the volume of drunken texts sent from my mobile in the early hours of 1 January will attest. But it's a tad disconcerting to get back to work and find an inbox full of "Happy New Year" messages from people I barely know. The corporate New Year greeting always leaves a bad taste in the mouth, not least because it's usually a thinly-disguised attempt to get you to buy something. So Happy New Year to you, too, dear Amazon, Ocado, Fine Stationery etc - I hope you don't just love me for my money.
Reader views (1)
Thank you laura craik for completely and utterly missing the point.
Your ideas of "it's overpriced baubles comme ça that have got us into debt in the first place" and "those who see their beauty as a force of good" are completely irrelevant.
Chanel is not FORCING you to buy their products, they are simply available. You might as well blame all of the murders in the world on the weapons themselves, rather than the people behind them if you take that attitude.
Or are you so weak willed that these inanimate objects do indeed make decisions for you?
- D, London, 05/01/2009 14:33
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