Handbags and Gladrags

by Maggie Alderson

  But Paul was looking at me with the tip of his tongue peeping out of the corner of his mouth. It looked so pink next to his black skin. He had a look on his face I knew very well.

  ‘What?’ I said, crossly.

  ‘What what?’ he answered, still looking at me that way.

  ‘You’ve got your listening face on,’ I said. ‘I know you’re thinking something.’

  ‘I’m thinking you’re the one that needs to do some listening,’ he said.

  ‘Uh? What are you on about?’ I said, getting annoyed. ‘Have another coffee and get that dazed look off your face, it spooks me out. When are you going to Paris anyway? Are you going to spend some time in London in between? Is that the Miu Miu jacket you were telling me about? It’s great. I love that colour on you.’

  He shook his head at me.

  ‘Nice boots, Emily,’ he said. ‘New, are they? Nice bag. Limited edition? Must have been expensive. Great jacket. It’s Marc Jacobs, isn’t it? Is it size eight? Wow, you must be a really great person.’

  I just looked at him. What was he going on about?

  ‘There’s more to life than shopping, Emily,’ he said, then he sighed deeply and turned his attention to the barista, ordering us two more coffees.

  I looked down at my Prada boots. He was right, they were great.

  By 8.45 that night I wasn’t so keen on my new boots. They were absolutely killing me and Bee was in such a filthy mood that, despite my pleas, she had refused to let us take a detour via the hotel between our punishing schedule of shows and appointments, so I could change them.

  ‘Suffer,’ had been her final comment on it when my whingeing had reached what she considered an unacceptable point.

  It was the last day of the Milan shows – the day of Iggy’s debut for Rucca – and Bee seemed to have gone into hypermania about fitting in as many advertising appointments as possible. It was the same every season.

  There was a lovely cruise-y time in the middle of the week, when she would relax and take us out for lunch and shopping and other treats. During the midweek lull she’d always talk about coming back to Milan in a few weeks’ time, to schmooze all the designers and PRs at a more leisurely pace, but as the time to go home approached, she clearly went off that idea and was determined to cram it all into the remaining time. Then she’d go into nightmare editor mode and work us like pit ponies until we got on the plane back to London.

  By the time we were in the car on our way to the Rucca show that evening, my face was so tired of smiling at hideous hag PRs and their ghastly clothes, I felt like it was going to crack and fall off. I was seriously over it, but it was quite a contest between all of us in that car, who was in the worst mood. As well as my boots – I was sure I could feel blood seeping into the leather – I was fuming because Bee’s insistence at fitting in two more ‘essential’ advertiser visits, one of them with a lingerie company, for pity’s sake, had made us really late for the show.

  And I mean really late, not just fashion late, but miss-it late. It was already forty-five minutes after the time on the invitation and we weren’t even there yet. The show was being held in an old book-binding plant so far out of the centre of Milan it was practically in Switzerland and I was terrified we were going to blow it. It had happened. I’d had to stand at the back of Versace once after Bee pulled one of these stunts. I was not going to stand at this show.

  ‘Can’t you move over one inch?’ snapped Frannie – in the middle seat – at Alice, who was doing extravagant yoga stretches from the comfort of her corner. ‘I’m not a bloody contortionist.’

  ‘Oh, do stop waving your arms about, Alice,’ yelled Bee simultaneously from the front. ‘You’re putting Luigi off his driving, which is dangerous with an Italian.

  ‘For GOD’s sake,’ she yelled at him as he swerved wildly around an old lady at a crossing, prompting a frenzy of honking and gesticulating from other cars. ‘What is the matter with you people? Why can’t you drive like normal humans? You all think you’re bloody Senna and guess what? He’s dead.’

  I saw Luigi’s eyes crinkle with mirth in the rear-view mirror. He had clearly done it on purpose for his own amusement. He leant over and pushed in the car’s cigarette lighter – he knew how to calm Bee down.

  ‘Why do they have to have this show at this ridiculous venue anyway?’ she was spluttering on.

  ‘It’s only the same place as DSquared2,’ said Frannie, who was in her most argumentative grammar-school-girl mood. She even annoyed me when she turned into Miss Prissy Know-It-All.

  ‘I know that,’ snapped Bee. ‘But it’s still a bloody stupid place to have to come at night. Rucca always used to show in Via Sant’ Andrea, which was so handy for dinner, but this Croatian idiot has to make it hard for everyone.’

  ‘Serbian,’ said Frannie quietly.

  ‘I really don’t care where he’s from,’ yelled Bee, practically snatching the lit cigarette being proffered by Luigi. ‘He’s an arsehole wherever it is. An arsehole with a really stupid name.’

  ‘A really stupid name that would look great on our cover…’ whispered Fran to me, nailing the real problem Bee was having with the whole event. It was going to be Beaver’s moment of glory by proxy.

  The mob scene that greeted us when we finally arrived at the old factory – now a full fifty-five minutes late – just cranked Bee’s fury up a little more. There were hordes of paparazzi and a great roiling crowd of people trying to get into the venue.

  ‘Oh, that’s all I need,’ snarled Bee, reapplying her lipstick in Luigi’s rear-view mirror, which she had yanked round to face her. ‘Fashion students.’

  I could see her eyes reflected back to me in the mirror and despite the venom in her voice, there was a vulnerable look there. But from the moment Luigi opened the car door to let her out, you would never have guessed it.

  She swung her long thin shins out of the car like the fashion royalty she was and glided towards the heaving throng with regal grace, despite the fact she was wearing skyscraper heels, the ground was treacherous with potholes and, except for a few blinding arc lights intermittently sweeping over us, it was pitch black.

  Adding to the intensity of the scene, it was raining slightly and the air was booming with the sound of low-flying helicopters. I kept looking up and flinching, even after I realized it was being broadcast from speakers. Dodging choppers that weren’t there, I managed to walk right into a major concrete crevasse and gave my ankle a nasty twist. It was the same foot that was bleeding, but it could have been worse, I told myself, I could have damaged the boot’s heel. I hobbled on.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said Frannie, as we pushed our way into the mêlée, waving our invitations over our heads. Most of the people there didn’t even have them and were just trying to get in on bluff, such was the level of hype about Iggy’s first show for the label.

  ‘I bloody hate crushy crowds,’ said Frannie. ‘I always feel like I’m going to suffocate.’

  I looked down at her ginger head. She was a good foot below me and I could see there wasn’t much air down there.

  ‘That’s why you should wear heels, Frannie,’ I said. ‘They’re protective clothing in this situation.’

  Standing on my good foot, I used the stiletto heel on my other one as a weapon to deter a skinny-hipped Italian guy who was trying to push in front of me. He was the worst kind of Eurotrash modelizer in his jeans and blazer and he wasn’t going to get in my way. I got him right down the left shin and as he yelped back with pain, I grabbed hold of Frannie’s arm and pushed my Louis Vuitton-clad shoulder into the crowd.

  I could just see Bee’s head way in front of us, slicing seamlessly through the mob. Something about her bearing made the gatecrashers and the security guards part like the Red Sea and I saw her disappear into the venue. I relied on brute force. A rugby union prop forward could not have got through that crowd quicker than I did, until we were brought to an abrupt stop, faced with a wall of huge bouncers.

  ‘No more,’
said the one right in front of us, standing there like something out of The Arabian Nights, his ham-like forearms folded in front of him. He was so huge it wasn’t even funny. They must have made his black suit specially out of old tarpaulins. Frannie’s face was practically at a level with his crutch.

  ‘We have invitations,’ I shouted at him. ‘With seats.’

  I showed him my invitation and seat number. GA12.

  ‘No more,’ said Gigantor. ‘Full.’

  ‘Front row!’ I screamed at him.

  ‘Full,’ he repeated back at me, a glimmer of sadistic pleasure in his primitive dinosaur eyes.

  I felt physically ill as I heard the unmistakeable sound of the first bars of ‘Blue Monday’ come throbbing out through the door.

  It was Nelly’s favourite track. Of course she’d start the show with that. I felt quite desperate. Not only was I going to miss my best friend’s boyfriend’s show, but the glory of strutting over to my first-ever front-row seat.

  At that moment Frannie made a very strange sound. I looked down to see vomit cascading from her mouth on to Gigantor’s surprisingly small black shoes. He sprang back in horror. Frannie grabbed my hand and we sprang forward into the venue. We didn’t look back, but just made straight for where we thought the catwalk should be in the darkness of the venue – and we walked right into Nelly.

  ‘Where the fuck have you fuckers been?’ she screamed at us.

  ‘Bloody Bee made us bloody late,’ I screamed back. ‘And then your bloody bouncers wouldn’t let us in.’

  ‘I’ve held the show up for you. They’ve already played this three times,’ said Nelly, looking at Frannie, who was wiping her mouth on a tissue. ‘What the fuck happened to you?’

  ‘I vomited,’ she said, picking bits out of her teeth with her tongue. ‘To order. Taught myself to do it at school, for when I hadn’t done my Latin homework.’

  Nelly just grabbed our hands and marched us into the black space. I could feel rather than see that it was packed with people and I couldn’t imagine how there could be a spare seat in the place, but Nelly didn’t falter as she dragged us over other people’s feet and bags round the edge of the catwalk. It was so thrilling I forgot I had a bleeding foot and a sprained ankle.

  She walked us straight up to the prime position in front of the photographers, plonked us in the front row and disappeared. It took me about three seconds after my eyes got used to the dim lighting, to realize I was sitting next to Anna Wintour. As I nudged Frannie to alert her to our proximity to a deity and frantically scrabbled through my bag for my glasses and notebook, Ms Wintour didn’t even turn her glossy basilisk head, but continued to stare straight ahead down the runway through her huge black sunglasses.

  I looked left along the edge of the catwalk to where Bee and Beaver were sitting side by side looking over at me and Frannie – with their mouths hanging open and pursed up respectively. I glanced quickly back over my right shoulder and saw Miles grinning down at me, shaking his head and smiling. And then the show began.

  It was, as the saying goes, a fashion ‘moment’. From the minute it started there was a tingling magic in the air that only happens very occasionally at a fashion show – and not even every season. I’d experienced it before at a few shows – Tom Ford, John Galliano, Alexander McQueen and Miuccia Prada had all taken their turns to cook it up over the years I had been doing the collections – and there was always something weirdly emotional about it when it happened.

  It was some kind of combination of a pure artistic experience with gross commerce and the absolute certainty that you were experiencing something that would be talked about for years to come. And which would change fashion in a fundamental way. Not just in the rarefied world of designer wear, but all the way down the food chain, so that in a couple of years’ time even babies would be wearing clothes influenced by the styles in this collection.

  With this show it wasn’t just the clothes, it was the whole event. It started with the space going completely black and staying that way for quite a while, until the photographers started to whistle and make rude comments. And then the first noise we heard was almost imperceptible, gradually getting louder until you realized you were listening to a jet fighter approaching at screaming high speed. It made your stomach turn to water.

  Then, just when it was starting to get unpleasant, the lights went up – wham! – and the music blared out, Mary J. Blige, in full diva mode, as the first model strutted out, a gold-plated army helmet on her head, her face and entire body painted like camouflage, creating the most amazing contrast with a floor-length electric blue parachute-silk dress, with a huge train.

  Sashaying down the catwalk she lifted up her skirt to reveal army-style boots, which had seven-inch stiletto heels and laced all the way up to her thighs, which were also painted like camouflage.

  As the music changed to a Keith Richards guitar riff, another of Nelly’s favourites, the next girl came out, also painted with camouflage. Even her hair, which was up in a huge beehive, had been sprayed to match – and she had a yashmak across her face. She was wearing a black satin coat with huge epaulettes shaped like the armour on a tank and, as she strutted along, she took one of the shoulder pieces off the coat, and pulling out a strap, hung it over her arm as a handbag.

  So it went on, the most extraordinary mixture of disturbing military themes, high glamour and ethnic motifs. But, apart from the spectacle, the thing that made the show really impressive to the thousands of highly trained eyes in that crowd, was that mixed in with the wild styling and over-the-top statements, were truly wonderful clothes – and bags and shoes – that women the world over were going to want to wear.

  When the models came out for their final strut along the catwalk, they did it to the poignant strains of a small boy singing John Lennon’s song, ‘Imagine’. It might sound cheesy, but it seriously wasn’t. It brought tears to your eyes.

  The whole thing was a triumph and when Iggy came out to take his bow the crowd went wild. Anna Wintour was clapping enthusiastically next to me and Frannie and I leapt up to give him a standing ovation and each other a hug, because we were so proud of Nelly. It was then that I spotted something I had never noticed before – Iggy’s left hand was missing. Instead he had a hook.

  While Frannie and I were still squealing with excitement I suddenly realized that Ms Wintour – as you couldn’t help thinking of her – had quietly left her seat and had climbed up on to the catwalk, along with a huge stream of other people. She was going backstage to congratulate Iggy too. Now, that was huge.

  ‘We’re going backstage,’ I immediately said to Frannie. It was something we never did – only the big editors, close friends of designers and total wankers went backstage, but now we felt related to Iggy and quite entitled to go. And apart from anything, I sincerely wanted to congratulate him on one of the most amazing fashion shows I had ever seen.

  ‘We’d better tell Bee,’ said Frannie, back in good-girl mode, so we rushed over to find her just climbing up on to the catwalk herself. She looked down at us, smiling broadly – but she had tears in her eyes.

  ‘Come on, gang,’ she said. ‘Let’s go and get in the way of the pure photographer.’

  It was total mayhem backstage, with bouncers trying unsuccessfully to keep people out, models with no clothes on, television crews and paparazzi everywhere and corks popping like 24-gun salutes.

  I couldn’t see Iggy, but I assumed he was in the epicentre of the tangled mass of cameras. So did Bee because she headed straight for it. Frannie went to find the makeup director to get the low-down about the camouflage effects and I had just taken a glass of champagne from a passing tray, when Nelly came running over. I gave her an enormous hug, while camera flashes went off all around us – the paps clearly already knew she was the girlfriend.

  ‘Oh, Nelly,’ I said, getting all tearful again. ‘That was amazing, he’s brilliant. I don’t know what to say. It’s going to be huge.’

  She gave me another of h
er killer hugs. It nearly winded me.

  ‘I’m so glad you liked it, Ems,’ she said. ‘It means a lot to me. Especially as I thought you weren’t bloody turning up.’

  She cuffed me playfully around my head and then grabbed my hand.

  ‘Come and tell my boy how much you liked it.’

  Nelly shouldered her way through the cameramen and sycophants and pushed me in front of Iggy, who looked pink and bewildered and had about six microphones stuck under his nose.

  ‘Emily loved it, Igs,’ said Nelly.

  I didn’t know what to say, so I took his hand – except it was the wrong hand and I had grabbed hold of his hook. I couldn’t suddenly drop it so I just pulled him towards me and gave him a big kiss.

  ‘It was wonderful, Iggy,’ I said into his ear. ‘Absolutely wonderful.’

  He kissed me three times on the cheeks and put his arms round me.

  ‘Thank you, Emily,’ he said, in his heavy accent. ‘Means a lot. Nelly loves you, so I love you. Come with us for dinner.’

  I gave his hook one more squeeze and made way for the TV crews.

  7

  Iggy’s show was the lead on Suzy Menkes’s page the next day in the International Herald Tribune and was splashed on the front of World Fashion Daily. The papers had been pushed under my door while I slept and I sprang out of bed to grab them. Suzy raved about Iggy, describing how he had introduced a new level of creativity and intellectual interest into the Milan calendar and Louise – the ice queen of fashion journalism – was equally effusive in WFD:

  This was the kind of bravura creativity you expect to see in Paris – not in oh-so-commercial Milan. Yet despite the breathtaking drama of the show with its, at times disturbing, bellicose themes and references, there were clothes here – and even more crucially for Rucca, accessories – that women of all ages will long to own. Veselinovic’s armoured tote is destined to be the next cult bag.