‘She’s exactly the same as my parents like that. With them it was always “oh, she’s really creative”, or “but he’s not creative”, and that was the only level on which they judged people. It didn’t matter if they were clever, or brave, or loyal, or successful, or totally hideous, greedy and venal, all that mattered was that sacred creativity. It’s why she and my parents were such great friends. They had the same stupid value system.’
‘You’re creative,’ said Paul.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘And so are you, darling. My parents would have loved you – black, underprivileged, gay and creative – they would have been in heaven. But, while I love creative people too, I don’t want to live with them. I’ve been there, done that, got the bloody T-shirt. I know what happens around creative people and as far as I’m concerned, Ollie’s lack of creativity, combined with his ambition and business smarts, is exactly what I love about him. Ursula might not like it, but I do.’
I could see mischief starting to sparkle out of Paul’s eyes again, which was a relief.
‘What now?’ I said.
He started to giggle, a low rumble in his chest like a Tube train going under a building. ‘Does Ollie know he’s not creative?’
I laughed too.
‘Not entirely. That’s why he loves having me around – it’s creativity by osmosis.’
‘So all those little games he plays, those contrived “salons” you have and inviting people at the last minute, that’s all part of trying to be creative, isn’t it?’
‘You got it. He thinks having a bright pink lining in his suit coat is creative and having a funky old car with a stupid eight-track instead of a proper stereo and collecting fashion photographs is creative, when really it’s just join-the-dots stuff. Ollie thinks you can buy creative. All that other stuff is just schoolboy games, but it makes him happy so it’s fine with me.’
‘Well, that’s good,’ said Paul. ‘But I don’t think that is what Ursula means. What’s worrying her is that you are very vulnerable after what happened with your parents and she’s concerned you’re not getting proper emotional support from Ollie. She believes he encourages you to live your whole life on the surface, which she doesn’t think is a good thing for someone with deep-seated issues.’
I rolled my eyes. I couldn’t stand all Ursula’s therapy bollocks.
‘And I’ve got to tell you one thing, Emily,’ Paul continued. ‘You have got really thin lately. Now, you know I do thin – I’m gay, I’m in fashion – but you are getting a little too skinny. Unhealthy skinny. Doesn’t Ollie talk to you about that? Doesn’t it worry him?’
I sighed. I was so sick of that from Ursula and now I was getting it from Paul too. Why couldn’t they see how happy I was in my life and leave me alone?
‘I like being slim,’ I said. ‘I watch what I eat, because I like to feel good and I like to fit into my clothes. I haven’t got an eating disorder, I just don’t want to be fat. I don’t see what it’s got to do with Ollie.’
Paul pulled a ‘whatever’ face.
‘What I don’t seem to be able to make Ursula – or it seems, now, you – understand,’ I said, leaning forward, ‘is that I might not discuss my inner child with Ollie, but I don’t need to because I get a real sense of security from him. Financial, domestic, social, the lot. And after my childhood, those are the best things I could possibly have – can you dig it?’
‘I can dig it,’ said Paul, raising his glass of hot chocolate. ‘Security is the holy grail for people like us. I’m just trying to create it for myself, rather than relying on someone else to provide it for me. But, I take your point and I’ll tell Ursula to stop fussing.’
‘That’s all right,’ I said, clinking my cup against his. ‘I’ll tell her myself. Ollie and I are coming over to New York for a visit after this hoopla is over. He wants to get you to sign your life away to Slap.’
‘Excellent,’ said Paul. ‘I’ll start looking for the beach house. Now that would make me feel a lot more secure.’
After he left to get ready for the Céline show, I still had some time to spare, so I wandered around Saint Germain a bit more, ending up in a tiny little boutique on Rue de Buci which seemed to sell clothes for prostitutes. It was brilliant. I bought a pair of skintight PVC crocodile-effect pants and a shiny PVC bustier. They were outrageous and I loved it.
Then I strolled around a bit more, picking up some lavender bags for our cleaner and the girls back at the office, a few bars of olive oil soap to make a nice pile in our bathroom and a stripey matelot jersey for Ollie to tie round his shoulders for a transeasonal weekend look, before I headed back to the hotel to change for the show.
As I walked I tried not to think about my conversation with Paul. As far as I was concerned it was done with. Ursula’s concerns were intrusive and misplaced, end of subject. But as I stood once again waiting for the lights to change on Rue de Rivoli, it did occur to me that if security was what I valued in my life above all else, why was I risking it all by cavorting with a penniless Australian photographer, who now had a key to my hotel room?
I didn’t have time to think about that, or anything else, for the rest of the day as the cruise-y down time was seriously over and we had seven shows back-to-back, from Helmut Lang at two thirty ending up with Alexander McQueen at eight thirty. All with Luigi at the wheel.
Amazingly, we got to Helmut Lang’s obscure venue – and back – and to all the other far-flung spots on the schedule without going wrong, basically because we just followed other limos. We’d come out of each show, Bee would get on her mobile to find Luigi among the throng of identical cars choking the street – pretty much all dark blue or grey Mercedes – and then we’d just follow one of them and their black-clad passengers to the next venue. It worked a treat.
After that the week went on with its usual pattern, all the shows an hour late, grinding limo rides out to them, tailing another vehicle, hectic dinners at 10.30 p.m. after the last show, sometimes leading on to silly drinks and carrying on, a bit of light shopping in any spare time and, for me, a couple more secret trysts with Miles.
By the time we were on to our fifth assignation – counting the times in Milan – it had started to feel really comfortable. I didn’t have any more spontaneous crying jags, we just had a great time together and then parted amicably. He never made me feel pressured, or sluttish, he just made me feel good. Really, really good.
I seemed to be slipping happily into my new role as an adulteress and whenever I spoke to Ollie, which wasn’t that often over the week, with my busy schedule and all his ‘phone off’ meetings, he certainly didn’t seem to notice any change in me. He was his usual affable self and, despite what I was getting up to behind his back, I didn’t feel any differently about him. That may seem hard to understand, but my shows life and my real life were like two separate universes, and Ollie and Miles existed in different ones.
The only people who existed equally in both were my work colleagues and, for once, I was glad about their monumental self-absorption. Bee and Alice were far too wrapped up in themselves to notice any changes in me and the only one of them who may have spotted a certain Ready Brek glow around me – Frannie – was so busy with her backstage make-up story, I didn’t see much of her all week. When we did meet it was mostly at dinner and I could put my flush and good cheer down to the red wine.
One of the shows I always looked forward to most during the Paris week was John Galliano and on that Friday night my excitement was quadrupled when Nelly appeared and sat next to me.
‘Nellster!’ I squealed, giving her a huge hug. ‘Oh, it’s so good to see you. It’s just like old times. What’s it like being in Paris and not being at the shows? It must be so weird.’
‘It is,’ she said. ‘It’s fucking weird. When I look at Suzy in the morning and read about all the shows I haven’t been to, I feel really left out and I wasn’t going to bloody miss this one.
‘Oy, Mrs!’ she said, suddenly turning round to the wo
man behind her. ‘Can you stop kicking my bloody back? You’ve already done it about ten times and you’re really pissing me off. Sit still, or piss off, all right?’ She turned back to me, rolling her eyes and grinning. ‘Bloody Nora. Some people. No idea.’
Ah, my Nelly was back. A little bit of Kentish Town in the heart of Paris. I just sat there beaming at her like an idiot, I was so pleased to see her. I mean, I had seen her several times that week for drinks and dinner, but always in a big crowd, not just the two of us, chatting and gossiping, waiting for a show to begin, like the good old days – the good old days of just over a week before. I never thought I’d look back nostalgically to waiting for shows to begin, I thought to myself, but there you are.
‘So, how’s everything?’ I asked, not knowing where to start.
‘Bloody marvellous, Em – still. It’s a miracle. Iggy and I just keep getting closer and closer and we’re doing amazing things with his work too. I’m officially moving to Milan to be with him. He’s coming back to London with me after this – he’s gonna meet my parents, that’ll be a laugh – and I’m going to pack up my place, probably sling most of it actually, and then head back to Milan for good. Although between you and me, it may turn out to be Paris, rather than Milano, in the not-so-distant future.’
She winked at me dramatically. There had been something in Louise Kretzner’s column that morning about rumours that Iggy was already being approached by one of the big Paris couture houses to be their new designer, although she didn’t say which one. Now it seemed like there was some truth in it.
‘So are you going to stay with pure?’ I asked. ‘Oh mighty fashion-director-at-large?’
‘I dunno,’ she said with her wickedest smile. ‘But I’m going to enjoy torturing Beaver about it. She’s already asked me if they can shoot our Milan apartment for the first issue of pure inside – did you know they were starting an interiors mag? Although pure crap would be a better name for it, judging by what I’ve seen of the dummy.’
‘Oh, do tell,’ I said, thinking how interested Ollie would be in this news.
‘OK – it opens with a ten-page story on “The Vessel” – that’s a vase to any normal person – in black and bloody white, so you can’t even see what colour the stupid things are. And they’re all hideous anyway. Then there’s an “essay” – which means no jokes and no pictures – on the subject of “sitting”. Sit on this, I said. Then for their real triumph they’ve done Christian Lacroix’s beach house – once again, in black and white. Black and white pictures of Pucci prints. How totally fucked is that? What a stupid cow.’
‘Oh, good,’ I said. ‘Sounds like it will give Spitty Felicity some competition in the pretension department, as well as for advertising, then.’
‘Actually,’ said Nelly. ‘They’ve got loads of Slap ad spreads pasted into the dummy, which I thought was weird. It’s not like they make “vessels”, is it?’
‘Hmm,’ I said. ‘Doesn’t surprise me. Ollie’s all excited about homewares at the moment. It’s his latest craze. He probably will advertise in it – he thinks those painful magazines are the perfect “vessels”, ha ha, for reaching the more sophisticated consumer, who no longer reads fashion mags.’
Nelly just snorted. The very suggestion that anyone could be less than desperate to read fashion magazines was ridiculous to her. She was 100 per cent fashionista that girl.
The Galliano show was the usual thrilling extravaganza, a breathtaking spectacle of mad disparate elements of historic and ethnic references, which somehow fitted together as a modern whole. And which you knew would translate into brilliantly cut suits and evening dresses that would make women look and – more importantly – feel amazing.
At the end John Galliano made his legendary theatrical bow, which got more over the top every season. This time he had a bare chest under a white suit, with flowing dreadlocks, bondage pants, brothel creepers and a trilby hat. Everyone came out beaming.
‘Oh, that’s what it’s all about, Em,’ said Nelly, wiping tears from her eyes. ‘Bloody brilliant. I’m done with missing shows. Well – I won’t do the pissy little advertiser shows any more – but I’m not going to miss the biggies. I’ve got one more day of this season to enjoy and I’m going to do it all. Can’t believe I missed Dior on Tuesday. I must have been mad.’
‘You were,’ I said. ‘Madly in love they call it – that’s the mad part.’
‘Hey,’ said Nelly, suddenly. ‘Let’s go for a drink. Just you and me. It would be great to have a really good catch-up. I’m supposed to be meeting Igster, but he can join us later. I got him a big pile of early Nineties fashion-show videos which I conned out of various PRs and he’s in heaven, watching them in the hotel room.’
Frannie was backstage with Pat McGrath again, so I rushed to find Bee and Alice, to tell them not to wait for me. I was lucky to catch them, in the mad mêlée out front. Great crowds of thin women in high heels choked the pavement, shouting down their mobiles as they tried to find their limos and drivers, who were blocking the entire street and causing a state of honking hysteria among the never exactly relaxed Parisian drivers. I grabbed Bee just as she was getting into the car.
‘Fine,’ she said, when I told her I wasn’t coming with them. ‘I wasn’t going to wait for you anyway.’
They sped off and Nelly and I walked slowly up the slope of Avenue de Wagram with our arms linked, just taking in the scene.
‘I bloody love this bloody city,’ said Nelly suddenly. ‘I love all of it, even the corny old corner cafés and the corny old lights twinkling on the corny old Eiffel Tower. I seriously hope we do move here. The only thing you see twinkling in Milan are the capped teeth on the gigolos and the diamonds on the old bags they service. It’s really not my scene. I love all of this place, not just the groovy bits. It’s all great.’
And so, rather than peeling off to one of the killingly fashionable bars we normally frequented, we sat in an ordinary little café drinking kir and watching Paris go by. I loved it too.
After a couple of drinks Nelly confided that Iggy had been approached by one of the grandest of all the couture houses – Albert Alibert – to be their new designer. It was a huge deal, like being offered Chanel, or Saint Laurent. I whistled between my teeth.
‘Crikey,’ I said. ‘I thought it might be Givenchy, or even Rochas, but Alibert, that’s the serious big league.’
After another kir, she told me Iggy had already accepted the job and was hanging out in Paris while his lawyers got him out of the Rucca contract, which luckily for him had only been provisional until after the first two collections. It had never occurred to them that their new designer would move on quite so quickly.
‘We’re looking at apartments here, Em,’ she said, squeezing my hand. ‘It’s so exciting. Can you imagine? We can live practically anywhere we want in Paris. It’s so nice to be able to talk to someone about it – someone I know I can trust.’
She was right, she could trust me. I wouldn’t even tell Frannie or Ollie. I could be impeccably discreet with other people’s secrets. With a family history like mine, it was a necessary survival tool. I also finally got the low-down on Iggy and his missing hand, by just coming out and asking her about it.
‘Sarajevo,’ was her reply. ‘He lost his hand in Sarajevo. Bosnian war.’
I tried to remember who were the goodies and who were the baddies in the conflict. All I could dredge up was hideous images on the evening news, reports of terrible atrocities and someone called Radovan Karadzic – wasn’t he a Serb, like Iggy? I asked Nelly.
‘He’s a Bosnian Serb,’ said Nelly. ‘Iggy has had to draw Venn diagrams to explain all this to me, but I think I’ve got a fairly good handle on it now. It’s just like the bollocks in Cyprus, which I can relate to, because my family are Cypriots. We’re not Greeks, like you probably think, we’re Greek Cypriots and my grandparents’ house rather inconveniently was in the part of Cyprus that now belongs to Turkey. Which is how come I grew up in Kentish Town.
So I probably had a head start on understanding Iggy’s situation, compared to most fashionistas.’
She laughed, shaking her head at the ridiculous irony of it all.
‘Which side was Iggy on?’ I asked tentatively.
‘That was the problem,’ said Nelly. ‘Both and neither. Iggy’s dad is a Serb – but a Serb-Serb from Serbia, not a Bosnian Serb – and they lived in Sarajevo, which is in Bosnia, because that’s where his mum comes from. With me so far?’
‘I think so, carry on…’
‘Well, Iggy’s mum is a Bosnian Muslim, so he’s a mixture. That war was between Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Muslims and Ig was a really bad mixture of it all. The Bosnian Serbs didn’t like him because of his Muslim blood and the Muslims didn’t trust him because of his Serbian blood, even though he wasn’t an actual Bosnian Serb.’
‘Phew,’ I said, struggling to understand. ‘I can see why you needed the diagrams. But how did he lose his hand?’
‘Somebody cut it off,’ said Nelly. ‘They were torturing him, trying to get him to spill the beans on the other side, which he was supposed to know about and he really didn’t.’
‘Which side cut it off?’ I asked, my voice disappearing almost to nothing. Faced with the enormity of Iggy’s life, I hardly felt qualified to ask, hideous little Westbourne Grove princess that I was.
‘That’s the thing, that’s why Iggy is so amazing,’ said Nelly. ‘He won’t tell. Not even me. He says there was good and bad and right and wrong on both sides. They’re both to blame, so it doesn’t matter which side actually did it, because they both caused it and because he is of both sides himself, he says he can’t take sides.’
‘That is amazing,’ I said, my whole life suddenly seeming shamefully over-indulged and decadent by comparison, give or take the odd dead dad, estranged brother and mad mother. ‘What a story – and after all that, he’s a fashion designer?’
Handbags and Gladrags Page 15
