I had been glossed over as ‘his stylist girlfriend’, which didn’t really bother me in terms of my ego, but confirmed my fears that the poison dwarf had it in for me. I was hardly a ‘girlfriend’, I was married to Ollie, and Peter well knew it, but hopefully this second invitation might make him rather less ill-disposed towards me, as well as boosting Ollie’s personal profile a little more.
Nelly was also less than thrilled to see Mr Potter – or Harry, as she had taken to calling him – after slightly too many mentions of her private business in his column.
‘What have you gone and invited ’Arry Potter for?’ she hissed at me, when I took her and Iggy into the bedroom to see the fabulous Boudicca jacket I’d bought on my Conduit Street shopping spree. ‘I mean, he’s all right for a laugh, but now I’ll have to watch what I say all through lunch. I won’t be able to get properly pissed – boring. Why didn’t you get Louise Kretzner along as well and really stuff me up?’
She punched me gently on the arm.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, grimacing at them in sympathy. ‘It was Ollie, he thinks being friends with Rotter will help get Slap mentioned on the telly.’
Nelly roared with laughter. ‘Rotter! I love it. I’d better be careful or I’ll call him that to his face. But your bloody ’usband, Em,’ she was shaking her head. ‘He’d do anything to flog that bloody make-up, wouldn’t he? I’m surprised he don’t wear it himself.’
Her face brightened suddenly in a way I knew could lead to big fun, or big trouble, in equal doses. ‘I think I’ll suggest that to him actually,’ she said, looking thrilled with the idea. ‘He could double up his market opportunities – as I’m sure he calls them – if he could sell his stuff to blokes as well. Here you are, Ig,’ she said, going into the bathroom and opening my overstocked make-up cupboard. ‘Put this lippie on. We’ll have a laugh with him.’
She started applying dark red lip gloss to Iggy’s willing lips. He didn’t object. He seemed to think anything Nelly did was marvellous.
‘You know he’ll end up in The Daily Reporter as a cross-dresser, don’t you?’ I said, watching them from the door.
Nelly didn’t even listen. She was coating mascara on to Iggy’s already long and luxuriant eyelashes. I went back into the living area to find it full of people I didn’t know, although Ollie seemed terrifically happy to see them all.
‘Ah, darling,’ he said, coming over and taking my hand. ‘I want you to meet this crowd, I don’t think you know them. This is Donovan Pertwee – he’s a brilliant designer and decorator. Worked with Philippe Starck on the Sanderson, now he’s doing that new hotel in Soho – you know, the Wigwam. Donovan – this is my wife, Emily Pointer. She’s senior fashion editor on Chic.’
I shook hands with a small dark-haired man who looked like he had recently swallowed something very unpleasant. It may well have been his own tongue as he just grunted in reply to my welcome. Next Ollie turned me – he had his hands on my shoulders and was manoeuvring me round like some kind of puppet – towards a nervous-looking fellow wearing a brown corduroy suit and a bright purple polo neck.
‘Now, Emily, this is Mike Hurleigh-Bromgrove – he has that genius new shop Sweep, in Brick Lane, remember we read about it in the Telegraph mag? Sells all those marvellous Romanian dustpans…’
This was typical of Ollie’s introductions. You never just got the name, you got a potted CV, career history and press cuttings service thrown in too, presumably so you could decide how useful they were going to be to you and could bother with them accordingly. I was shaking hands, how-do-you-doing and smiling like the ambassador’s wife I was.
‘Now who else don’t you know?’ Ollie was continuing. ‘This is Gilda Jansson, the wallpaper designer. Marvellous stuff, it was in Chic Interiors last month, remember? This is Emily…’
I did remember. They’d wallpapered the inside of cardboard boxes with it as a witty styling idea – decorating for the homeless. Frannie had thrown the magazine across the room with disgust when she saw it. Ollie was still wittering on. ‘Now Sammie King, you must know, she does the homes pages for The Sunday Courier magazine and this is her, er, partner, Elinor, who does amazing tiling. You know, Elinor, I’d really like you to look at our shower, I think it could look great in that Byzantine style you did in that house in Palm Springs…’
I was quite dumbfounded. It was the weirdest guest list to invite to meet the world’s most exciting new fashion name. I’d been expecting major magazine editors and all the newspaper fashion girls, not a bunch of po-faced interior decorators and wallpaper designers.
Things did get a little more normal as even more guests arrived – I was glad I’d made plenty of phô to feed them all. There was Katy Jennings, the lovely beauty editor from pure who was a great friend of Nelly’s, Frannie’s and mine – we’d shared many a wild night together after spot concealer launches. And then, as a special surprise for me, there was Frannie herself and her husband Andy.
They were a surprise to Ollie too, it turned out, as Nelly had invited them on our behalf. I was delighted, because while Frannie was always keen to come over to our place, Andy felt the same way about our salons as Nelly did and after they’d been once I could never get them to join us again. I’d given up asking them, as I had with Nelly.
Andy had only agreed to show up on this occasion, I knew, because it was Nelly who’d called and suggested it. I was glad I didn’t know exactly what she’d said to persuade him, but I’m sure the words ‘that wanker’ and ‘just ignore’ featured. I knew that’s what they thought of Ollie, but it didn’t bother me. I’d decided long before that his tendency to pretentiousness was just a kind of eccentricity and I found it rather endearing. And I could be a tad on the precious side myself, given half a chance.
Now it was my turn to do the introductions and I took great pleasure in introducing Andy McAllister to Ollie’s new interiors pals as ‘the hottest landscape gardener in west London.’
‘Yes,’ said Andy, whose Dundee accent was even stronger than Frannie’s. ‘I wear thermal underwear under my woollie jumpers. Two layers. Makes me very hot. So does my flask of cocoa.’
The last guests to arrive were two of Ollie’s more normal strategic Slap invitees. There was Maeve Fischer, who was the make-up buyer for one of the big department stores – I was never quite sure which one, as she was always changing jobs, although it seemed she was now at Storridges, the hottest store in town – and Hervé Moret, a leading French make-up artist.
The final piece of the human jigsaw – which made fifteen people, a lot, even by our standards – was a woman called Rosie Stanton, who I knew of from around the fashion scene, but didn’t actually know. I’d seen a lot of her work, though, and was always impressed by it.
Rosie was a highly respected and rather intellectual fashion writer, a former fashion editor on the brainy broadsheet, The Sunday Courier, who had gone freelance to concentrate on books. Her biography of Rudi Gernreich – the man who invented the topless swimsuit – had received brilliant reviews and I had bought a copy, although I’d only ever looked at the pictures.
Despite that, I was really pleased to have the opportunity to meet her properly as I’d always been rather fascinated by her. Mainly because, while she wrote about fashion with amazing knowledge and authority, she was astonishingly badly dressed herself. It didn’t seem to matter that she hung out with the world’s most stylish and image-aware people, none of it ever rubbed off on her. When it came to pulling together a look, she was a shocker.
On this occasion she was wearing the most horrendous pair of wooden parrot earrings – which kept getting all caught up in her rather frizzy hair – and I really wasn’t sure if they were brilliantly ironic, or she truly thought they were great. The could just as well have been given to her by some amazing new conceptual Dutch designer, or her seven-year-old kid sister. I really couldn’t tell.
The rest of her ensemble was a bobbly pink cardigan with a ragged bit of velvet edging – ‘vintage’
Voyage – an old Ghost skirt in a murky shade of mauve and some really scruffy Emma Hope yellow satin slippers with black opaque tights in between. Completing her assemblage was an Anya Hindmarch Be A Bag, which featured a photograph of Rosie as a very fat baby in a saggy nappy. It was not what you would call a good look.
Despite her lack of personal style, Bee was always trying to get Rosie to write fashion ‘essays’ for Chic and I thought I might be able to use this opportunity to talk her into it and win some major points with the boss. So I was delighted, when I peered over Ollie’s shoulder as he hastily revised his placement scheme, to see that he had put me next to her.
We finally had them all sitting at the table when Nelly and Iggy made their re-entrance. His hair and clothes were the same as when he arrived – naturally jet black locks in a sexy Caesar cut, a dark grey Prada suit and a deep raspberry-pink shirt – but he was fully made up. It was quite a sight.
There were two full heartbeats of amazed silence and then everyone – well, everyone who knew who they were, the decorators just sat there blankly – went nuts cheering, laughing and clapping.
He actually looked quite amazing. Iggy was very handsome in a sultry Gypsy King kind of way and Nelly’s over-the-top make-up job had somehow enhanced his features without making him look like a total drag queen. He was overtly wearing make-up – it wasn’t one of those tragic ‘no one will know but you’ man tan jobs – but he was such a fundamentally male bloke, he didn’t look camp.
‘There you are, Ollie,’ said Nelly. ‘What do you think? Slap for Chaps. Reckon it will work for you?’
‘It’s brilliant,’ said Ollie, jumping up from his chair, he was so thrilled. It was just the kind of idea he could never have come up with himself. ‘I love it. Wow, I seriously love it.’
‘What do you reckon, Harry Potter?’ Nelly shouted over to Peter. ‘Reckon you can use this in your column, darls?’
‘Should be in news pages,’ said Iggy, in his strongly accented English. ‘I am first Serbian man ever to wear mascara.’
Everybody roared again and what could have been the weirdest Sunday salon of all time, actually turned into one of the best.
Potter the Rotter was able to boost his ego filling in the decorator set on exactly who Iggy was – and how well he knew him. And once they realized Iggy was the designer who had been splashed all over every major newspaper the day after his debut show a couple of weeks before, they clearly felt a lot more excited about meeting him.
Rotter was also stoked up because the man make-up was such a great item for his column, enhanced further when Iggy gave him some great quotes about how he had wanted to try the make-up to see how it really felt to be a woman so he could design for them better. Nelly was winking at me over Rotter’s shoulder the whole time Iggy was talking, making it clear that she had rehearsed it all with him, which greatly added to my enjoyment of the scenario.
Above all, Ollie was beside himself with glee. He knew the incident would be in Rotter’s column and seeing the sacred brand name in print alongside Iggy’s would be brilliant for its cool credibility – and his. I could also tell he was genuinely excited by Nelly’s whole concept of Slap for Chaps and the next thing I knew, he, Rotter, Donovan and Mike had all gone off giggling into the bathroom with Hervé and Maeve to get their own looks done. The only man who declined was Andy.
‘I’d rather set light to my own hair,’ he said and settled on a sofa with a can of Guinness and a book about Andy Goldsworthy, which we had featured on one of our coffee-table piles. ‘And I mean my pubic hair.’
I went over to the kitchen to see to the food and Nelly came and leaned against the counter, grinning broadly.
‘How do you rate that for damage control then?’ she asked me, holding out her wine glass for a refill. ‘That should keep Harry Rotter off our backs for the rest of the lunch, don’t you think?’
‘Nelly Stelios,’ I said with frank admiration. ‘You are a serious piece of work.’
‘Yeah, mama,’ she said and put her hand up for a Paul-style high-five. ‘Gimme some flesh. Reckon your husband might hold me in higher esteem as well after this. Oh, look, here he comes now – Widow Twankie himself.’
And there was Ollie lavishly made up, the full catastrophe. I put my face in my hands and groaned, it was so weird, but when I could stand to look at him again I had to admit it rather suited him. It was a more exaggerated treatment than Iggy’s, with rosy spots on his cheeks, pink glossy lips, bright blue eye shadow and a large beauty spot. He looked like a Regency fop and it went perfectly with his personality.
He came over and leaned his face into mine. ‘What do you think, darling?’ he asked, batting his eyelids.
‘Er, it’s actually quite great,’ I said. ‘But please don’t ever wear it in public. That really would be taking brand loyalty too far. And don’t kiss me – you’ll get lipstick on my collar.’
One by one the boys came in wearing their make-up looks, which were all different and all strangely suited to them. The last out was Hervé who had done himself up like Louise Brooks, right down to combing his spiky hair down into a sleek bob with one of Ollie’s many free grooming products. He looked amazing.
They were all so overexcited it was like trying to organize a chimps’ tea party, but I did finally get them all back to the table – except Andy, who elected to have his food on the sofa, as he worked his way through our art, interiors and photography ‘library’, as Ollie called it, and the six-pack of Guinness he had brought with him.
Trying to eat just prompted more hysteria about the boys not spoiling their lippie, which reminded Ollie he had a box of promotional Slap mirror compacts in his study and he handed one out to everybody so they could check their maquillage between bites.
He also cracked open one of the cases of champagne he always had on hand for such ‘emergencies’ and the party just took off from there. It was the Nelly effect again.
*
Despite all the squealing and acting up that was going on – all of it being cranked up to greater heights by Nelly and Rotter, who were getting on famously – there was plenty of chat as well and I had a really fascinating discussion with Iggy and Rosie about whether designers really needed to have fashion shows any more.
Rosie, I soon realized, was one of those clever people who make you feel cleverer than normal, because you have to try harder to keep up – rather like playing tennis with someone better than you. The combination of her brain and Iggy’s first-hand experience – and a few cogent little observations from me as a third-row veteran – added up to a debate that could have gone straight on to Radio 4.
I was surprised how much I enjoyed it, as a contrast to the hilarious, but rather sillier banter that was my normal idea of a good time. I felt really stimulated mentally and it was a very nice change. Probably, I had to admit to myself, because it reminded me of the kind of conversations that used to go on around my parents’ dinner table.
I used to love listening to them from a hiding place under a console table in the hall, where my brother Toby and I would be sitting ready to make raids on the leftover cheese and puddings as soon as the grown-ups left the table. My parents may have had ‘artistic temperaments’ to the point of being actually barmy, but they were rather brainy too.
But needless to say with Nelly present and a case of champagne on the go, it wasn’t long before the lost art of conversation was lost all over again in favour of disco dancing. It was great fun, of course, and I even started to like Ollie’s new decorator friends, who turned out to be OK once they let go of their off-putting sangfroid.
It was, I realized, just a necessary part of being accepted in their tiny world, just as being as silly as possible was in mine. It was a professional face, a mask, rather than the real person – with the possible exception of Gilda the wallpaper designer, who really was boring and took herself incredibly seriously.
She even danced seriously, making very deliberate shapes with her arms and body, which I’
m sure she thought were terribly ‘graphic’. She looked like she was pretending to be an Anglepoise lamp. It was Frannie who pointed it out.
‘Would you look at Laurie Anderson,’ she whispered to me and then to Nelly and Katy, until the four of us were in such hysterics we had to run off to my bedroom together to jump up and down and copy her. For the rest of the evening we just had to catch one another’s eye and assume a tiny little angular pose to render the others insensible with laughter. I loved jokes like that.
Ollie didn’t get it, though. It was after two in the morning when they had all finally gone home and we were having a post-party post-mortem in the bathroom, as I helped Ollie take his make-up off.
‘What do you mean Laurie Anderson?’ he said, a bit crossly, as I tried to wipe off the copious layers of mascara Hervé had caked on to his lashes. ‘Ow! That was my eye. I need that.’
‘Sorry, darling, try to keep them shut. Oh, you know, all that short hair and severe clothes and the “art dancing”. You’ve got to admit Gilda takes her self a bit seriously, Ollie.’
‘I don’t know what you mean. I think she’s lovely – and she’s a very talented designer.’
‘She designs wallpaper,’ I said, rather contemptuously, but sensing I might have gone too far and not wanting to spoil such a great day – and night – I tried to make amends.
‘I really like Mike and Donovan,’ I said quickly. ‘They’re lovely.’
‘Aren’t they great?’ said Ollie enthusiastically. ‘I knew you’d love them.’
‘Yes, and I thought Sam and Elinor were, er, nice too. It made a nice change. So where did you meet all these design people, all of a sudden?’
‘Oh, I’ve been going to quite a few interiors events recently, you know, checking out the market to see if it is the way to go with Slap. I must say, so far, I think it is a very interesting arena, which is not being fully exploited by the beauty market, so I intend to do so before any of my competitors cotton on to it. It’s definitely where you’ll find your really sophisticated consumer these days.’
Handbags and Gladrags Page 19
