She writes punchily about some of the crazy king-emperors of the global fashion industry (Karl Lagerfeld, Donatella Versace, Helmut Lang, Claude Montana). She had already interviewed these luminaries (for Vogue and elsewhere), but where magazine writers must self-censor the bits the advertisers won’t like, authors can put them in. As a fashion professional, she understands the barking lunacy of high-end professional fashion: a short interview with the British supermodel Erin O’Connor is quite sick-making, but it made me laugh. O’Connor was wearing the boss dress in Alexander McQueen’s notorious ‘asylum’ show. It was covered in razor-shells which took months to stitch on, and the designer told O’Connor to ‘go crazy’ on the catwalk and ‘rip the dress’. She tried hard to do so, but the razor-shells ripped her hands to pieces, and she was dripping blood by the time she got backstage. Instead of ministering to her with plasters and TCP, the dressers and make-up artists screamed with delight, ‘Oh, major!’ ‘Wipe your hands on your headdress’, she was told, ‘because your next dress is blood-red, and it’ll look perfect.’
Picardie frets (as do most Voguettes, lifelong) about her own wardrobe and What Not to Wear, so her book is dotted with magaziny lists of hints and tips about dressing, e.g. the middle-aged woman is always flattered by something soft around the neck. ‘Something feathery or furry, perhaps,’ writes Picardie, ‘but not real fur. Please.’ And again: while ‘gold snakeskin heels’ will give a kick of youthfulness to the elderly leg, she hopes the snake ‘would be fake’. Hmm. I’ve no patience at all with this tenderly urban delicacy. Partly because you only ever look as old as you are and partly because I’m well hard, me, and getting harder by the year. Don’t mind pigs being slaughtered for my pleasure in bacon, or pythons for my golden heels, or (if I could only afford it) bright-eyed little minks for coats and bed-covers.
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