New York comes to London
New York comes to London in a nursery queue
Manhattan's strangest practices are arriving here
I have happy memories of attending the annual Halloween/Howl-o-ween fancy-dress dog parade in Brooklyn with my mother. Hundreds of dogs competed for the title of Best Dressed Dog. There was a Britney Spears dog (from the ‘Hit Me Baby One More Time’ era) complete with gym slip, little rucksack and blond plaits;Â a Marie Antoinette dog with ruffles and an enormous white powered wig and policeman dogs with capes and truncheons. Only in New York, we chortled together. How wrong we were.
This summer I received my first invitation to a doggy fancy-dress party in Peckham of all places. Peckham, better known for gangland killings and sink estates, apparently now has its own annual doggy fancy-dress show, doggy day-care and doggy grooming parlour. Not that I have a dog or have any intention of ever buying one, but I was curious to see where I could buy a dog outfit if I suddenly got the urge. Angels (www.fancydress.com) tells me that fancy-dress hire for dogs has gone up by 293 per cent in the past year with the Superman outfit being the most popular. Stuff like this just isn’t supposed to happen here!
In the past, one of the major differences between the two cities was the level of personal grooming. New Yorkers take grooming to a whole new level: mani/pedi’s, blow-outs, touch-ups, fake and bake sessions, Brazilians, CBSs for the men (I’m not going to explain that last one!) â” it’s a new language of beauty that has to be learnt if you want to make it professionally or personally. Now I find that even TopShop has its own Blow Dry Bar, Nails Inc has expanded from one store to over 50 in five years and men (even straight men) fake tan on a regular basis. London is officially turning into New York. It’s rather disconcerting. I came back so I didn’t need to blow-dry my hair straight every morning and be judged in meetings on whether or not my nail varnish was chipped.
There is a type of person that flits easily between New York and London, equally happy in both, surrounded by friends in both: the NY-Lon. Increasingly I am starting to think that we should just twin New York City and London and get rid of their separate identities â” they’re merging into one anyhow. Let’s call them Nylon City East and Nylon City West. We could have special Nylon passports and strict policies on who we wanted to live in our new unified city, we could ban shops we disliked, politicians that annoyed us and have special holidays just for Nylons. I guess that the only downside might be that we would be constantly surrounded by thin, tanned, overanxious overachievers and their designer children and fancy-dress dogs. On second thoughts, much as I love New Yorkers, maybe I’ll stick with London and keep up the fight against its increasing New York-ification, one Bugaboo and one yappy dog at a time.
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