I miss Issie. I am waiting outside in the Orangerie in the Parc de St-Cloud, in Paris, where the Chanel show is about to begin. The incessant driving rain, the clouds, thick, and black with purpose, as another deluge begins. The huge white bright spotlights shining undiminished give a silvery magnificence to the scene. The team of Karl Lagerfeld and Chanel, undefeated by the elements, succeed in staging one of the best couture shows I have seen, and I have seen quite a few. Contrary to what one might expect, the rain heightens the senses and gives it a poetic surrealism. Showtime. The moment the first model exits to explosive music and flashbulbs, the runway has become a stream in the gravel. No one can do drama like Karl, and this is a drama. He is a master at the apogee of his game and a true artist. It is Metropolis meets Les liaisons dangereuses, neat and exquisite silhouettes encrusted with jewels and paillettes. Perfectly executed, Quintessentially Karl. But, as I sit here, I feel a huge void. Isabella. My friend. Brilliant, irreverent and visionary. Gone.
Valentino in Rome. One day more splendid than the last. Rome is ablaze. It is the Beistegui ball in Venice and Le temps retrouvé by Proust simultaneously. Everyone is here. A myriad of people from all worlds. From our hosts Valentino and Giancarlo Giammetti to Mario Testino, the Cecil Beaton of our times, to Princess Firyal of Jordan, Amanda Harlech, Karl Lagerfeld again, Mick Jagger, Barry Diller and the perceptive and glamorous Diane von Furstenberg, the provocative Francesco Vezzoli, Tom Ford, Manolo Blahnik, Christian Louboutin and Louis Benesch, Philip Treacy and hundreds of others. I was so happy to see Princess Alessandra Borghese, whom I had not seen since the
legendary Thurn und Taxis ball in 1986. Debbie and Leopold von Bismarck. Prince Pavlos and Marie Chantal of Greece. And Ruy and Georgina Brandolini with whom I spent so much time, particularly a trip down the Nile, where we laughed for a week. I look at all of them. I think of those who should be here, but are gone, but are so near to me in spirit. Friends of my past, my present, my future.The kaleidoscope of my life. Have they changed? No. Valentino’s magic. He possesses the power to freeze everybody in their eternal, definitive youth. Another way of being a master.
Annus horribilis. So many great friends. Dead. The last few months have had a punctuation of funerals and memorials. Like dominoes falling, key people in my life, from my cousin Paul Channon who steadied my morale at the darkest hours of my despair: with whom will I be able, now, to talk for hours about Wagner whilst cracking jokes? Tony Lambton, who guided me with his sang-froid and gallows humour and ability to dismiss the irrelevant and the serious with one dry yet apt remark: who can I laugh and talk for hours to about politics and history, spiced with scandal and sex? Oh the jokes! With whom, now, can I share an informative laugh? Ahmet Ertegun, the founder of Atlantic Records, who would have adored his own memorial, in NYC, two months ago, with the eulogies given by David Geffen, Rudy Giuliani, Henry Kissinger and Mick Jagger. My sharpest memory of Ahmet was in New Orleans in 1993. He organised all the music for a party we gave. The day of our departure, Ahmet called to say he would be a little late. I am sitting on the runway in New Orleans airport. Minutes pass. Slight panic. Where can he be? And suddenly, he’s here, surrounded by a TV crew and three amazonian blondes in hot pants and cowboy hats walking with such poise across the tarmac to the plane. Such style. Pure Fellini. This is frozen in my mind for ever. Without a doubt, three of the cleverest men I have known. All, in their different ways, remarkable. All, with an innate sense of duty who knew power but did not seek it for its own sake. Unique against the rising tide of mediocrity. And today, I miss them. Have I reached a point in my life where my mind is filled more with cherished phantoms and memories or are those alive more numerous and dear? Happily, I think the latter. But the desert grows ever wider.
Politics. I cannot help but compare the way in which Gordon Brown is dealing with the attempted acts of terrorism during his first few days in office with the ongoing, unrelenting hysteria of his American counterpart George W. Bush. Of course, the United Kingdom never had the enormous and hugely symbolic shock of 9/11. But nevertheless … Another style, for sure. Deft and reassuring and, to me, alluring. A new way of governing? Perhaps. Politics is in my blood. I love it. The accession of the new Prime Minister first filled me with dread. But suddenly it feels like a government again and less of a one-man show. Tonight, dining with my friend Amanda at the Ritz in Paris, I evoke these thoughts and we laugh. What she doesn’t know is that I am the only Speccie diarist who had a drink at the Carlyle in New York with Mark Malloch Brown, ex- deputy at the UN (now his lordship) five weeks ago before he became a minister in the Foreign Office. She makes the observation that this is the first time I speak with a touch of enthusiasm about a bigwig of the Labour party. I reply that it is such a relief to have at the helm someone who does not want to be George Clooney. A Prime Minister’s function in my view is to govern and not to want to be a celebrity. It is a disaster to mix the two. Maybe, as Oscar Wilde pointed out, the English public always feels perfectly at its ease when a mediocrity is talking to it. Let’s wait and see.
Comments