Haute Couture at Paris Fashion Week

Hidden beauties

Well hush my mouth! You will never guess.

Gianni, is the designer side of the equation. He has the fast soft top car, the designer suits, the watches.

Me, I lean in more to the scruffy side of things, or as I like to feel it - a Romantic, Beatnik, Bohemian, Art Nouveau floaty style. Well that’s the plan. On occasions I wear the lovely sparkles Gianni has bought me over the years and the watch he gave me (but which I cannot read as my arms are not long enough) and waft around in Camila pieces that float somewhere behind me. They dazzle everyone with their loveliness so they don’t’ realise that ‘the canvas’ is a slightly-gone-to-seed doughy eccentric.

I love, love, love Camila Franks

https://uk.camilla.com

But the reality is that whilst I would like to have a Grace Kelly chignon or a Stevie Nicks topknot, I am far more likely to be found in a loose pony tail secured with a pair of (clean) pants, wearing something baggy that I can sit cross legged in. Or, if it is cold, wrapped head to toe in a blanket. But it wasn’t always like this, there was that brief moment when all was different

Truth to tell, aged thirty, I was able to escape some almighty messes I had made in England for a new life in Rome. The golden age of Rome was not Fellini’s era, it was 1000% the years between 1994 and 2004. I lived in my extended late twenties in a riot of happiness and freedom. That happiness, freedom and joie di vivre burst out – in parties, in dancing, in creative ventures (I wrote a pantomime and two other garden theatre plays!) It showed in the unexpected confidence of my wardrobe choices. Gone were high shoes with blood at the heel, gone the uncomfortable strict black or greys suits of a city solicitors practice.

Instead I bought dresses inspired by Botticelli’s Primavera. I bought the softest swishiest fake fur Dalmatian coat, half 1950’s movie glamour, half hooker-chic. I bought see-through designer black lace dresses with tiny slip dresses beneath and chopped those slips shorter, I bought one off pieces that were one week on the Milanese runways and the next mine, I collected La Perla concoctions - scraps of exquisite lace crafted into camisoles and French knickers, my favourite La Perla piece- a fuchsia pink feather bikini. How I loved that bikini. You couldn’t swim in it of course – it went from Folie Bergère to drowned chicken in an instant. I wasn’t the only one that loved it either -many a time I found a fuchsia feather floating down the stairs and had to wrestle it back from my pair of Siamese cats.

https://laperla.com/

Later, when the world had turned on its axis again and rivers of money had become shrunken ditches of dust, I treated myself to a stiff granny column coat made of curled shearling fur with a leather trim. On arrival it seemed that it had never been worn. I imagined it hanging unloved, kept for best in the wardrobe of a lady recently gone, her probate treasures being dispersed of through eBay to the highest bidder.

By then, not just a mother, but an impoverished single mother of two wonderful children, BB and Archie, the glamour had faded and slipped away. Motherhood combined with repeated injuries to turn youthful lithe muscles to fab, cellulite bobbles and wrinkles. Nouveau pauvre meant no glamorous events and soon all of the relics of my La Dolce Vita were wrapped in tissue on the off chance that my baby girl, when grown, might want to play dress up with these vintage, physical items of history.

I didn’t forget those days entirely. Busy with motherhood and inspired by The Apprentice, I had the odd entrepreneurial pipe dream. Wouldn’t it be fun to have a little boutique Lingerie shop called Boobie Trapped? La Perla at that time had floral pretty names for their collections- at the moment they have Midnight Botanica, Dreamland, Zephyr (although I myself would avoid a reference to wind if I were naming an underwear collection) I wanted to design collections for the recent mothers ‘ The promised land, milk and honey range’, and the recently betrayed the ‘Come out fighting’ range, the ‘Cougar bites’ or the ‘F**k me into a coma’.

One by one the years passed and I grew older. One by one the years passed and my baby girl grew from a babe in arms into a teenager and then a young lady, happy and free of spirit just like her mother. And, one by one the treasures came back out from their tissue tombs.

My Dalmatian coat made regular appearances at fancy dress parties.

My pink feathered La Perla bikini reappeared on my daughter.

Next up was my black lace dress for a party in a Tuscan hilltop castle. She danced so much the little spaghetti straps finally broke.

This week is Paris Fashion week. BB and Friso her boyfriend are in Paris, invited to front row for the Paris Couture shows and doing press interviews. We are as excited as they are, impatient for the videos are flying back. The designer https://juanamartin.es And guess what is being worn by Friso? My fabulous granny column shearling!

The moral of this bloglet is not that my sartorial genius has finally been recognised. The moral is that once upon a time an unloved, unworn coat was sold on eBay. It spent two decades in suit bags and tissue on occasional airings. Then one day it was discovered by the fresh eyes of youth, and vooom, the next second it was starring in the front row of Paris Couture week.

So to the young- aim for the catwalk and conquer on the world- it’s yours for the taking. For all my fellow writers, artists, photographers and creatives, currently mothballed, our youth long gone and our lights hidden by layers of tissue. We are hidden beauties -one day we too will go to the ball.

And as to that coat?- I always knew you were a star.