THE CURRENT WINDOWS OF THE LOUIS VUITTON SHOP ON BOND STREET ARE A DREAM OF CHIC.
DE CHIRICO-ESQUE WHITE PLASTER CARROUSEL HORSES AND VAST BAROQUE CURLIQUES LEAP AND TWIRL AMID GLOWING CURVES OF LIGHTS….I WAS PARTICULARLY INTRIGUED BY THIS ONE.
WHICH SEEMED SOMEHOW FAMILIAR, WHEN I STOOD BACK I REALISED THAT THE CARTOUCHE READS “N H”. OF COURSE!… ON THE SUBJECT OF LIGHTS, COULDN’T SOME CLERK OF WORKS AT BUCKINGHAM PALACE REPLACE THE BLOWN BULBS IN THOSE WONDERFULLY GRAND LANTERNS ON THE PIERS OF THE GATES TO THE FORECOURT?
MAKING SURE HER HOUSE DOESNT LOOK SHABBY IS THE LEAST WE CAN DO FOR THE QUEEN’S DIAMOND JUBILEE…IT IS SUCH A MOMENTOUS EVENT, AND ONE WITH SPECIAL RELEVENCE FOR ME AS MY MOTHER WAS BORN ON THE DAY OF QUEEN VICTORIA’S DIAMOND JUBILEE. SHE WAS DULY CHRISTENED DIAMOND WITH QUEEN VICTORIA AS HER GODMOTHER.
Nicky is flying to South Africa tomorrow for the St Leger & Viney Design Focus event as their Keynote speaker. Nicky will be talking in Cape Town at a Reader Event at the St Leger & Viney showroom on the 26th March and then travels on to Johannesburg for his speech on the 28th at the University of Johannesburg which is hosting this years Design Focus. Nicky’s presentation promises to be full of exciting and fascinating stories of his life, career and future projects.
My friend the writer Victoria Mather, who besides being the travel editor of ‘Vanity Fair’, is among the most brilliant observers of la comedie humaine. Her several books, ‘Social Stereotypes’, document the recognisable bores, eccentrics, climbers, clingers and sheer dottiness of, and to, our national character, all culled from Victoria’s selfsame page, which until recently considerably brightened up the Saturday Telegraph Magazine.
But the other day she emailed me with a charmingly eccentric brief encounter of her own, and on the number 19 bus in Chelsea to boot.
Victoria, pink-lippied, fashionably swathed in a tangerine cashmere top by Hermes and holding her orange (“ the jobs I’ve slept with to buy that”) Birkin, was reading my memoir ‘Redeeming features’ as the bus sailed along the Kings’s Road. And, she reports, “a nice woman—-the 19 is a gentle bus—- leaned over and tapped a pale manicured nail on the cover, saying ‘how very chic to be reading a book to match your handbag’…….
Take a cue from the divinely run (not to mention decorated) Soniat House in New Orleans, where Nicky and I have just finished our delicious breakfast…
And keep a hot stone in the bottom of your biscuit basket…works a treat! Proprietor Frances Smith tells me keeping them in the oven makes the biscuits rise to their VERY best…
Just back from a delicious lunch at Richard Carings new restaurant ‘34’…where Nicky and I were delighted to see the chicest toothpicks imaginable.
Wrapped in New Mown Green paper, these gems are individually wrapped, and the ends are colour dipped to match!!!! Whoo hoo!!!
And even better, they are available at www.kokeshe.com
