Handbags and Gladrags Page 3

  ‘Who is it? Who is it?’ murmured the crowd, who all pretended they were the coolest people on the planet, but who were in fact just as impressed by a famous face as anyone else. Probably more so actually, considering we were a major part of the international conspiracy that made these nonentities into celebrities.

  ‘What silly tart is it this time, then?’ said Nelly, standing up again. I yanked her arm to get her to sit down, but before I could stop her, she was off, squeezing along the row and round the end of the catwalk to have a gawp, pushing through the crowd in her Fifties polka-dot dress and red high heels with ribbons laced up around her ample calves.

  The amazing thing about Nelly, though, was while she could be coarser than a fishwife, she really was the most brilliant stylist. She had the rare ability to do the all-important ‘beautiful’ shoots, which is the kind of fashion readers really like, rather than the super-duper conceptual stuff people like Alice did. Nelly’s pictures always made me sigh, they were so gorgeous. And all the models loved working with her, because she made them look so wonderful. Many a lucrative cosmetics contract had been won by a model’s portfolio full of Nelly’s pictures. Alice frequently made her models look hideous – because she could. Everyone told her it was ‘art’. Which Nelly had once told her was Greek for ‘shite’.

  She quickly came stumping back and I saw Beaver beckon her over. Her brash and fearless stylist did have her uses. Nelly leaned into the thicket of her editor’s hair to whisper who it was, because Beaver clearly didn’t want Bee to earwig and get the celeb-sighting low-down from a member of the pure team.

  ‘Madonna,’ whispered Nelly to me, as she sat down.

  ‘Really,’ I said, sitting up like a begging dog.

  ‘Naaaaaaa! You silly cow,’ said Nelly, punching my arm. ‘It’s never Madonna, is it? Or Kylie. It’s Britney and Posh. Again.’

  She rolled her big brown eyes.

  ‘Who’s the bloke?’ I asked, peering over. ‘He’s getting as much attention as the girls. It’s not Becks is it?’ I said, hopefully. I had a major crush on David Beckham.

  Nelly looked at me.

  ‘You’re pathetic,’ she said. ‘You really love him, don’t you? I bet you’ve got a poster of him on your office wall.’

  I giggled. ‘I have actually… No shirt.’

  ‘Well, tough shit, babe, it’s only George Clooney.’

  And then, maddeningly, before I could have a proper gawp, the lights went down, the music roared out and Karolina Kurkova appeared at the top of the runway copping a pose in a single spotlight. She was wearing a huge Barbarella wig, a tiny silver bikini and bright pink snakeskin thigh boots. The hair on the back of my neck prickled. The magic had been unleashed. The show had begun.

  It was only an hour and ten minutes late.

  2

  Twenty minutes later, while Antonello Ferrucci was still taking his bow, holding Karolina’s hand – never a good idea for a man of Neapolitan stature – and blowing kisses to Posh and Britney, or more likely, to George Clooney, Nelly was hustling me out of the row, via everybody’s feet, so we could make good our escape without Alice seeing us.

  Right on cue, as instructed in Nelly’s note, Frannie caught up with us at the exit. Nelly blew kisses at the security gorillas, who were gawping at her cleavage, then she grabbed our hands and had us skipping along the cobbled street like the von Trapp family.

  ‘Pardeeeeee!’ she yodelled into the night.

  ‘Who are we meeting?’ I asked, Nelly’s enthusiasm temporarily taking my mind off my feet.

  ‘And do they smoke?’ asked Frannie.

  ‘I bloody’ ope so,’ said Nelly, puffing to a walking pace. ‘Just a few guys I met through Seamus – you know, the guy that does pure’s catwalk pictures? Sexy Irish geezer? Bit on the short side? Anyway, him, some mates of his and a few of the usual suspects. Peter from The Daily Reporter – bitchy queen, good laugh – Dizzy from The Sunday Opinion, her girlfriend Rani, you know, that model I used for my ball gowns-at-the-circus story? A few others, the usual party crew. And whoever we pick up in the bar.’

  She chuckled heartily. I often thought if you could bottle Nelly’s energy the bottom would fall right out of the drug trade. And the really amazing thing was, she never took them. She was like that naturally.

  My phone rang. I couldn’t hear a voice on the other end, but there seemed to be a party in full swing. I could hear loud music and a lot of hubbub and screeching.

  ‘Hello?’ I said, wondering if one of my friends back in London had sat on their mobile in a nightclub and rung me by mistake. ‘Hello?’ I said again, beginning to get annoyed. Then I could hear someone talking, although it was pretty indistinct.

  ‘No,’ the voice was saying. ‘It was a deliberately matt lip…’

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘Oh, thank you, yes. It was mainly inspired by Jane Fonda’s Barbarella, with a bit of Liz Taylor’s Cleopatra, but modern…’

  ‘Who is this?’

  ‘That’s right, but there is an “s” on the end. OK, thanks a lot… Emily? Are you there?’

  ‘Jacko!’ I screamed down the phone, as I heard the deep dark chuckle, like something primal, which was the rumbling gut laugh of my adored best boy pal Paul Toussaints, who I sometimes called Jacko for reasons that went right back to the start of our friendship. Among his other talents, Paul could do a brilliant moonwalk.

  ‘Where are you?’ I squealed, literally jumping up and down with excitement. He’d been living in New York for over a year and I missed him hideously.

  ‘Backstage at Ferrucci…’ he answered. ‘Doing an interview with Allure… just thought I’d share the moment with you.’

  I squealed again.

  ‘I had no idea you were even in Milan.’

  ‘Make-up director, sweetie. Don’t you read the show notes that are so helpfully placed on your seats?’

  ‘Are you kidding? A load of bollocks about what Mr Ferrucci is “feeling” this season?’

  ‘Yeah, usually the tight ass of his latest male model. Anyway, where are you, you big slapper?’

  ‘On my way to the Four Seasons bar with Nelly and Frannie and then on to Mr Ferrucci’s party. You?’

  ‘See you in the bar in five. Just have to pack up and I’m outta here.’ He paused and then added in an even deeper voice. ‘Don’t wash.’

  Just another of our little jokes.

  The Four Seasons bar wasn’t our normal territory, it was a bit grown-up for us – and a bit hard to get the bills through expenses – but it was great people watching, and handy for that night’s festivities. The party was being held back at the palazzo we had just left.

  As a rule Nelly didn’t so much enter a bar as invade it and usually the proprietors were pleased to see her. There was something so big and bright about Nelly’s personality that people just reacted to her positively. She seemed like ‘somebody’, because she thought she was. I suppose it’s what you call charisma. Well, most people reacted positively, but there were exceptions and we were looking at one.

  ‘Hello, darling,’ said Nelly to the sourpuss who was seating people in the bar that night. ‘Got a spot for three thirsty girls?’

  He gave us the once-over and was clearly wondering whether he could just turn us away, when Nelly suddenly charged off.

  ‘Iggy!’ she was shouting, already en route to the far side of the bar where fashion’s brightest new star, Igor Veselinovic, was holding court. He greeted Nelly like the old friend she was. They’d met at least twice before.

  Actually, Nelly had been one of the earliest people to latch on to the Serbian designer’s talent, when he had just left Saint Martins and was showing off-off-off-schedule in London. She was certainly the first stylist to use his clothes in a major shoot and, unusually in our industry, he didn’t seem to have forgotten. He was also gracious enough to acknowledge that Nelly’s beautiful pictures had helped him get his new gig as the ready-to-wear designer at Rucca, one of Italy’s most prestigiou
s accessories houses, an amazing platform for a young designer. Already people were saying he was the new Alexander McQueen.

  And that was how the party began. Firmly attached to Iggy’s group, which also included rising fashion photographer Nivek Thims, whom I knew a little from London, a couple of up-and-coming (literally, if Nivek and anything to do with it) male models, the ageing billionaire playboy CEO of Rucca and his Italian starlet wife. Instantly, we were the power posse in the bar. Nelly turned back and grinned at the miserable maître d’, who looked furious.

  Gradually the rest of Nelly’s pals turned up, all with a few extra friends in tow, so that after about an hour we had taken over half the place, with bottles of champagne on constant order. All on Rucca’s corporate bill. Even Frannie was happy – the Four Seasons had excellent air conditioning.

  That must have been where I first met Miles. He was definitely there, but I have no memory of it. I met so many people that night, as I did just about every night at the shows. It was like being in a kaleidoscope of smiling faces and air-kissing lips, accompanied by lots of laughter about God-only-knows what, but it all seemed hilarious at the time.

  I do remember my darling Paul arriving, looking more handsome than ever in a beautiful Dior Homme suit and a crisp white shirt, and I remember him greeting me his usual way, which involved grinding his slender hips into mine, a routine which still made me blush.

  ‘Stop it, you big poofter,’ I said. ‘I can feel your manly length.’

  ‘Oh, come on,’ he said, licking my cheek. ‘You like that, don’t you?’

  ‘You are such a perve, Paul Toussaints. Stop it, yuk,’ I spluttered, triggering one of his belly laughs.

  Paul had been my absolutely number-one gay-boy buddy for nearly ten years. We’d met at the south London tech where I’d been doing an art foundation course, and he’d been studying hairdressing. We’d seen each other around the college – at nineteen he was already gorgeous and incredibly stylish, so you couldn’t really miss him – but we didn’t actually meet until we both happened to be at the same fancy-dress party. The theme was Pulp Fiction – well, it was 1994 – and we were both dressed as the Uma Thurman character in black bob wigs.

  It was instant chemistry.

  ‘Hey, baby girl,’ he’d said, shamelessly checking me out from head to toe. ‘I like your style.’

  ‘I like yours,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, adjusting his wig. ‘Everyone expected me to come as Samuel L. Jackson, but I told them, you can shove your racial stereotyping, I just want to look good. Not ethnic.’

  He laughed that deep chuckle. I couldn’t help grinning at him.

  ‘Damn,’ he said suddenly, clicking his fingers. ‘You’ve got better shoes than me. I think we’d better dance.’

  Not long after that, he’d showed me his moonwalk and had me in hysterics describing his childhood obsession with Michael Jackson, the first man he had ever loved. He knew every word of every song on Thriller. So did I.

  Within days we were doing our first fashion shoot together, with him doing hair and make-up, me styling the clothes, and a photography student – my boyfriend at the time – taking the shots. We sold those pictures to a style magazine and none of us ever looked back. We all had second jobs to pay the rent – I was a waitress, my boyfriend was a labourer and Paul mixed cocktails like Tom Cruise – but from that point all three of us were on the fashion groove train and we had no intention of jumping off.

  Now, nearly ten years later, Paul was one of the most successful make-up artists on the circuit and he’d left his sink-estate childhood so far behind him it was almost just a bad dream. He lived in a loft in downtown Manhattan, always flew first class and spoke like the international style surfer he was. From his accent you’d never have picked him out as a ‘Sarf London’ boy, if you hadn’t known. But it wasn’t pretension that made his voice change along with his lifestyle, it was just part of his personal metamorphosis.

  Professionally, he’d actually left me way behind too – although he was always trying to get me to move to New York – but we still worked together whenever we could. That night at the Four Seasons, though, I hadn’t seen him for months and we stood there gabbling like lunatics, with so much to catch up on. It was ridiculous really, because we emailed and called each other all the time, but there was nothing like being in the same place together.

  After a few minutes someone stood up to go to the loo and Paul pounced on the empty armchair, patting his lap and making pouty faces at me. I sat on his knee and put my arms round his neck. He growled into my ear.

  I didn’t think twice about it. We’d always had a very physical relationship – not sexual, of course, Paul was rampantly homosexual – but we just felt so comfortable with each other and I suppose it was part of his endlessly teasing personality, to tantalize a straight woman with his glorious physique. It amused him, how beautiful I thought he was. I wasn’t the only one in awe of Paul’s looks. He’d had endless offers to model, but apart from one cameo appearance in a Yohji Yamamoto menswear show – along with John Malkovich and Dennis Hopper – he always refused.

  ‘Not going to trade on da physical, darlin’,’ he’d say in imitation of his grandmother’s Jamaican accent. ‘Looks ruined me mama and I’m not going to let them ruin me, praise Jesus.’

  He had good reason for not wanting to emulate his mother’s life. Seriously beautiful as a young woman – he carried a picture of her in his wallet – she’d been led astray by a handsome, sweet-talking bad boy, who beat her, pimped her and regularly impregnated her, so that Paul grew up the youngest of five children, and the only boy, watching their mother being pummelled by their father’s fists. When he wasn’t in prison.

  Once he got away from that Peckham flat, Paul never went back. He said he just couldn’t cope with what his mother and sisters had become, but he did stay in touch with his grandma, a devout member of the local Baptist church, who adored her grandson.

  My childhood was pretty gothic too, albeit in a Home Counties setting, and it was one of the many things we had in common. In fact, talking to Paul about his difficult early years had made it a lot easier for me to come to terms with mine. He had a psycho dad and I had a psycho mum, we’d both survived, we’d both moved on. Or run away, depending how you looked at it.

  ‘Bloody Nora,’ said Nelly’s voice suddenly. ‘Look at those two, they’re practically snogging. Anyone would think he fancied girls. Oy, Paulie, if you want to kiss a girl, I am available.’ She bumped one hip in his direction, but then she was distracted by the background music.

  ‘Oooh,’ she squealed. ‘I love the Sugababes, they’re London girls, like meeeeee. Lon-du-on,’ she chanted, like the Arsenal supporter she was. And she jumped up on a table to dance.

  As I stood up to stop her – it wasn’t the time, or the place, and if it got back to Beaver, she’d be dead meat – I saw Anna Wintour walking into the hotel. I remembered that she always stayed there and it suddenly struck me that she was coming back to it from the Ferrucci party. If Frannie and I missed that gig we were going to be in so much trouble with Bee, it really wasn’t funny.

  ‘Stay there,’ I said to Paul. ‘I’ve got to find Frannie. Emergency.’

  I looked round the room for her red head and found it in a corner, deep in conversation with Nelly’s photographer friend Seamus. Frannie was reading his palm – a sure sign she was pissed – and if I hadn’t known she was happily married I would have thought she was having a big flirt with him too. I almost hated to interrupt her, but this was serious.

  ‘Frannie,’ I hissed. ‘We’ve got to go to that party, or Bee will kill us.’

  Frannie’s face snapped into a rictus of horror.

  ‘Fuck me blind,’ she said. ‘I’d totally forgotten about that stupid thing.’

  She stood up, paused for a moment and then looked down at Seamus, who was staring sadly at his palm.

  ‘Hey, Shuey,’ she said to him in her richest Scottish burr. ‘Want t
o come to a wee party with us?’

  ‘That would be grand,’ said Seamus in his Irish one; it was like some kind of Celtic voice-off.

  I went back to tell Nelly, who had been ordered down from the table by the miserable maître d’ and was starting to look bored. Always dangerous.

  ‘Nell,’ I hissed at her. ‘We’ve forgotten the bloody Ferrucci party. Frannie and I have to go.’

  Her face brightened immediately.

  ‘Fucken ace,’ she said, draining her glass. ‘More free booze. Come on everybody.’

  I have no idea how we all got into that party. There was a great crowd of people milling around the entrance trying to breach security and the door staff were vetting people like the CIA.

  Only half of us had invitations; Seamus and his little crew were dressed like roadies, only smellier; we were all drunk; yet somehow when our noisy group arrived, with Paul, Iggy and Nelly at the lead, we were all ushered straight through. It just happens like that somehow, if you know how it works. It’s all about confidence.

  I grabbed Frannie’s arm when we got inside and I saw how big and dark the space was, with lots of curtained-off booths, conversation pits and different party zones.

  ‘I’ve got an idea,’ I whispered to her. ‘We’ll tell Aleechay that we’ve been here the whole time. With this set-up, she’ll never know. We’ll tell her we ran off to go to the loo after the show and then came straight here. Cool?’

  ‘Cool,’ said Frannie, shaking my hand. ‘I love lying to that bitch… and look – there she is.’

  Alice was chatting animatedly with Antonello Ferrucci in the roped-off VIP area and I could see Beaver sitting on her own nearby looking really put out about it. Excellent. Bee would be ecstatic. And Alice would be feeling so up herself about being in the elite area, she wouldn’t have noticed we weren’t there earlier anyway.

  But I was so glad we finally were. Ferrucci’s clothes may have been the preferred choice of hookers and gangsters, but his parties were seriously classy. Frannie and I went on a swift exploratory tour and discovered there were several different bars dispensing champagne, vodka, cocktails, made-to-order alcoholic fresh-fruit smoothies, or whatever else you wanted. And in case anyone felt peckish, white-gloved waiters were circulating constantly with perfect canapés, just the right size to swallow in one go, without spitting crumbs over the person you were chatting to.