The finale of the Valentino show in a Paris library. Picture: courtesy of Valentino
I haven’t sent a newsletter in months, and boy have I missed it. Though I have been reading (full list below!) and a lot of life has happened because it happens whether you’re taking notice or not. I have been thinking! Things such as how there are so many links between Dolly Parton, patron saint of women who hustle, and the high art of being cheap and not chic and how people on the internet calling themselves chic will never be the real thing. And also about Gloria Steinem and the importance of a good belt and of uniforms setting you free. How the best party I’ve been to in years (the launch of my friends Grace and Paulina’s Persona magazine, entirely dedicated to Bella Freud) was a reminder that despite best efforts, you cannot manufacture a vibe in the room. Remember that when you see something you weren’t invited to all over Instagram!
What else?
In Milan for work for three days I found a signet ring that the owner of the funny shop in which I found it told me the Latin inscription basically meant “don’t give up on your dreams (“liveias, laughias, loveias!” said my friend and it made me LOL). Later an artefact jeweller on instagram told me the Latin actually reads “even against the tide.”
I didn’t make it to Paris Fashion Week but I loved the Chanel and Celine shows. I’ve been down an Anne Carson hole since she won the Nobel Peace Prize for literature.
I love this:
“Beauty makes me hopeless. I don’t care why anymore I just want to get away. When I look at the city of Paris I long to wrap my legs around it. When I watch you dancing there is a heartless immensity like a sailor in a dead-calm sea. Desires as round as peaches bloom in me all night, I no longer gather what falls.”
And this:
You remember too much,
my mother said to me recently.
Why hold onto all that? And I said,
Where can I put it down?
(The Glass Essay <3)
Also as much as I love Prada (the skirt collection! I wrote a whole article about it) and Celine, I was fascinated to read how Carson refused an invitation to work with them. I get why they would have wanted her!
Anne Carson, a woman of style.
Carson, like Dolly Parton and Gloria Steinem and Joan Didion has a look. The ties, the blazers, the glasses, the bob! Idiosyncratic style but shrugged on, too busy in deep thought to consider her clothes too much. Yet the effect is the kind of thing people will pin to their mood boards and say on instagram is “kind of chic” because it gives them gravitas. Which right now of course is very chic. You don’t even have to have read the books, the alignment to a person of depth and of character and a style that few have mined yet is enough. A side note: imagine being the first person who said, say, Jerry Seinfeld has style!
Fashion’s obsession with books has only deepened in recent years. I wrote about hot girl books a few years ago for Vogue and books as a status symbol for Wish (it fits the Venn diagram of my sole interests!), and now every brand is basically a quasi literary salon. I read, therefore I am, and fashion has always been smoke and mirrors and illusions anyway.
I loved the Valentino show this season, held in the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève in Paris, where each guest was invited to bring their favourite book. The books were later donated to local libraries (the only thing I love more than clothes is libraries). Do you know who else gave away books? Dolly Parton!
The set for the Valentino show!
Last year I spoke to one of fashion’s most in demand men, Michael Rider, backstage after the Celine show. The first thing I noticed was his vintage Cartier watch (a gift from his partner) and how the last group of his friends congratulating him backstage included Miranda July (another serious person of idiosyncratic style who loves clothes). When I interviewed July a few years ago we spoke about clothes and she talked about how her child loved clothes too and what a bonding experience this was.
“I’ve been saving clothes for them—vintage clothes that I don’t want anymore, but that I think are really cool—in boxes for years. “Just waiting for the moment when they might care. And that moment came and now we’ve entered this era of clothes sharing and getting dressed and it’s just very creamy and delicious.”
The thing about Celine is that it wears its seriousness about clothes lightly.
I think I need a big belt …
The Celine show, like Rider’s others, wasn’t just about clothes you could wear (and how! The show was full of ideas!) but clothes that you want to.
Rider told me last year, and I think about it a lot:
“I’ve had my fair share of fun in very strange clothing in my life, so nothing against it, but I think I crave and I certainly was excited about coming back to Celine because it’s a place where we get to make things that everybody in the room is going to wear, and wear in their own way.”
“Their fashion comes from the attitude of the wearer.”
Which really, is the essence of having your own sense of style, anyway.
As for the literary aspirations, well, maybe fashion still feels like it needs to prove you can be serious and still like fashion (eternal tension!) as if frippery isn’t all there is. Or maybe it’s more that we want to feel that all of it has deeper meaning. I think the reason Bella Freud’s Fashion Neurosis podcast has enthralled us is because it is serious about clothes.
Anyway, all of fashion is a book club now and we’re all pretending we’ve read the book. So long as you look the part. Unless you’re Anne Carson and eating peaches and noticing everything.
A list of some books I’ve read in the past six months (that I can remember)!
Kate Atkinson Our Noble Selves - loved! Crackled like all her books do.
Rachel Cusk Life of M (I loved it, not everybody did!). It also has a scene where an author is part of a panel for a luxury brand literary event. Cusk has been part of Chanel’s ‘Rendez-vous littéraires salon, AKA the only book club I want to be part of (apart from my friend Ben’s, which is him reading alone in the pub. He said I could join him though!).
Laurie Colwin Another Marvelous Thing. Wonderful.
Elif Shafak The Forty Rules of Love. Adored this.
Meg Mason Sophie Standing There. It caught me by surprise in the end, with feelings.
Barbara Kingsolver Demon Copperhead. Oh god this devastated me. And then, a tiny glimmer of hope?
Ann Patchett Whistler. Lovely, hopeful. Terrible cover though!
Jenny Jackson Pineapple Street. Fun and frothy! Which is important.
Kevin Kwan Sex and Vanity (see above, sometimes this is the balm you need).
Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney. See above also, with a little more heft.
Andrew Sean Greer Villa Coco ADORED. Idiosyncratic characters of inimitable style and FUNNY is always my favourite genre.
Patrick Radden Keefe London Falling Absolutely, grimly, fascinating. Inhaled.
Elizabeth Strout The Things We Never Say LOVED. Nobody, NOBODY captures people like Strout.
Graham Swift Mothering Sunday. Knocked me out.
Arundhati Roy Mother Mary Comes to Me. See above!
Maria Semple Go Gentle My kind of book totally and completely.
Deborah Levy My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein. Will read everything Levy writes.
Love,
Annie xx
I'm at the Canberra Writers Festival about to see Susan Orlean speak about her memoir, Joyride which I adored. I am loving the rise of book events
I am reading Whistler now!
The cover!