004 Self-assured enough to wear a banana print

Lessons from the Olympics, being the kind of woman who has a tuxedo made in Paris and two books I loved this week.

Aug 14, 2024

Bonjour! I wrote this on my way back from Paris. I was there for the Olympics! I still can’t believe it. I was there with Omega, the official timekeepers and I will remember this experience for the rest of my life. Prior to this my best Olympics story was that I once sat next to Kieren Perkins!

It was joyous and thrilling and moving. Here are a handful of thoughts from The Ground.

Did you know in the 10 metre diving competition the competitors all sort of line up along the diving tower to wait their turn? It was a veritable tower of men in their little speedos doing their stretches and wiping themselves down with towels!
A life lesson from the table tennis: the women I watched made a great show of doing an enormous serve and then gently tap it over the net. It often won them a point. Not all power comes from being big and loud and aggressive.
It is much less embarrassing and self-consciousness-inducing to properly join in than to sit something out because you feel awkward. By this I mean, embrace the crowd dance moves at a volleyball match with gusto. Give it your all on the dance cam! A Mexican Wave is a reminder of the contagiousness of joy.
Surely there could be no better feeling than being an athlete and getting to wear your team tracksuit home on the plane? I spotted several athletes in the airport today and honestly, if I were them I would never take my tracksuit off again.
Did you also forget that the lead singer of Phoenix is married to Sofia Coppola?

Books

I absolutely devoured Taffy Brodesser Akner’s new book Long Island Compromise as expected. My favourite genre is eccentric and dysfunctional multi-generational family saga. This was also v good on inherited trauma, and how we can transfer all of our stuff onto our kids (yikes!). Also Taffy is so incisive and unsparing in her observations of people - this is why she’s such a good profile writer.

I don’t know it’s taken me so long to read Caroline O’Donoghue’s The Rachel Incident but I loved it. It is, to borrow from Marian Keyes’s (I love her) blurb on the front, DRENCHED in nostalgia. This was exactly my vintage. I recognised every touch point but also every anxious thought. Also, I could really hear the characters talking - and not just because of the Irish accent! Don’t you always hear Irish accents in your head? Reading Normal People was like being inside a play. Good writing is when you could read it out loud and it wouldn’t sound weird. This is harder to do than it sounds.

& Nice Things

(Image: Toby Scott)

I was in Melbourne last week to see Hermès’ recently renovated new flagship on Collins Street. Actually, one of my favourite ever people I have interviewed is Pierre-Alexis Dumas, artistic director of Hermès and a member of the family that still owns Hermès (his cousin, Axel, is the CEO). He told me he is “famous for giving very long answers to short questions.” And every answer was thoughtful and philosophical and lead the conversation in a new direction.

At the event I was chatting to Liz , who is a brilliant photographer - her photos of me at fashion week are the only ones I ever want to use! - and another thoughtful person, in many ways, including fashion. As part of her investigation into how and why we wear our clothes (this is her substack), she is not buying anything new for a year. Her only caveat in not buying clothes for a year is that she would like to get a tuxedo tailored. To have one suit that she wears to everything and every time it is perfect. Something she said particularly struck me is that she really wants her grandchildren to one day remember ‘that suit’ she always wore. To have a memory of her in her clothes.

Has anybody ever worn a tuxedo better than Bianca Jagger though?

(My friend Grace, whose chicness and, well, her grace, is my eternal North Star, added in this conversation that there is a place called Husbands in Paris that does incredible custom tuxedos and I am committing this knowledge to my brain for the rest of my natural life/until I can have one made). I think the kind of woman who has a tuxedo made in Paris that she wears to death is the kind of woman I want to be.

Speaking of, don’t you think there aren’t enough original dressers? Everybody is so obsessed with being chic, being original hardly factors! It counts for at least double in my view.

hoda_kova

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A true original is Cate Blanchett. I loved her custom Hodakova top from Swedish designer Ellen Hodakova Larsson made from 102 spoons. It also immediately had me singing one of my family tradition songs. On New Year’s Eve, when we’re all together, we all dance around a circle singing a song that I swear goes, ‘Take my spoon, Ludwig make it soon?” But googling those lyrics is giving me nothing?!

Anyway, I love original women, and I also love family traditions.

And if you’re in the market for spoons, one of the best places I have visited is Jarosinski & Vaugoin silversmiths in Vienna. They’ve one of the oldest silversmiths and have made tableware for royalty and very famous people (the extremely charming chief executive, a member of the founding family, was unfortunately rather discreet) but did you know you can get an ice cream fork, for example? I could have spent hours there. I did buy a little silver heart locket. I wish I could have bought a whole dinner set. Or the silver crab to hold salt that cost approx. 900 Euros. Man I loved that little guy.

Fruity fashion

I also saw the Loewe fall/winter ‘24 collection up close this past week. How adorable are the little radishes and asparagus keychains and bag charms?

Fashion loves to tell you to eat your fruit and vegetables! Phoebe Philo, patron of thinking, quirky and original women, did banana prints when she was at Chloe, and I love that Chemena Kamali has brought them back. Speaking of clothes for thinking women, the best bananas were at Prada spring/summer 2011.

Which makes me think that only truly self-assured women can truly pull off a fruity print - especially the slightly subversive banana. I think that’s why they hold a certain kind of appeal (a-peel!).