013 Bonkbusters forever
Jilly Cooper's world is just what we need right now - including all of the so bad it's amazing fashion.
Alex Hassell as Rupert Campbell-Black in Rivals - woof! Picture: Disney+
Sometimes I think telly comes along at exactly the right moment. Like Emily in Paris in the depths of lockdown. And a proper Jilly Cooper bonkbuster when the world is unrelentingly heavy. You know what I think we’ve all been craving? Decadence and some jolly, winky, campy innuendo. It’s sorely lacking in daily discourse! That’s probably why everybody went so mad for Andrew Garfield and Amelia Dimoldenberg’s flirt-fest on Chicken Shop Date. Everybody flirts in Jilly’s bucolic, sybaritic worlds!
As Guardian fashion editor Jess Cartner-Morley once wrote of Jilly Cooper’s universe, “I love that there is no bad day that can't be vastly improved by washing your hair and opening a bottle of champagne.”
Victoria Smurfit as Maud, wife of TV star Declan, on Rivals - now this is a party dress, and an entrance (on a camel!). Picture: Disney+
I adore Jilly Cooper, though I admit I have only read a few from her oeuvre - which is vast and unendingly delicious.
But Riders and Rivals, her two most famous, I have, and I’ve loved caddish Rupert Campbell-Black hopelessly since. The Disney+ adaptation is the biggest treat and beyond it being so lush and campy and fun, I’m obsessed with the fashion. I love Cameron’s high octane houndstooth suits and the taffeta party dresses (bring back proper party dresses), the lurid Argyle jumpers and the pinstripes and cigars of awful Lord Baddingham.
The Eighties, that much maligned decade of baby’s breath and bubble hems, shoulder pads and taffeta puffs is having a glorious revival. It is in full roar in Rivals. Princess Diana, queen of the Sloane Rangers and patron saint of pie crust collars, was clearly on the vision board and I cannot get enough.
In proof that you really ought to hold onto your clothes, the most recent seasons have been rife with polka dots (Valentino), bubble skirts (Coperni), leopard print (everywhere but especially Versace) and major shouldered suiting (Saint Laurent, Rabanne). Anthony Vaccarello said Patrick Bateman, problematic pin-up for the office, was an inspiration for his Saint Laurent menswear collection, not to mention the strong shoulders and Working Girl references for his womenswear collection in Paris this month. On the American Psycho revival by the way, my pick is Patrick Bateman wearing only Loro Piana, his suits made in perpetuity by the late Edward Sexton and a very rare Patek Phillippe Nautilus! A fun fact, Bret Easton Ellis once read out of one of my tweets (I used to tweet!) at an event in Melbourne years ago (I bought tickets to see Bret Easton Ellis!) and said it was cute.
Saint Laurent Spring ‘25.
Anyway, as the show’s costume designer Ray Holman told Grazia UK of the fashion on the show: ‘Power dressing was the thing and maybe we’ve come full circle, maybe people need to feel that tingle of a glamorous outfit and feel the power of a shoulder pad.”
Golly, don’t we all want to feel a tingle right now?
Some other Jilly things: Pandora Sykes interviewed the cast.
One of my favourite ever Sentimental Garbage episodes was JoJo Moyes on Riders (Caroline O’Donoghue says that Riders was her MOST requested book for the podcast!)
Nobody does ghastly quite like wonderful David Tennant. I love when the very pure Cockney millionaire Freddie Jones tells him he’s the worst kind of snob, the kind who’d forgotten where he came from.
There is no better class barometer in England than the state of your waxed Barbour jacket and riding boots.
On the subject of riding boots (everybody wants a pair!) am also obsessed with Vogue bringing back this tidbit from Tatler on King Charles starring on the cover in his polo-playing years with the headline,
“Is Prince Charles too sexy for his own good?”
The King, by the way, is a man of a style.
Meg Ryan in You’ve Got Mail, I’d wear this today!
Speaking of the ‘80s, I watched You’ve Got Mail on the plane home last week, and Meg Ryan’s outfits were adorable and perfect. I know When Harry Met Sally is the pin-up for cosy, nubby sweater weather outfits, but the cardigan twin-sets here, the black tights and Oxfords cutie Kathleen wore with everything were just right. The show’s costume designer told Instyle US of her approach to Kathleen’s wardrobe, “[Kathleen’s] always the same person. She has a T-shirt, a sweater, slacks—which are just plain slacks [with no designer name]. They’re not jazzy or fashion-y.”
Consistency is a key thing to having great style. It doesn’t mean a uniform, it just means a recognisable thread!
Also jazzy is a word that ought to be used more.
On that NYT Jonathan Anderson profile: Obviously I googled to find out which of the “three fashion critics whom he pays much attention to called the show ‘great’ and ‘inspiring’“
(Cathy Horyn).
I sometimes wonder, if I was a creative genius, would I read my reviews. I think probably not given I can’t even bear to read the comments on my articles. I do read and respond to my Substack comments and emails though, because they’re all so lovely!
Loved this: “The problem with the world,” Anderson says, “is that there are so many things to discover.”
One other thing I loved this week was a tidbit in Hamish Bowles’ British Vogue piece on a new Vogue exhibition coming to London and how Gertrude Stein was in the front row at Balmain’s first show.
Here is her dispatch where she writes of knowing Pierre Balmain as a boy, during the war and he made her suits in those cold, hard years,
“I suppose there at the opening, we were the only ones who had been clothed in all those long years in Pierre Balmain’s clothes, we were proud of it. It is nice to know the young man when he is just a young man and nobody knows, and now well I guess very soon now anybody will know. And we were so pleased and proud. Yes we were.”
Books
My only recommendations this week are Riders and Rivals, obviously!
Still savouring the new Hollinghurst though. Best read in the bath. Like most things.
Love,
Annie x