Migration

As the Bewick swans flew in from Siberia - bringing winter with them, some three weeks ahead of schedule – it did seem that the season had switched as abruptly as when Mark went back to France, taking summer with him.  

Me and Mr Wesley (sic) rendez-vous’d in Paris on Thursday evening, to stay with Carolyn, on the Rue Faubourg de St. Antoine. This runs off that famed hub of demonstrative discord, La Bastille. My visits never go unmarked by less than hordes of people taking to the streets with banners and megaphones to broadcast their opinion on my presence.  I was there the weekend Sarkozy was elected and was treated to burning wheelie bins and tear gas canisters.  At that time, I remarked upon the highly economically literate grafito around the column of La Bastille – “Sarko – fils de macro”. I took that to be a reference to macro-economics. “Macro”, I was duly informed, is slang for “whore”. Maintaining the restless tradition, thousands took to the streets on Saturday under a brilliant blue cloudless sky to protest against retirement being pushed back. Meanwhile, Marco and I, we just want to get to work.

Carolyn looked over the portfolio properly for the first time, even constructing a smaller, less cumbersome one for us – a more portable portfolio. She is practical, hands-on, get-it-done.  Her late grandmother's catchphrase was “Never mind eh?” The old lady lived in England over sixty years yet that was pretty much the sum of all she learnt, or perhaps needed, to say. We should adopt it to apply to the let down in funding. Repeat until feel. 

Carolyn proposed we hone the collection around jersey, which would keep production at one factory. We went to meet her at the Kenzo HQ for lunch one day and production manager Corinna joined us. She told how, as of the last two-three seasons, even fat accounts such as Kenzo / LVMH have to pay for samples from the Portuguese factories, and that three times the price of production run was quite standard.

Carolyn presented Mark with a huge chunky scarf in mustard and gherkin and matching mittens she had knitted. I received a silky cardie in Schiaparelli (or, to keep with the theme, beetroot juice) pink. We were glad of them at Pony Club in the Parc de Vincennes on Friday night. My godson Marcello has just started lessons there. His class split into two teams for a game - horseback tag. His opponents elected to call themselves the "Golden Dragons", a name of some inherent intimidation, while Marcello's gang opted for - "Salad". Reversing expectations, Team Salad established a cracking lead only to it away at the end. But as frankly they won hands down in the name game, we consider them to be the victors in the League of More Interesting Choices. 

The cloudless sky meant that the temperature dropped dramatically on Saturday. The moon was ice white as we celebrated Carolyn's birthday.  Her movie star mate Karin Viard (who won a César for Exceptional Interpretation of Interesting Choices no less) and her husband were guests, along with many mummys and daddys from school including a bright, athletic American lady called Maggie who kindly advised me on blogging. Her own is a well-followed journal of the perils and panics of having your singular identity held hostage by your children – http://maternal-dementia.com

Here's Carolyn's husband Jean Christophe looking Tres Pack de Rat in his Antonio Marras suit with Mark in his gardener's jacket and mossy Ralph Lauren plus fours that I found at a vintage store in Venice Beach:

Also present (am I sounding like Tatler mag's society correspondent?!) were photographer Marge whose wonderful building site studio at Alexandre Dumas we visited (link to her work on an earlier post); the beautiful house model from Kenzo who, I was pleased to note, scoffed cake; and Catrina, one of Carolyn’s closest pals and designer of Jean Paul Gaultier’s jewellery line for nearly twenty years. Maybe it seems like the best of both worlds, when you are creative, to get a long-term tenure with a regular salary, but you risk forfeiting the satisfaction of those beyond the inner circle knowing your name. For all glory goes to the Artistic Director of the house.

Someone who seems to have navigated the rocks and whirlpool of that trade-off is Peter Dundas. He also worked for JPG for a long time, then Roberto Cavalli, before being made DA himself at Ungaro. Now he has hit his Viking stride at Pucci. He sent Carolyn an enormous bouquet as he was in Miami tonight. Moving is progress, and you can get comfortable in the security of a job even if it is deciding that “purple goes with blue” (as Carolyn’s brother teases her). If progress were measured in miles, Mark and I are doing pretty well. Here, Catrina and Karin are the fragrant flowers on the sofa beyond Peter's bouquet:

Lunching in the Marais, I thought I recognised the gentleman at the table next to us, wondered if he was perhaps a former neighbour of Carolyn’s seeing as we were in a restaurant on the corner of her old road, Rue Elzevir. The apartment there must have well designed ley lines - when she left there Peter took it over. Now he is installed in the Pucci palace in Florence. It turned out the man is a famous TV presenter in Greece - not that I watch Greek telly or much of any telly at all come to that. He said he would wear our clothes on the box and get his best mate, top Turkish TV presenter-actor, a Mr Okan Bayülgen, to do the same. So we have Byzantium sewn up.

Before we left for London we went to meet Vincent Smith, formerly a London punk and uncle to a little boy called Soda Pop. He is the menswear pattern cutter at Kenzo and consults for Chinese fashion companies.  Now he has a Neapolitan gig too - he sets up in a hotel room for a day or two and measures up the locals. Maybe he allows a little extra cloth to the left or the right of a jacket, according to where they pack a pistol, I wouldn’t want to say. Someone mused, “Smith and Wesley – guaranteed a lifetime” and like a vision, the logo of scissors drawn appeared suspended before me. His studio in Montmartre was immaculate. An older gentleman was pressing sections of fabric and then running them under the sewing machine needle. He is well into his seventies but comes to work every day because he loves it. He was not on the march on Saturday.

We showed Vince the mini-portfolio and he said he would help if he could when we were ready to tackle the tailoring. We walked up the steep steps of Montmartre to the Marché St. Pierre with five floors of fabrics (more demure than the “five floors of whores” boasted of by the Bangkok brothel "Angelwitch"!) before bobbing along under the Channel on the Eurostar back to London.