The Purple Curtains of Paddington

So as you have been extremely well-behaved, here is the story of my grandma and the St. Barnabas' Hostel for Fallen Women. It starts off a little gloomy but should give you hope that even the most dire of unpromising situations can turn themselves around:

On a dark and rainy night back in February, I found myself walking alone across Soho Square, on my way to meet Tracy Cupcake for a spot of supper. Puddles shone silver in the lamplight. The damp aura infected my spirits and the next thing you know my tears were adding to the general wateryness. Then, from the far corner of the square an altogether more dazzling glint drew my eye. It was puzzling to to see chandeliers and works of art in a building I have only ever known as a sad, run down refuge for sad, run down ladies. 

Next to the front door on Greek Street the sign exhorting passers-by to donate pennies via the shoot handily placed for that purpose - reliant on contributions as they were, the holy Sisters who hosted the less chaste - was not only still in place but recently repaired and repainted. I peered in the window for clues. A man with a handsome countenance smiled out at me before making a mime of invitation that I wasn't quite sure how to interpret. I wondered just how far fallen I appeared. The door opened. "Would you like a tour?" he asked. 

"A tour of what?" I replied, trying to appear as elevated as possible. 

He explained that the local authority had closed down the hostel on some daft Health & Safety detail. Socially well-placed entrepreneur Ben Eliot asked permission to restore it, for use as a (phrase du jour) "pop-up" club. He would - and indeed does - donate 99% of the money raised to the homeless. The gentleman then led me through the newly lovely rooms to the secret garden before announcing that the best was about to be revealed. At the end of a stone-flagged corridor he unlocked a heavy wooden door and we walked into a chapel.

"So originally this house was run by nuns?" I whispered, partly out of deference to the sanctity of the place and partly because something was dawning on me and I could hardly speak.

"Yes," he replied, "they sold a marble fireplace to build themselves a place of worship."

A chilly tingle ran through me and goose bumps popped up my arms. In front of this stranger, I only started to cry again. The fellow, who looked at me now in a discreetly concerned way, was due an explanation  - "My grandmother," I shared with him, "was born in this house."

Dickensian fashion details have spread like typhoid recently, from the last collection Mark worked on to All Saints to Paul Smith. Guy Ritchie's "Sherlock Holmes" movie was our shorthand reference for the A/W2010  show that Mark and I took to New York back in January, but my Grandma, born just six months after the death of Queen Victoria, on July 16th 1901, caught the cat o'nine tails' end of proper Dickensian poverty. Her mother, my great grandma Alice Bond, was a spirited and self-sufficient woman, with a mane of such lush beauty that she was asked to sit in Selfridges' window to promote a new hairbrush. Extraordinarily for the time, she earned her own living as the most celebrated freelance chef of the day, cooking for, amongst others, the Empress Eugénie, Sir Arthur Sullivan ("The Pirates of Penzance" et al) and Edward, Prince of Wales, whose favourite pudding she invented. In keeping with her singular way of living, pudding wasn't the only thing that got knocked up. She found herself highly inconvenienced by her condition and was duly placed with the nuns of Soho Square for her confinement. 


In time, the baby was born. A succession of aristocratic Italian ladies arrived to visit the tiny mite, presenting jewellery of some fabulousness, asking that she be christened Ellazina and raised in the Catholic faith. A distinguished lawyer of the day put his name on the birth certificate but he was in the employ of someone whose identity has always remained a secret. Alice took that to her grave. 


Keen to get back to her life, Alice had the baby fostered by various people as evil as any Dickens' character whoever wronged a child (he wrote "Nicholas Nickelby" in the garden of this magical place). At four years old, Ella was sent to stand bare foot in the cold on the corner of Bayswater Road to sell oranges from her apron. A fine lady and gentleman took pity on the shivering child and gave her a gold sovereign so she could get home - the floor of a filthy, empty shop. Upstairs her "foster mother" sat  drinking gin. Ella thought she would be rewarded with some kindness for doing so well and indeed the woman was thrilled - her eyes lit up as she announced "From now on, you can do that EVERY day!" 

But one story she could tell me laughing was this: aged nine, by then a raggedy tomboy urchin, she was sent by the ghastly crone to steal as much of the purple fabric as she could carry from the Oxford Street stands erected for people to watch the funeral procession of King Edward VII. She and her gang were staggering under a load of it when the bobbies blew their whistles and gave chase. For years after, every house in their down-at-heel quarter of Paddington had purple curtains at the windows.


There's a silver lining to this story, never fear, but before I forget, here's a curtain-related sub-plot. When we bought fabric at the curtain warehouse in Finchley, I spotted a roll printed with great big beautiful bantam hens and the legend that they should roam free and happy to lay their eggs in the sunshine. It would take a stronger hearted person than me not to have bought a few metres as a present for my dear friend, designer Antony Price (or "Eyore" as he is quite guaranteed to spot the lead lining in any situation). Antony keeps chickens and other fancy foul the way regular folk have pet cats and dogs. Most plumage in Philip Treacy's hats can trace its provenance to Tone's backyard. I called him to tell of my find and to discuss his rash of press last week. As usual it was news to him that anybody had said anything nice about him, let alone printed it in a newspaper.


His fourth menswear collection has launched for Top Man and it seems Tone might be in danger of being almost cheered by its success:
http://fashion.telegraph.co.uk/columns/gareth-wyn/TMG8090455/The-Price-is-right.html
It's been some years since he had his own shop and despite a devoted private clientele (I number myself amongst them) he was starting to be convinced he would die forgotten and destitute. His epitaph, it seemed, was nominating itself - "Well that was a f*ckin' disaster!" But a second round of glory is not the only thing he appears to have acquired lately. If the Sunday Times "Style" magazine is to be believed, he now has a wife. In their account of the Harpers Bazaar dinner to launch Bryan Ferry's new album "Olympia", they describe Stephen Jones and Manolo Blahnik whipping a scarf off  "Mrs Price" to improvise a hat. The lady in question was fashion writer Judith Watt,  and while they are devoted to each other, no vows are likely to be exchanged. In the Harpers blog, they also gift Antony an "h" in his name. Being dyslexic he has long been pleased to do away with it - "one less letter to get wrong." Mark Antony Wesley feels the same. The two of them share something else - the conviction that it is the boys' turn to show off and dress up once again.


Back to my grandma for the happy ending curtain closer - thanks to the kindness of a wealthy, widowed American heiress who wanted a swell companion with whom to stay in the best hotels, Ella was at the airfield in Paris when Charles Lindbergh landed; attended the premiere of Al Jolson's "The Jazz Singer"; shimmied down the balcony of the Crillon Hotel to go dancing with Prince Aly Khan (who would later marry Rita Hayworth); and while not quite taking tea with the Vanderbilts, she did push the baby Gloria in her pram down La Croissette on the Cote d'Azur. So inspired by her resourcefulness and resilience, we are duly making like a couple of curtains and pulling ourselves together.