The City of Light
by Nick Foulkes8 March 2010
There I was lounging on my day bed when a call came through from Bernard Arnault. OK it was not from Bernie himself, rather one of his palanquin bearers, inviting me to Paris to cast my eye over the new Christian Dior collection. I wavered. My visits to the various outposts of Bernardo’s empire have not always gone that smoothly, in fact I don’t recall one that has yet run without trammel. I wavered and my interlocutor, clearly sensing my indecision, asked whether, while I was flaneuring around Gay Paree doing my impression of Maurice Chevalier, I wanted to see Victoire de Castellane.
The answer was an immediate yes. You see while Mr Galliano is indeed a very talented fashion designer and, so I understand, a fellow worshipper at the shrine to shirting that is Charvet (any friend of Charvet and all that…); Victoire de Castellane, the creative force behind Dior jewellery and watches, is a genius and what is more she is a descendant of one of my great heroes Boniface de Castellane.
Boni was one of the greatest Frenchmen ever to utter the language of Molière and Racine; he married the daughter of one of late 19th century New York’s most colourful Gordon Gekkos, a man called Jay Gould, and did his best to empty the Gould coffers by entertaining on a scale that made even the shindigs of Emperor Nero seem sotto voce. Boni raised conspicuous consumption, a term invented around this time by Thorstein Veblen, to artistic levels that few have since been able to match.
His descendant Victoire is a chip off the old block; with more taste in the smallest of her ringed fingers that many soi-disant creative directors. Ever since I had spoken to her on Mr Alexander Graham Bell’s new-fangled ‘telephone’ about the beauty of Tiger’s Eye watchdials (and there are very few people with whom one can have that sort of conversation these days) I have been looking forward to making her acquaintance.
And so, having given Mr Galliano’s frocks the once over, having signalled my approval to the chief, and having paid my respects to my new best friend the Sartorialist who was busy snapping away at the various types attending the dėfilė I was in the back of a mafia-spec Mercedes flying over the Parisian cobbles to Victoire’s studio, where I enjoyed a delightful hour’s conversation about everything from the design of cowboy boots during the 1950s to the difficulty in getting woven gold ‘Milanese’ watch bracelets of sufficient suppleness these days. I am pleased to say that we agreed on all important matters such as the exigency of the work of Gay Frères and the whimsical charm of Meisner’s architecture. Moreover she was sweet enough to compliment me on my rough turquoise and textured gold cufflinks from Nardi.
And then, with the satisfaction of a man who has put in a good honest day’s toil, I headed for supper at the Relais of the Plaza Athenee – the Relais is a little piece of the 1920s and 1930s on the Avenue Montaigne where it is possible to eat great classic food that has not been rendered overly fashionable. Then, pausing only for an hour or so to enjoy a Cohiba Siglo VI on the hotel’s charming cigar terrace (every hotel should have one), I called it a night. I needed to be well-rested and in tip-top condition for the busy morning ahead of me. As luck would have it the charming Anne-Marie Colban of Charvet had called to say that my shirts were ready and as I happened to be in Paris I wanted to see how the new monogram we had selected on my last visit to the City of Light, had turned out. You can understand that I wanted to be in full possession of my faculties; although such was the sense of mounting expectation that I found that I could hardly sleep a wink.
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