Houston? We have a problem. Several of our fashion editors are missing. Trust Richard Branson to have kept half the fashion pack grounded in New York while the London shows kicked in without them. Every fashionista worth his or her safety-awareness demonstration should have been rushing from Calvin Klein's show on Friday evening straight on board the Virgin Atlantic red-eye - the only travel option timetabled to have them at London's Natural History Museum for Saturday afternoon's Mulligan show. Yet those same gremlins which have repeatedly
dogged Mr Branson's best efforts to operate an efficient rail network had also eaten
his aeroplane.
Staff at Kennedy Airport's Virgin Atlantic check-in did their best to make the whole situation a great deal more frustrating by keeping information to an absolute minimum. Passengers therefore had the joy of queueing for a couple of hours in splendid ignorance of the multiple-choice ordeal which lay ahead. Available options included flying from New York to London via Frankfurt with Lufthansa - which does suggest that this airline ought to be checking the geographical accuracy of its navigational charts.
Virgin Atlantic offered bountiful bribery to stay on in the Big Apple, and travel back to London some other day. But the bravest and most doggedly determined frock-watchers took yet another option - boarding a late-departing chartered airbus which had been laid on as a small-scale replacement for their scheduled aircraft.
Susy Menkes of the International Herald Tribune, Hilary Alexander from the Daily Telegraph, Elle's Ian R Webb and my own good self were among the committed few who battled on regardless, forsaking physical comfort in order to make it to the London shows (almost) on time. We must be mad. Arriving weary, bleary, frayed around the edges, and aching all over, only a truly fabulous fashion moment could have refired our cylinders. I, for one, slept like a baby during newcomer David Wyatt's soporific show of ecru flapper dresses. So it was a good thing that hat designer Philip Treacy laid on an invigorating festival of glamour at Tiffany's Bond Street store that very same evening.
It might have been breakfast for all I knew -
jetlag does such strange things to the body clock. But the cocktail of flowing champagne, fabulous celebrities, big rocks, and spectacular headgear proved completely intoxicating. The glittering crush included Kate Moss, Nick Rhodes, Nick Cave plus model wife Susie Bick, Jade Jagger and boyfriend Dan MacMillan, Anita Pallenberg, Marianne Faithful . . . and that other former Jagger playmate, the nubile Luciana Morad in a $15 thrift-shop dress. ''Luciana is just a nice, ordinary, down-to-earth girl'', explained Hilary Alexander, who had met the litigation-friendly home-wrecking young mum in Brazil. ''She's really not a gold-digger . . .'' This seemed a splendidly ironic comment given that Luciana was at that very moment ogling the contents of Tiffany's jewel-stuffed showcases. Perhaps the welfare of that tiny love child will stretch to funding a really decent pair of diamond earrings for Mummy.
While Boy George presided at the decks, a succession of Bentleys disgorged gorgeous models and so-so somebodies - all attired in Treacy's fantastical expressions of millinery craft. This little piece of street theatre quite literally stopped the traffic as girls pouted, preened and paced back and forth on a pedestrian crossing, before mingling inside with the mirror-ticketed chosen few.
Darcy Bussel was one such so-so somebody - a proper prima ballerina performing for once before a right old bunch champagne-drenched prima donnas. But her graceful elegance was easily upstaged by the antics of Grace Jones, who swung her legs out of a stretch limo, clambered up on the vehicle's roof to high-kick ass and attitude for the
benefit of flash-popping paparrazzi cameramen.
Back inside, we were toasting absent friends - all those comfort-conscious half-hearted fashionistas who'd opted to remain in New York on the Branson hospitality package rather than face the gruelling alternative. The fashion crowd was losing its inhibiting sense of cool.
And by the time Grace Jones joined us indoors, everyone was clapping, cheering,
and calling out the diva's name. She made a truly remarkable impact.
In fact, the limo still has the impressions of her 10cm high heels to distinguish its bodywork. And having
now viewed it at close quarters, I can confirm that Grace's own bodywork is still in splendid condition.
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