My friend Queenie invited 40 of her closest friends, all women, to a charming Italian restaurant in north London. The table settings were a study in pink with candy-coloured heart sponges, crowns, and wands.

Queenie’s husband Nick made a surprise appearance, gave a loving roast and then skedaddled home before the singalong got going – yes singalong.

Queenie, a psychotherapist and no, that’s not her real name, knows what makes her happy, what fills her cup. She’s confronting this transition to old, as Nick tactfully put it, by celebrating her birthday with only women – her 40 besties– and singing ‘You’re so Vain’, ‘Sugar, Sugar’, ‘Jolene’ and ‘Cecilia’ at the top of her lungs.

Queenie shows zero  signs of slowing down – she works really hard, follows all the latest fashion pages and is always making new friends. Her personality is as big as she is small. Here she is with Stretch last June.

When Stretch heard that not a single male made it onto Queenie’s guest list, he  made me promise that I wouldn’t do the same thing when I turn 60 in a decade or two. Maybe Stretch should take a leaf from Maurice’s book.

Maurice is married to Jessica, one of my long-time besties.

She turns 60 in a few days. Maurice insured that he was on Jessica’s guest list by throwing her a surprise party. Hard for her to argue with something she doesn’t know about. And what a surprise party it was.

Not only was it really fun hiding in the dark and shouting ‘Surprise’ to a stunned birthday girl, but I learned a lot about rocks, a secret passion of mine. The party took place in gorgeous, but trés hilly Dartmoor.

So while Queenie hosted her friends in a cosy, warm, wind-free London venue, Maurice chose to toss us out into the elements, more of a sink or swim feel, in south Devon, about a four hour drive from London.

Prior to our arrival in Dartmoor, Maurice had promised us- mostly middle-aged, not particularly in shape city dwellers- that there would be a choice between two hikes, one easy and one hard. We all knew which one we were choosing.

Sadly, there was a slight miscommunication, and only one hike was on offer- the hard one. Our tour guides for the day Debbie and Amanda led us  up hill after windswept hill, with Debbie (the chattier one although I wouldn’t call either chatty unless it was to do with rocks) – stopping frequently to point out a rock here, a rock there, an invisible rock in the horizon  and the story behind those various rocks or tors as they are called in Dartmoor.

Debbie also pointed out a significant ditch dating back to the Bronze Age or maybe the 18^th century, it was hard to hear with the gale force winds whipping past. I wasn’t quite sure if Debbie said this was a Norman ditch, or Norman’s ditch, but apparently, it was a must-see ditch.

I wouldn’t say this merry group of urbanites was ideally prepared for the rugged tors of Dartmoor. I had to borrow waterproof boots – two sizes too big- thick socks and a shell jacket. My city boots and cute red coat weren’t going to cut it on the muddy, windy terrain of south Devon. However, the hand warmers I found at the bottom of my handbag did prove useful.

Here’s Sandy using one to prevent hypothermia.

Maurice planned quite an elaborate lunch for us mid-climb at a lovely pub with a huge crackling fire, delicious roast chicken, gravy, fries and chilled Chablis.

Just kidding- we lunched  on ‘nature’s picnic basket’…

feasting on…

As we climbed the umpteenth hill, I asked another guest, Arabella, who had planned on taking the non-existent easy hike option what her favourite part of the day’s climb was:

Tea and I haven’t had it yet.

To be fair, Maurice’s itinerary was perfect for Jessica. Jessica is my one true hardcore athlete friend, the steeper the incline, the happier she is. And I wouldn’t call Jessica a foodie- Costco’s lasagna has been served at a dinner party or two. Like Queenie, Jessica is very curious, always up for a challenge, works hard and is a glass half-full kind of person.

She’s thrilled about this for example….

If this is the new face of 60, where do I sign up?

February, 2020

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What do you think about the Annabel’s sale?

Nina: I think it’s closure. I do think it’s quite strange to see the carpet and the urinals for sale. But it’s going, apparently, to charity, which is good.

Who is going to buy those urinals?

Nina: God knows… I remember when I had just been taken on by Mark to do the club…. I was about 19. I had never been to a urinal. I mean, why would you? And I was also trying desperately to sound intelligent. So we go into the men’s room which is beautiful because there’s this wonderful onyx on the wall and there’s a ticker tape in the corner with all the Reuters news coming in. And then there’s this wall of white porcelain urinals.

I really do find them quite unattractive… Everyone’s there. Mark’s there. The picture hanger’s there because we were thinking of hanging up pictures. I was struggling, thinking what could I add to this?  I see that there’s no loo paper holder. And I say, “Oh, you don’t have a loo paper holder here.” … I had no idea that men just peed and shook themselves dry. And of course, the whole place collapsed in hysteria. I had clearly made the most unbelievably stupid remark.  I’m quite amused that the urinal is being sold. I think if I had a huge house I might just buy one for memory’s sake.

How did you meet Mark?

Nina: I was 19… My brother gave a dinner and Mark was there. Annabel’s was just newly opened, and I was lucky enough to go pretty much every night. I remember saying to Mark, ‘You know, there are those terrible vitrines either side of the bar. It’s really tacky selling jewelry in the bar. Does anybody ever buy them?’

And he said, in that rather languid way he had, “Well, if you think you’re so clever, do them up yourself.” Two days later I went by the office with a little plan I had (for the vitrines) – some Chinese red silk and some imari china, a little braid going around in blue and red and they remained like that, I think, until the end of time.

And where did you find the marvelous Buddha in the Buddha room?

Nina: Mark went out to lunch and came back from Barling on South Audley with that Buddha. He never went very far. He could possibly get to Sotheby’s. Then he bought Mark’s Club and then Harry’s Bar. He’d go the Fine Art Society and buy the most wonderful paintings. He just bought unbelievably well.

Mark never really believed in owning anything further than he could walk. He’d have lunch in one place, dinner in another. He was always there, and that’s why they were so perfect.

He always had a tiny little pad next to his place in silver, made by Hermés with a silver pencil, and that’s where he sat, quite quietly,  just writing something (down) he didn’t like. That’s why his clubs were always so impeccable. There was nothing that got on your nerves in any of his clubs. Nothing irritated you. Nothing was ever annoying.

How did you come up with that rich red lacquer color in the Buddha room that somewhat defines the décor of Annabel’s?

Nina: In the Buddha is this red tinge and I’ve always loved that color. I thought that red lacquer would make a marvelous background color for all those paintings. We painted the room layer upon layer of wonderful lacquer done by this specialist painter called James Smart. And I loved the way lacquer would reflect.

Did you two ever go on shopping trips together?

Nina: We used to go do the trade shows in Paris, we went to Venice and bought glass on Murano island… I was intending to go to Nason Moretti (with Mark). They make exquisite glass. Given that I knew Mark quite well, and we were staying at the Danielle and we’d just had lunch at Harry’s Bar, I thought that it wouldn’t be unusual to get a boat, like getting a taxi, to go straight to Nason Moretti, which would mean that we’d arrive at Nason Moretti and that would be that.

But Mark chose that moment to call me Spenderella, and he said ‘That’s so extravagant. We can go on the public boat to Murano island. Everybody goes on those boats.”

And I said, ”Yes, they go to those terrible factories with the hideous multi-colored chandeliers.” We got on the public boat and we get to the hideous place with the multi-colored chandeliers.

I look up and I see the fire escape, you know that little green man, so we go out that door and we’re in Murano and we somehow, by miracle, find the proper factory that we were looking for. By the time we arrive there, instead of looking elegant, we look completely crumpled and disgusting. It was unbelievably hot as well.

By a miracle, nice Mr. Nason Moretti greets us, gives us cold water and believes that we can pay the bill. Because we honestly didn’t look like we’d be able to pay for the glasses.

Did you buy lots?

Nina: We bought lots, all those clear glasses with the blue line were started there. And they were impeccable glasses. Where Mark was so clever is you see, they weren’t a tumbler and they weren’t a wine glass so they were the most perfect cocktail glass. You could put anything in them. Anything you chose to have in this glass just looked delicious.

All these journeys were incredibly funny. Just the two of us. We went to Limoges to buy the china which involved going to Paris and getting the train to Limoges.

Getting on this train with a first-class ticket and being told that we haven’t quite paid enough for dinner. We had to take a supplement. And every dish we ordered, being terribly French, they say ‘Ahhh, ca c’est un supplement.”

We arrive in Limoges which is like arriving in Stoke-on-Trent at about 10 o’clock at night with a one-legged porter with our bags asking us if our holidays were over. I mean, the thought that we might have gone there for a holiday is so ludicrous.

Then we go to the hotel. We went to the Sofitel, which wasn’t really Mark’s normal hotel. And the woman behind the counter pretended that she didn’t know who we were and pretended that she couldn’t find our name.  Nothing under Annabel’s, nothing under Birley. Eventually, infuriated I said, ‘Well, do you have any rooms?’ And she said, ‘Mais oui.’ So French, the place was completely empty. There were 400 bedrooms. She was determined to make us suffer.

Did you go on any other buying trips abroad with Mark?

Nina: We went to Switzerland once to buy something from a factory. And we managed to go on a public holiday when everything was closed. That was another triumph.

We went to stay in this divine hotel and that’s where we found the sugar lumps. It’s extraordinary to think now – la Perruche – they are rough and brown and they come in a big blue box. We thought they looked so much chicer than ordinary Tate & Lyle sugar lumps. We bought all these boxes of sugar and brought them back to England. They didn’t have them in England. That was the level of detail that he went to.

We went to Fouquet in Paris and bought those Russian Sweets.  They were tiny boiled sweets that exploded in your mouth and those chocolate coffee beans.

If you could buy anything in the auction, what would it be?

Nina: There’s a little watercolour which I would love to buy for myself. It’s a picture by John Ward. It’s called ‘Annabel’s Study’ and it shows the bar and the wallpaper that I had made especially for Annabel’s, Berkeley Street by Colefax and Fowler.

What do you think Mark would say now about the sale?

Nina: I think he’d be quite pragmatic and think, “Well, if it’s gone, let it go.” Because, you know, it’s never going to be the same so why not sell it all? At least (the sale proceeds) are going to charity which is good. Off it goes to a new life.

I think everybody who loved Annabel’s is going to be greatly relieved that this place is over. When anything like that shuts, it’s like a whole part of your life ends.

Last Thursday Christie’s and Lombard Odier hosted a goodbye party at the old Annabel’s. I asked Nina what she thought of the dinner:

Nina: Actually, it was rather divine. It was full of quite a lot of old faces, Annabel faces which was a relief. And it was lovely just sitting in the Buddha room and having a drink under the gaze of the Buddha and knowing that it was all going to a new home.

How many of you were there?

Well, the dining room was full. It was a seated dinner. I was very lucky. I sat next to David Snowden, David Linley. I can’t keep calling him Snowden. Jolly nice. We chatted about old times. It was full of old Annabel’s people, not much of the new.  It was lovely to have last night because it was as near to the old days as possible.

The only trick they missed is that they should have had the bitter chocolate ice cream.  That’s the one thing I would have done differently.

Christie’s Chairman of the European Advisory Board Pedro Girao said he was very sad.

But the world moves on. We can’t be nostalgic.

But sometimes nostalgia is for sale. If you remember dancing the night away at this legendary spot, you can take it with you. I know I could use a dance floor.

November, 2018

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Luckily for me, LAS founder Kate Gordon

answered my prayers with an  on-line site which is both informative and entertaining. If you want a quick fix- go to LAS Loves and see what Beyoncé and Jay-Z are dancing to at the Louvre in Paris, or what Wes Anderson and his partner author/costume designer Juman Malouf have selected as their top pix at the  Kunsthistorisches in Vienna.

If you want to go deeper – like I did recently after seeing “Obsession: Nudes by Schiele, Klimt and Picasso” at the Met Breuer,

LAS has five minute videos on specific artists, artworks, city tours and more. Pay a yearly, monthly or even a daily pass fee and you can watch over a 100 short videos hosted by screen-friendly art historians.

I  Beamed Me Up Scotty to  Vienna where LAS’s art lecturer Richard Stemp told me what to see, how to get there and where to get the tastiest  slice of Sacher torte, not to mention a few artistic tidbits about Hitler.

To complement the Vienna tour,  I watched LAS’s videos on Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss and Egon Schiele’s Nude Self Portrait, Grimacing. Both Klimt- a very modern painter of fin de siècle Vienna and Egon Schiele,  the scandalous and hugely talented painter, died in 1918. Schiele was just 28 and Klimt 55.

As it’s  the centennial anniversary of their deaths there are shows galore, (7 this year) including one about bad boys  Schiele/Basquiat at the Foundation Louis Vuitton now in Paris

and   Klimt/Schiele at the Royal Academy next month (November) in London.

If you can’t beam yourself up to Vienna, Paris, London or any major European capital for that matter, LAS’s videos are the next best thing to being there.

October, 2018

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Lee Alexander McQueen was born in 1969 to a working class family. He was the youngest of six. His father was a taxi driver. By the age of 27, the self-proclaimed  “East End yob who used a needle” ran French couture house Givenchy. The British Fashion Awards named McQueen British Designer of the Year four times. In 2010 at the age of 41, at the top of his rocketing career designing sexy, rebellious, thrilling clothes and having just finished a highly praised show Plato Atlantis, Britain’s bad boy of fashion ended his life.

The documentary spans McQueen’s early days to his time learning the craft on Saville Row to his pivotal Central St Martin’s end-of-year fashion show when the eccentric, hat-wearing fashion-promoter Isabella Blow spotted him. She fell in love with the controversial, edgy clothes coming down the runway blending beauty with violence, classical with modern. Born ‘Lee”, Blow renamed him the more upper-class sounding Alexander, like “Alexander the Great”, she said.

The film’s directors – Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui – talked to me about the making of the movie and why the often overused term ‘genius’ is on target in McQueen’s case.

You got access to never before seen home movies, audio tapes, and footage- how easy was it to get all that?

Bonhôte: It was very difficult, not easy at all. None of the archive was available so we started by looking at books, looked as much as possible at what was available on line… We probably contacted two to three hundred sources. All of our archives are made up of more than 160 sources.

How many years were you two working on it?

Ettedgui: When we talked to the producers they said it’s the kind of film that you need three years for. We did it in a year (big laugh). We started thinking about it properly in January 2017. And we had to deliver the film end of this February. It was a good pressure to have. It was the kind of insane pressure that McQueen had to do  several times a year. There’s something about being under that kind of pressure that really forces you to work with instinct, to be spontaneous.

Cool Brittania- How did McQueen help usher that era of the nineties in?

Bonhôte: Lee drew expression from everywhere, he started collaborating with musicians, with artists, with photographers and this was the time that everything was possible… Lee directed videos for Pure, he reinvented the art and form of photography in fashion. Lee influenced as well as was influenced by loads of his contemporaries. Even in the publications, the new crazy magazines coming out – ID, The Face, Dazed and Confused –

Ettedgui: McQueen was something of a moving spirit behind that. For example, when he was at St Martin’s, most of the fashion students stayed in the fashion studio. McQueen, apparently from what we’ve heard, was with the photographers and the graphic artists, the print people, the jewelry designers. He moved around the building constantly and took things from everywhere and brought people together, like he did throughout his career.

He also took influences, he was very influenced by arts and crafts, by renaissance, by photography. He was a real force of nature. The time was right for it. We’d had Thatcher in the 80’s, fashion had become quite beige in that time, the time was right for something new to happen and McQueen was absolutely at the forefront of that.

McQueen said “If you leave my show without an emotion then I am not doing my job properly. I don’t want you to walk out like you’ve just had Sunday lunch….I want heart attacks, I want ambulances”- What was your favorite show?

Bonhôte: We have plenty of shows that we really like, but Widows of Culloden…

Ettedgui: For me Number 13…

The whole show is just so beautiful… I was particularly moved by it because in some of the archives my dad was sitting there in the front row. So it had a very special place in my heart.

But also interesting because people think about Lee as being a bad boy, and the dark side and all of that. But without discussing this together, we both picked shows that are really expressions of light and joy, when everything was working, everything was coming together and he was happy. We are very keen to emphasize that. People say why don’t you go more into the drugs or the this or the that. For us we’ve had lost the balance then between this man’s angels and his demons. It’s crucial to get the balance because if you don’t get it there’s no way that you’re going to understand quite how significant this man was.

 What do you think he thought of women. I know with the Highland’s Rape show people said he was a misogynist?

Bonhôte: He wasn’t, he was so close to his mom, his sisters. Lee wanted to shock and he shocked people. He put that on the catwalk. If you look at his clothes, the way he changed women’s silhouette, the way he made women feel and the way he dressed them up. He made clothes for women who knew what they wanted and women who wanted to dress for themselves. It wasn’t like the husband was buying them clothing so he was very much designing for the independent woman.

Ettedgui:  The women in his life, not just his relations, he was surrounded by women who absolutely loved him because he empowered them.

How would you summarize McQueen’s contribution to fashion and art?

Bonhôte: I think he inspired so many people. There were so many tableaux and visuals and strong elements. His shows and his fashion were way more than his clothing. Not only did he manage to create the real only haute couture house in England, but his vision and all his ideas and all his collaborations have been used by a lot of people, actually, by a lot of creatives. And then further than that he established a business that five years later he ended up creating the most famous wedding dress in the world for the Duchess of Cambridge.

Ettedgui: Peter- The show at the Met showed that there was a huge interest for his work in the US as well. I think his story can touch a huge amount of people who have no clue what fashion is. We had people coming up to us at the screening in New York and saying, “I had no idea who this man was and I fell in love with his story and his life.”

Do you think he was a genius?

Ettedgui: Mozart once said ‘why does everyone call me a genius, don’t they understand how f…cking hard I work to get where I am right now?’ I think it’s the same with McQueen. Those years of apprenticeship McQueen mastered every aspect of the technique and craft of making clothes… And he wasn’t just a craftsman, he had things he wanted to do when he mastered the technique. He wanted to turn it inside out. He wanted to respect tradition, but break all the rules. And communicate emotions and change the silhouette. All of that is encompassed by the word genius.

June 2018

This article also appeared in The Women’s Room Blog.

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The show’s title comes from the late  abstract expressionist Joan Mitchell, who said

Abstract is not a style. I simply want to make a surface work.

The earliest work was made in 1918 by Liubov Popova, a commanding figure in early Abstract Expressions. She was born in 1889 in Russia, showed with Malevich at the age of 26 and died of scarlet fever in 1924, aged 35. I want, I want, I want.

the latest work in the show was made this year …

by Brazilian artist Adriana Varejão (b. 1964).  Azulejão (Moon) is one of Varejão’s celebrated ‘cracked tile’ works reference the history of Portuguese Azulejo tile work and the disturbing legacy of Brazil’s colonial past.

Every decade gets represented in Surface Work, which takes place across Victoria Miro’s two London galleries.  While bluechip names like Lee Krasner, Helen Frankenthaler, Joan Mitchell, Yayoi Kusama and Agnes Martin are all here – mainly at Miro’s Mayfair gallery – plenty of lesser-known talents, both old and young, get wall space.

Take African-American activist and artist Betty Blayton (1937-2016) who championed the arts in Harlem and was a founding member of the Studio Museum in Harlem (which is currently getting a massive new David Adjaye-designed headquarters).

Alma Thomas’s (1892-1978) untitled painting below was painted in 1971 and inspired by the Apollo moon landings. Thomas was the first African-American woman to receive a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York in 1972.

I love reading the snippets about these artists almost as much as looking at their work.  British abstract artist Sandra Blow (1925-2006) used  things like tea, sawdust and sackcloth in her work. American Howardena Pindell (b. 1943) opted for  glitter, talcum powder and perfume. Japanese-Brazilian Tomie Ohtake  (1913-2015) painted while blindfolded. Bay Area artist Jay DeFeo  (1929-1989) is best known for her painting The Rose, a one-tonne, ten foot tall painting made up of layers and layers of oil paint applied to canvas. It was so heavy that it had to be removed from her apartment by a forklift truck.

Fast forward to now, American superstar Lynda Benglis (b. 1941) transforms chickenwire and glitter into something floating, lovely and slightly puzzling.

Victoria Miro’s Wharf Road space shows the younger, more affordable artists. Run don’t walk to Hoxton as this show closes May 19th and not all of the glorious works are sold, like this exuberant work from relentlessly inventive British painter Fiona Rae (b. 1963)…

Rae is a Professor of Painting at the Royal Academy Schools, one of the first two female professors since the Academy was founded in 1768. Of this work, she says:

I’m inventing characters…  who exist only as abstract paint marks, but who might be wearing crowns, clouds, arrows, dresses, shoes, hats, feathers, stars… I think of these paintings as having a relationship to the way one presents oneself to the world; the way one might use costume and props as bits of language to hang off the body.’

Hungarian-American Rita Ackermann (b. 1968) painted this. I love the whirlpools of pink and red.

As Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011) once said,

‘A really good picture looks as if it’s happened at once. It’s an immediate image.

 May, 2018

This article also appeared in The Women’s Room Blog and Almost Essential London

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