Category Archives: Columns

Columns

A Lesson Learned – AUSTRALIAN FINANCIAL REVIEW

A Lesson Learned

A gaggle of women in full-on African dress were utterly perplexed by a moving staircase going up to the stars. One gingerly places a foot on a tread, shrieked and fled.

AFR | August 2011

by Marion Hume 

Before reaching air-side at Kenyatta International Airport, I was halted at a security desk manned by those doing something most unusual for their rather serious job; they were giggling. It’s true the scene ahead was, in a purely slapstick sense, rather funny. A gaggle of women in full Africna dress were utterly perplexed by a moving staircase going up to the stars. One gingerly places a foot on a trend, shrieked and fled. Another started slapping the rubber handrail as if it were a snake she must kill to stop it moving-at which point the immigration official who had raised his arm to stamp my exit visa bit into his sleeve to stop himself laughing out loud.

Passport stamped at last, I walked towards the high escalator and stepped on to it to gasps of astonishment. Next, a young girl was behind me, shrieking with glee. “See, it’s OK,” I said, before raising my right leg slowly , indicating how to step off again. While I was running late for the Nairobi-London night flight, I hung around just long enough to see others of the group emerge over the top from what. by the look on their delighted faces, has been the ride of their lives.

We all travel so much these days, it’s a struggle to remember our own first time. But to travel, to transit your fist airport, to fly, when you come from a country mired in poverty, is an even more extraordinary thing. Of course not even Kenyan is poor- far from it- but my sense was these women were certainly not Nairobi cosmopolitans. By the time they reached the top of the escalator, their eyes were sparkling with both astonishment and a sense of achievement. They’d conquered something and they hadn’t even left the country.

Still, one must always be wary of stereotyping. I recently worked with a Kenyan cameraman who told me how an international director had shown him some footage shot by his foreign team. Seeing a filthy little toddler digging in the mud with a stick, the cameraman suggested it might not be a great idea to use that sequence but was ignored.

Months later, a mother watching her flat screen TV was furious when she spotted her son being used in one of those bulletins urging us to flex out credit cards for charity. “Don’t those people’s kids ever sit in the yard?” she shouted. (That, and demanding to know why, when the images of kids from rich countries are protected, no one though to so much as ask whether a mother might be equally protective of her little boy). The cameraman said he’d heard that parents in New York and London have become so scared, they never let their kids just be kids, sitting in the sun digging for worms.

Wherever my escalator ladies were headed, I hope there are people to guide them through the subtleties of their new location. For while I was only able to teach them the not wildly complicated skill of how to ride an escalator, what they gave me in exchange was more profound.

If we are lucky in our working lives, we are forever fronting up to new experience. Yet sometimes, I know that makes me nervous and now I now realise that the terminology we use is partly to blame. Why would I relish risking going ‘out on the wire’ when I lack the balancing skills of a circus performer? But stepping on to an escalator, going up? I can do that. So from now on, I’m going to remember the Kenyatta escalator ladies when I need reminding that the new isn’t always to be feared. It can be fun.

Columns

Royal Ways with Austerity chic – Australian Financial review

AFR | April 2011 

Royal Ways with Austerity Chic

by Marion Hume 

There’s much chatter about how a wedding dress big enough for Westminster Abbey and the world’s TV can also be in keeping with the current make-do-and-mend trend. 

Austerity Chic: that’s the term being bandied about to describe a forthcoming royal wedding of which, even if you are the staunchest republican, you cannot be unaware. Wills and Kate are doing a buffet, we hear, but there’s much chatter about how a wedding dress big enough for Westminster Abbey and the world’s TV screens can possibly also be in keeping with the current make-do-and-mend trend.

I’m guessing that the royal couple have advisers they can call on in such circumstances, but they could still learn a trick or two from my friends A&M and N&M, as both these couples have recently scored 100% on the Austerity Chic wedding monitor of my own invention.

I doubt W&K – as I shall henceforth call them, for balance – can manage to pair things back quite the way A&M did; their invitation consisted on him saying “Can you meet me at the Civic Centre on Tuesday morning?” -and there he was on the steps, in the suit he was given 15 years ago when he first came to England and got a job as a silver service waiter.

The ring was his mother’s, the bridal car – this will explain the initials – had been borrowed for a test drive from a swanky dealer, the pictures were taken outside Kenwood, one of London’s grandest wedding venues although we didn’t go in, the champagne was concealed in my handbag and the cake was a pile of meringues bought from a local cafe. As for the dress, it was in shades of oyster and chocolate, chosen by a woman who rarely gets new clothes to be worn again. All in all delightful and in the nicest way, spectacularly cheap.

N&M’s wedding was on a bigger scale. Hundreds packed the church and later, a scruffy music venue which had been transformed with elbow grease and ropes of circus lights into a magical place. The groom’s dad is of Welsh heritage, so we kicked off with cups of tea, rounds of sandwiches and slices of Victoria sponge cake that he and his side of the family had made that morning. Mother-of-the-bride is from Sierra Leone, Mother-of-the.groom from Barbados. I’m prepared to wager that the African & Caribbean buffet they cooked up later, and which the bridesmaids ladled out, will outdo W&Ks for flavour – even with all the organic produce from Prince Charles’ farms.

Another bet I know I’ll win is on the dancing. Posh ‘Hoorays’ tend to be commendably enthusiastic but really bad dancers, in contrast to N&M’s celebration where Granny-of-the-bride cleared the dance floor out of respect when she did her moves wearing flame orange robes, a vivid head scarf and a jaunty fedora hat atop it all. The bride’s dress? Cocktail length and one of those rare ones where you think “she really could dye that and wear it afterwards.”

But how can you do “Austerity Chic” when you are marrying the heir to the heir of the throne?  Kate’s dress has to be sort of grand; companies such as 9th generation silk weavers, Stephen Walters & Sons, keep going in part because of royal trade, but (please) there has to be less of it than there was of Di’s gown. Dyeing and reshaping is not an option for what is, after all, a future historical artifact, but then, that’s austerity points scored for the guarantee of a second life, viewed under glass. Where Kate’s outfit-to-be is all set for maximum points on my Austerity Chic wedding monitor is in the jewels department. After all, the ring A gave M was only second hand. And those royal tiaras get hauled out and remodelled generation after generation.

So overall, W&K may score higher than you might expect, familiar as they are with the Austerity Chic mantra; Reduce, Recycle, Reuse.

Columns

FIN! – Australian financial review

Fin!

AFR | May 2011

By Marion Hume 

We used to fret that the internet would render fashion shows obsolete. While the opposite is the case, it’s us, the professional audience, whose days must be numbered.

There’s no such thing as “fashionably late” in a world of live streaming.

Time was when, if the invitation said 4pm, you could dawdle over to a cafe near the venue, enjoy a cup of tea, or, if you were feeling full-on fashionista, a glass of champagne, yet still fret that, by turning up before 5pm, you’d be revealing yourself as a rookie who was frightfully keen.

Today, 4pm means in your seat at 3.45 pm or the designer’s PR will be SMSing frantically. It means sitting up straight and slapping on your catwalk smile by 3.50pm, then it’s lights down, music up and a huge screen running a countdown as viewers in Dubai, Hong Kong, Los Angeles are welcomed to start “shopping the show”. You can buy the coats at Burberry, to arrive months later, in 150 countries, as they are appearing on a catwalk in London. What you can’t do is bribe your way in once a show has started – as I discovered at 4.01pm. Opps.

Lesson learned. Over in Paris, I got to Louis Vuitton so horribly early, I had to sneak off for a coffee so as not to linger with the kids who snap the arrival of the front row set for their blogs. The Vuitton show was staged at the Cour Carree du Louvre, as it has been for several seasons now, but just to make things interesting, they changed the point of entry. Cue scores of people, myself included, who glancing over and, seeing no line yet, relaxed and ordered another “cafe creme”.

People may think we fashion folk are so dumb, we can’t walk and chew gum, but let me tell you, once I realised entry was via the gate around the corner, I was sprinting, texting to friends in five inch heels to “move it from the café, now!” and thinking how HUGE the Louvre is, all at the same time. True, I couldn’t remember exactly which Louis had extended the old chateau of Francois Ist until it became a palace that seems to take up half of France but I did keep wishing he’d put in more cut-throughs. Luckily, I was in my seat when the show started, but as it featured women in handcuffs, I got hot under my feminist collar all over again.

Those of us who watch fashion shows for a living are increasingly questioning what they are for, (although kinky handcuffs, are, you have to admit, a whole new product category to brand). The truth is dawning, chillingly, that shows are no longer for those on the seasonal schlepp from New York to London to Milan to Paris. We used to fret that the internet would render fashion shows obsolete. While the opposite is the case, it’s us, the professional audience, whose days must be numbered. “Shopping the show” online still requires skinny girls (one of whom, this season, is a boy) walking up and down in the clothes to click and buy. The vast lobby of net-a-porter, the pioneer of luxury online, is dominated by a gigantic screen showing designer shows. The Burberry website, the Burberry stores, feature more catwalk footage. The equation of “1,000 seater show staged like a rock concert + clothes to click on now” is key to how this British brand has become a GBP 5.1 billion fashion megalith.

But what of the 1,000 people who are invited to attend? What purpose do we serve, now that anyone can go to London’s Piccadilly Circus and watch the Burberry show, simultaneously, on a 32-metre digital screen? (As I did)  What is the point of fashion critics now the public, on twitter, on apps, shopping as they go, votes on what’s fashionable now? As for those of us who go to actual shows (if we are not locked out, at 4.01pm), how long before they just paint us in by CGI?

Columns

Minding your P’s and P’s – Australian financial review


It seems Australians were among the rare few who were not ‘frightened’ or ‘shocked’ by the radical ideas of Yohji of Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons.

Belinda Seper is one of the most respected fashion retailers in Australia. Before her retail career, she was a model, which overlapped with being a soldier. While an unusual career arc, it’s is no more unusual than a fashion editor I know who doubles as a trapeze artist or the chef in my local café who is also an acrobat. Small and lean, he moves with the feline grace of someone you imagine, yes, could manage back flips while up on a high wire although, personally, I have never seen him doing anything more complicated than flip a steak while frying an egg. As for Seper, early multitasking involved stripping back a weapon while applying nail lacquer. (Ok, I’ve exaggerated. She used to do one, then the other. But that doesn’t take away from the fact she was the fastest shot in her battalion. And had the best manicure.)
One of my most valuable life lessons came from Seper, who once shared her motto, ‘Never forget the six Ps’. These spell out ‘Prior Planning Prevents a Piss Poor Performance’. I have to say, had I learned that motto from a puritan American and it had been the five Ps, it would not have stuck. Right now, I am grappling with the eight Ps, which might be familiar to you; ‘Prior Planning Prevents a Piss Poor Powerpoint Performance’. What a lot of prep to find 87 images to back up a 45 minute speech! Especially as I never actually said yes to this. (Didn’t it start as a panel discussion and just chatting for a few minutes?).
The subject is the arrival in Europe of the Japanese designers, which I am a little too young to remember personally. However, having read all the contemporary reports from the early eighties, it seems the Australians were among the rare few who were not ‘frightened’ or ‘shocked’ by the radical ideas of Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons. I can find no Australian reports urging readers to run for the hills, or indeed the bunkers. The French talked of the invasion of the ‘yellow peril’ and judged the debuts of two designers who have turned out to be among the greatest of the last quarter century as “Hiroshima, sans amour”.
There will be Q&A afterwards, so I am trying to be super­prepared, although that will probably translate as staying up all night and then not having time to have my roots done. As a rule, which alas I always seem to break, fashion people are groomed, immaculate. But, until recently, the best you’d expect of many of them as public speakers was that they’d hide behind the lectern, mumble a bit, then slink off stage. But media training has changed the game irrevocably – to the benefit of all.
I was at the International Herald Tribune’s Luxury conference in London recently (it’s in Sao Paolo next year – exciting!), and not only were all the thousand or so delegates chic, but the immaculate speakers – designers and CEOs – gave precisely calibrated performances, never straying off brand message. They were all way too prepared to risk falling off the tightrope.
Bar one. Paul Smith, the British menswear designer, spoke off the cuff (he had a few slides, but they got muddled). He said that his failsafe for public speaking is to bring a rubber chicken, which he then pulled out and brought the house down. So I’m thinking, what if the laptop fizzles or the audience react like the French in 1981 and, at the sight of a tattered dress, duck for cover? Although I realized I was taking the eight Ps too far when I caught myself eyeing up a friend’s new kitten and wondering where they kept the travel basket so that, if the speech goes belly­up, I can let the cat of out of the bag.
International fashion editor Marion Hume is based in London.