A rather fabulous party - Skate at Somerset House hosted by Tiffany

Yes, I know I have been M I A, and I promise a proper apology and explanation is forthcoming in another post. But right now I am feeling all squiffy and happy thanks to Somerset House and Tiffany and think it would be much nicer to tell you all about that instead.

I's not often that I get invited to many glamorous parties through work - architecture journalism really isn't that swanky - but there have been a few exceptions recently. One of those was being given my editor's invitation for the Skate at Somerset House launch party, hosted tonight by Tiffany. I took one of my old war (graduate training scheme) buddies R, who enjoys a free glass of champagne and watching attractive but annoying well-bred men fall on their bums probably even more than I do.

The event was very... well, it was just very. As well as copious amounts of champagne, there was also apple and cinnamon cocktails, hot chocolate in the form of steaming hot cups of full fat milk and cream and a whole stick of solid chocolate to melt in it to your taste and, of course, mulled wine.

We watched Paloma Faith, clad in deep green floor length velvet coat with fur trim and matching hat, sing Santa Baby and one of her own songs (I think it was hers - it was about the advantages of dating much older men) and then turn on the lights on the Somerset House/Tiffany christmas tree, which to be honest was a bit of an anti climax - they were too tasteful to be really impressive. The tree was nice, just slightly overshadowed by the surreal goings on around it.  

We got stuck in to the canapes including tiny pots of soup with cheese sticks, pate on teeny tiny bits of toast, similarly small blinis, small copper bowls of yummy beef stew with horseradish mash, prawn and crayfish cocktail and miniature christmas puddings that were almost like truffles. 

Then we watched a rather mad, but very enjoyable, performance by a man in a lycra jesters suit who white-boy rapped over a mixture of classic swing and hip hop and watched Henry Holland, Sarah Beeney, Jamie Winstone and editor of Elle (and my idol) Lorraine Candy and her very cute little girl skating round and round in circles for a while.

Sadly, I was unprepared and didn't have my camera with me. My phone battery was also dying, but I did attempt to grab some snaps for you. 

The tree - adorned with Tiffany's decorations worth the price of a flat in west London according to Paloma Faith. I think she was joking but can't be sure...

A man dressed as a jester, rapping and scatting to a hip hop version of King of the Swingers from the Jungle Book. Seriously. I'm probably betraying my complete lack of cultural awareness by being unable to identify him, but he was actually quite good although I can see the novelty wearing off pretty fast.

Lorraine Candy. Honestly.

That's Henry Holland on the left there. Have we firmly established that I don't have a career as a paparazzo waiting for me if the journalism thing goes awry yet? Jolly good.

After a few glasses of champagne, we did attempt to skate ourselves. R was intent on accidentally on purpose crashing into a good looking (and rich looking) young man, but chickened out at the last minute. 

I don't think I've ever seen such a well-dressed crowd of skaters in my life. It was all picture postcard fluffy fur hats, shearling trims and cashmere scarves. So many women in so many beautiful coats! There were also some pretty tragic examples of plastic surgery addiction on display - no-one needs to have their lips that full, even if he fillers do act as insulation from the cold.

As we left we were handed a Tiffany's gift bag containing a box of notecards and envelopes. No jewellery unfortunately, but you can't have it all.

I wish I had more photos to show you that aren't just blue blurry messes, but I'm sure there will be plenty populating the pages of our illustrious tabloid press tomorrow morning for you to enjoy...

Christmas wish list entry number 6 - Topshop Parisian wedges

Ok, so technically this is more than one wish list entry, but Topshop has launched a collection that is so perfect I can hardly breathe from the lust. Some of the pieces from the Parisienne collection are starting to trickle through, hiding in the Jubilee collection pages on Topshop.co.uk...

First there's these Parisian wedges, which I could never wear as they'd make me about a gazillion foot tall. Plus at £130 they're not exactly cheap, but I want them anyway...

Then there's this rather lovely velvet boyfriend blazer, £70

Which would look super with this leather sequin mini, £75

Or this double layered bow skirt, £30

Plus this comfy Eiffel Tower embroidered T, £22, which I may actually buy anyway...

And this twist lock square holdall bag from the Highland collection, £35

Apologies for the Topshop overload, but during my trip to hell I had a surprisingly pleasant Topshop experience with an in-house Style Advisor called Alys that has prompted a new trawl of on the online highstreet's finest. Brent Cross may be hell, but Alys was an angel. Plus her aunt is a textiles designer for Yves Saint Laurent, or something along those lines.

Journey into hell (also known as Brent Cross)

I think that we have by now established that I am a big fan of shopping. I love the thrill of the chase, the finding of a bargain, the touch of something new and the spring in your step when you put on something that makes you feel fantastic for the first time.
But even I have my limits. Yesterday I spent most of the day recovering from a trip to Brent Cross, the epic-centre of everything evil in shopping. Somehow a group of architects, planners and retail folk all came together to create a place that saps every last inch of your will to live out of you while surrounded by lovely things that mock you by being out of stock or expensive and hundreds of incredibly badly dressed people who bump into you, make a lot of noise until your head hurts, or, in one extreme case, throw up on passers by (admittedly the thrower upper was about three). And the worst thing is that these incredibly badly dressed people can actually afford the things that you can't.  
This all in a grey faux-marble artificially lit environment that breeds a herd mentality of the kind that makes you queue for the supremely mediocre Wagmama's rather than just leaving as quickly as humanly possible with a bag of Waitrose's finest to scoff in the car on the way home feeling pleased with yourself for having escaped but supremely drained of all mental energy.
It's even worse at the weekends. Especially in the run up to Christmas.
Being a rare native north-west Londoner, I grew up with Brent Cross and have seen it evolve into its full Dante's-seventh-level-of-hell-like current incarnation. When we were young it was a good place to go and hang out after school because it was indoors and no-one would tell us off. Now it just gives me nightmares.
How could they do this to something as good as shopping?
I was forced to enter its horrid halls yesterday because my Mac suddenly froze and needed to be taken immediately for treatment at an Apple Store. But of course London Transport being the wonderful thing it is and me living on the Jubilee line, there is no tube to take me to the Apple shop in town at the weekends. So I girded my loins in the manner of Orpheus setting out to rescue Eurydice and drove through the pouring rain willingly into the underworld.
Look at how they've tried to decorate it for Christmas to make it seem almost cheery;

This is the best picture I could get of the nicest bit of Brent Cross. The roof in the central bit actually looks ok. Shame it only covers a small fraction of the shopping pit and none of the actual shops.

It's not even like the place would be useful if there was a zombie invasion (too many vulnerable access points). In fact, if anything, it's the place where the zombies are most likely to spawn.

Not everything about Brent Cross is bad. It does have both a Waitrose AND a John Lewis which means I can buy yummy cheese, Touche eclat, sewing supplies, Family Guy, Vogue and have a diverting rifle through Topshop all under one roof. But Sunday was horrific. 

Inside the Prada party

So, last night I found myself in the Prada shop on Old Bond Street standing at the side and pretending to look very interested in the book they were launching  because I didn't know anyone and hadn't had enough champagne to talk to the scary people.
Of course, after a couple of glasses of champagne it transpired that some of the scary people were actually nice people who would talk to me like a human being even though I was ostensibly there representing an architecture newspaper (my day job) and not technically a fashion person.

However I was very pleased to be the one who recognised Christopher Kane before the very nice girl from Grazia did, even though she managed to identify a Jagger spawnling that I wouldn't have recognised in a million years.

People I saw/recognised that might mean something to you but I didn't speak to because the pan fried scallops on a bed of black rice seemed like a more sensible option;
- Bianca Jagger (the other Jagger spawn I didn't recognise was a daughter of Jade Jagger - surely too young to be partying already?)
- Various fashion editors and writers
- Christopher Kane
- The doyenne of west London vintage shops Virginia Bates
- Brett from Suede (what does he even do these days that means he gets invited to nice parties?)
- Tolula Adeyemi, model du jour and possesor of the amazing two and a half thousand pounds fur shorts - so expensive it needed words instead of numerals - plus some incredible legs...

People I spoke to;
- Amy Molyneaux and her date Alistair who claimed to also be a non-fashion person but, being a dj, was rather taken with the music selection provided by a girl in a deep blue velvet dress and perfect inky black bob behind the shiny black decks upstairs. Amy was nice even though she didn't have to be because I was patently not anyone of any importance at all, but quickly moved off to talk to someone who was.
- Joanna from Purple PR who was really lovely and friendly and normal.
- Jess from Vogue.com who was wearing an amazing shade of lipstick by Mac which I'm fairly sure was called Impassioned. Or something like that.
- Ashleigh from Grazia who was pretty awesome.

What we drank;
Champagne
Pear cocktails in short tumblers

What we ate;
Pan fried scallops on black rice in a small matt black bowl (black is still the new black)
Smoked Salmon arranged in elegant rounds on tiny squares of bread
Medium rare grilled beef with horseradish dip
Chicken on a stick. No really, it was a bit of chicken on a little bamboo stick.
Little edible chocolate bowls with chocolate and orange mousse
Large profiteroles with a crunchy caramel disc on the top

Here's some general pics;

So there you go. It was actually really fun. I had three glasses of champagne, which as anyone who knows me will attest, is far more than enough to make me tipsy.

Trundling off to the very unglamorous tube home, I passed by the window dresser for Dolce & Gabbana putting the finsihing touches to their Chirstmas displays for the New Bond Street store...

Suffice to say the entire tube journey home was spent thinking about those shoes, the second entry on this year's pointless Christmas wish list. Got home in a merry haze and ate a rather large amount of these before hitting the hay...

And so it begins with a Bittersweets NY ring

We don't celebrate Christmas in our family. You have absolutely no idea how much resentment this has bred among us children, even though the reason why we don't celebrate it is an exceedingly valid one (we are Jewish).
For me Christmas had become, until relatively recently, a time I dreaded. Stuck at home feeling lonely, watching the same movies that are always on, eating our traditional egg and chip lunch, while friends received many extravagant presents, covered their houses in glitter and gorged on yummy stuff. I'm sure it would be different without my other-side-of-the-fence rose-tinted glasses, but I was particularly envious of the decorating and the cranberry sauce.
Despite all this, every year I assemble a rather motley Christmas wish list of things I know I will not receive as a minor form of self flagellation.

Here is the first entry for this year;

Bittersweets NY Baby Vamp rings. In silver please.

The past few Christmases have actually been lovely. I have been spending the dreaded day in Yorkshire with my lovely friend B and her lovely family and it has all been log fires and foggy walks in the woods with the dogs, stockings for everyone, excellent food and drink and, most importantly, Very Good Times.
Very Good Times make Very Good Memories, which are more meaningful than extravagant presents. Unless those presents are Chanel.
This year B is doing something amazingly altruistic in Cambodia, and I am very sad to be missing out on the Yorkshire Christmas. But I will be on a beach in Goa having a massage. So it's not that bad...