Have you read this Aunt Sally of an article on Grace Coddington in the new Intelligent Life by Julie Kavanagh? Evidently the powers-that-be are trusting Ms Kavanagh to write her hybrid interview-memoirs again after her last one about her bed hopping antics with Martin Amis tainted the rarefied airs of The Economist's ivory towers with the smell of bad sex and Martinis before lunch. (I have it on good authority that the powers-that-be hated that article, but also that the syndication requests on it keep rolling into her agent's offices.)
Link to Coddington piece
As one would expect from Ms Kavanagh, the subject of the piece is not so much Grace, who's rather sketchily characterised, but the author herself. She may attempt to present herself as a gauche day tripper in the beau monde of fashion journalism, but the white heat of ambition and social climbing burns between the sentences. I wonder if she's aware of it.
I do hope Mr De Lisle commissions more of these. I derive more pleasure from hating Ms Kavanagh's writing more than I do from reading good journalism.
Ever yours, C x
Dear C
Thank you for drawing this to my attention - I hadn't noticed it and am grateful for your thoughtfulness.
Ms Kavanagh is certainly of a breed I recognise: one with unerring antennae for auric celebrity, even before its formal recognition. It's a genius of sorts and works best when recall is at its sharpest. London journalism would shrivel without these opportunistic sleb-surfers: if they can write, that's mitigation.
Against better judgement I rather enjoyed Kavanagh's Coddington piece, notwithstanding the vulgar opener - 'On a summer night in New York one of the gays in a huddle outside Rawhide on Eighth Avenue calls out, “We love you, Grace!” as she walks home.'
Gays? I guess they were a-screamin' and a-lispin' as gays do.
Many best wishes
Madame Arcati
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