Julie Kavanagh: From Martin Amis' cock to Grace Coddington

Dearest Madame,

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

Dictator's wife Asma al-Assad - thin, as approved by US Vogue's Anna Wintour

Asma al-Assad

A faint sneery rustle of controversy over US Vogue's embarrassingly timed profile of Syria's first lady, Asma al-Assad, 35. As Middle Eastern and north African regimes topple all about its borders and beyond, and Syria itself beats down rioters and restricts internet access, here comes a piece of scented puffery which lauds the wife of President Bashar al-Assad, who won 97% of the vote in the 2000 election.

You can't buy that kind of charisma. Or may be you can.

Apparently, the first lady is the nation's Mother Theresa. Wisely, she leaves the jewels at home while ministering to the dirt poor. She's a strange kind of saintly figure, however. The Vogue piece recounts how she cruelly tells a bunch of children that their school is to be closed down. As infantile blubs start up she reveals she's only joking - 'I just wanted to see how much you care about Massar,' she says of her charity.

It's a very telling anecdote. Living saints should not be overly conscious of the favours they do unto others. Note to the first lady's PRs.

As for Vogue, oh dearie dear. Yet another cock up. Why they ran the interview is revealed in the opening lines. She is 'glamorous, young, and very chic... a thin, long-limbed beauty with a trained analytic mind who dresses with cunning understatement.' Yes, she is thin: this will have endeared the first lady to editor Anna Wintour who most certainly would not have commissioned the profile had the subject resembled the late Golda Meir or some other aged gargoyle. We all know about Anna's obsession with thin.

If only she had read the astrological Old Moore's Almanack, which from the vantage point of January 2010 foresaw the current revolutions in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and elsewhere, while secular seers had their antennae up their arses. If only.

Read the profile while it's up, here

Time magazine tries to give me one (again)

Years ago I took out a subscription to Time mag just to get some free gifts - Christmas cracker stuff, as it turned out.

Long before I cancelled, unread issues lay about in neat piles. Its journalism looked and tasted like mystery meat: highly processed, glazed: not good for the blood pressure. Where was the individual voice? Harshly, I formed the view that anything it claimed or reported - or saw - was probably manufactured to suit its house style gospel. Such is the peril of writing and editing as if attired in pulpit robe.

Time has never got(ten) over my rejection. Like so many of my ex-lovers, it does not take No for an answer. I hear a plaintive ululation at the door (OK, the letter plate needs oiling) and there on the mat lies yet another billet-doux from Time (Discount Services).

The latest offers me a 54-issue sub for just £15. This includes 6 additional issues if I buy now, the 100 Special Issue, the Time Person of the Year issue, any other Special Issues, unlimited access to http://www.time.com/ and - best of all - the Time Privilege Card. If I pay by credit card, I can have my sub automatically renewed at the "guaranteed low rate".

The annual value of this largesse is £162. At just £15, I save £147. This is so generous that an MP would, I guess, have to declare it as a gift. The wonder is what's in it for Time. This is a loss-making offer though perhaps a healthy circulation figure helps maintain high ad page rates.

On the cusp of temptation I visit Time.com. Oh dear, the latest issue is dedicated to football.

Bin.

Omg! Your chance to breathe Anna Wintour's air!

Oh, hand-fan your face, girlfriend! The legend that is Anna Wintour has created an "opportunity" to meet her at American Vogue on the 12th floor of 4 Times Square, NY. You don't just swan in for ritual humiliation, natch. First, you must make a bid for the chance in an online charity auction - here's the link - and the price to beat as I write is $12,000.

I'm surprised that only 16 bids have been placed; the deadline is April 29 - plenty of time to butter up daddy for the dosh or whatever. Aside from meeting Anna you get to do unpaid intern work at the magazine - y'know, do the coffee runs, push clothes racks and watch Grace Coddington pull faces behind Anna's back. All cash goes to the RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights, but more important, "Just Being Near Her [Anna] Will Make You Chic," as organisers Charity Buzz put it.

How common.

Is Alexandra Shulman no longer in Vogue at the Daily Mail?

The Prada-wearing Newcastle conwoman who posed as "Vogue editor" or "editor of Vogue" - agency copy needs only a bit of reshaping - gets wide media coverage today. But nowhere does it say which Vogue editor Emma Charlton pretended to be when she fraudulently booked a top British hotel for an £80,000 shindig.

Since it must be assumed the Press Association report failed to specify, the Daily Mail alone has opted for American Vogue, if only as an excuse to put up a pic of its editor Anna Wintour for a sexed up The Devil Wears Prada reference. Commonsense dictates that Charlton would have posed as the British Vogue editor, Alexandra Shulman - who is not half as chic as Wintour and has not been depicted in a movie or played by Meryl Streep: she is known to be distressingly normal and pacific in her responses to daily life. Her affable and chirpy boss Nicholas Coleridge can't abide divas. Say "Prada" and you don't automatically think of Shulman. She's not thin, either. Her chipmunky chops are positively squeezable with only the rumour of a hammock-style second chin.

Once upon a time Shulman was a fashion columnist on the Mail until she was dropped in March of last year due to "budget cuts". Her gig was passed to the professional loony Liz Jones who once edited British Marie Claire. All papers are cutting back but I remain unconvinced that money lay at the root of this cut. What could be better than a Vogue editor writing about fashion? Does someone at the Mail think that Alexandra falls slightly below the soignée standards of her US counterpart? The question's not rhetorical.

'Tatlersnob': The man who is utterly obsessed with Nicholas Coleridge

Nicholas Coleridge: In the company of Jordan, Megan Fox, Justin Timberlake et al, he is now a sex object: in this instance, the pin-up of 'Tatlersnob'

Even my most unforgiving critics - yes, you - will readily agree that Madame Arcati has a talent for finding human nuggets: very singular creatures with peculiar tastes. The gorgeous Robin Tamblyn and his preoccupation with Kevin Spacey. Fish and her exquisite fanaticism for Nicky Haslam. Now meet "Tatlersnob".

Tatlersnob, 28, is the alias of a young man who has a fixation on ... Nicholas Coleridge, 52 (job title below), the man who presides over Vogue, Glamour, Tatler etc, in the UK. Recently, Tatlersnob began dropping comments on various Arcati posts in praise of Mr Coleridge: after a while I thought, "I do believe I have spotted another nugget for my Museum of Charming Peculiarities." [I thought these words as a proper sentence]

I am quite confident that Tatlersnob is not a tiresome stalker or clinical loon: he appears to have an incomprehensible obsession with the upper classes (as framed in upmarket glossies, I hasten to add), the aristocracy and Coleridge in particular as icon of the genera. Tatlersnob, after a little persuasion, agreed to a brief, explicatory interview ....

Tatlersnob! Crazy name! Now look, it's become apparent from messages you've left on Arcati that you have a thing for the Managing Director of Condé Nast and novelist, Nicholas Coleridge. Tell me as much as possible what this "thing" is and how it started - do not stint on detail.

I'm a 28 year old male from the wilds of Scotland. I do so love the upper class and the aristocracy. All those ex Eton and ex-Le Rosey types: so attractive and sauve.

You stinted on detail. Anyway, starting with what remains of his hair down to his well shod feet, give us a guide to your thoughts on Nicholas' body parts. I mean, what do you think of his face, his shoulders, tum, other areas, legs etc. And tell us what you think he is like as a person.

Mr Coleridge has such a handsome face. He looks quite sporty and like he enjoys the outdoors. His chest looks quite wide and muscular and he seems to have lovely chest hair. He may well ride and so have very muscular thighs and bottom. AS a good snob I'm sure his crown jewels are well polished and sparkling.

In your dreams what would you love to happen between you and Nicholas, bearing in mind he's a happily married father of four. Share your fantasy - do you have fantasies about him?

I would just like him to take me out to dinner. I'm sure he is a very interesting person. It would be so lovely listening to his lovely voice for a couple of hours.

My own view is that Nicholas is a status obsessed snob as reflected in the magazines he oversees such as UK Vogue, Tatler, GQ etc, and in his rather facile novels which are just about money. How is this healthy? Defend your hero/fantasy lover from my brutal assessment.

I'm sure Mr Coleridge is just going by the old adage "write what you know about". He knows so much about high society and the upper classes, then why shouldn't he write about them? Mr [Geordie] Greig and he made a wonderful team at Tatler and Tatler needs to be somewhat snobby to remain a society magazine.

Christmas is a-coming. What would you love to buy Nicholas and him you.

I'm sure he could could find me some vintage copies of Tatler or maybe get me an invitation to bounce around a stately home. I would take him as my guest as it's always fun to have someone else to bounce around a stately home with.

Tatlersnob! Thankyou for sharing. xx

Candy Pratts Price: How Gord could get back in FASHahhn

CPP © Dimitrios Kambouris/WireImage.com

Style.com executive fashion director Candy Pratts Price (CPP) easily steals the show in the US Vogue movie doc The September Issue, out shortly, in which she stakes her claim for immortality with a one-liner: "SepTEMburr is the JANuahhry in FASHahhn". The way this Puerto Rican drawls and croaks out the dictum with the oddest basso cantate diction is one of many unintentionally comic moments, so much so, you can now download it as a ringtone (click arrow on Myxer to listen).

Candy (or Candida Rose Theresa Pratts Price) also appears in cartoon form in her periodic Candycasts on the Style.com site, laying down the law on such matters as eco-pod coffins (or "echo-pod" as she puts it. "Don't pollute, just bury correctly") and playing dominoes on Sunday (but not in Alabama). The Anna Wintourised stick insect 'toon-Candy bears little resemblance to the living-breathing irregular Candy, beyond her dark colouring; and the graphic version has the weirdest crossed arms: stretched out she'd be able to balance on them without stooping.

I just love CPP. And her animated form should be an inspiration to others who in the flesh may also not look entirely the part. Gordon Brown should think about joining the Bugs Bunny tribe and turning himself into a 'toon for his YouTube performances. He'd lose the eyebags, the alarm smiles, the intake-of-breath mouth movements: he could be made to be cute and sexy. I can't help but feel that this bold act of imagination could reverse his fortunes. Possibly. Think CPP, Gord.

CPP 'toon show

A celebration of CPP

Anna Wintour: 'US Vogue is not for blind people'

The editor of US Vogue, Anna Wintour, 97, says in this The September Issue movie trailer, as she casts her own fragile orbs on a magazine cover: "This type seems so large and pretentious, it looks like it's for blind people." There's sophistication for you.

For more info on the blind and partially sighted click here.

Q almost sunk by U2 interview

A spy at Emap tells me that the issue of Q that carried a mega-interview with U2 a couple of months back was the worst-selling in the magazine's history. Time for the Christ in shades to take off the perma-Red Nose.