Good taste is the worst vice ever invented

Girl power, flabby bums and a dinner in reverse

If Instagram is about how fabulous my life is, maybe Substack can be about how much it sucks? And I suppose the truth lies somewhere in between. I woke up on Monday morning hating myself. I’d ruined father’s day on Sunday by being too hungover (cue: excess screen time for the whole fam) and I’d ruined Saturday night by being too drunk. Cut to that evening when I was reminded at dinner of two totally unhinged, wildy incriminating stories from when I was a student at Oxford, both involving bodily fluids. Christ. Should I just get a lobotomy now? Book a one way ticket to the asylum to cure my acute feminine hysteria? Sometimes I think life would be easier if I was quiet and well behaved. But then I remember a quote by the twentieth-century poet Edith Sitwell: “Eccentricity is not, as dull people would have us believe, a form of madness.”

She also said this:

“I have often wished I had time to cultivate modesty... But I am too busy thinking about myself.”

This:

Vulgarity is, in reality, nothing but a modern, chic, pert descendant of the goddess Dullness.”

And this:

“Good taste is the worst vice ever invented.”

What I saw

On Thursday I went to see an exhibition of Dick Jewell’s work at Tyrone Lebon’s brand new gallery in Camberwell. I can’t remember the first time I came across Jewell’s work but I do remember dropping his name early on in my relationship with Tom, during which I downplayed a lot of my key personality traits and lied about things I was into. But with Dick Jewell I was telling the truth. Tom had a piece by Dick on his wall called Girl Power; a perspex grid featuring found images of Posh Spice, porn stars, Hilary Clinton and Natalie Portman, transposed onto polaroids of Battersea Power Station - which is very typical of his work and which I accidentally knocked off the wall.

A multimedia artist, Jewell often recontextualises found imagery in a witty and irreverent commentary on the absurdity of modern life and human behaviour. He’s a visual anthropologist, if anthropologists were funny and ironic. Or maybe they are and I just havent met them.

Spanning his five-decade career, this retrospective plays his greatest hits to thrilling effect. The Michael Jackson lookalikes, the repetition and subversion of victory signs, and the one with all the tongues. All of them interrogating the various meanings and possibilities of the same set of codes / visual phenomena. Sticking out your tongue; it’s coquettish, seductive, brash, brat. It signifies hunger (the vampire), humour (the laughing man) and desire (the pin-up), but also rebellion (the club kid), horror (Gene Simmons) and innocence (the child). How can the same action communicate so many different things? Context, context, context.

There was something incredibly meta about standing in Tyrone’s slick new space, a Pawson-esque box, which makes you think you’re in LA rather than Camberwell, with a phone in my hand taking a blurry picture of a work about pictures and picture making - an ironic commentary in itself about our image-obsessed society. Definitely worth a visit.

What I bought

I think I was definitely still drunk when I was hardballing that seller on Vestiaire Sunday morning, but to be honest, i think she was too because she fully acquiesced. Two days later and a vintage Balmain military jacket arrived at my door, with little beaded detailing that I hadn’t quite expected. Wow, who ordered that? Or rather, who was I trying to be when ordering that? In my mind I was going for Dara-era Christophe Decarnin, but something tells me I've got this provenance all wrong. And there’s a huge difference.

From 2006 to 2011, Christophe Decarnin put Balmain back on the map. Razor sharp shouldered military jackets, distressed denim, second skin leather, everything dripping in embellishments and encrusted with gold. It was about sex, glamour, rock and roll, power, celebrity and excess. It was high voltage fashion, an electric shock that moved with such volacity that people didn’t know what to do with it. The haters called it vulgar. But Vulgarity is, in reality, nothing but a modern, chic, pert descendant of the goddess Dullness. The Balmain woman was anything but dull. And it was that spirit and lineage that I was hoping to tap into.

What I watched

I went to see Charli XCX play at the Lido festival in Victoria Park, where I was knee deep in the cult of Charli. Amelia Dimoldenberg was the apple girl this time, which is huge. To be broadcast on the jumbotron doing a 1-minute dance that someone randomly came up with on Tiktok, and which is now widely sanctified as a cultural ritual, is to be enshrined within the pantheon of cultural relevance. Charli is the value system by which stars are made or validated. Gabbriette, Alex Consani, Chappell Roan, Romy Mars, Jenna Ortega, Lorde, Clairo, Rosé. It’s not just their summer, it’s their world.

What I read

I read Superworm every night to my daughter Phoenix this week to prove to myself that I was in fact an OK parent. I can't cook or drive or carry my kids for long distances without experiencing excruciating back pain, and I find it almost impossible to engage in role play with them for a meaningful amount of time without being distracted by my phone or disappearing inside myself and disassociating entirely, thanks to my raging ADHD. But a bedtime story? One that rhymes and I can style into a kind of rap? That I can do. #Icelandsmumoftheyear

What I did

I went to the Realisation Par x Frankies Bikinis pop up. Two stalwarts of the LA insta girlie scene, this collaboration feels like an arranged marriage. It makes perfect hot girl summer sense.

I met RP founders Al and Teale last year when I did a shoot for them as part of their coming to london moment. They’re great. And fun. So fun that Al almost persuaded me to get naked during the shoot. What’s smart about their brand is that they appeal to a wide section of people without ever massively changing their style. The dresses are fun and flirty and easy to wear. The sartorial code for Hot Girl, put a realisation par dress on and you become hotness personified. And who doesnt want to look hot?

After that, I went to the Burberry pub quiz at the Walmer Castle. Cue: Goldie, the Sugarbabes (original line up), and other ghosts of Top of The Pops past. Regrettably did not stay for the quiz.

Every time I see the Burberry check I think of Daniella Westbrook in full look Burbs, even the baby and pram were decked out in check too (v. me and Phoenix energy tbh) . An iconic cultural moment. It was early noughties, the era of the flip phone, Paris Hilton falling out of clubs, wag life, the OC. At the time, the picture was plastered on the cover of the Sun, with the caption “Chavtastic”, making the point that Daniella’s brash way of styling the luxury print was the epitome of bad taste. What did they know? Nevertheless that was the moment when the brand decided to distance itself from the check, and really lean into the luxury side of things. 2 decades later and we are so back.

What I had done

There’s a scene in the Full Monty in which Mark Addy’s character Dave is wrapping his body in cling film as a way to lose weight (I guess it makes you sweat?) while continuing to chow down on a Mars Bar, which is more or less my approach to fitness. I like having things done to me and then making no effort whatsoever to try and change my lifestyle. Enter Emsculpt, a non-invasive body sculpting technology that uses electromagnetic energy to trigger muscular contractions. It basically forces your muscles to work out without having to, you know, actually work out.

You can have it all over your body but I've just been getting it on my bum, because I don't like the way it looks and I cannot face going to the gym. It’s obviously having zero effect on my butt whatsoever because I’m not doing anything else in conjunction with it, but at least I’m not eating any mars bars.

Best meal

Earlier in the week I travelled 5 hours to Peckham to celebrate Kaitlin 'gift guide' Philip's bday where we ate dinner in reverse. It started with chocolate birthday cake and ended in takeaway fried chicken from Morelys with an Ottolenghi-style homemade potato salad. Very high/low. Very Kaitlin. Kind of unhinged but in the most brilliant way.

Quote of the week

"Where are the boys?" Phoenix, one and three quarters. The apple doesn't fall far...

Random thoughts of the week

Is the right side of my face uglier because I slept on it as a child?

Is Tom the favourite parent?

Why can’t the yolk to egg white ratio be more in favour of the yolk?