I want you to know I plan on being a star

Bread rolls, Eve Babitz and harnessing the power of the buck moon

I can't believe I’m saying this, but the highlight of my week was watching Sabrina Carpenter perform at Hyde Park, surrounded by a bunch of baby prostitutes and bags made out of repurposed crisp packets. I wasn’t even meant to be there, but a friend of mine persuaded me to come last minute. And I’d said yes on a whim. I’d been jealous of everyone who had been to Oasis, Lana, and Black Sabbath, and I wanted what they were having. I just didn’t realise it would come courtesy of a pint-sized pop star / friendly garden gnome.

It was all very British; a horde of hideously dressed people getting smash-up en plein air and losing their shit to live music. A real Martin Parr vignette. People were there with their kids and their nans, all gyrating on each other in one amorphous mass, and shrieking to lyrics like “take my clothes off” and “turn me round”. In those Elysian fields, all social hierarchies seemed to collapse and things like status and shame stopped mattering.

I had more fun there than I did mincing around Couture Week in Paris, an institution predicated on hierarchy, status, and somewhere, certainly shame. It was a fallow period this season, but the clients were out in full force, which is actually my favourite part. The embarrassment of riches, where old money and the new season collide.

Occupying the liminal space between vulgarity and taste, these rare exotic birds make it all worth it. Maybe they’re not as chic as they were when Juergen shot them for W back in the late 90s, but there are still the obvious tropes: the flat iron faces, liberally applied slap, the musty stench of wealth. Sorry, but Lauren Sanchez sitting FROW for Demna’s final collection at Balenciaga couldn't be more on point.

VIPS at the Sciaparelli show...

The whole thing was made ever more poignant by the fact I’m currently binge-watching Squid Games, season 3, in which a cohort of nefarious VIPs pay to watch a bunch of down-and-outers fight to the death while they get to quaff bubbles from their seats. Aren't those animal masks they’re wearing by Schiaparelli? There is something vaguely Squid Games-y about Couture Week or rather the rat race that exists around it; all the content farming and desperate waft of competition. Forget the clothes, this is the work of art right there.

What I saw

On Wednesday, I went to the Jenny Saville exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. Raw and confrontational, her large-scale renderings of female body parts and unadulterated flesh made me feel somewhat better about my own body.

I was recently on option for an underwear campaign, which had set off a small bomb inside my head. I’ve never really bothered to wear a bra, not because I have those petit, mignon French girl breasts (it sounds sexier in French than just saying small tits) but because I can never be fucked to and because sometimes I just forget and at 34 you can finally tell. Plus I'm a mutha, hear me roar. And while I benefit from skinny privilege, I wouldn't call myself in shape. I am soft and fleshy and wobbly with dimples, which isn’t really giving Victoria’s Secret.

But seeing these heroic and almost intimidating images - they somehow bridge the gap between beauty and the grotesque - of female nudes, where each painted tach mark mimics the visceral nature of fat, skin, and flesh, I suddenly stopped caring.

I also loved the intimate self-portraits where she’s holding a wriggling child over her swollen pregnant belly, it *almost* made me want to have another kid, and then I remembered what having them is actually like. LOL.

What I bought

When it comes to sartorial poetry, there’s nothing quite like a ludicrously arbitrary belt. Which is to say, a belt that has no other function than to look effortlessly cool. The beauty of superfluousness. The bliss effect of Bohemia. This isn't about holding up your britches, but rather conjuring the kind of feeling you get when you’re passed out in an opium den, the euphoric rush felt upon entering Valhalla. I also love the naivete to it; this is styling 101, the most basic bitch trope or stylistic intervention an It Girl can rely on to look somehow affected. To communicate they care without looking too much like it. It’s Mossy at Glastonbury and everyone who has ever copied her since.

Low slung, with brassy studs and made out of battered brown leather, I found the perfect answer in a vintage Chloe belt from Vestiaire. It’s giving financial crash era Sienna Miller without being too referential, which is basically my mood for summer. Failing that there’s R and M Leather or Lewis Leather. Touch the leather, leather.

What I watched

I couldn't get to sleep on Wednesday night, and so I put on Boogie Nights, an old Paul Thomas Anderson classic. I’m clearly in a PTA era. And it hits every single time. Mark Wahlberg is small-time waiter Eddie Adams, who hits the big leagues as legendary porn star Dirk Diggler. With his monstrous cock, and Brobdingnagian ego, combined with a not so insignificant coke and meth addiction, things obviously start to unravel. In fact, his character arc mimics the journey of an erection. Up, up up it rises, until an explosive crescendo, before shrivelling back to whence it came, only to lie latent with threat of and potential to rise again. It’s a tale as old as time about the knife-edge sword of fame, but you have to admire his tenacity. “I want you to know I plan on being a star,” he says. “A big, bright shining star. That’s what I want. That’s what I’m going to get.” But is it ever worth it? IDK

What I read

Eve Babitz’s Slow Days, Fast Company. I’d actually never read any Babitz before, but I’m going to LA this summer, and wanted to set the scene. Eve was one of the all-time great bon vivants, or as she herself proclaimed, a “frivolous young woman prone to adventure.” LOVE. Her ability to romanticise the mundane is infectious, and her writing has that cinematic quality that makes you wish like you were living inside a movie; Staring out of windows nostalgically on moving trains, biting your bottom lip, smoking cigarettes just a hint too slowly, and generally looking lobotomised and/or lost.

Her observations about men having to go with their womenfolk to parties they don't want to really struck a chord (sorry, Tom!) as did her meditations on the mirage of fame (something of a theme this week.) “I realised the truly awful thing about success is that it's held up all those years as the thing that would make everything all right.” It’s true, I’m not sure I’ve met anyone huge or successful that could be classed as all right. In fact, it takes a special kind of madness to become famous in the first place.

What I did

On Thursday night, it was the ‘Buck’ full moon (also known as the salmon moon, raspberry moon, and thunder moon,) which astrologically signifies a time of growth, inner strength and overcoming obstacles. We had a beloved, brilliant, bat shit friend of ours staying and she’s really into all that New Age woo woo stuff. So to harness the power of this significant lunar phenomenon, she made me leave my carnelian signet ring (which apparently helps inspire confidence and quell procrastination, but, like, does it?) in a jar of salty water all day and then leave it out in the garden over night to charge.

We also wrote down all of our harmful patterns of behaviour and things we do to sabotage ourselves on bits of parchment and then burn them under moonlight as a way to karmically and cosmically release them. I couldn't tell whether using a Loewe garden candle that the brand had sent to me to burn them was ironic or just inappropriate (was it too high luxe for the karma gods? Too much of a capitalist jerk off?) but it smelled nice, looked good, and added a sense of occasion to the whole affair.

I waited til my magna carter had disintegrated to ash and thought about snorting the remains, but then realised that would then defeat the whole purpose of releasing all that negativity. I really do have terrible instincts.

What I had done

I was feeling a little ropey by the time I’d slithered back home from Paris, so I booked myself a vitamin drip. When it comes to wellness, I'm more of a power bottom than a top; I love having shit done to me, and just lying there and taking it, even if it hurts.

It wasn’t my usual girl this time, the one who I spend hours neurotically talking to about things like fecal matter and vaginal flora. Instead, it was a male nurse. Which, for some reason, made me feel all shy and silly.

He asked me what I wanted, and I told him I wanted to feel well; in fact I wanted to feel amazing. He took one look at me and rattled off a bunch of obscure names. “Great for detoxification,” he said, knowingly. I’m not sure I like his tone. “And I think we should do some procaine. It’s great for mental health. You’ll feel high and want it all the time.” Ok, maybe I do like him. He seems to understand me, at least on a chemical level, which, to be honest, is more than some of my immediate family.

Me getting a drip on the day of my wedding

Halfway through, I started to feel all woozy, and the taste of plastic began to flood my mouth like I was chewing on a deflated armband. I was back in Elysium. I want to be like this all the time. “How many of these do I need to get for the long-term effects?” I asked him. “The most important thing is how you feel now,” he replied. “I know we make money with these drips, but for me, it feels great when a client feels good. And that matters more than money.” Wait, I think I love him.

Best meal

She’s a naughty girl with a bad habit, a bad habit for bread. After two back to back fashion dinners, which randomly both featured tomato water(!), despite presenting it as two radically different things (one was in jelly form and the other was infused with lavender oil and came in a flask which you had to pour on your meal yourself, although I watched a male model/meatsuit who looked like he’d been chiseled out of clay, down his like a shot) i was fucking ravenous. Having felt like I was coming down with something - the old influencer influenza - by the time I was back on the Eurostar, I was in need of a soft doughy embrace, a taste of the devil’s wheat, so I gobbled not one but two of the complimentary bread rolls, one for each tomato-y transgression. And it was just what I needed. To hell with gut health!

Quote of the week

“Diamonds are like very expensive wellness” - overheard at Couture Week.

Random thoughts of the week

Are we in the era of performative friendship?

When’s a good time of year to get a boob job?

If there is no one there to bear witness, did it really happen?