PHOTOGRAPHS Christian Blanken BY CATWALKING.com
Report by Mr Caryn Franklin
With but a few hours left before the end of Rag Week, a certain tenderness re-emerged yesterday in relations between myself and the fashionista. As dawn broke and outside the bedroom window birds and bees got about their springtime business, inside, tucked up, I too felt something stirring. It was the missus, up and about. But then the morning gnashing and yelping gave way to a certain sweetness. “Where the %*&^++ is my left Louboutin, darling”. “Have you had my ^$£”$£^ mobile? Sweetheart?” and “Some *^%*^ cretin’s left my I&^(&^ arc-welder on overnight. You I take it, dearest.”
When the F adverb is used with gentleness, one feels the rush of life along one’s keel, and so I sprang into the gentleman’s closet area with vigour. The choice of costume was now no longer perplexing: the comfy lace-ups from Mr.Hare, the credible Edwins, the commodious Deryck Walker collarless overcoat. But now that things sensual are back in vogue, what of the other F word, fragrance?
Yesterday that was a priority because I was due to slip around to the atelier of my friend Michael Boadi as he prepared for the Christian Blanken presentation in my regular haunt, The Portico Rooms. Michael, you will recall, was for many years the hairdresser of choice of the choicest photographers. His book bulges with Kate, Naomi and Eva editorial. Madonna had him on speed dial. Donald Trump would slip in via the tradesmans for some undercover comb-over. But when on location, Michael forswore the bright lights and entertainments and retired to his room to indulge his solitary obsession, mixing scents.
Boadi’s Boadicca the Victorious collection now dominates dressing tables across the globe. They are for tough, wise, sexy, arse-kicking women. The Fashionista wears them when meeting VAT men and deputy head teachers. I recall an occasion when I made a slight comment about her driving, shortly after she’d sprayed one fluid ounce of Headhunter or maybe Hunter-Killer, and had to move to another postal district while she chewed the dashboard off. But I digress.
The morning began at Schloss Boadi with Michael athwart his models wielding rollers and blow driers, but the real action was the subliminal message stuff. I realised long ago that fashion is about sub-text. “They’re not trousers, Ian, they’re a statement about gender politics”. In this Boadi/Blanken collaboration there was more semiotics going on than in a short by Jean-Luc Goddard. The models were to wear Blanken’s fierce AW looks, while embodying the Amazonian qualities of the perfumes, telegraphing no-nonsense sister stuff from inside a glass box. They were not to say anything, they were just instructed to be. To this end an acting coach was doing Improv 101 between the crimping and eye-lining pre show.
All this took time, and we en-cabbed in Maida Vale and dis-encabbed at Somerset House in a flurry. There was an in-car miasma of Eau de Parfum Explorer, which conjured up the inside of grandad’s 1920s chamois ski gloves, a recently cleaned briar pipe and something organic on the knees of the under-gardener’s moleskin breeks. It also advised other motorists to pull over.
Within a tweak or two the models were in their CB outfits and out there, projecting attitude from the chest and pointing at invisible horizons with serious intent. Christian was beaming, and the Japanese photographer I stepped on was so enraptured he didn’t even notice. Michael himself seemed to sail above the frenzy like someone who had recently applied a coating of EdP Energiser.
For me it was almost the end of a perfect week off-world in frothworld. Returning to the tender, sensually charged homestead I was able to breathe deeply and even answer back when the Fashionista got feisty. But that would be the empowering squirt of Don’t Take any S^%T on my left wrist.
