THE SHAME

Ugh. So I stayed up to see the Baftas red carpet looks last night. Which is at least two hours of my life I'm never getting back.


Obviously nobody was ever going to make too much effort, given that they're British and this is a serious British award decided by British people, so it's ok to wear something calf-length with sleeves and a collar.


But that hardly rules out looking halfway decent, which nobody did. The lesser amount of glitz associated with the Baftas actually had me looking forward to it, given that the looks should in theory have been more wearable and more fashion-based. THEORY turned out to be the operative word. Seriously, my best-dressed of the night goes to Andrew Garfield. A boy. In a suit. Who pretty much only got the award because I am deeply in love with him.


Ask yourself, if you had zero budgetary or logistical restrictions placed upon what you could wear, would you pick any of these?

Style-wise, being my favourite Girl Aloud is still like being the best house on a bad block. And Ashish? Really? You'd think as the E! host, Kimberley Walsh would know this wasn't the Soap Awards. And ps, is she drunk?

Ginny Weasley in Clements Ribeiro. We get it, you're all grown up now, you and Harry have kids so you've definitely lost your V plates. Why not try dressing like you are, say, 25, before heading straight to 79-year-old territory?

Hailee Steinfeld rocking the same god-awful Prada grandma crap that always makes Carey Mulligan look like she has a stick up her ass. And I had such high hopes after her moment of glory in Prabal Gurung at the Golden Globes. You've got one more chance kid, and it's called The Oscars, which gives you two weeks to make sure this doesn't happen again.

Hermione in Valentino's gran's lace curtains. Are we sensing a theme yet people? PREMATURE AGEING. Give nonna back her curtains Hermy, but see if you can maybe borrow her wig.

Even Bellatrix Lestrange has let me down. Because it's NOT BAD ENOUGH.

Thank the lord then for Sarah Harding, who came as an ageing East End prostitute on the point of accepting her days of turning tricks are numbered and turning madam, and Minnie Driver, who apparently moonlights as an elderly cruise ship singer, with her jaw accompanying her on keyboards.


What were either of them even doing there? I doubt whether anyone handing out Baftas saw St Trinian's, and when was the last time Minnie Driver appeared on any screen anywhere outside of the homes of people who own the Good Will Hunting DVD?

Rosamund Pike is off to Abigail's Party.

Eva Green (I think she was a Bond Girl with twenty minutes of screen time about six years ago) clearly thinks she is sexy enough to pull this off. She is not.

Jessica Alba looks nice, but who cares? Looking nice is hardly a compliment, and it's Jessica Alba. She always strikes me as one of those celebs who are just really really dumb. Like she's only an actress (kinda) because she was the exact precise combination of stupid, pretty, toned and just under regulation catalogue model height to rule out all other options.

So basically everyone looked like total crap. And I've spent a fair amount of time asking myself why, and what in the hell happened, and whether world order will ever be restored, but as to the former maybe we'll never know, and as to the latter, we can only hope.

And breathe............

One thing I have gained from this experience though (and I think it's important that we take something from it), is the certainty of what I have long suspected. That most people writing about fashion talk absolute crap, most of the time. I have read acres of gushing rubbish all over the internet about how great some of these people look. And nobody could possibly actually think that.

"It seems that the greatest difficulty is to find the end. Don't try to find it, it's there already" - Sofia Coppola

Some time in the late 90s I bought a Milkfed beanie, which didn't suit me and my small head at all and was hence worn about twice, but was nonetheless treasured. Because I'm pretty sure Sofia Coppola and I are twin souls.


I love everything this woman does. First job? Chanel intern. Ex-husband? Spike Jonze. Current boyfriend? French new wave rock star who's best mates with Daft Punk. Home? Paris. If I were to make movies I would cast Kirsten Dunst and Bill Murray in them too. So I feel confident in saying that were we to meet for a milkshake, we'd click.

I would get (most of) the fawning out the way and start by telling her that she is my favourite director, and not to pay attention to the people who say her movies are vapid and superficial. These are the people who do not understand the inherent value in aesthetics. Her imagery looks like memories, drawing out your own and thus making each film entirely personal to the viewer, and leaving it up to them to construct their own meaning from what they see.


I think a lot of the naysayers are probably boys too. To me, Coppola's films are about the mythology of being a girl, and what the world feels like when you are one who is lost and unsure of herself in the face of the expectations placed on you by yourself and others. The external world she presents might be sumptuous, but the films are unmistakeably about the internal world.

Although I am (still) dying to see Somewhere, in which Stephen Dorff (excellent choice, Sof) is the one who is lost, although his character is apparently an autobiographical version of Sofia.


Coppola chooses actresses who exemplify the beauty of imperfection. Much like Sofia herself, Kirsten Dunst and Scarlett Johansson are beautiful not because they are perfect, but because they are interesting to look at. It's an ordinary, off-beat beauty. The same type Chloe Sevigny and Clémence Poésy (my other two leading ladies) are possessed of. And the type Keira Knightley, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley and Megan Fox are not.


Her aesthetic, both on screen and off, pretty much sums up my own ideal, the DNA of which was set during that 90s New York moment populated by lo-fi heroes Chloe Sevigny, Kim Gordon, Marc Jacobs, and Harmony Korine and photographed by Juergen Teller, in which everything took on the quality of a polaroid picture, steeped in memories and childhood and reality, with wit and intelligence inherent.


This is a style executed in a plain, muted, tomboyish wardrobe of ankle grazing navy trousers and slouchy t-shirts, white Converse and round-neck sweaters and practical jackets; a fresh, innocent, un-jaded, American version of classic Parisian insouciance.

Wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings!

peonies - Centre Pompidou, Paris - Sagittarius - The Smiths - pointe shoes - Colorado river - Gerhard Richter - The Atomium, Brussels - Chanel Hysteria - Little Women, Louisa May Alcott - hydrangeas - Medusa - Michael Phelps - Simone De Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre - Tate Modern - Trainspotting - Tender is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald - Barcelona - Frida Kahlo - Philip Larkin - snow - Marc Chagall: Birthday - Severus Snape - Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger - Denver, Mile High City