Art and the East End

A fun week began when we went to the launch of our friend Jacques Azagury’s new scent at Selfridges. Jacque’s perfume is lovely; an uplifting modern classic with hints of Ylang Ylang Rose and Ginger leaf, in a gorgeous heavy crystal bottle. I immediately rushed to Selfridges the next day to buy some.

Jacque Azagury and I

On Friday, we had dinner at a secret lawyers’ restaurant in New Square with our legal eagle friends, Paddy O’Connor and Gill Brasse. Paddy is a criminal lawyer and Gill is en route to becoming a much needed female judge. (The judiciary only has a 1:10 ratio of women to men at the moment.) Paddy loves to say rather shocking things like:

“I did a murder at the Old Bailey last week”

Paddy and Gill

On Sunday the Independent ran a Living feature, showing a photo of me at home with masses of flowers. I’m wearing our ruched under the sea dress from Spring/Summer.

Relaxing at home with the Independent on Sunday

On Tuesday we visited Tracey Emin’s studios. She has a ‘wet’ studio for painting (which she famously does in very little clothing) and a ‘dry’ studio for her signature patchwork quilts. Tracey lives nearby in Spitalfields. She is a remarkably strong, open-hearted and sane woman with a very well organised archive of work and photos.

I can’t reveal what she is working on at the moment, but her next personal project is buying a wonderful building that was originally occupied by Spitalfields weavers. It will eventually become her new studio. It is a very atmospheric property, the devices for holding tenter hooks, from which the dyed cloth was suspended to dry, are still in place.

After we left Tracey’s we had a bagel-fuelled drive from Brick Lane to Somerset House for an opening of a show called “Skin and Bones” which traces the relationship between architecture and fashion.

Enjoy the Skins and Bones show at Somerset House

Most of the featured designers are Japanese deconstructivists, but there is also some interesting early work by Hussein Chalayan where models remove chair covers and put them on as dresses. We bumped into Jacques, who said his perfume suited me, and Jancis Robinson whose daughter, Rose, has just completed a week’s work experience with us.

This morning I received a lovely surprise: a copy of .Cent magazine with a small piece about me and a picture of the Victoriana design for next Autumn/Winter. .Cent is a bi-annual magazine, featuring a fascinating mix of art, culture and style. It is edited by Jo Phillips and a different guest editor each edition.