Frieze

There was a time when I used to go to all the shows at London Fashion Week.  It sounded glamorous, but was utterly exhausting, involving spending ludicrous amounts of time criss-crossing London, never having time to eat properly, and staying out too late every night downing champagne/ passion fruit martinis/ vodka redbull*.  The only thing that inspired me to carry on to the next show was that there were always a few - most usually Erdem, or Giles Deacon, or Christopher Kane - that were so beautiful that I would fall in love with fashion all over again.

Frieze week is not dissimilar - only it is about art, and there is less opportunity to sit down . . .

But, as ever, there are certain shows, or artworks, that remind me why I love what I do.  Either because they're beautiful, or fascinating, or just plain fun.

For beautiful, I can recommend Kandasamy Project's inaugural show:  JAMESPLUMB's 'To Have & to Hold' at the House of Saint Barnabas.  The exhibition reflects the artists' core ethos, which is to look again at the overlooked.  With a desire to treat each piece preciously, they marry apparently disparate fragments into new, and always exquisite, assemblages.  The House of Saint Barnabas was once a women's refuge, and the show encompasses the seldom seen and utterly stunning on-site chapel.  I went to the opening, and the entire space was scented with dozens and dozens of Diptique Feu de Bois candles, making it not only the most beautiful but also the chicest exhibition I've been to all week.

For fascinating, I suggest Lazarides Gallery's collaboration with Old Vic Tunnels on 'Bedlam', which sets out to explore the well intended beginnings, final disgrace and reform of the legendary mental institution.

And for fun, please go and experience Ed Fornieles's Character Date, at Frieze itself.  Ed is the boyfriend of the brilliant Sundance award-winning actress Felicity Jones, star of the entirely improvised Like Crazy - which I mention because Felicity's work on that film was, Ed tells me, a significant inspiration for Character Date.  I was Candace, a poor little rich girl with a serious Daddy fixation, and was sent on a (fake) date with a (fake) Norwegian oil engineer.  We spent an hour wandering around the fair, in character, discussing what we might (fake) buy and discovering whether or not there was any (fake) chemistry between our characters, before being filmed disassembling it all, Cilla Black style.  While it is hilariously funny, there is a well-intentioned subtext to it all, which is that it encourages one to look at art with a fresh eye.  Making this year's Frieze rather refreshing . . . .

*Delete as appropriate, depending on seasonal trend/ level of exhaustion

The Fly is Free

Ilya Kabakov is the father of Moscow conceptualism, and, without doubt, Russia's most famous living artist.  One of the first artists to leave after Perestroika, his works have been exhibited across the globe, from the Centre Georges Pompidou to the Hermitage, via the Serpentine, the Garage Centre for Contemporary Culture . . . You get the picture. I have been fortunate enough to interview him and his wife, Emilia - they co-sign all their works - more than once, both for AD Russia and Vogue Russia.  The former consisted of meeting them at the Venice Biennale, before spending a whole day at their house on Long Island a month later, being shown around the studio, and swimming in the sea from the jetty at the end of their garden.  (And yet still it took until we had breakfast in London a couple of months later for Ilya to speak to me in English, which, incidentally, he speaks perfectly - we'd been struggling in German up until that point, and I had deliberately taken a German photographer to the Long Island house . . . )  Anyway, that interview is still probably the highlight of my career to date, and Emilia even gave me a goody bag to take home:  pretty much every book ever written concerning their artistic output.

They are less well known as jewellery designers, mainly because it's a recent venture, and the pieces sold are very limited.  Also, they never really intended this to happen.  Ilya designed the set for Emilia for her birthday in 1995, she put the drawings into a drawer and didn't really think much further about them.  For fifteen years.  They only finally got made because the wife of the owner of their London gallery (Elisabetta Cipriani, and the gallery is Sprovieri on Heddon Street) started selling artist-made jewellery, and suggested to them that they should get the pieces made.  The initial designs were for a ring and a bracelet; a necklace and earrings have just been added and been unveiled at PAD (the Pavilion of Art and Design, taking place now in Berkeley Square.)

The whole set is called 'The Fly'; these are the earrings.

Beautiful, no?  The flies themselves are brilliant-cut diamonds and enamel, the leaves pear-cut emeralds and enamel, and all is set in 18 carat gold.  And as for the reasoning behind the fly?  In the words of Emilia, "She is for us a symbol of freedom.  She can go anywhere, be everywhere and we don't even notice her presence, because  she is so insignificant.  Nobody can control the fly.  Even in a totalitarian state, where everybody's life and movements can be limited and controlled, the fly is free."

If my husband's lottery tickets every yield the much longed-for win, Heddon Street will be my first stop.  

Anna Karenina

Without a doubt, Anna Karenina is one of most beautiful - if not the most beautiful - films of the year.  I'd been looking forward to it ever since I interviewed Jude Law while he was mid-filming (yes he's incredibly attractive, even more so with age, despite the fact he still seems to dress like a teenager - oh, and he's intelligent too and really, really nice) and it didn't disappoint:   the endless partially decaying theatre sets, the lighting, the serious stylisation, the dresses, the furs, the diamonds (Chanel, worth approximately £2 million if anyone was thinking of adding them to their autumn/ winter wish list) - and of course, the cast themselves.  I laughed ("paperwork is the soul of Russia") and cried (Anna's reunion  with her son, Serezha; Levin's reunion with Kitty) and almost ran home to my husband and children afterwards, so full of love for them did I feel.

Oh, I know, the reviews have been mixed.  And Tolstoy only gave two lines to the sexual apect of Anna and Vronsky's relationship, whereas Joe Wright gave rather more.  But I don't care what the reviews say, I loved it all, and could watch it again tomorrow.

So here's a picture of Anna (Keira Knightley) in furs at the station.

Have you noticed how all the best films have significant scenes set at stations?  There's Brief Encounter, The Red Shoes, Lawrence of Arabia, North by Northwest, pretty much every Western ever made. . . .  and doubtlessly many more.

(Irrelevant and barely related fact:  a Russian art group, pre-Perestroika, put on an alternative version of Anna Karenina, in which Anna missed the train, didn't commit suicide, and married the station master.  A happier ending for those who can't deal with tragedy.)  

Sultans of Swing

So I went out for the first time since Esmeralda was born.  I was nervous, tired, didn't want to leave her, didn't feel attractive, thought I'd go just for an hour - which was also about as long as I figured I could stand in my gold four inch Gina platforms.  (I hadn't worn heels for nearly a year.  I'm totally out of practice.)

I refused the glass of champagne in favour of as many canapes as I could lay my hands on (not many, I was late) and tried not to talk about my children (hard, when I haven't been without them once in the past month, and my world has effectively ceased existing beyond the walls of our house) before realising that my feet already hurt.  I had my phone in my hand, ready to text my husband to say I was coming home, when it was announced that Mark Knopfler and his band were going to entertain us.  The name rang a bell, but still didn't mean much to my befuddled breast-feeding brain.  But there was no mistaking the opening cords of Walk of Life, and the text I wrote was quite different from the one I had been going to send.  "Won't be home for a bit.  Dire Straits are playing."

This is a crummy photo (Sholto broke the good phone, and I'm not due an upgrade for a bit) but I was really, really close.  And after Walk of Life came Romeo and Juliet, Money for Nothing, and Sultans of Swing.  And all those songs are so well known to me, and so evocative of different times (pre-children, pre-marriage, pre-mortgage, pre-job, even) and different places (playing pool in Saigon, endless night buses in Mexico, walking down near-deserted beaches in Morocco) that for forty-five minutes I happily allowed myself to be consumed by a host of mist-coloured memories, the kind that entirely restore one's sense of self.

I went home barefoot, and terribly, terribly content.  Music really does nourish the soul.