Because fashion must always operate at 1933 levels of intimidation and fear, it has unexpectedly fallen to a senior executive at the British branch of Hervé Léger to be our Oswald Mosley of the Week.
According to a recent interview, Patrick Couderc has said that Léger’s tight and sexy bandage dresses should not be worn by “fat” people or “committed lesbians”. “If you are a committed lesbian and you are wearing trousers all your life, you don’t want to buy a Léger dress. Lesbians,” he says, “would rather be butch and leisurely.”
Obviously, Patrick has now been propelled out of the top window of the highest tower by a number of extremely fat but very committed French lesbians wearing Hervé Léger dresses. Not only did he not reflect the company’s official “take” on ze lesbians, he also failed, spectacularly, embarrassingly and unequivocally, to stay ahead of the fashion curve.
For this, reader, is the Age of the Fashion Lezzer. And what a wonderful age it is: a no-nonsense, EU-approved rolling thunderpant of ’tached-up, power-drilling, sturdily shod professional man-repellers. Someone wrote that the decline of B&Q has come as a terrible blow to all downstairs carpet-lovers, as they now have nowhere to cruise the aisles and “speak knowledgeably about underlay” (not a euphemism).
But fashion is now their thrilled and loving home, thanks to the success of shops such as Cos, where everyone pays to be mistaken for a stern but jewelled Castilian rug-muncher. Only four weeks ago, I wrote about the utter sorcery of the Mudlark nun shoe, “a clunking ode to podiatric lesbianism” fashioned out of dead cricket bats.
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Personally, I adore the idea of swishing around in a pair of “butch and leisurely” dungarees and/or cut- off prison jorts topped off with an uncompromising athletic sock and an all-weather fanny pack, rather than cramming my sweaty party meat into a dress that makes me look like Cheryl Fernandez-Versini shading into a broken Knightsbridge sex worker down to her last pair of chandelier earrings.
Which is probably a good thing, as anyone my age clearly disgusts Couderc as well. He says that older women may be slim, but fail to notice that their “cleavage is two inches too low because you’re 55 and it’s time you should not display everything like you’re 23”. So, along with lesbians and fat people, anyone over the age of 23 is also banned from wearing Towie’s favourite designer.
Only Samantha from Sex and the City seems to pass Couderc’s muster — a sad professional dildo who wears dresses with what he describes as “expertise” and I describe as “reluctance”. Samantha is the sort of woman to wear “hosiery”, which is “magical”, he says. “I never go out to dinner if she’s not wearing tights.” The difference between a woman who wears tights, he adds, and one who wears, I don’t know, her own filthy skin, is the difference between someone “working in a private office in a bank in St James’s” and a “shampooist” from Croydon. “But I am veering off into complete poetry now,” he titters. What a gold-plated hand pump.
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I am afraid to report that my beloved new housemate, Dickie, continues to struggle with life’s immense challenges. This week his thoughts have turned, as ever, to portraiture. Would an enormous oil painting of him dressed as an Elizabethan harlequin (complete with ruff) actually get up the (tiny) stairs? He is desperate to mount the masterpiece in pride of place as part of his grand plan to become “the Elton of Bloomsbury”.
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But nothing fits up the twisting garret stairs, except, obviously, his devoted Filipina nursemaid, who was summoned to cook dinner at a moment’s notice 10 days ago, after he flew into a panic over the two lettuce leaves and chicken that had been spirited over on the wings of Ocado for our dinner party (on the floor). “By the way, you got your column wrong,” he said, quite coldly I thought, as we watched her slowly put the chicken in the oven and take it out again half an hour later, while simultaneously colour-co-ordinating socks and dusting teddies. “I’m not a mummy’s boy at all.”
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Can we please, please, please discuss Ben Affleck’s hot-panted, peen-popping nanny? Personally, I would never admit to shagging the director of the dull airport drama Argo, but Christine Ouzounian seems perfectly happy hinting at their alleged trysting. And by hinting, I mean splurging $12,000 at the Hotel Bel-Air — where Affleck installed her after the scandal — romping around the beach in a string bikini and turning up at his house at midnight brandishing champers, as well as posting pictures of her “new drop-top Lexi” in spite of the “low profile” he reportedly begged her to keep. I hope she continues to splash her trashy splosh literally everywhere, thereby demonstrating exactly how little taste Affleck has.