It might be known — and if it isn’t, it should be — that the best drinks in London can be found at the bar in the Connaught. Hip, hip, hooray, then,that the chosen venue for the afterparty of the Loewe shop opening (on Mount Street, W1) was none other than… Yes.
Marie Helvin was first in; next, Katie Grand, wearing Miu Miu. “You only like me for my jacket,” said she, facing a hail of flashbulbs. (She knew this wasn’t true.) Then the beauteous Hazel, designer of House of Jazz, our favourite fashion label from the early Noughties, bringing good tidings. “We did a dress for Lulu & Co and it sold well, so we thought, ‘Why not give it another go?’” The bespoke tailor Patrick Grant was talking about the Wedding: “Everyone keeps asking me if guests will be wearing my suits. They will, but they’re not coming in for new suits. They’re not those sort of people.”
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Then the champagne ran out temporarily. “I’ll just have wine, then,” said Nick Grimshaw, nursing a large glass of red. Is it ageing as you hoped it would, we asked David Collins, who designed the bar almost three years ago. “I try not to notice, to be honest,” he said.
Here, we have the New York fashion designer Thakoon, surrounded by lovely ladies at a party he threw for London friends at Soho House. Aren’t they elegant? Aren’t they manicured? This is the young NyLon set, a group who travel frequently between Manhattan and Notting Hill, and never without luxuriant transatlantic hair. “I’m obsessed with the Fat Radish, on the Lower East Side,” said Marissa Montgomery, who lives in New York, but visits fortnightly to see her boyfriend. “It was set up by two English boys and it’s the coolest place ever.” “But I love it in London,” said Poppy Delevingne. “I could honestly live here,” Thakoon agreed. It appears you can, if you have the right hair.
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As most girls know, the importance of a reliable wing woman can never be underestimated. After a reading from her book, Luella’s Guide to English Style, at Pamflet’s ladies’ salon, in King’s Cross, the fashion designer Luella Bartley took a question about partying in the late 1990s, when her gang ruled the scene. “We were young, arrogant and drunk, and we stormed it,” she said, then admitted she had never gone out without her “gang”. Style spotters noted that a member of her “gang”, superstylist Katie Grand, was sitting in the corner.
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The pavements of Brewer Street, in Soho, have been rattling with the sound of a secret underground disco in the basement of Hix. “It’s a good age group, 30 and up,” said the owner, Mark, right, at the last one, held in honour of our friend Emma’s birthday. She goes out with the DJ Jeremy Healy, who was on the decks. “And that lot are hard-core partiers,” Mark said, “so...” Yes, we heard that girls were dancing on the bar. When’s the next one? “Oh, we haven’t decided. It’s a bit random.” Disco enthusiasts might consider booking for dinner every night for the next month and hoping for the best. But not on a Friday. Everyone leaves for Dorset on a Friday.
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