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That dress might have been one of the best career moves since Diana Dors posed in a mink bikini, but since the Four Weddings and a Funeral premiere, Elizabeth (she doesn’t like “Liz”) Hurley’s dress sense has looked about as spontaneous as her presenting style in Project Catwalk.
Having realised that she could rule the red carpet in frocks slashed to the thigh, she has repeated the formula ad infinitum. Even though she has brought out her own beachwear line, she is less interested in being directional than in being sexy — a posh, pony-club kind of sexy, camped up with Eurotrash glitz and elocution-exercise vowels.
Although she looks as good at 40 as she did at 30, the danger of keeping the same look for years is that it becomes almost cartoonish. Her hair and lips seem to be inflating. When she was pictured with Pamela Anderson at an Oscar party in 2001, the two resembled drag queens having a bitch — something Hurley has been known to do. She recently had a go at Sienna Miller for cutting her hair, saying: “That’s the thing about valuing trends above sexiness . . . it exposes your flaws.” It turned out that Miller had cut her hair to play Edie Sedgwick, the Andy Warhol acolyte, but since Hurley is unlikely to land the movie role of the year or to set global trends, there is no need for her to sacrifice her own man-pleasing tresses yet.
In fact, she has resisted almost every trend of the past decade in favour of two looks; red-carpet attention-grabbers by designer friends such as Donatella Versace, and off-duty tight trousers and even tighter tops. Her much-maligned white jeans (she owns 30 pairs) have the cachet of a Matalan carrier bag, but she insists that “they are the most flattering thing you can wear”.
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Her priority is showing off her body — perhaps not surprising, given how hard she apparently strives to maintain it. After her son Damian’s birth she went into hiding in Elton John’s mansion to lose weight. Her response to the public humiliation visited upon her first by Hugh Grant, then by Steve Bing (the father of her son) has been to follow the sympathy-vote technique of Diana, Princess of Wales — ie, looking perfectly groomed at all times. You’re as likely to see her nipping out to buy (skimmed) milk in a saggy-kneed tracksuit as you are to see her beachwear range teamed with a kiss-me-quick hat.
But her biggest style statement, her wedding dress, is still the subject of much speculation. She has joked that she might get married in one of her own-label kaftans, “jewelled, of course; hand-beaded in India”, or buy a dress at Debenhams to avoid offending her designer friends. Whether she weds her boyfriend, Arun Nayar, in a sari, a bikini or a white denim dress held together with safety pins, she must be hoping that none of her guests upstages her by flashing their knickers, as she did at Lili Maltese’s nuptials.