Cotswold People
Living on the Edge
Above: Selina Blow. Picture by Mark Fairhurst
What should you wear to interview a fashion designer? And note the phrase ‘fashion designer’. This isn’t the world of zero-sized models, press releases and the safety of mass-produced high street beiges and greys. (So bang goes most of my wardrobe.)
This designer is Selina Blow, friend of Malcolm McLaren and sister-in-law to the late, great maverick Isabella Blow; Selina, whose designs look as if they came from the wardrobe of Nellie Melba or straight off the film set of Sunset Boulevard.
What to wear? Umm… It’s a question so befuddling that, as the Paddington-bound train glides irrevocably out of the station, I realise I’ve forgotten to put a pay-and-display ticket on my car (£30 fine). It becomes all the more pressing on entering the parallel universe of chic-slick Sloane Street: the exclusive shopping destination that can name-drop Belgravia and Chelsea; the street that once lent its name to the upper class fillies who browsed their endless youth away collecting rare pieces in beguiling paper packages.
Selina Blow waves from her shop window: “Do come in!”
Ahh… So here’s what you wear if you’re meeting an iconic fashion designer (or, rather, if you are one): a red gingham (man’s) shirt, deep burgundy corduroy jacket, jeans (and, no, she can’t remember whose) and green Converse lace-ups.
She looks…
“I know,” she burbles cheerily. “A mess! Should have washed my hair for the photographs – I’ve been known to wash it in the hand basin in an emergency.”
No, no, not a mess at all: exuberant; eclectic; individual; confident; shy; contradictory. And quite as posh as Sloane Street itself.
You can read the rest of this article in the March issue of Cotswold Life.
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