THE BOOKS THAT BUILT ANDY MILLER

Andy Miller & I at The Club at Cafe Royal and his chosen 'Books That Built Me'

The last Books That Built Me salon with Andy Miller, author of The Year of Reading Dangerously, went so delightfully well, I'm ashamed it's taken me so long to write the experience up. I have no excuse for my tardiness, other than reading Andy's book so rekindled my own  

 passion for books, I've have had my head stuck in a succession of novels ever since, some improving, some not so much.

Andy Miller's Books That Built Me took place, as ever, at The Club at Café Royal, which has welcomed the great and the good of London's literary set since Oscar Wilde was a regular in the Grill Room. In a lovely coincidence, I discovered Wilde (reputedly) wore Hammam Bouquet, the first scent created by Penhaligon's, who support The Books That Built Me and give the lovely fragrance libraries that guests get in their goodybags. I have a deeply superstitious side, and in the spirit of making a kind of burnt offering to the ghost of Oscar Wilde, willing him give the salon his benediction from the other side, Penhaligon's very kindly gave me Elixir candles to scent the room, a decadent contemporary take on Hammam Bouquet, all exotic spices, incense and old libraries with leather bound books.

The Year of Reading Dangerously is about a man whose life has been built of, and on, books. It's all about the beautiful truth every book lover understands: books not only have the power to open up the world, but they also have a magical ability to open up one's understanding of oneself. They heal and nourish, delight and entertain. Yet as every bibliophile will also understand, the acquisition of books is an addiction - ownership of these enchanted objects leads inevitably to a large pile of unread books reproaching one from one's bedside table - as Miller writes in The Year of Reading Dangerously, 

“Books, for instance. I had a lot of those. There they all were, on the shelves and on the floor, piled up by the bed and falling out of boxes. Moby-Dick, Possession, Remembrance of Things Past, the poetry of Emily Dickinson, Psychotic Reactions and Carburettor Dung, a few Pevsners, that Jim Thompson omnibus, The Child in Time, Six more Ian McEwan novels or novellas, two volumes of is short stories…. These books did furnish the room, but they also got in the way. And there were too many I was aware I had not actually read. As Schopenhauer noted a hundred and fifty years ago, ‘It would be a good thing to buy books if one could also buy the time to read them: but one usually confuses the purchase of books with the acquisition of their contents.’

These books became the focus of a need to do something. They were a reproach – wasted money, squandered time, muddled priorities. I shall make a list I thought. It will name the books I am most ashamed not to have read – difficult ones, classics, a few outstanding entries in the deceitful Miller library – and then I shall read them.”

And so he did, as you'll discover if you read his book. But for the Books That Built Me, Andy and I talked about books he had already read and loved: here are the six Books That Built Andy Miller.

1.Moominpappa at Sea

“One afternoon at the end of August, Moominpappa was walking about in his garden feeling at a loss. He had no idea what to do with himself, because it seemed everything there was to be done had already been done or was being done by somebody else” Andy says Moominpappa perfectly describes his existential angst, his innate Eyore-ishness, what one of his favourite writers, Douglas Adams, calls 'the long dark teatime of the soul'. It's "a chronicle of a mid-life crisis foretold, for readers of nine and over.” I say, Andy Miller is a lot cheerier than he believes himself to be.

2. Absolute Beginners

"Absolute Beginners gave me an exit strategy, a teenage identity I could relate and aspire to. In the process, it liberated and liberalised me – awaked in me the nervous excitement of being young, on the brink, in the same way that great pop music does." 

3. The Whitsun Weddings

I wondered if Andy had chosen The Whitsun Weddings because Larkin is another self-confessed pessimist, like Moominpappa and Andy Miller. Perhaps there's some truth in that. Andy read Larkin's Arundel Tomb - and talked about how its most famous line 'what will survive of us is love' was entirely misinterpreted by Julian Barnes in A History of The World in Ten and a Half Chapters. Bold but fair, I thought.

4. A Rebours (Against Nature)

Oh, Andy Miller, mon semblable, mon frère....how fabulous to discover someone else who's actually read this marvellous book. Against Nature is a now rather obscure late nineteenth century novel about Des Esseintes, a world-weary, filthy rich, fin-du-siecle French aristocrat who leaves town for an isolated country house where he can indulge in a kaleidoscope of extreme sensual experiences – he has a black feast in which everything is ....black, he fills his house with symbolist art, he grows a garden of poisonous plants, he spends days trying to make the perfect perfume – he has exhausting sex with a lady athlete called Miss Urania – and there’s the tortoise, of course, which he encrusts with astonishing precious jewels so it can crawl exquisitely over his carpet. It expires under the weight of its beauty, logical conclusion of an aesthete's life.


Andy says it's one of the funniest books he's ever read, I say it's one of the most tragic: the truth is somewhere in between.

5. Anna Karenina 
Andy describes Anna Karenina as the perfect union of art and entertainment. I'm ashamed to admit that I'd owned a copy of Anna Karenina for nearly thirty years without ever having read it, thinking it might be enormously hard work. It isn't. I read it whilst swotting for Andy's Books That Built Me and it's every bit as miraculous as he says it is, gripping and nourishing in equal measure.

6. Tigers are Better Looking
Jean Rhys will be known to most only for her Jane Eyre prequel, The Wide Sargasso Sea, read by Andy during his reading odyssey for TYoRD - there's something immensely satisfying about discovering an author you love and then going on to read everything else they've written too.

Andy and I talking about Against Nature - in honour of the famous tortoise passage, I'm wearing Livyora's beautiful Tartarucha earrings, smoky quartz surrounded by diamonds in the shape of a tortoise

Like Andy Miller, I seemed also to have ..."forgotten the parquet floor, the boy sitting in the back seat, or stretched out on his bed on a summer’s day, lost and found in a good book… So far the List of Betterment had offered me glimpses of something bigger and better. It was up to me to keep looking for it, to push reality aside until I relocated the magic of reading." - hosting Andy's The Books That Built Me helped me completely relocate the magic of reading: for this, and for being such a marvellous and entertaining guest, I owe him quite a debt.

Guests went home with a goodybag containing a copy of Andy Miller's The Year of Reading Dangerously, a copy of Harper's Bazaar, a Penhaligon's Scent Library and a delicious bar of Prestat chocolate. 

Andy Miller's solo show 'Read Y'self Fitter', a ten step programme to cure yourself of bad reading habits (like not reading at all) is at the Chiswick Book Festival on Saturday 13th September. Tickets on sale now.
The Books That Built Me is also coming to the Chiswick Book Festival in a special salon with Sacha Wilkins of LibertyLondonGirl.com, in advance of the launch of her gorgeous book Food Friends Family:  tickets will be on sale next week.

IN PRAISE OF RED LIPSTICK

When I wrote about The Plankton back in September, it sparked much debate with friends about whether or not women over forty became suddenly invisible. 

But every conversation about sex appeal - were we still desirable, beautiful, attractive, we asked ourselves anxiously - inevitably turned into a broader discussion about the forty-something state:  Suddenly, I became appallingly paranoid that I would wake up one morning and discover myself wearing purple with a red hat that doesn't go? 

'We simply have to work harder to make ourselves visible, particularly at work' said my friend Basista, and I think she's right - one does lose the effortlessness of youth in one's mid-forties. Sometimes it's the small things like having to think twice about wearing an A-line skirt with a chunky heel - what looks hip on a thirty year old can easily look frumpy on a fortysomething, particularly if you remember the look first time round - I mean, God knows what havoc the coming Thatcher-inspired trend will wreak. All I'm going to say is, if you're old enough to remember her as Prime Minister, steer well clear of the clothes unless you're achingly hip and very obviously working in fashion. 

Anyway, sometimes it's also the bigger stuff, like realising that life isn't the rehearsal it once was, and you've got to get on with the Next Big Thing before it's Too Late. 

However, since this is supposed to be a post about make-up, I shall stop myself segueing off into some psycho-drama about a dawning realisation of one's mortality/career shelf-life etc etc, because I've remembered that what my friend Basista went onto say - not entirely flippantly - about how the antidote to mid-life invisibility was to wear bright lipstick. She's right, of course but it's not just about making a bold statement, it's also about the subliminal sophistication conferred by a really good red lip. 

Although I'm madly keen on my shiny Dior Addict one, if it's done perfectly, a red lip should be matte and it should also be expensive - not Tom Ford spendy, necessarily, but definitely something bought with due ceremony and sense of occasion from one of the more intimidating beauty counters in a department store. Chanel, of course, is the gold standard when it comes to sophisticated glamour and there are several marvellous reds in the Rouge Allure range, but I do wish they had Rouge Premier - a copy of the first ever red lipstick Chanel produced -  as part of the permanent offer: it came out as a limited edition about ten years ago along with a killingly beautiful gold eyeshadow, and I only wear it once a year because I can't bear to think of using it all up.  

Finding one's perfect red takes time and a lot of experimenting - it's all about nuance - I had fourteen at the last count (six of which are badly photographed below) in every shade of red from vermillion to crimson.

Now that I add up the approximate cost, fourteen red lipsticks is a rather lavish investment. But of course, I wasn't just buying a lipstick, I was investing in the whole idea of myself as elegant and well-put together.

I don't think the search for the perfect red is finished by any stretch of the imagination - I've yet to try the Bobbi Brown red that everyone says is a classic- and as I write this, I've just rummaged in my desk drawer and come across a very serious red I'd forgotten I even had (make that fifteen red lipsticks) - Dior Addict in Red Carpet. Possibly it ticks the 'get you noticed' box a little more emphatically than my everyday red (which I'm wearing in the Dior taxi), but that's all to the good.

Is Basista right? Is bright lipstick the perfect antidote to mid-life invisibility? It certainly seems to give one a much needed confidence boost. However, I'll offer one small warning: the distance between groomed glamour and looking like Bette Davis in 'Whatever Happened to Baby Jane' is little more than a sharp jog of the elbow.

BAZAAR, BASTYAN & A SHOWSTOPPING DRESS

At least half the fun of going to a party is in the anticipation: it's not just the hours spent getting ready, it's endless debate about what to wear.

The big event in the Harper's Bazaar calendar is the annual Women of the Year Awards - and the sartorial stakes are pretty high - I'm pretty sure we talked of nothing but party dresses for weeks beforehand. I had thought of wearing a very nice strapless 'MadMen' style dress I bought for a party not long after the Tiniest Trefusis was born until I came across this from my absolute favourite label, Bastyan. I hadn't thought of wearing long, but since it meant I didn't need to slather my blue-white legs in fake tan, it was pretty tempting, and as ever with Bastyan, the fabric drapes in a wonderfully flattering and luxurious way.

This is me at the party - it's not a very clear picture, but the mirror shows how nice the back is too

This is me just before we left - I've rubbed out the grim office from the background - magazine offices are much closer to The Office than they are to the Devil Wears Prada. One shoulder has a beautiful gold clasp, and the other is designed to drape - I wanted it slightly off the shoulder, so I stuck it in place with some tit tape (I'm sure there's a more elegant word for it - but you know what I mean).

The jewellery is from Carat* - they're simulated diamonds, but they're set so beautifully I defy anyone to be able to tell the difference - I wore the Pear Exquisite necklace, a pear drop tennis bracelet  and an incredibly covetable pair of drop earrings, which shivered and shimmered and caught the light most gratifyingly whenever I turned my head. I don't seem to be able to find them on the website, but these are similar.

Sometimes partywear needs to be a bit of a disguise, doesn't it - it's about costuming oneself appropriately for the occasion: and for once, at Bazaar Women of the Year, I felt appropriate.

The Mormo Maxi dress I wore is on sale in the Bastyan pop-up shop on Regents Street - if you're in the market for a party dress (or a beautiful coat like this one -  the tweed it's made from comes from the same mill as Chanel gets theirs from) then you must hurry to this oasis of loveliness and calm toot sweet because the stand-alone only exists until 24th December.

I asked Tonia Bastyan for her buys of the season - this exquisite lace 'Dia' dress [above], with jet beads that button closely up the wrists promises to be an heirloom piece: I can quite imagine putting it away after a few seasons and saving it for when the Tiniest Trefusis grows up - it's utterly beautiful and absolutely timeless. It has a very elegant wool crepe skirt, but the back is absolutely sheer lace - I've not seen anything of the quality in most Bond Street designer stores. I'm kicking myself that I didn't take a better picture. It's sold out online, however, there were plenty of sizes at the pop up store.

Tonia also picked out this pony-skin coat as one of her favourite pieces - as ever with Bastyan, the devil's in the detail -  it has long woollen gauntlets under the bracelet sleeve - I don't know if they're detachable, but fortunately this is on the website so you can get a better look if you want.  Here's my snap of Tonia with the coat.

London Bastyan Pop Up Boutique 288 - 294 Regent Street W1 Tel: 020 7323 5978

MRS TREFUSIS TAKES A DIOR TAXI

I've had a life-long love affair with Dior - when I was a child, my father bought my mother a bottle of Diorissimo, and I thought that it was the most luxurious present imaginable. I used to sit and stare at it on her dressing table, admiring the - now iconic - houndstooth packaging and longing but not daring to take the beautiful glass bottle out of its case and dab it behind my ears as I'd seen my mother do.

Working for Harper's Bazaar, it's hard not to be a devotee of Christian Dior - after all, it was Bazaar editor, Carmen Snow, who coined the expression The New Look in 1947, for the exquisite nipped in waists and full-skirts with which Dior created such an impact after the austerity of the war years. 

I've always liked Dior for saying that his 'dream' was to 'save women from nature': never having had much truck with a 'natural look'  myself, I'm more than willing to be rescued. What I like about Dior beauty is that sixty years on from the New Look, and fifty years after Christian Dior's death, the brand is still absolutely true to his original vision. It's all about enhancing, transforming and creating an incredibly feminine, elegantly made-up face. 

With such a promise, it's no surprise my make-up bag is completely Dior dependent - these below are the products I use pretty much every day: I just slap more on to create an evening look. And Sali Hughes is completely right - a navy eye is incredibly wearable, no matter what colour one's eyes. This Dior 5 couleurs palette is particularly versatile.

my makeup, as captured by my utterly rubbish iphone camera

The Skin-flash primer is a work of complete brilliance - I swear it takes five years off me. Under foundation it just brings back that nice glossiness that one seems to lack after forty, and it's packed full of hyaluronic acid, which nicely plumps up fine lines and stops them looking so visible. The 'New Look' lipstick is absolutely the perfect red for me, and I live in terror of it being discontinued - it's all the things I thought were inadvisable in a red lipstick - sheer and shiny with a tiny hint of shimmer - but it really works and helps you avoid the 'all lips' thing you can get with a strong, matte, red lipstick. 

I forgot to photograph my favourite mascara ever - Dior's Extase - it gives you vast lashes without going the full Pauline Prescott. There's a brilliant new one launching at the very end of January, which promises to be even better - 'New Look' apparently creates an 'unprecedented voluminous effect'. I can't wait.

Anyway, coming up for Spring is a whole host of beautiful, tempting new colours, all designed to save me from nature. But in the meantime, I'll continue to enjoy the Dior staples I have - here I am wearing them in Dior's specially customised taxi. 

With Vincent Jeanniard, General Manager of Parfums Christian Dior UK, in the Dior Taxi

LIFE THROUGH A LENS

'When was the last time you read a book?' asks Mr Trefusis one evening, 'You used to read all the time.'

'I do read.' I say indignantly, but I know Mr Trefusis is right - I was once a book bulimic, devouring novel after novel, forever on holiday in someone else's imagination. But lately I've found it tiring to read more than a few pages at a time: it's started to take weeks rather than days to finish even a thriller. I've blamed work (too much of), twitter (distraction), Angry Birds (ditto), but really the truth of the matter is as plain as the lines that are springing up all over my forehead: I can't do without my reading glasses. If I try to, even reading Harper's Bazaar becomes too much of an effort, which seems a shame considering it's the magazine I work on.

'Presbyte' says Mr Trefusis, somewhat eliptically, 'that's what the French call you, from the Greek for Old Man.'

And so it is: as confirmed by my optician, I have the kind of long-sightedness that's inevitable after forty, and, although it's helpful of Mr T to contribute to my education by offering me the French for long-sight, presbyte makes me feel as if I ought to come over all Calvinist and start railing disapprovingly about the sin of vanity.

It's no good though: presbyte or not, I still want to look good. I want my reading specs to be fabulous face-furniture, rather than just something practical: I want glasses of distinction. What's more, I want glasses that scream an elegant protest against the presbyte diagnosis - I might be old enough to need them, but I am not so old that I want to entirely relinquish looking vaguely hip and moderately sexy.

The first glasses I bought were the insanely expensive Bulgari pair you see sitting on the laptop in the holding shot of this blog. It's to my shame that I immediately went off them - they're fine, but - you know - they're a bit dull. Realising that it's deeply inconvenient only having one pair of reading glasses, I had some lenses put in a pair of Emporio Armani frames that were discovered unclaimed at the back of the fashion cupboard, but they're also a bit ordinaire. I mean, obviously I'm too grown-up to suddenly go all Hoxton, and sport statement frames like a self-consciously trendy architect or  app developer, but there is a middle ground, surely, and one which doesn't necessitate eating baked beans for a month to afford the bill.

Reader, I think I have the answer - London Retro is a new range of vintage-inspired frames, seemingly designed with me in mind. Ok, that's a little solipsistic, especially when there's enough edge in the range to please my imaginary Hoxton dwelling architect, but really, all boxes ticked - cool and interesting frames and they come complete with single vision lenses for £99 with a second pair free, which seems astonishingly cheap in the context of the Bulgaris. I have Carnaby in red, which have a wonderfully 1980's ad agency feel to them and Camden with a tinted lens for reading outside (have previously felt very foolish wearing sunglasses on top of reading glasses).

London Retro Carnaby in red £99

London Retro Camden in tortoiseshell with a tinted lens-
there's an agreeably Wayfarer feel about them, which kind of reminds me of my yoof, and of the first time I read Money and Brideshead Revisited.

London Retro specs are only available online, but all you do is imput the details of your prescription into the right box and a couple of days later they arrive on your desk, all gleaming and fabulous - kind of like a net-a-porter for spectacles - and despite the price-tag, the quality is at least as good as my existing Bulgari and Armani pairs.


I'm slightly worried now that specs are going to replace shoes as my guilty pleasure - I love the Carnabys, and they definitely suit me, but I do also rather fancy something a bit edgier: these below are next on my acquisition list, just as soon as I've finished all 974pp of Belle du Seigneur to prove that I've really earned them.

 Shoreditch - what do you think? Too cool for school, or could I get away with it, despite my advancing years? Being a bit bookish, I really wanted Fitzrovia, but my face is entirely the wrong shape for that kind of frame.


Of course, what I'd really like now that I've discovered trendy specs is a pair of bifocals - my reading prescription in the bottom so I can see what I'm doing, and plain glass in the top half so I don't fall over when I walk around still wearing them. 

A LIFE IN SHOES

About a zillion years ago, one of my favourite bloggers, Christina at Fashion's Most Wanted, tagged me in a shoe meme. It's taken me such a shamefully long time to pick up the baton, I can't actually remember the rules of the meme, other than one had to post pictures of one's favourite shoes. 


This weekend, however, Mr Trefusis made me sort out my shoe cupboard, and I finally got round to taking some (rather bad) pictures. Like all women I have far too many shoes, yet end up wearing only three pairs, and those are either too worn or too boring to show here. My favourite shoes should really go in the bin - they're completely knackered but they're chocolate brown stilettos, with a very pointy Blahnik-style toe and schiaparelli pink detail and I completely love them.

These are Prada: Black kid with a natural coloured lizardskin and silver piping. Sadly, like their owner , they're getting on a bit and are a little tired and worn.  Nevertheless, every time I slide my feet into them, I feel like Zelda Fitzgerald - without the dodgy alcoholism and mental issues, obviously - but in a jazz age kind of way that makes me want to perch elegantly on a bar stool and knock back a couple of Sidecars.

These are also Prada: fabric with ostrich: I fell in love with the print and the bright turquoise toes and heels. Like all Prada shoes they're very comfortable, but they're a little too distinctive to wear often and so, despite being ten years old, they're still in quite good nick.

Bottega Veneta and my most bargainacious shoes ever: they were twenty-five pounds reduced from £250, presumably because there was no call for orange shoes in London 12 years ago when I bought them. Twenty five pounds. More than anything else, they make me feel like Summer's finally arrived: I like to wear them with a pink linen shift dress and with watermelon pink varnish on my toes.

These are Kurt Geiger - satin with swarovski crystal studded heels and cripplingly uncomfortable - taxi shoes if ever there were any. They also upstage me terribly so, fabulous as they are, I've worn them about twice - once to a Harper's Bazaar party where I had to take paracetamol to be able to keep them on, and then once to a dinner party where I knew I'd be sitting down all the time. Are these what magazines call a statement shoe?

'No one would ever mistake you for my mistress in those shoes,' said Mr Trefusis, rather unflatteringly. I don't for one minute suspect him of having a mistress, but I do know what he means: you'd never slap a super-injunction on someone in Ferragamos.  However, what they lack in vampiness, they make up for in sophistication and I love them passionately not least because they remind me of my honorary grandmother, who had immense style, and swore by cashmere jumpers, linen sheets and Ferragamos with every outfit. 

I couldn't work out why these were the only flat shoes in the shoe cupboard - surely I must have other flats, I thought, casting around for evidence. I found a pair of Converse, a couple of pair of really beaten up ballet flats and (the shame) a pair of frog green Crocs: I seem only to wear flats to get from A to B, and then whip out the heels. I must have a terrible complex about being short, or maybe it's that unconsciously I think it's only worth spanking serious shoe money on what the Tiniest Trefusis calls 'heel-high shoes'. However, these glamorous gold Prada flats make me feel a bit Jacqueline Onassis. Is it just me, or do shoes have a transformative power for every woman? Is it the Cinderella thing all over again?

I couldn't photograph these to save my life - they're purple satin and very high and I wore them when I married Mr Trefusis, but that's another story for another time. They're Kurt Geiger.

My favourite shoes don't belong to me at all - the Tiniest Trefusis wore these silver Kicker boots not long after she first learned to walk.  She's very much her mother's daughter - the first word she ever said was 'Shoe'.  

SEVEN ANTI-AGEING SECRETS

I'm still half-heartedly batting off middle-age. By which I mean, my efforts to remind myself that I'm not absolutely over the hill are certainly more vigorous than they were last year. 2010 was mostly characterised by my devotion to eating cake and feeling morose, and of course, by the time the New Year dawned, the cake had made my pants feel like I was wearing them back to front, and the moping around smacked too much of the horror of my fifteen year old self, when all I did was stay in my bedroom wearing an oversize black mohair jersey, writing bleak, sub-Sylvia Plath inspired poetry to a soundtrack of Kate Bush and The Dead Kennedy's.

There has been some progression, thankfully: the mohair has given way to a black cashmere polo neck (admittedly, I'd much rather the label inside said 'Brora' than 'Tesco Finest', but still), and the awful poetry has been replaced by this blog (less prolific, more self-conscious). Fortunately for Mr Trefusis, I only have The Dead Kennedy's on vinyl, and we no longer have a record player. But even so, the period of appalling self-indulgence would have to come to an end at some point, and God, January is a good a cut off as any.

'Shake it off, Trefusis, and spruce yourself up,' I said to myself over Christmas, 'There's no point in waiting for your second wind, if you're still puffed out from the first, life in the old dog yet and all that.' I'm afraid I've never been one for covert, internal transformations - for one thing,  if I'm going to make an effort to buck things up, I don't want it to go unnoticed and for another, I can't possibly change myself on the inside if the outside looks shabby - it seems so hypocritical, really.

It's not a new or original thought, obviously - about two thousand years ago, Roman poet Juvenal wrote that 'seldom do people discern/eloquence under a threadbare cloak' so now, as then, the externals matter.

Of course, after a certain age, there's no such thing as a five minute fix - one can't shrug off twelve months of intimate acquaintance with the Campari Spritz at lovely Polpo Soho or Red Velvets at Hummingbird Bakery overnight - and it seems to me that, after forty, everything, from reading the instructions on a new gadget to looking halfway presentable, takes an unreasonably long time.

But there are a few rules, I find, to making one look less of a natural disaster -

(1) Decent skincare
The effects of winter weather and central heating, as much as age, make skin seem grey, dry and dull. Harper's Bazaar's Newby Hands said Nubo's Diamond Peel and Reveal 'is the best we've tried for giving refined, clear skin'. It's the best I've tried too - it's like Mr Sheen for the face, getting rid of the dusty look and putting the fresh shine back. It's not a steal at £65, but it is wonderful, and a little goes a long way.
I also really like Clinique's Repairwear Laser Focus wrinkle and UV damage corrector (£35) - I'm a huge fan of serums - I've tried everything from Lancome's Genefique to Creme de la Mer - but this works even better than products I've used at twice the price. It makes my skin incredibly clear and soft, and has all but eradicated the finer lines on my face. I use it with another Clinique product, Youth Surge Age Decelerating Moisturiser (there's a day and a night cream), which again has a performance which belies the price - it's about £28, which is only a few quid more than Olay, and infinitely more effective. I'm a complete convert.

(2) It's all about the hair
Watch any of those make-over programmes, and it's not the zillions spent on botox/fillers/peels/surgery that turns the bags into beauties, it's the hair.  Good colour and a decent cut work miracles beyond comprehension. My beloved Graham, who created the Mrs Trefusis hair (profile picture) and is King of Up-do's, has opened a salon a hop, skip and a jump from the office, so I need never let my roots admit what he tries so hard to conceal, that I'm very far from a natural blonde. Graham also taught me that a professional blow-dry is infinitely better value for money than a new frock if you've somewhere special to go.
Tilley and Carmichael, 5 Silver Place, Soho, London W1F 0JR. 0207 287 7677

(3) Until someone sensible brings vigorous corsetry back into vogue, exercise is unavoidable
I've tried, really I have. There have been a few half-hearted attempts at getting back into running, but really, it's been all about the Spanx and a push up bra since the Tiniest T was born. Apparently, exercise not only puts the zing back into your figure, it also makes you feel jolly. Three mind-boggling Zumba classes and some fiendish gym sessions, I'm still to be convinced, possibly because the programme was designed for me by an infant in trackpants, who talked slowly to me in a 'Does he take sugar?' kind of way, and said 'I expect the gym has changed a lot since you last came: it's all computerised now.'


(4) Bugger being young: be sophisticated.
(Actually, this is points 4, 5, 6 and 7 all rolled into one, partly because it's taken me a month to get round to writing this blog, and we'll be here all night if I go on much longer.)

Why bother to épater les jeunes when this season's ultra-groomed glamour looks utterly bonkers on the under 35's. If you try to do the current  'done' look, all blow-dried hair and proper lipstick, and you're in your mid-twenties, you risk looking like the Tiniest Trefusis after a raid on my wardrobe.

Ha! Quick, quick, Middle Youth, I call upon you to rise up: our fashion moment has finally come.

Anyway, the quickest short cut to sophistication is a bold lip, which seems to be very now, thankfully - Sali Hughes has it bang on in this lovely piece from the Guardian. Unconsciously, I've been working up to this moment for a while because at the last count I had fifteen red lipsticks, all different, but then with red lips, it's all about the nuance. It's not especially easy to pull off - a strong lip doesn't really work if the rest of you is a bit laissez-faire - but on the days one can be bothered, it's pure beauty prozac.

It's also probably time to develop a signature look, as recommended in one of my favourite books  - Backwards in High Heels - I'm still working on this, but I'm told it's not only sophisticated, it's most youthifying.

I was also told the other day, by someone who knows, that fast fashion is over and it's all about 'considered shopping' - for example - no one needs three expensive handbags - invest in the one you really love and look after it. Don't buy six cheap white shirts, find the definitive white shirt, and so on and so forth.

But really, the apogee of grown-up chic is the ability to eat oysters. In my head, I am exactly the kind of woman who could perch elegantly on a high stool and lunch on a half dozen Duchy Natives and a glass of champagne - not only is this sublimely elegant, it's also only 4 Weightwatcher Pro-points, the same as a couple of slices of toast but infinitely more impressive.  Reader, I have yet to manage more than two oysters, because secretly they rather revolt me, but I am practising hard, helped by the opening of fabulous new seafood restaurant, The Wright Brothers on Kingly Street in Soho - just walking in makes me feel impossibly stylish, like Alexis Colby, but in a good way.

THE SCARLET DRESS

It's a long time since I was this obsessed by a dress. You know how it is - you see something in a shop, and you can't stop thinking about it. Every time you open your wardrobe, there's a great glaring hole where the coveted item should be, but isn't, because it's still in the shop. Every time you get dressed, even your most favourite outfit is diminished by not being the dress. And so it is with this scarlet frock from Bastyan. Red isn't a colour I usually wear, having very much a Ford Model T approach to fashion - any colour you like as long as it's black - but there's something immensely Christmassy about this particular shade of vermilion. Quite marvellous for Christmas Day, and New Year's Eve, and my sister's birthday, and, and ....you see what I'm doing here? Fashion maths. Fashion maths means you divide the price of some gorgeous object of desire by the number of occasions you think you might wear it. It always comes out as £1.22 per wear, and so it is that your brain says '£1.22? You can't even get a cappuccino for that' and it instantly becomes a complete steal.

It's not even especially expensive - it's currently reduced from £225 to £125, both on the Bastyan website and in House of Fraser, and it's silk too. What's more, Bastyan makes the most fabulously flattering frocks on the planet - Tonia Bastyan, the label's owner and designer, understands perfectly that when one is over 35 one doesn't want to be tugging things down to cover a less than perfect knee, or pinning a neckline to conceal the fact one can't get away with bra-less anymore. She uses luxurious fabrics and clever draping to drift gently over the difficult bits and enhance the parts that aren't quite yet completely disastrous. She's that all too rare thing, a designer that designs for, rather than against, all the idiosyncrasies of a woman's body, without sacrificing a strong design edge, and the net result is a collection which flatters, and is yet still completely on trend. The scarlet silk georgette goddess dress is a really good example of this, but there are many more. I could start to develop a small addiction.

Oh, see how I'm longing for it? Should I wait to find out if I get any money for Christmas? Should I brave the ghastliness of Christmas Eve at Westfield to see if they have one left in my size in case the yearning gets too great and I have to have it?


Addendum; Writing this post made the craving worse: I couldn't live without the dress. And not only did they still have my size at Westfield, my mother said that she'd get it for me for Christmas: evidently it was meant to be mine. I can't wait to unwrap it and put it on. Happy Christmas everyone.


UPDATE: October 2011 - I've just heard a whisper that the next Harper's Bazaar party is to have a black and red theme - guess what I'll be wearing? That's another nice thing about Bastyan - it's fashionable, but not so achingly on trend that you can't wear it for more than a season

MRS TREFUSIS TAKES A BICYCLE

"If it all gets a bit much, don't be too proud to cycle on the pavement" says Mr Trefusis, kindly, rapping me on the top of my helmet as if to test its strength, and waving me off on my inaugural bicycle ride to the office.



Well, I say inaugural, but I do have form for cycling, albeit in the dim and distant past. Eight years ago, in the middle of a tube strike, I wobbled off to work on my monstrously cool yet entirely impractical Kronan, and I only did it because I had no alternative. The Kronan was developed in the Second World War for the Swedish army, weighs as much as a tank, and was once selected by Tyler Brûle as one of the most stylish design objects of the twentieth century. A bicycle less suited to a commute from West London to Carnaby Street, I can't imagine. Quite apart from its heft, it has no gears and only a back pedal brake, a distinct disadvantage when pedalling up and down the aptly named Notting Hill. As brutal as it is beautiful, I keep expecting to find it used as a murder weapon in an episode of Wallander. Anyway, it was a one off experiment and the Kronan has long since been retired, due to the hassle of getting spare parts shipped in from Sweden, as well as its other disadvantages. Until now, cycling to work has remained nothing more than a latent aspiration.



However, the ongoing Great Trefusis Economic Crisis, and the onset of incipient middle-aged lardiness has put commuting by bicycle firmly back on the agenda. Could I save money and get fitter at the same time, ideally without finding myself squashed between the 148 bus and a John Lewis delivery van on the Bayswater Road? I'm not convinced enough to invest in a bicycle of my own – and of course, that would hardly tick the money-saving box - so I borrowed an old one from my parents instead and bought the sort of luminous waistcoat that people on building sites wear. I figured that if I was to cheat death on two wheels, it was best to make my lack of cycling proficiency really, really visible.



On paper, or indeed by car/bus/tube, the journey to work is simple – turn right out of our road, turn right again, and keep going straight until one gets to Oxford Circus. But on a bike, going along Holland Park Avenue and then down Oxford Street feels like a route mapped in one's own blood. I plugged the postcodes into TFL's planner which came back with a route so circuitous and complex that it went on to two pages – God only knows how one is supposed to memorise a route like that, but I tried to keep it in my head by earmarking the familiar. It's roughly straight on West to East – how hard could it be?
Anyway, I set off, went straight, turned left at the Rug Company, ran behind Holland Park Avenue and Notting Hill until I passed Le Cafe Anglais, and then, not quite a third of the way into the journey, I promptly forgot the route, found myself back on the main road, inches from the thundering juggernauts. I remembered Mr Trefusis's pavement advice, but the pavement was, rather inconveniently, full of pedestrians, so I crossed at the lights and went into Hyde Park – what could be nicer? Trees, no cars, squirrels, loveliness and Parks Police. "Cycling is not allowed" shrieked the Parks Policeman, "can't you see the sign?". 'No Cycling' is written in two foot high letters at intervals along the path so I was definitely caught red-faced and red-handed. All I could do was dismount and walk my bike, head held as high as I could muster, to the nearest exit. Not being able to cycle in the park, parallel with the Bayswater Road, seems to me to be the most enormous swizz – Hyde Park is huge, with much wider pavements than the street, and could easily accommodate a small cycle lane. Boris should have fixed this at the same time as planting all of his bikes all over London. I overtook two Boris Bikes after that, just to get my pride back.



Actually, the journey from then on was relatively uneventful – I took a slightly idiosyncratic route north of Oxford Street, and then down through Hanover Square so I could 'wave' cheerily, hem hem, at Vogue House before arriving at work rather earlier than usual.



Cycling is moderately terrifying, I must admit, but the greatest dangers seem to be from other cyclists – those wearing earphones to cycle seem to lack an appropriate respect for their own personal safety – and Professor of Traffic Psychology (and God, who knew there was such a thing), Dr Ian Walker's insights seem to work, cars/buses/cabs and vans give you a wider berth if you're obviously a bit rubbish, your mum's bike and long blond hair worn loose are as essential a part of your Cycling Safety kit as a helmet and lights. As I write this, I'm about to don the fluoro waistcoat and swirly-girly helmet for my newly mapped route home, past Estee Lauder's head office, over Park Lane and straight on until I get to the cup of tea Mr Trefusis promises he has waiting for me at the other end.

THE COCKTAIL PARTY: BAZAAR & LANCOME FETE KATE WINSLET

On Friday, I had the good fortune to go to a cocktail party thrown by Lancôme and Harper's Bazaar to celebrate the BAFTA's and British fashion talent. Hosted by star guest, and face of Lancôme, Kate Winslet, and packed full of the great and the good of fashion and film, plus a lot of rising British talent, it was as glamorous an invitation as one could wish for.

I arrived seconds before Kate Winslet, and I was right next to the logo-board as she did her obligatory five minutes posing for the cameras - I took it as a perfect opportunity to have a really good stare at her, safe in the knowledge that she was too busy being photographed to notice me gawping like a star-struck teenager, something that I knew I'd be far too well-brought up to do when in the throes of the cocktail party itself. The photograph below is taken on my iPhone - hence the appalling quality.

I confess I scrutinised her very carefully -I don't know whether I've been corrupted by a lifetime of reading gossip magazines, but now find I can't look at a celebrity without thinking 'has she had work done?' or 'bonkers food regime, or nutty workout schedule?'. Kate Winslet has always come out strongly in favour of women accepting the way they look - she spoke out in 2003 against GQ's heavy handed retouching of hercover image, and last year successfully sued the Daily Mail for alleging that she'd, ahem, underplayed her exercise regime: having now seen her at close quarters, she's as much a poster girl for 'normality' as one could hope from an international film star. She's neither too thin, nor too worked out - I'd put her at a UK size ten, certainly no smaller: She obviously takes care of herself, but her slender shapeliness has a refreshing touch of achievability about it. I don't know why I'd expected her to be less luminously beautiful in the flesh - perhaps one's expectation is that Hollywood glamour owes an awful lot to good lighting and the art of the re-toucher - but she was utterly gorgeous. Her skin, particularly, could have sonnets written about it, and she's a wonderful asset for Lancôme. Mr Trefusis has always maintained she has fat ankles: I spent quite a lot of time at the party trying to take a surreptitious pic of her feet on the iPhone so I could prove him wrong, but failed miserably. He'll just have to take my word - and the images here - that her ankles are every bit as perfect as the rest of her.

Of course, film and fashion is an irresistible combination: the BAFTA's run slap in the middle of London Fashion Week and the combination of the two simply piles glamour upon glamour. It was a heady, scented mix of beautiful actresses in exquisite outfits, from Westwood to Temperley and Berardi to Christopher Kane, cheek by jowl with scions of fashion, from Testino to Bazaar's Lucy Yeomans.
Sam Taylor-Wood was a little more dressed down than most, but beautiful in a way that doesn't quite come over in photographs - in the flesh she looks at least ten years younger, and he a good five years older - and she and Aaron Johnson are so clearly wild about each other that only the most stony-hearted could fail to be moved by it or wish them every happiness.


There are much better pictures, particularly of the frocks, on the Harper's Bazaar website - I was struck by what a riot of colour it was - for a fashion party, very few people were wearing black, other than Kate Winslet, in Alexander McQueen, and Emilia Fox - reds, corals, purples, and golds were very much in play. I'm afraid I couldn't get my head round the dress code - 'cocktails and canapés' can mean anything from smart workwear to full on party frocks - I was too broke to buy anything new, and borrowing something was out, being too much on the wrong side of cake and chocolate for a sample size, so ended up in an unobtrusive black silk chiffon empire line dress that has nothing to commend it other than the way it allowed me to blend into the background so I could observe the beautiful people unobserved, and tweet away to my heart's content.

Bazaar's Lucy Yeomans wearing Berardi, with Kate Winslet and Harold Tillmans, Chairman of the British Fashion Council.

ON BEAUTY AND LOOKING YOUNGER (PART ONE)

A two part post on make-up for grown-ups

'What have you done to your eyes?' Asks Mr Trefusis, staring gloomily at me as I'm on my way out to a party, 'I assume it's fashion.'

Whenever Mr Trefusis says 'fashion', it's always as if there are vast inverted commas around the word, making it sound as if it's something I've just invented to tease him.

Trefusis Minor adds his ten pence-worth: 'I like your lipstick, Mummy, but not your eyeshadow.'

And with that, my self-esteem hits the floor: why couldn't he say 'You look beautiful, Mummy, like a beautiful shiny star, twinking in the night', like he did once when he was four. Ok, so that was a peculiarly extravagant compliment, but one can usually rely on Trefusis Minor for a positive comment whatever the occasion. Not this time, apparently, though in fairness, it's sweet he's trying to be tactful. Trefusis Minor has quite firm views on makeup - I came home from work one day and got changed to go running and he ran after me to tell me that I should take my lipstick off before I went out because 'Red Lipstick is only for glamorous parties'. He's quite ahead of the game, even if I am a little concerned that he knows rather more about beauty than is usual in a boy of his age.


'It's deeply fashionable,' I say, naturally on the defensive, 'It's the last word in fashion, actually. They're Dior's new colours and I've copied the look from Harper's Bazaar. Blue is back.'


'Hmmm,' says Mr Trefusis, an eyebrow vanishing into his hairline, and goes back to playing with the cursèd Wii.

I tuck my sparkly clutch firmly under my arm, and flounce off grandly into the taxi waiting to take me to some work do or other. Yet I no longer feel quite so fashionable. I squint into the tiny mirror above the door of the cab and am slightly aghast: The bold drama of a pale cobalt eye with an equally colourful lip looked amazing when done by Aaron de Mey for Bazaar, but looks decidedly Barbara Cartland on me. I'm just wondering whether to tone it down a bit by scrubbing at my eye with an old bit of tissue - probably the same one I spat on earlier that day when removing nutella traces from the Tiniest Trefusis's face - when I arrive and forget all about it.

A few days later, it comes back to me. Mr Trefusis was right - perhaps these kinds of directional looks are like very up-to-the-minute clothes - only the very young or intensely trendy can carry them off. If you are neither, then probably one should bite the bullet and go for make-up that makes the best of what you've already got, rather than spoiling the lily with a hefty gilt impasto.

And frankly, the very best kind of makeup at all is not the edgiest runway look, it's the kind that takes years off you, like in the picture of Julianne Moore on the cover of February British Harper's Bazaar (above). She's had a little light airbrushing but I have it on good authority that in Real Life she looks utterly amazing for 49 and has eschewed the dark arts of the cosmetic dermatologist to boot.

Christian Dior once said, “I dream of saving women from nature”, and that seems to me to be the essence of beauty. I don't want to appear in front of anyone in the same dishevelled, unmade-up state that greets me in the mirror every morning, natural as that is: I want to make the best of myself, even if that's doesn't immediately scream that I'm au fait with the latest Moschino eye, or the Bottega Veneta brow. Most of all, I want to look young(er) and fabulous, not like an old has-been try-hard.

This post was going to neatly segue into a list of tips and techniques for turn back the clock make-up, but I've run out of time somewhat. However, in the very next post I promise to impart everything I've picked up whilst working with make-up artists and with some of the very best magazine beauty editors.

LIFE IMITATES ART: CLAUDIA SCHIFFER & HARPER'S BAZAAR

The November issue of Harper's Bazaar featured a selection of exquisite portraits of Claudia Schiffer, created by some of the great and the good of contemporary art. In a unique and wonderfully ambitious venture, Bazaar commissioned Jake and Dinos Chapman, Gillian Wearing, Jason Brooks, Marc Quinn, Dexter Dalwood, Chris Bucklow, and Keith Tyson to offer their own interpretation of this platonic ideal of female beauty.

The pictures looked pretty extraordinary on the pages of the magazine, but begged to be hung and displayed properly in a gallery. So this Monday, Bazaar hosted a private view of 'Capturing Claudia' at the Colnaghi Gallery, attended by the muse herself, the artists who represented her according to their own particular vibe and vision, and vast amounts of wildly glamorous people from the art and fashion worlds, all of whom looked vaguely famous but who I was too dim and uncool to recognise.

Helpfully primed by all the pictures of her staring back at me from the walls, I did manage to recognise Claudia Schiffer. She looks so robust and statuesque in fashion shoots, yet she's rather fragile looking in real life, albeit very tall in an etiolated kind of way, like a plant that has been nurtured in the dark and grown lanky in search of a light source.

I'm afraid that when 'Capturing Claudia' myself, I used my iPhone, hardly the world's best camera, hence the rubbish blurry quality of this shot of her in front of Marc Quinn's flower portrait.

Here she is, slightly closer up. Not as close up as the Marc Quinn picture, which, though idealised in its composition, is un-retouched, and bears witness to her flawless skin. God, how few of us at thirty-nine could stand being scrutinised in close-up and displayed at such magnification?

Jake and Dinos Chapman's Hammer-Horror-meets-Hitchcock series is easily the least disturbing of anything Chapman Bros have ever produced, but no less stunning for that.

Jason Brooks' double-portrait appears at first to be the most conventional of the seven pieces, yet this starkly beautiful pencil drawing of Claudia's un-made-up face, in all its unflinching, photo-realist simplicity, relies on nothing other than the precision and skill of the artist for its power. It's a bold contradiction of the heavily re-touched, idealised and perfected images of celebrities we're used to.

I didn't get to take any iPhotos of Claudia in front of Keith Tyson's enormous seven-headed portrait. I was standing in front of it, muttering like a bag lady about how little I understood why he'd represented her as a beautiful Hydra surrounding what looked like a golf-course, when I realised I was standing next to the artist himself. Gutlessly, I turned and fled, only to be pursued by a sense of l'esprit de l'escalier: turning over in my head a dozen conversations in which I had the courage to ask him about his thinking behind the portrait, without the attendant anxiety about appearing stupid or uncool.

There is something about contemporary art that always makes me feel deeply, deeply unhip, like a Friend of the Royal Academy that's accidentally wandered into the Turner Prize. I won't say I didn't feel overawed in the company of art made flesh, and flesh made art and I'm wise enough to leave the art criticism to those that can fashion a coherent opinion but, by 'eck, they were lovely pictures, and that Claudia Schiffer's right pretty.

PS: I've just been told that if you're quick, you can pop into the gallery and see Capturing Claudia for yourself

Colnaghi Gallery
15 Old Bond Street
W1
(opposite Gucci)
Free Admission
10am - 6pm
But be quick - it's only on until this Friday, 6th November.