DIARY
Iwas a little miffed that Cherie wasn't at the reception given by the PM at No. 10 for 'leaders in design'. Modesty prevails on me to use the inverted commas. One fellow 'leader' railed at me when I casually admitted (out of earshot of Mr Blair and Mr Mandelson, you understand) that I had voted for the other side. 'What — that bunch of losers?' No,' I said, 'I voted for John Major, a man I felt I could trust and someone who would whip the others into shape once given a clear mandate', which is precisely, I suspect, why he voted for Tony Blair. The assembled movers and shakers of the design industry, myself included, were very impressed with the content and delivery of the PM's address: dreams of the Empire had been swept away and we were on the edge of a New Dawn where a modern, forward-looking Britain would be measured by its leader- ship in design, and by harnessing that commodity to industry we would be able to shrug off the beefeater, Big Ben, red bus, Tourist Board image of Britain and replace it with a new iconography of radi- cal, forward-thinking statements. I don't think that he quite meant tearing down old favourites like the National Gallery and replacing them with the Pompidou Centre, but nevertheless stirring stuff without a trace of gung-ho. I'm sure that, had they been present, neither Tony Benn nor Roy Hattersley would have disap- proved. From where I was standing, it was definitely in the spirit of 'Think not what your country can do for you.' It was at once a blatant appeal to our collective sense of community spirit, and also enor- mously flattering to our individual egos in that we could assist its execution.
Iwas horrified by the murder of Gianni Versace, not a bosom buddy, but someone who I had met on numerous occasions who was always friendly and talkative, without a trace of fashion hauteur. Within hours of his death, pundits from across the world voiced opinions and paid tributes to the slain designer (even Naomi Campbell got a speaking part). Tales of alleged Mafia involvement were skirted around skilfully by those who chose to pay tribute to his personality and the importance of his work rather than analyse too deeply the often hinted at darker side of his business deal- ings. But wait, the Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce and its doughty police department showed that it had teeth and within five hours had come up with a mur- der suspect and a motive, and so the good citizens and realtors of South Miami could sleep well that night, comfortable in the knowledge that the already violent image of their burgh had not been tainted. No, this BRUCE OLDFIELD was not a Mafioso-style assassination of an innocent fashion designer, he was the vic- tim of a gay serial killer whose ranking in the FBI's most-wanted list rose by each news bulletin. Gianni Versace was now the victim of his own seedy, homosexual lifestyle and this, of course, was the story that ran and ran and ran. It was pretty shameful. Considering its global interest, this was to be the neatest and most sinister piece of crime detection, trial and execu- tion of recent years. Within days they had surrounded the suspect, very close to the scene of the murder, and when the Miami police were finally hinting that there were perhaps other reasons for the killing, Cunanan conveniently shot himself. Conve- niently for whom? you may ask. End of story? I think not.
Function? What function? I'm only interested if it's cash in hand, right.' Ayou would expect, the big stars of fashion and rock turned out for the mass at the Duomo in Milan: Elton, Sting, Valenti- no, Karl and Diana — the show must go on, and it did! One unkind fashion observer noted that there were more top make-up artists and hairdressers flown into Milan to service the highly modish congregation or was it flock? — than would normally be seen at the biannual fashion collections. (Naomi got a walk-on part too.) The most imminent (though non-com- mercial) manifestation of this will undoubt- edly be the millennium site, but I know that most of the designers present in that room want to see initiatives put into place, possi- bly with the help of the government, to pro- mote more dynamic couplings between design and industry on a long-term basis. I do hope there will be someone there to drive home the point that, if such marriages are to succeed, they need the ingredient, usually overlooked, or simply dismissed as unnecessary in British industry: of strong, focused marketing. We don't want to see Union Jacks plastered over everything; if the product is well designed, well manufac- tured and correctly presented to its intend- ed market, they will be queuing around the block.
Iwas impressed by all this New Labour, so you can imagine my horror when I turned on Channel 4 News the next evening to hear a minister for education in conver- sation with an undergraduate who had argued (not convincingly) the plight of fel- low students of the working class who would be put off pursuing further educa- tion with the spectre of the heavy debt they are now expected to incur for their own tuition. I could hardly believe my ears. The minister's reply, delivered in the arrogant, patronising (admittedly pre-Major), high Tory manner, was that this was simply a `cultural problem'. A cultural problem? Is that New Labour? Well, actually it wasn't, it turned out that the spokesman was in fact the Tory minister for education in 1985-87, George Walden. My mistake, Tony. I will skip over the easy segue into royal mar- riages and marketing and won't comment on the daily sport of debashing where we see Camilla and Diana straddling the see- saw of public opinion, up one minute, down the next, though it becomes apparent that Camilla remains buoyant, even when Diana is also riding the waves. I'm going on my holidays, where I will no doubt see endless versions of that swimsuit. Being a little on the heavy side at the moment, I shall stay out of the way of any photographer, I promise!
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