I was hugely in love with various art teachers.
Not the way I’ve ever been in love with a boy, but this was something deeper and more scraping in my gut, a kind of sense that maybe I’d grow up one day and be like them.
Theirs were the only classes I liked; theirs were the only outfits I shared – long sweaters worn as dresses; Indian prints; high-waisted shorts; blazers with wooden buttons. This was the ’90s, remember, and while I was obsessed with Kate, Julie Delpy, and Kirsty Hume, they were just being themselves, which (I think now) was probably described as “leftover hippie.”
I remembered all my art teachers this morning at Stella McCartney, when the runway was washed in yellowish light and the girls swooshed down smiling, with huge blazers worn as dresses; Indian-inspired prints; high-waisted shorts; the lanky tangled hair of leftover hippies.
Once my father showed me some prints of Linda McCartney, the photographer, Stella’s mother. I remember outfits like these in them. Seeing them now on the runway, Paul McCartney was smiling, but Lily Allen looked a little furrowed – until they played Blackbird as the closing song.
It felt peaceful outside the show. I sat with Mickey Boardman from Paper Magazine to have coffee. We could see the Eiffel Tower in the haze.
Then Carine Roitfeld came and sat at the table next to us with Mario Testino. She briefly said hi. The calmness evaporated, like cigarette smoke in cafes.
–FARAN