Spectator Life

Are you a ‘recliner’ or a ‘refrainer’? Do you ease your seat back on an aeroplane as soon as you can, or remain bolt upright and swallow your fury as the headrest in front is lowered a few inches from your nose? Or are you to be found in the slender oval on the Venn diagram; the waiting room between recliner and refrainer, hanging on until the food service has finished before caressing the recline button? Whose armrest is it? Nobody cares anymore. All anyone wants to know is will the person in front of them recline their seat?

The gestation of Usha Vance’s fourth baby – born on Sunday – has made for a politically revealing spectacle. Not only was she the only Second Lady to be pregnant since Ellen Colfax, the wife of Schuyler Colfax, in 1870, but she led, throughout the visible portion of the pregnancy, with just that: the visible bump. For J.D. Vance’s wife, there was no locking herself away or hiding her pregnant belly beneath frumpy maternity wear. Instead, she embraced the Trumpian vogue for ‘babycon’ through a range of clingy pregnancy dresses. Since Donald Trump’s second inauguration last year, the ‘Maga babe’ has become as much an aesthetic phenomenon as a political one.

You know what I want with a haircut? Silence. I want the hairdresser to keep his or her eyes on the scissors and not get distracted by conversation. I want to know that, during the crucial period when it could all go horribly wrong, the man or woman at the back is concentrating. I like having a conversation with hairdressers, who are generally interesting people, but I just don’t want it while they’re working. I was rather impressed by Leslie Cavendish, The Beatles’ hairdresser, who was on Michael Berkeley’s Private Passions series recently and made clear that at Vidal Sassoon’s salon in the 1960s, the Trappist approach was preferred during cuts.

Count Binface has never lacked ambition. Nigel Farage’s only challenger in the Clacton by-election has, over the years, promised to cap the price of croissants at £1.10, nationalise Adele and build at least one affordable house. Admirable though these causes may be, however, the self-proclaimed ‘intergalactic space warrior’ has overlooked one national emergency. If he truly wants to leave Britain – or indeed Earth – in a better place than he found it, he should use this campaign to outlaw the royal blue suit from politics. The royal blue suit has spread through Westminster with the invasiveness of Japanese knotweed. Farage has embraced it with particular enthusiasm.

Unsurprisingly, Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen (LLB) doesn’t judge No. 10’s recent occupants by their policies. Rather, it’s their interior design. First there was Theresa May, ‘desperately trying to keep everything lidded and controlled in mid-century John Lewis’. Then there was Boris Johnson in a ‘ridiculous operatic explosion’ of Lulu Lytle. As for Andy Burnham, he’ll probably go ‘mad for Manchester with graffiti everywhere’. If LLB were asked to redecorate No. 10, would he do it? ‘Well I’d have to really get a skittle on if it was for Keir Starmer, wouldn't I?’ he laughs.

My daughters used to tease me mercilessly about my infatuation with Julio Iglesias. Not because I moved heaven and earth to get a ticket (and an interview) with the absurdly divine dreamboat when he performed in Lausanne in the 1970s. But because I swooned over the crooner’s bare, tanned feet tucked into espadrilles.  It is possible I was the only Swiss housewife who couldn't resist Iglesias in his bare feet, clothed in cotton and as seductive as his ballads. 'Señora Corner,’ Mme. Formosa, my Spanish housekeeper told me, ‘You wouldn't have been happy. Señor Iglesias came on stage in a black suit, black tie and shiny, black shoes. But his singing was still fabuloso.’ Contrary to Mme.

When I announced to my American neighbour that I was going to Ascot for the first time in 20 years, she grabbed me by the arm as if I had just announced that I was running off with the gardener. Apparently Ascot and the Royal Enclosure have changed beyond recognition since the latest refurb and there is much to learn. ‘Which day are you going?’ she asked wildly, as I muttered something about Ladies Day. She turned around in shock, hand over mouth. If she were Hyacinth Bucket from Keeping Up Appearances, I was her nervous friend Elizabeth who spills her tea all over her saucer, shaking like a leaf. ‘We don’t have much time,’ she cried in no particular direction.  When she learned about my proposed outfit, she went pale.

How appropriate that the late David Hockney favoured that ash blonde hair colour, given that the chain-smoker was said to get through 100 cigarettes a day? And not just any old fags: the long, slender and upmarket Davidoff Magnum Classic, of which he was said to keep a store of 2,000 at home for emergencies. Hockney said they helped him concentrate. But this everyday accessory was also a yellowed two-fingers to anyone who wanted to close down what he saw as his right to live as he chose. More than that – and let’s hope no school kids are reading – they imbued him with an old Hollywood, rebel cool, especially in more anti-tab times. ‘You can’t have a smoke-free Bohemia,’ as he once noted.

It was once the norm that a good greeting was typically accompanied by a gregarious physical act, such as doffing your hat or kissing the back of a hand. Increasingly, Brits seem only able to muster a feeble nod or grunt. ‘Physical touch is very important for the cohesion of a community,’ the Berlin-based philosopher Byung-Chul Han remarked in his 2023 lecture ‘On Eros’, in which he discussed what love means in modern society: ‘The squeeze of the hand is what creates trust. Despite, or because of, digital interconnectedness and communication there is very little touching in our society.

The landscape in which female beauty trends play out is increasingly mean and ludicrous, just when it should be less prone to obsession and caricature than ever before. We should be seeing thick hairy legs on urban streets, not just on LGBTQ activists. We should barely be hearing normal women talking about facial ageing or getting regular poison-loaded needles injected into their faces for the sake of the blandest type of beauty.  And we should definitely not be seeing the rise of teenagers making millions from hawking anti-ageing skin products to other children. And yet, here we are. What is obvious is that a female body is still the most powerful asset a human being can have, if presented correctly.

At the news that Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) will allow members to remove their jackets thanks to soaring temperatures, I wept a tiny tear. That is, one of sadness, not relief, as I imagine some of you may be feeling, because it is the thin end of the sartorial wedge. Before you know it, Prince William will be appearing in flip flops on the Buckingham Palace balcony and the Prime Minister will take questions in Bermudas.  For the British man needs absolutely no encouragement to disrobe. Left to his own devices, most will slob about the house in their most comfortable pants. And the moment the sun appears for more than five seconds, the men are out in the streets, shirts off, shorts on, their horrible feet on show in sliders or even – shock horror – flip flops.

When I was in my teens and twenties, older people told me that they were exhausted just watching how I lived my life. I careered through my youth in a fog of football matches, protest marches, pubs, clubs and raves. I treated sleep as an inconvenience and I’d increasingly arrive home at daylight, not quite sure how the evening ended or where that bruise came from.  ‘Wait until you’re our age,’ oldies would say. ‘You’ll slow down too. Then it’ll be your turn to look at the young with bewilderment.’  Well, I did the slowing down part. After we were all locked down in 2020, I never fully unlocked again.

So, the Met Gala has rolled around again, with the predictability of death, taxes and the knowledge that some of the world’s most tedious celebrities will be photographed wearing some frankly bizarre outfits. As with the Oscars, the gala is a display of how deeply unfair it is to be a woman at these events. Men turn up, traditionally, in inoffensive displays of black tie, although this year’s theme of ‘costume art’ saw Colman Domingo appear in what looked like a Wetherspoons carpet and the 32-year-old Bad Bunny decided to anticipate old age by dressing like a man in his late seventies, complete with silver hair and grandfather make-up. God knows why.

In P.G. Wodehouse’s Cocktail Time (1958) the characters are frequently ‘lapping up martinis like a vacuum cleaner’. Wodehouse was living in the US at this point, and this was the era of the three-martini lunch. In the ensuing decades, the classic cocktail took a bit of a back seat. But the martini has made a mighty comeback.   Not put off by Sir Raymond ‘Beefy’ Bastable denunciation of the modern youth endlessly sitting around drinking cocktails, I went therefore to find London’s best.  They are not always where you imagine. Archive & Myth is, ominously, underneath Leicester Square’s Hippodrome Casino.

When I became wheelchair-bound at the end of 2024, the biggest change I had to deal with was not being able to walk any more on my lovely long legs. But, as I surveyed my poor ruined body in the cold light of 2025, I was dismayed to see that there were a multitude of minor indignities which had vandalised my youthful looks since my spine went under the knife.  My lovely, glossy, dyed dark hair was now thin and greying. My teeth were mostly missing. My bingo wings could have flown me to the Moon. My lovely legs were like an old man’s. My bum had disappeared. My lovely vulva was vandalised with an unspeakably common plastic catheter. My stomach was crenellated from rapid weight loss.

To my mind, there can be few more perfect games than backgammon. Equally at home in an Iraqi teashop or played atop a fur in a plutocrat’s ski chalet, it is a game punctuated with bitter glares, bemused chuckles, and outrageous reversals of fortune. For those not yet initiated, the aim is to race all your men (pieces) to your home section and off the board first, avoiding their being knocked off the board and sent back to the beginning, while delaying your opponent’s men as much as possible. It blends luck and skill, and is at times infuriating, but always fun.  The name we know dates to 1635, but it has been played under other names and variants for at least 1600 years – 5000 if you think The Royal Game of Ur is close enough.

Contrary to what we redheads have been led to believe, we are not disappearing. Our numbers have increased in the past 10,000 years, according to a recent Harvard study. What’s more, researchers found, being ginger may actually be desirable as far as natural selection is concerned because ‘having red hair was beneficial 4,000 years ago’. The reason why has yet to be discovered. But it’s good news for the class bully, producers of sunscreen and those – like me – who’ve had a love-hate relationship with the variants in their MC1R gene which leads to red hair and pale skin. I was an extreme redhead as a child; not one of the beautiful ones with long, auburn curls and green eyes.

First things first, as this is an article about toilets, we need to establish if the word ‘toilet’ is an acceptable word. Here at The Spectator, editorial opinion on this crucial point is deeply divided. Some have expressed a preference for ‘bog’. Others opt for 'john', 'jakes', or lavatory.

Over ten years ago years ago, I made the transition from auction house ‘expert’ to antiques dealer. And it came as a rude shock. Nothing like a healthy dose of comeuppance; deference vanished overnight.   Auction houses are open to the public for consultation, even the grander ones in London’s West End; or that is how it was in the early 2000s. Back then, anyone could turn up (without an appointment) and ring a buzzer on the front counter. And, as an auction specialist, you played the part. Keep ‘em waiting for ten minutes, then a star-like descent down to reception, where a forelock-tugging hopeful awaited with Tesco bag and fake Fabergé frog in ‘resin’ — a useful auction house term to describe plastic.

Last week I dreamt I was a cowboy. My name was Billy ‘Toothpick’ Pickett, and I was the fastest pistolero east of Whiskey Row. I dreamt of robbing stagecoaches. I dreamt of playing three-card monte with Toothless Dan down by Granite Creek. I dreamt of owning a Smith & Wesson and shooting buffalo. I dreamt of riding a buckskin stallion named Tex. I dreamt of vintage Americana. And then I woke up.  This was the third cowboy dream in a fortnight. Once again, I had fallen asleep watching videos of cowboys on Instagram and paid the price. For months, my algorithm has been inundated with visions of a neo-Wild West. Videos of Monument Valley and the sandstone rocks of Utah. Young men with mullets camping in the Sierra Nevada.

In times past, any self-respecting man of a certain class would have been dripping in jewellery. Henry VIII is said to have owned no fewer than 700 rings – almost as many rings as wives. Ruby rings, gold necklaces, diamond earrings, you name it: jewellery was not just reserved for noblewomen and Queens of England, it was fair play in Tudor England for both sexes. Fast forward to the 21st century and, as a rule, you won’t find the English upper-class males sporting emerald knuckle dusters. But that’s not to say their jewels are lying rusty in a stately home attic. Take a look at any recent red carpet and you’ll see ‘bling’ is finding a new audience among modern alpha males.

Bentley’s Continental GT has a name to suit it: four voluptuous syllables then two emergency stops. This is the first car I reviewed, and it is still my favourite. I think this is because I grew up in Esher, and this is the car of the functional aspirant upper-middle class. It is important to remember that the state limousines – the pair of sinuous maroon sharks that transport the monarch from one demonstration of public magic to the next - are Bentleys, based on the long-gone Arnage, elongated for majesty. The Bentley is for people who work hard: the still responsible. Just enough flash. Not too much. If Aston Martin is British romance and Rolls Royce British violence in lambswool, Bentley is British functionality and taste.

Every self-respecting gent these days is sporting a gilet. Don’t laugh. The gilet has come along leaps and bounds; you can’t tar it with the same brush as the Schöffel ‘Chelsea Life Jacket’ which is worn by the Hooray Henrys who guffaw at dinner parties twinned with their strawberry corduroy trousers.  The gilet is the height of sophistication. It is worn by the finance bros, the best-looking dad on the school run, the recently retired silver fox barrister you met at the ‘locals’ drinks party last Christmas and the gruff farmer who is so rich he really shouldn’t be that dour for goodness' sake.

In PR terms, it’s a such a well-worn trajectory, it has its own name. ‘Doing a Burberry’ is the term for when something once exclusive and favoured by those in-the-know is appropriated by the hoi polloi and its standing slips inexorably downwards. The Ivy — now a chain of naff provincial cafés — is a notable victim. Marbella, now ‘Marbs’ thanks to the cast of TOWIE is another. So is the name Samantha, once terribly Sloaney, now associated only with a former page 3 girl and some really filthy double entendres on I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue on Radio 4.

People can seem completely normal, until you look at their shoes. Particularly men. There they are, appearing sane: natty haircut, ironed shirt, non-psychotic trousers. But then: oh, horror! Terrible shoes. Slimy-looking Docksides, or Toms espadrilles, or something shiny and pointy. Or tremendous show-off brogues like Mr Noisy, with those execrable metal tap things, worn only by bounders and con men.  I was once, aged 23, struck silent with horror by the shoes of a boy who accompanied me to a beach: a pair of dusty brown lace-ups it seemed he’d had since Upper Sixth. I now understand this to be tremendously posh but at the time it turned my stomach. I am too suburban for that kind of thing.

Flitting between runway shows, new collection previews and cocktail receptions under the blaring sound of air raid sirens is now the norm at Ukrainian Fashion Week. Following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, Ukrainian brands travelled abroad to fashion weeks in cities including London, Berlin and Budapest to exhibit collections, before coming home to Kyiv in September 2024.  After covering international fashion weeks for almost a decade, attending the return of Ukraine Fashion Week to Kyiv for British Vogue was naturally unlike any other fashion happening.