Fabulous Somebody

A cruise to somewhere past the bridge to nowhere

2008-10-26T10:19:00.007+11:00

Way before any of us had heard of Mooselini, I took a cruise to Alaska on the magnificent Silver Shadow and wrote about it for Wish magazine published in The Australian newspaper on October 3. Here's the first paragraph. For the remainder of the story go here.

"It is approaching midnight off the coast of Alaska and the sun has not yet quite set. Less than a kilometre away, the coastline is a torn loaf of bread, spilling small, densely forested islands, like broken-off crumbs into the sea. I lean on the railing of my midship terrace, breathing in the crystal air, mesmerised by the waves that ripple away from the ship as it glides along. I have just consumed a five-course meal with matching wines, but if ever an occasion calls for another glass of champagne, it’s this one."

The Fey Mrs Palin

2008-09-30T08:30:00.004+10:00

Pity poor Hillary. (Sort of). Like most female politicians she has struggled over the years to look crisp and serious in the way she dresses for public appearances. Hence those pants suits - businesslike whilst not being butch, and ever-so-slightly suggesting the female form in sky blues and yellows that aren't gender-specific. It's a tricky act to pull off, especially as the scrutiny is blistering, in a way that it still isn't for her male colleagues (unless they're handsome black men). Look too feminine, the argument goes, and you'll be taken as soft. And then comes along Sarah Palin, flashing shapely legs and a tousled, come-hither hairdo, and suddenly paens are being written to her gorgeousness. And, the first heady week, at least, she's being taken seriously! The pit bull with lipstick! The Barbie with balls!

Here's the thing. Sarah Palin's style is pitch-perfect for a female politician. Modern but retro; instanly recognisable as her own. I'm frankly sick to death of those pants suits, on Hillary or anyone else. One might argue that sex appeal has no place in the political chamber. But I disagree. Politicians spend an inordinant amount of time regulating our sexual and procreational behaviour, so why should women kit up as if they're entering a nunnery? If you've ever sat in on a parliamentary or congressional session, you'll note how much it is about pumped-up, testosterone-stimulating male posturing. A few female hormones released into the air is simply redressing the balance. Unsex me now, said Lady Macbeth and, sadly, female politicans, with a couple of notable exceptions (Cicciolina comes to mind) have been taking her advice ever since.

In Australia, we have Julie Bishop, Deputy Opposition Leader, a tiny-waisted blonde with enormous cross-eyed baby blues and a penchant for florals, who is the wet dream of every right-leaning male in the country. It seems to me no one has taken her to task for the occassional glimpse of expensive lingerie peaking out from her substantial cleavage or the excessive attention to getting the flip of her frosted locks immaculately correct. (And why should they?) And yet, our Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, has copped a regular serve, as they say, about the perigrinations of her own flamboyant red hairdo.

So, here's the other thing. Feminine and sexy is a strength if you're on the right side of the House, but if you're on the left, it's a weakness. Somewhere in there lies the hoary (or whore-y) old chestnut about strong women being unfeminine - as if you can't be pretty and a feminist too (or right-wing and a feminist for that matter). But maybe the glass ceiling is in fact a glass mirror. I'm sure the inner girl in Hillary would love to wear a figure-flattering frock sometimes, but she's been put on the Pants Suit Express by her stylists and there's no getting off.

Rather than being a sexist issue, I think it's an intra-sex issue. Women are making these judgements about each other as much as men are. It works against men too. Obama is getting flack for being too elegant, too body and health-conscious, vain even. Cranky and crumpled McCain was trumpeted as the Alpha Dog after the first debate. Not because he spent the debate talking over the top of Obama, but because Barry was calm and unruffled and piss elegant. A bit suspiciously poofy, don't you think? And poofy equates to weak.

If more female politicans had frocked up, Sarah Palin would not have seen so unusually attractive to John McCain and the Republican Viagra-chomping set. McCain wouldsn't have exposed himself as desperate and we wouldn't have had Tina Fey... OK, I take it back.

Footnote: This just in from Joan Walsh at salon.com: "(there is) a recent outbreak of misplaced Palin pity among liberals – the New York Times' Judith Warner, the Atlantic's Ta-Nehisi Coates, the New Republic's Christopher Orr have all expressed sympathy for the sinking VP nominee. I'm with Traister; I'm not feeling it. Palin "didn't blink" when McCain asked her to join the ticket, didn't think twice, because she's a supremely self-confident woman with a limited worldview, impressed with her own greatness and not terribly curious about anyone else. She reaps what she sows. I'm with conservative Kathleen Parker and Zakaria: I believe Palin would be a menace as commander in chief, and she's got to get off the GOP ticket."

Duck a la horreur

2008-08-21T15:41:00.003+10:00

SO pleased to see Paul Collins' appreciation of Vincent Price's cookbook A Treasury of Great Recipes in today's Slate. I have had the great pleasure of owning a copy of this book for years. Not quite since 1965, when it first was published, but probably since some time in the '80s, when I suppose I picked it up from one of those street hawkers at Cooper Union in New York's East Village. It's a gem and suggest you trawl online second hand booksellers for your very own copy. While Vincent and his wife Mary were true gourmands and the book is a very serious encyclopaedia of recipes from the world's best restaurants, there is a sense of the sardonic running through the pages. Here is part of the chef's own recipe for pressed duck at Paris' famous Tour d'Argent: "The duck used for this recipe must be very young (8 weeks), fattened the last 15 days. They kill this bird by suffocation (strangling) in order to keep all it's blood. (Author's note: This begins to sound as though the Tour d'Argent chef writes my movie scripts!)"

More lobbying

2008-07-29T09:09:00.004+10:00

I wrote about my fascination for hotel lobbies for Australian Gourmet Traveller in June:

Wish you were here – but not too many of you, as there’s not much room on this brocade couch. I’m sitting in the lobby of the Hotel de Crillon in Paris, researching my new novel, The Woman in the Lobby, which is the dark, erotic story of an Australian woman who finds herself stranded in Paris and survives by picking up rich men in hotel lobbies. During the course of writing this book, I found it necessary to travel the world to check out locations and observe the kinds of things that go on in the lobbies of luxury hotels, which are not only places of transition but often the marketplace for subtle social and sexual liaisons. The research led me to New York, LA, Biarritz, San Sebastian, Monte Carlo, St-Tropez, Cannes, the Maldives, Hong Kong, Beijing, Bucharest, Dubai – and Paris, where I am now, sitting in my favourite lobby, which is not only exquisitely elegant but full of intriguing people.

I’ve always loved hotel lobbies, ever since the time, as young teenager, I waited for hours in the lobby of the Southern Cross in Melbourne for a glimpse of Cat Stevens. I learnt then that patience is a virtue and that sitting still in places where people come and go often reaps the most interesting rewards – even if it is the two-second thrill of seeing the pop star you are in love with as a pair of elevator doors swallow him up. A friend of mine struck up a friendship with Robert Redford in a Monte Carlo lobby and I know an attractive Sydney woman who, recently holidaying in St-Tropez with a girlfriend, was approached by two Qatari sheiks in the lobby of her hotel in St-Tropez and invited to go to Egypt for a party – on the brothers’ private jet. This kind of thing has never happened to me, although I have had a few hopeful teas at the Ritz in London.

Ask anyone you know, and they will have a story to tell about a hotel lobby. Why? Because it can be a stage where you play out your fantasies – or you collide with strangers playing out theirs. As one of my characters says of hotels, “It’s as if we give them a key, not to a room, but to another life altogether. ” The lobby is the first act.

Even if I’m not staying in the swishest of accommodations, I like to dress up and find a suitably interesting lobby to while away a few hours, to “borrow” its glamour for a bit. I prefer the slightly decadent ambience of the European hotels, although the Peninsula in Hong Kong gives them all a good run for their money. I like a comfortable chair and attendants who are unconcerned if you stay all day. They’re very sweet in the Crillon and the crowd that stays here is arty and diverse. I never tire of the little dramas that materialise all day. And if I do, this is Paris. There’s always the George V or the Plaza Athénée.

Spah Spah Spah

2008-06-09T15:20:00.003+10:00

My final column in the (sydney) and (melbourne) magazines appeared in April. Here is an edited exerpt:

At the new Chi spa village in the Shangri-La resort at Yanuca, Fiji Islands, they offer a “Dusk till Dawn” spa ritual, where you are guided gently, like a small child, to an ocean front villa, bathed, scrubbed, polished, massaged, fed sushi and chocolates, put into a king-sized bed with the TV remote control (or your partner, as the treatment is available for couples) and then woken at sunrise with breakfast and a facial. As spa experiences go, this is one of the best. But for years, this popular resort offered only basic massages in simple huts on the beach, which was considered the height of bliss. Trouble is, these days, we’re all so darn spoiled that bliss is not enough.

As I was wallowing in my warm bath at the Chi village, watching the sunset, peeling myself a grape, with frangipani blossoms floating all around me, I wondered about this spa thing. Where once hotels attracted clientele with state-of-the-art gyms and heated swimming pools, now they need to build a whole village on a Cecil B. DeMille scale, complete with open air showers and spa pools, fragrant steam rooms, ocean views, lush gardens, therapists trained in the latest Asian healing philosophies, relaxation pavilions, water features, temple-like ambience and products made from plants plucked from the highest reaches of the Himalayas.

A venerable hotel like the Peninsula in Hong Kong devotes a floor of prime real estate to its new Espa, which includes a waiting room where Chinese tea ceremonies are performed, a crystal steam room where lavender-infused air hisses like dragon’s breath from a giant chunk of pink crystal, treatment suites with magnificent views over the harbour and a shower that deluges you with rainforest-temperature water under changing mood lights. Australian Tom McLoughlin, owner of the intimate Huvafen Fushi resort in the Maldives, spends a small fortune sinking his treatment rooms into the coral reef, requiring a mad-genius feat of engineering, so that the experience is like lying in an aquarium, only the fish are swimming around you. The stakes are high. Not having a completely gorgeous spa in a luxury hotel is now as bad as not having clean towels.

Spa. Spa. Spa. We even demand spas in airports these days. And the concept of the “day spa,” an American term for what is basically a beauty parlour with “wet” rooms to allow for scrubs, wraps, Vichy showers and the like, has taken hold here. There are day spas everywhere, full of women (and men) lying on tables slathered in algae, wrapped in foil blankets like roasting chickens or squirming under a sheet of hot rocks heated up in a crock-pot. When you think about it, it’s quite absurd how far we all go to indulge our senses, relax our bodies or neutralise our worries. Is the world outside, beyond the reaches of the Enya soundtrack, so terrible?

It must be, if you consider how busy these places are. For a surprising number of women an appointment at the spa – for a facial or a spray-tan or perhaps a pedicure - is as regular as putting the garbage out. The big travel trend is for girlfriends to holiday together in wellness retreats, such as Chiva-Som in Thailand, for a few days of detoxing. No one really needs any of this, although I’m the first to argue for the benefits of regular massage. The culture tells us we “deserve” to be pampered. Fair enough. But what happens to our spa habit when the economy goes south? Back to egg white facemasks in the bathroom at home? Begging a neck rub from the boyfriend while he watches TV? Or will we live on air and pedicures?

Just asking.

Book Launch

2008-05-13T16:50:00.008+10:00

Courtesy of Robert Rosen, Australia's No 1 (and nicest) snaparazzo, here are a few shots from the launch of The Woman in the Lobby, held (naturally) in the sexy, candle-lit lobby of the Blue Hotel, Sydney. Even though he lives at the end of the wharf next door to the hotel (and in fact wandered by during the evening) we didn't ask Russell Crowe to launch the book, given his reputation with hotel desk clerks and telephones.

High Flying

2008-05-12T08:23:00.003+10:00

In Friday's Melbourne Herald-Sun, an article on where High Flyers (like me) like to take their vacations... check it out here.

Lobbying about

2008-05-12T08:14:00.002+10:00

I can't put my finger on the moment I developed a passion for hotel lobbies but I suspect it was fuelled by my teenage obsession with Hollywood movies of the 1930s, particularly those of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, or Carole Lombard, which invariably featured scenes set in the grand lobbies of hotels such as New York's Waldorf Astoria. Not surprising, then, that when I first went to New York in 1983 and walked into the lobby of the Plaza Hotel, where I was soon ensconced in a magnificent suite, I felt instantly as if I had come home...

Read all my article on hotel lobbies in The Traveller section of The Age.

The seedier side of glamour

2008-04-25T09:23:00.003+10:00

Thank you, Girl with a Satchel, for your review of The Woman in the Lobby in this week's blog. "A vivid, captivating, sophisticated look at the seedier side of the ‘glamour’ life, which will make you appreciate the normality of your own. Definitely for grown-ups only. "

Booked Up

2008-04-19T09:53:00.006+10:00

The following interview with me appears in the May issue of Vogue Australia:

Lee Tulloch's new book, The Woman in the Lobby (Penguin, $32.95), tracks Violet Armengard, a redhead with a penchant for champagne and Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, as she lies in wait...

What inspired you to write the story?
"Years ago I was in Paris covering the shows for Vogue Australia and I was approached in a restaurant by an Italian woman who wanted to know if I would accompnay her gentleman friend to Capri for the weekend. He was much older than me, with white hair and an eye patch, clearly quite rich and very dashing. I said no, but I always wondered: 'What if?' On my travels, I've often found myself sitting in glamorous hotel lobbies watching the fascinating social interaction that goes on. I observed quite a few gigolos and prostitutes trying to hook a rich man or woman. Women do become the mistresses of the men they meet in bars and hotels. And there's a real culture of this if you loook for it- women who are the 'travelling companions' of rich men. I wondered, what kind of mental leap does it take to sleep with an older or ugly man for his money? And is there necessarily anything wrong with it?
How easy is it to write an erotic scene?
"Extremely difficult. It can take me weeks to write one erotic interlude. The trick is finding the right words, so that the prose isn't too prudish - or too crude."
Have you ever met women like Violet?
"I wanted Violet to be someone we all could relate to - an ordinary Australian woman who abandons her middle-class morality to pursue rich men. She has typical insecurities about her physical and sexual self and tries to find her identity through men."

The Screaming Mimis

2008-04-08T07:45:00.004+10:00

I wrote about Omnilux Light Therapy in the April issue of the (sydney) and (melbourne) magazines:

I steer well clear of the armoury of needles, scalpels, lasers and other appliances that the cosmetic services industry deploys these days in its relentless war on the terror of aging. Going to the dentist is bad enough; I can’t for the life of me imagine why one would willingly pay for pain.

I’m suspicious of anyone touting the latest “weapon”. I’m a Pacifist, in all things, including beauty. I’m not impressed with the rules of engagement. An acquaintance had fifty years of freckles removed from her arms using IPL (Intense Pulsed Light) treatment. While she’s pleased with result, she admits it felt like hundreds of burning cigarettes being pushed into her arms. Some people enjoy being human ashtrays (James Dean most famously) but I don’t share that particular fetish. A therapist assured me IPL wasn’t more painful than having elastic bands lightly flicked over my face. And that’s a selling point? So I have chosen to go AWOL on the matter of IPL. I have learned to love my freckles.

When couple of friends raved about Omnilux Revive light therapy, I resisted trying it for a very long time, dubious about claims that it is non-invasive and pain free. In fact, I had to be virtually taken hostage to road test it. The Omnilux system was developed in Britain as a non-surgical light therapy to treat skin cancer, but soon its benefits for a variety of other skin conditions – such as acne and photo aging – became evident. The machine uses a head that emits thousands of LEDs (light emitting diodes) that do not contain harmful UVA, UVB or infrared radiation. With Omnilux Revive a brilliant red light is used on aging skin, reaching below the epidermis to give a deeper massage than possible with the human hands, stimulating the body’s own collagen to refresh the skin and reduce those pesky “visible signs of aging.” The Omnilux Blue for acne-prone conditions uses, unsurprisingly, a blue light, which stabilises three of the triggers for acne – excess sebum production, inflammation and the growth of bacteria. The twenty-minute treatment is usually paired with a brief salon facial. A course of nine or ten sessions under the lamp, three or four days apart, is generally recommended.

This is how it works: you lie on a bed and a lamp is placed about 10 cm above your head. Goggles are provided although I am assured the light does not damage the eyes. The first red light as the lamp warms up is not so bad. But then the full lamp is turned on and it’s not only bright, it’s so bright, screamingly bright, that you want to close your eyes – but, of course, they are already closed. There’s no escape, the big red blob invades your brain. In my case, I feel like Malcolm McDowell in the torture scene in A Clockwork Orange. I try not to panic and the therapist gives me a hand massage to distract me. The colours soon turn searing yellow and orange and hot pink, like the acid trip I never had as a teenager. It takes all my strength of will not to beg for it to be turned off.

As freaky as this is, there’s no pain factor. In subsequent visits my eyes become more accustomed to the brightness and I actually start to enjoy it. I’m told that many people fall asleep under the lamp and come away with mood uplifted. I find this impossible, but half way through the program I am beginning to see quite definite improvement in the luminosity, firmness and hydration of my skin, especially on my décolletage, which is the most sun-damaged. The full benefits are not experienced until the months after treatment so, as I write this, it’s too soon to tell whether the recommended outlay of around $900 for a 10-session course, taken annually, is worth it (shop around - some salons offer special deals). But that’s less than a series of facials and I like the fact that it’s your own cells doing the repair work. It’s almost natural – less a Star Wars weapon than a little nudge from Mother Earth.

Jim Clark's Australian Honey

2008-03-26T08:49:00.005+11:00

In the Australian Women's Weekly this month, my interview with supermodel Kristy Hinze about her relationship with Netscape founder Jim Clark. Here's a sample:

When the story broke that Jim Clark’s Australian “honey” was Kristy Hinze, there was the usual cynicism about a thrice-married billionaire hooking up with a gorgeous, younger model. (He is now 63 and she is 28). His divorce from third wife Nancy had cost him a $US125 million settlement, and had been all over the papers. Plus Clark was no ordinary billionaire. The subject of a recent book, The New, New Thing by Michael Lewis, he is an undoubted genius who has redefined American culture, from the high-tech movies of Stephen Spielberg and George Lucas to the way we get our information and do our shopping.

“At first sight he looks avuncular, with thinning white hair, wire-rimmed spectacles and a lovely smile,” writes John Naughton. “Behind the amiable façade is the nearest thing Silicon Valley has to a force of nature, an ungovernable, relentless, mercurial, capricious, inventive character who transformed the computing industry, spawned the internet boom and eats bankers for breakfast.”

I read this quote to Kristy as we’re sitting in the courtyard of her Sydney hotel. She is en route to Melbourne, where she is taking part in the Melbourne Fashion Festival in her role as brand ambassador to iconic fashion label Sportscraft and for pre-production on Australia’s version of the fashion reality show Project Runway, which she will host and which starts shooting in April. Golden-haired and golden-skinned, with those amazing green sloe eyes, she’s very much a goddess, even in jeans and white shirt - but a very earthy one, with her throaty laugh and pragmatic view of the world. “That’s Jim!” she laughs when I finish reading the quote. “It’s perfect. He is relentless and ungovernable, for sure! That’s what makes him so amazing.”

She has been reluctant to talk about her private life in the past but today she seems very relaxed about it and happy to sing the praises of “my boyfriend,” as she calls him. “I never thought I was going to date an older man when I first met him,” she says. “I wasn’t chasing him by any means. For me it was different to hang out with someone with something to say that was so interesting and important and who was really, truly incredibly intelligent.” Besides, she adds, “He’s handsome and he’s got so much charisma and he’s so funny. He’s very normal and down to earth. He’s an incredible man and I just love him.”

Something in the Water

2008-03-07T17:32:00.004+11:00

The Lake House in Daylesford, Victoria, repeatedly gets awarded Australia's best country hotel. And the mineral spring at its front door is pretty invigorating too... Daylesford is my idea of a perfect country town. Read about taking the waters in this picturesque part of Australia in travel my story in The Australian magazine, published last weekend.

Not the kitten heel... the kitten head

2008-03-01T09:48:00.004+11:00

From my Deeply Superficial column in the March (sydney) and (melbourne) magazines:

Twice in my life I’ve fallen foul of the haircutter’s scissors and found myself sitting nervously in a salon chair as I watch my long hair being slashed to half an inch of its life. I’m sure that I was a Weimar Republic cabaret artist in another life and the urge to chop the locks into a Liza Minnelli-as-Sally Bowles bob (foolish for a blonde) becomes irrepressible sometimes. Hairdressers are amazingly quick to pounce on their clients’ identity crises and so I have twice ended up with horror cuts that, far from accentuating my divine decadence, made me look like a refugee from a bingo hall. I think we have all been there.

Let me say at this point, lest my hairdresser of 25 years gets upset, that these two occasions were outside his jurisdiction. These days, whenever I feel like a radical change – that is, short hair - he just rolls his eyes and refuses to budge. Bless him. But, fortunately, in 2008, if I do ever find myself succumbing to a brain short-circuit and demanding a Liza Minnelli, I can always call on Jessica Simpson to reverse the damage.

Hair extensions have always seemed to me rather terrifying. The type that is glued and bonded to the hair surely can’t be good for it. And the weaves, which are preferable, always remind me of a balding doll I had as a child and the way her hair was brutally stitched into her plastic scalp. But I suppose, if I try very hard, I can see the attraction in it, especially for women (let’s not even think about the men) with thin hair or those who need an Instant Rapunzel for a wedding or big night out. No one wants to wait for anything these days, let alone five years for hair to grow, so two or three hours in a salon chair reading international Vogues and sipping sparkling water seems like a breeze.

In an unfamiliar salon the other week I was shocked to see the number of chairs filled with young women having extensions sewn in. Each of them glowed with the bright wattage that comes from feeling sexy about their new look. But I couldn’t help feeling there was something creepy about it, just as I find nail extensions creepy. Occasionally, I have been sent clip-on hair extensions to try, such as those from Diva, and they’re all very clever, but ultimately they lie around the house, unused, like golden, baby ferrets.

So when the invitation came to have a HairDo™ salon clip-on extension from Jessica Simpson (you mean all that blonde hair is not hers?) cut and fitted by Anthony Nader at Sydney’s Raw, I thought I should open my mind and take up the offer. After all, unlike the permanent extensions, I could always just take it out.

In fact, the 21-inch long, 100% human hair extension is exceptionally easy to clip on and clip off. Initially, you need to purchase it from a salon, select the colour from 13 options and have the piece shaped to blend with your own hair. It’s all extremely simple – the long hair is woven onto one form, rather like a wig, and once you make a section through your hair and pin the length up, it attaches with seven very secure clips. The natural hair blends well and in theory it looks completely natural.

But here’s the thing, and maybe it’s just me – it doesn’t feel completely natural. It’s lightweight and yet my own hair, pinned in a bun underneath, felt lumpy under the fall. It was as if a small kitten had attached itself to the back of my scalp and wouldn’t let go. On top of that, a monsoonal rain came down as I left the salon and it felt like a very damp kitten had attached itself to me. It itched. I couldn’t wait to get home and get it off.

I willing to accept that for someone with fine or short hair these things are godsends, but for me the extension has become another abandoned critter in my bathroom menagerie.

Bad Geisha

2008-01-24T16:27:00.000+11:00

In the Australian Women's Weekly, on sale today, my exclusive feature on the first foreign woman to officially debut as a geisha in Japan, Fiona Graham, now known as "Sayuki". Here is an extract:

Sayuki is the lowest geisha on the totem pole, so she has to sit in on the classes the other geisha are taking before it is her turn. “Most young Japanese would not be able to adapt. It’s very hard to be in that hierarchical world and to be the newest member.” Geisha take classes in dancing and music all their lives and for the new geisha it’s very labour-intensive. Sayuki jokes about her lack of skills. “I’m a very bad geisha.” Today’s classes go for four hours. Sayuki does seem on tenterhooks in her deference to the others. When I ask her what has been the hardest thing about learning to be a geisha, she says sitting for hours on her knees (she has had to lose several kilos to ease the pressure) and wearing black contact lenses. “The black wig looks wrong with pale eyes,” she says. In effect, with the thick white makeup, wig and contact lenses you would not know she was Western. Except, she says, for her Japanese. She speaks in the small, little-girl voice of the Japanese, but apparently, even though it is excellent for everyday life, it’s not perfect enough for geisha.

Giving whimsy

2007-12-06T09:18:00.000+11:00

The following is the text of December Deeply Superficial, published in the (sydney) and the (melbourne) magazines:

I loathe Christmas in Australia. There, I’ve said it. The sticks of trees that are supposed to be firs, the pathetic bits of tinsel hung from city lamp posts, the fly-blown hams on the picnic table, the frenetic socialising because – God help us – we’ll never see anyone again come Boxing Day, and the all the whingeing about precisely these things that occupies our conversations from the first reminder, usually in September, that it’s only so-and-so-many sleeps until Santa comes.

When I lived in the northern hemisphere, Christmas seemed to make sense. It may have been just as commercial, but the roasting chestnuts, the real, chunky fir trees, the egg nog, the ice skating, the corpulent Santas on every corner and the splendid street decorations at least lent a whiff of occasion to a festival that seems more and more divorced from its origins.

I only have step foot into my local shopping mall, a hive of stressed-out worker bees armed with shopping lists and credit cards, to sink into a deep depression. The obligation to blow the family’s budget on presents you know the recipient is not going to like – and to spend precious summer weekends doing it when it’s more fun to shop at leisure - takes all the joy out of giving, which I firmly believe should be spontaneous throughout the year. And then there’s the nagging guilt each and everyone of us carries (or should carry) that there are many, many unfortunate people out there that would love those Simpsons shorts that make cousin Bjorn screw up his nose.

I have known parents who make a point of denying little Eustace the iPod Nano and donating the money instead to a worthy cause, but these bold souls are rare and, in this über-materialistic society, considered a bit mean. The kiddies have to have their dozens of presents, don’t they? Tellingly, if you ask social welfare agencies who are the people who give the most at this time, it’s usually people from the lower economic stratas. There’s nothing inherently wrong with gift giving and receiving. In fact, generosity is something to cherish. But if it’s the thought that counts, then gifts bought begrudgingly and received ungratefully are not worth the plastic that they’ve been bought with. Better to purchase a gift for an anonymous deserving stranger and pop it under the Target Christmas tree.

Some of us have too much stuff and others don’t have enough and Christmas might be a chance to redress the balance. It doesn’t mean being a bad capitalist. It certainly wouldn’t hurt the economy if every single person bought an extra gift for an underprivileged stranger. And it need not – probably should not – be something practical. A friend of mine says she worries about donating beauty products like fragrance to homeless women because she knows there is so much more they do need. But I don’t agree. It’s sometimes the whimsical things that people doing it tough miss.

Quietly, the beauty industry is very generous in donating products and funds to charitable organizations, through initiatives such as Look Good Feel Better, a free service which helps women diagnosed with cancer deal with the distressing physical side effects of chemotherapy and radiation by providing products, wigs and makeup workshops. While some might argue that women’s self-esteem shouldn’t depend on makeup – it shouldn’t – you can’t write off the importance of looking and feeling physically attractive in our society. It’s not just the provenance of well-to-do women.

Think of a woman in a refuge who has left her home behind and all of her clothes and her personal items or a woman living in a shelter who needs to be well groomed for a job interview. Would she not love something from Yves Saint Laurent, Chanel or Dior? (Or Origins, Jurlique, Jo Malone…I could go on.) And what she might like best is that another woman chose it for her.

You know what to do. Merry Christmas.

A bit of a pouf

2007-11-14T08:54:00.000+11:00

The following is the text of November's Deeply Superficial column in the (sydney) and (melbourne) magazines:

The idea of putting powder on your face seems strangely anachronistic these days, especially with the advent of mattifying foundations that make the need for blotting shine redundant. I like a bit of a pouf, so it always seems to me that we have lost something in not having a dressing table of marabou-feathered powder puffs at our disposal.

But a kind of revolution has happened with powders. It was only last May, when visiting New York, that a makeup artist friend suggested I dropped into the Sephora emporium for a jar of i.d. bareMinerals powder by Bare Essentials, which she thought among the best. I did and I was hooked. The tiniest bit of powder, when lightly and rather carelessly applied with a brush and then worked into my skin gave surprisingly good coverage, evened out my skintone and delivered the kind of glow you see on the cheeks of Hollywood starlets when they’re let out of rehab.

Just like those television commercials and the gushing endorsements of TVSN spokesmodels, mineralising powders work well and they work fast – and seem to suit every face from Gladwrap-smooth teenagers to expression-filled grannies. Because the best of the mineralising products are totally free of harsh chemicals, fillers, talc, preservatives and fragrances, they’re recommended for women with skin conditions such as rosacea and also for women who have undergone cosmetic procedures. Unlike talc, the powder does not settle into wrinkles or cake-up your complexion.

Just about every mainstream brand has a mineralising foundation these days, from L’Oreal’s Bare Naturale to Almay’s handy Pure Blends with a built-in brush and M.A.C.’s Skinfinish range. Dermatologists sell them to their clients and you can also find cruelty-free and vegan brands in the health food stores. It’s worth investigating these latter options. One brand I’m now using is Inika, founded by Sydney women Miranda Bond and Jenni Williams, who began the Thriving Healthy Women Network that specialises in women’s nutrition hormones and toxic-free living. The range of colours in the foundations and bronzers is excellent, as are the dazzling eyeshadow colours, and it’s all pure and ethical - and a speck of it goes a long way, as I discovered after dusting my clothes in it at my first, too-vigorous attempt. The $54.95 jar probably will last so long it will need to be carbon-dated one day.

Now I’ve got the swing of mineralisers, I’ve discovered something potentially more wonderful. Sydney makeup artist Karen Playel has brought to Australia the ERA spray makeup range from California, which includes foundations, bronzers and primers. This is a hypo-allergenic, water-based foundation in a can with an SPF factor of 20, which replicates a professional airbrush application and is almost foolproof. Really.

I’m a bit of a fool, believe me, and I was very dubious about this, but a quick two-second spritz of this product over my face, a minute for it to dry off, a bit of a pat down with a powder puff to remove excess moisture – and, voila, a flawless, light finish that can be as natural or as photo-ready as you like. You can spray a small amount into the palm of your hand first and then dab it where you need more coverage. And you don’t need to clean it off your eyelashes as it makes a great base for mascara. It’s long-lasting, waterproof, suitable for face and body and is recommended for those undergoing IPL or Microdermabrasion treatments because it is sterile. People with pigmentation, vitiligo, scarring, birthmarks, tatoos or rosacea will find it a boon.

I admit I was a bit terrified to use it at first, and still find it’s best to tuck my hair under a plastic showercap before I spray, but it only takes one or two goes to become adept. This is the stuff that’s used on Hollywood film sets. Mere mortals can buy the product ($74) off the website, which has an auto-match service that matches the foundation you are using to ERA colours.

The four-minute mile, the three-minute egg – and now the two-second makeup. O, brave new world!

Lobbying around

2007-10-19T08:08:00.001+10:00

Well, The Woman in the Lobby is finished. Off to the printers. And I've been lobbying around Europe, checking out the best hotel lobbies. Some favourites: the Hotel de Crillon in Paris (great crowd); The Regina, Paris (great slightly seedy ambiance); The George V, Paris (completely OTT filthy rich clientele); The Gresham Palace in Budapest (astonishing restored art nouveau interior, left); and the Pariz in Prague (small, lovely and atmospheric.) Next week, I'm off to Beijing and Shangai to seek Chinese hotel decadence, courtesy of the Shangri-La group. Stay tuned.

The Devil's Bargain

2007-10-19T07:34:00.000+10:00

Here's my latest Deeply Superficial column as it appeared in the (sydney) and the (melbourne) magazines:

Another day, another $400 face cream. The luxury end of the skin care market is so expensive now that when I was checking the price of a 50 ml jar of Chanel’s quite indulgent Précision Sublimage Essential Regenerating Cream for this column and discovered that it cost a modest $420, I thought, Wow! That’s almost a bargain!

Consider the big players in the luxury market. La Prairie’s Skin Caviar Luxe Cream is $560 for 50 ml. (Luxe Eye Lift Cream, $460). SK-II’s Ultimate Revival Cream from its prestige LXP range is $450. Lancome’s Secret de Vie Eye Cream will set you back $415. A 60 ml jar of Crème de la Mer is $440 and the Lifting Serum with Intensifier is $635. La Crème Parfaite, from legendary Parisian beauty house Carita, retails at $748 for 50 ml (available through the Crown Spa in Melbourne at crownspa@crowntowers.com.au). And Estée Lauder’s Re-Nutrive Re-Creation 24-hour system retails for $1320 for the Night Crème and Day Crème together, or $690 for each 50 ml jar.

So when a black lacquer box that housed Giorgio Armani’s new Crema Nera moisturiser arrived, call me psychic, but I just knew it would cost the magic $400-plus. (It’s $420 for 50 ml or $460 for the Ritual Coffret, which includes a polished black obsidian stone to massage the melting cream into the skin.) What is essentially different about the Armani product is that it is suitable for all skin types and ages, whereas the other pricey creams mostly target ageing skin, when the need for a more intense treatment to combat dehydration and hormonal balances becomes more essential and, dare I say it, when our insecurities about what we see in the mirror are likely to be more pronounced.

The costs of the products, according to the marketers, reflect the huge investment in science (discoveries which later filter down to the cheaper brands) and, more pertinently, the price of sourcing. For instance, the brief to Estée Lauder’s chief scientist Dr. Daniel Maes when he was formulating Re-Creation was to use “the best of the best.” That includes 74 vital trace minerals, a sea plant extract called Padma and a mechanism to provide the skin with a more effective way of utilising essential calcium reserves.

What’s more, with many of these products, you don’t just get the ingredients, but a romantic story that makes the cream seem even more precious. Mr. Armani, for instance, has a holiday home on the island of Pantella in the Mediterranean, famous for its thermal mud baths, which heal skin problems. Lying in his mineral bath one day, he wondered if the obsidian hidden in the volcano, a natural mineral known for its wellness powers and positive energy, could be adapted to a skincare line. With the scientists of L’Oréal on hand, the white powder made from the black stone was harnessed into an unusual solid cream, Crema Nera, which melts when it meets the warmth of the skin.

This is either gobbledygook or fascinating, depending on what kind of money you’re prepared to spend on your face. When I canvas other women about this, there are some who find it inconceivable to contemplate spending $400 on a small jar. However, I must say, most of these women are younger than forty. After Estée Lauder gave samples of Re-Creation to a group of distinguished Australian women, I spoke to one of them, who loved, loved, the product but was quite shocked when she found out the price. So, she started to make the kind of accounting we all do when we know we’re about to do something which might be considered indulgent. She reckoned she could make the jars last a few months, she could easily spend more on jeans in a year… her face was more important, wasn’t it?

In all honesty, my skin texture is amazing after a few months of using a variety of these products. But if you get frown lines from worrying about how you’re going to pay for them, then that rather destroys the purpose, doesn’t it?

Sydney of the Antarctic

2007-10-18T13:09:00.000+10:00

The incredible (and true) story of Sydney Walton Mouse's adventures in Antarctica is now available from ABC books. It's just darn gorgeous. My sister, Coral, wrote and illustrated it. Get it.

Retail Heiress

2007-09-01T10:34:00.001+10:00

When she was a girl, Pamela Myer Warrender might have been the model for Eloise, the mischievous little girl who had the run of New York’s Plaza Hotel in Kaye Thompson’s books. In Pamela’s case, however, she had an even more enticing doll’s house, the entire Myer Emporium in Melbourne, where her father, Norman Myer (later Sir Norman) was Chairman and Managing Director from 1938 until his death in 1956.

“I was passionate about the store,” she recalls on the occasion of the publication of her autobiography, Pamela: In Her Own Right (Hardie Grant, $29.95). “I’d follow my father around at night when it was being closed while he did his rounds checking on things. Quite often I used to sneak up to the kitchens where I got the best milkshakes and chicken sandwiches. My father used to say, ‘The people who work in this store are your friends. Smile.’ So I would smile at everybody. And of course that worked sometimes and it didn’t work other times!”

“Miss Myer,” as she was known then, worked during her school holidays in the store, as did her two younger brothers, Rodney and Beresford, and all their Myer cousins. Her first job was in the haberdashery department when she was thirteen. “On Fridays the store opened until 9 pm,” she writes “and my father told Mr Mathews [the manager] that I wasn’t to leave until I had the figures required for the day. To ensure this happened, I arranged a group of girls from school to bring their friends to buy handkerchiefs and hair clips. They couldn’t come all at once and they had to appear nonchalant – there was an art to the operation – but it always worked. As a reward we went off to Hillier’s Milk Bar in Collins Street for a chocolate marshmallow nut sundae.”

The spirited young Pamela would make this sense of enterprise a hallmark of her adult life, which has been both privileged and tumultuous and marked by great adventures, terrible betrayals and wrenching tragedy. Now 83, Pamela remains the tall, striking-looking, optimistic woman of her youth but her life is very much a simple one these days, the mansions, the country houses, the valuable works of art all gone. She lives in a chic but cramped Toorak apartment, the primary carer of ex-husband Simon Warrender, who is confined to a wheelchair and whom she remains devoted to even though they were divorced in 1985. Her autobiography, she says, is not “a Myer book” (she has already written a biography of her father) but a chance to set the record straight, to help her children know the trajectory of her life and understand “the bigger picture” of how her branch of the Myer family, Norman’s descendents, became estranged from the family business and its vast fortune.

Read more of my feature on Pamela Myer Warrender in the September issue of The Australian Women's Weekly.

Le Male

2007-09-01T10:22:00.001+10:00

The following is this month's Deeply Superficial column, published in the (sydney) and the (melbourne) magazines:

I wonder if the bottles of classic cologne that get wrapped and offered year after year for Father’s Day are the men’s equivalent of a woman getting a vacuum cleaner or a pair of nice socks for her birthday. Let’s face it, it’s difficult to be original here. Most men won’t venture beyond the bracing cleanness of something like Polo Black, dismissing anything more floral or pungent as girlie. For some of them, being given a bottle that has “pour homme” written on it is akin to asking them to shave their legs, an affront to their masculinity.

Like Carrie wearing men’s Jockey briefs to bed in Sex and the City, women are much more secure in their scent sexuality. Quite a few of us wear “men’s” fragrances regularly. (I have worn Geoffrey Beene’s bergamot-y Grey Flannel and a new men’s eau de toilette Kiton Black that smells quite like it.) But it can be agonising trying to get a man to move beyond Old Spice, let alone into something creative like Viktor & Rolf Antidote.

Now, I love Antidote and would happily wear it myself. It’s a men’s fragrance but it has sultry, spicy notes that smell really great on my skin when they dry down. And I think it is an antidote of sorts to the problem - why not give your man a men’s eau de toilette that works well on you? That way, if hates it or is shy about using it, you can steal it back.

Some ideas: Citrusy fragrances like L’Occitane’s Eau Fraiche Verveine Agrumes, a completely accessible light citrus verbena, L’Artisan Parfumeur’s Mandarine Tout Simplement, which smells like crushed mandarin skins or the Hermès Concentré D’Orange Verte, which is extremely uplifting and which I spray all over myself after the gym. In this vein, Aesop has released a deliciously pungent new unisex fragrance called Mystra, which draws its inspiration from Byzantium and blends exotic resins such as frankincense, mastic and labdanum.

At Jo Malone, try her innovative classic Lime, Basil & Mandarin, Wild Fig & Cassis or the almost-drinkable Blue Agava and Cacao, made from the flowers that are ingredients in the best Tequila. The Diptyque Philoskouros is the trend-setter among fig fragrances and, while it is thought of as a man’s cologne, it’s divine on women too. Malin + Goetz have synthesised natural ingredients into a collection of travel-sized bottles “for global nomads” containing fragrances that can be layered. Newest are Rum Tonic and Lotus Root.

Also at Mecca Cosmetica, the heavenly Serge Lutens collection, which includes many unisex possibilities, including Santal Blanc, a white sandalwood that my husband has already stolen from me, Gris Clair, a sweet lavender with an ashy dry down and Fumerie Turque, which has a top note of Turkish rose but base notes of leather and Balkan tobacco. And I think you can’t go wrong with Comme des Garcons 2 or 3, two eau de parfums that contain hearts of florals, wrapped in heady, spicy, exotic notes. (The beautiful silver bottle of CD2 is shaped like a whiskey flask – nothing girlie about that.)

Working on the principle that it’s a pity to waste a perfectly good fragrance on a man who can’t tell his Brut from his Burberry, why not give him Kai eau de parfum – a delicately feminine brew of white flowers that happens to be the favourite scent of Tommy Lee, who claims the fragrance calms him? (Goodness only knows what he’s like without it, if his twitchy performance on Rock Star Supernova is considered.) If you’re really bold you could give him Tom Ford Black Orchid, an OTT tropical fruit salad that’s totally scrumptious, but include two tickets to Bali in the package.

There’s another possibility – his’n’her sets, such as Prada Woman for you and the new Prada Man for him or Armani’s new masculine and feminine versions of Remix. Then, there’s Intimately Beckham for Men and Intimately Beckham for Women. Surely he can’t get upset that you think he’s as sexy as David Beckham. Of course, the downside is that he, in turn, might think you’re as sexy as Posh.

Explosive Choices

2007-07-29T09:12:00.000+10:00

The following is the text of this month's Deeply Superficial column in the (sydney) and the (melbourne) magazines:

I travel outside Australia four or five times a year and a couple of years ago I bought myself a beauty case that would keep all my toiletries neat. It proved a masterstroke – the hard case was also big enough to hold a couple of books and a change of teeshirt and upon arrival at my hotel room, I could just open the case and access everything easily, without having to unpack it. Better still, it meant heavy and fragile bottles of moisturisers, sun creams and fragrance need not be packed in the checked-in suitcase, leaving more room (and weight) for those exotic artefacts, like Chinese parrots and sacks of frankincense, that I am always compelled to bring home.

Unfortunately, about a year ago, a group of wannabe terrorists were sitting around in a London apartment dreaming up crazy ways of taking down a jet airliner – including the almost impossible trick of mixing unstable fluids in an airplane toilet to make a bomb - and they were dobbed in. Predictable international hysteria followed. The upshot of all this, as we know, is the banning of fluids over 100 ml on international flights and the restriction of those permitted to a plastic ziplock sandwich bag, lest any of us intend the precarious task of locking ourselves in the loo and making explosives out of the mini products in our leather Molton Brown travel kits. (If those same products were squeezed into a plastic bag, we’d have carte blanche, of course.) Goodbye beauty case.

I’ve just returned from New York and LA, and the new restrictions meant I had to rethink my whole travel plan. I could not believe how small that sandwich bag was! For instance, Clarins’ E3p Screen Mist, which supposedly reduces the effect of electromagnetic waves, would seem to be the perfect product to spritz on yourself throughout the flight – however, the 100 ml bottle is also elegantly elongated and only fits into the bag if you choose to include little else. Thwarted. In the end, I called in travel-size products from all the brands and played around with them. Certainly, these small sizes are readily available – from Leaf & Rusher’s Mini Essentials pack, Aesop’s Jet Set Kit to Trilogy’s Travelers – and savvy travellers know to ask for samples of their favourite products whenever they’re making a purchase at the beauty counter. Some companies, such as Kiehl’s, make fantastically handy plastic bottles of most of their products in 30ml and 65 ml sizes. In my meagre plastic bag I managed to fit Tali Shine’s Evolution O2 face spray (30 ml), Jo Malone’s Rosemary & Lavender skin tonic (30 ml) Ginseng Day Moisture Cream (15ml) and Vintage Gardenia fragrance (9 ml), Colgate toothpaste (25 g) and a Bobbi Brown Lip Tint gloss (15ml).

But here’s the thing. While the plastic bag only has to contain what you might need for the flight on board, and you can check the rest, the sheer weight you could add to your suitcase if you brought your regular jars of skin care products, self-tanning lotions, hair gels, whatever, means possibly some expensive overweight charges on your return trip, unless you jettison those costly jars of Estée Lauder Re-Nutriv night and day creams before you fly back. Now, short trips mean that you can do the juggling trick and exist on small sizes of everything if you have to, but what happens if – and this is usually my situation – you’re off for three or four weeks? When I went to Romania in 2005 I brought the whole pharmacy with me. The choice is a heavy suitcase, restricting what you bring to one or two key items or buying everything when you get there and tossing it when you leave.

Yes, I know. It’s annoying but hardly Sophie’s Choice. Still, I’d feel less annoyed if someone proved to me it were necessary. When I went through security in New York no one seemed to care whether I had a plastic bag or not. And my lip gloss was a pretty explosive colour.

Is that a gun in her pocket?

2007-07-11T08:14:00.001+10:00

Can it be a coincidence that this month marks the 60th anniversary of both the house of Christian Dior and the Kalashnikov AK-47 rifle? I think not. But Dior scalliwag John Galliano sure missed a great opportunity to blow his audience away. Still, all reports suggest he did it anyway. Go here to check out the anniversary collection. Go here to buy your assault rifle.

The Lipstick Index

2007-06-28T07:43:00.000+10:00

In newsagents today - my Deeply Superficial column in the (sydney) and the (melbourne) magazines:

Peter Costello should really pay more attention to lipstick. Forget inflation, trade deficits, housing figures – the true indicator of where our economy is going is the humble lipstick.

Leonard Lauder, Chairman of the Estée Lauder group, first coined the phrase Leading Lipstick Indicator when he observed that during tough economic times the sale of lipsticks boom. Immediately after 9/11, for instance, the sales of lipsticks doubled, as women sought comfort from an indulgent but inexpensive source. When female consumers face a dismal financial outlook, it has been discovered, they seek something to make them feel better about themselves. And that thing often is lipstick.

Why lipstick? Well, it’s cheaper than an Easton Pearson skirt or a Chloe bag. It has the ability to quickly transform a face – especially a gorgeous, deep slash of red or a swoop of liquid gold. In this orally fixated society there’s something undoubtably sexy about a luscious pout (even for the pouter.) It’s maximum output for minimum outlay. But, more crucially I think, a cylinder of lipstick (more than a wand of gloss) is an icon of the mystic feminine, invested with the collective potency of a century of magazine advertisements and images of sultry Hollywood goddesses. Unfurl that tube and you unlock the vamp within.

In any case, economists now view lipstick sales as a surprisingly reliable indicator that consumer confidence is low. And that is troubling – given the number of new releases of lipsticks recently, clearly the cosmetic companies feel the global economy is about to dive. A considerable amount of effort has been put into developing lipsticks that not only provide new colours, formulas and textures but also new ways of presenting them in clever packaging which often incorporates a useful feature, such as a built-in mirror (YSL’s Lip Twins lip duo with satin and shine options) or even built-in LED lights for those many occasions when you need to apply lipstick in the dark (ModelCo’s Lip Lights Ultra Shine Gloss).

If you have any doubt about the attention cosmetic companies are paying to the little old lippie, check out Chanel’s advertisement for its lipstick Rouge Allure, which has been playing on TV screens and in the cinema for a couple of months. “Le Rouge,” inspired by Jean-Luc Godard’s 1963 masterpiece Contempt (and borrowing the original music from Georges Delarue), is photographed by fashion great Bettina Rheims and features model Julie Ordon (a blander Brigitte Bardot) romping naked under white sheets with a tube of Rouge Allure (a lippie I love, by the way, because of it’s elegant click-open case.) “Tell me,” she purrs. “I want to know. Do you love my lips?” It’s all rather silly (if you’re going under the covers with something phallic, maybe a lipstick is a bit size-challenged) but girls and guys alike get the drift when our heroine slowly and lasciviously fills in her pout with creamy red: Lipstick equals sex equals big bucks.

Lancome is another company betting on the Lipstick Index. It had phenomenal success with Juicy Tubes and Juicy Gelée when the shiny look took off and now has released the next generation, Colour Fever Gloss, with the innovative Lip-Magnify applicator that is shaped so that it picks up more colour and contours more precisely. It’s not exactly reinventing the wheel, but the brush does deposit the thick, rich gloss on your lips in a way that seems more sensually satisfying than glosses that have a hard tip or a brush. I’m the sort of person who notices these things: you may not. The colours themselves are lovely - rich with pigment and shot through with a beautiful moiré effect.

Of course, it helps to have a big pout to begin with. I’m mad about YSL’s Exfoliating Lip Balm, which gives your lips a stimulating, plumping scrub and tastes like spearmint milkshakes. (Ask him to lick it off.) I also like a bit of S&M for the lips - those products designed to sting your lips swollen, such as Do Wop’s Lip Venom and Stila’s Plumping Lip Glaze (both available at Mecca Cosmetica.)

Lead with your lips!

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