Forbidden collars

After all this talk about fabulous dresses, here's the antithesis: in the window of Jil Sander, on the corner of Queen's Road Central and Lan Kwai Fong, a garment non pareil, which can surely only be described as a salmon pink house coat.

Dressed to kill

I admit, I am looking at dresses at the moment with the idea in my head that the perfect one is out there for me - think Lauren Bacall, think the 1940s, Hollywood glamour, whatever silly idea might come into my head (why do I put myself through this?). I'm going to be 40 this year and in my shallow fantasy, I am wearing a perfect dress, which makes me look fabulous.

So, I am looking at the dresses on Net-a-porter. And I don't think I can possibly be mis-stating this: none of the dresses there are less than GBP1,000/US$2000/HK$15,000. How can that possibly be just or meaningful in any way?

This is a world where hedge fund managers like John Paulson are making US$3.7bn profit for themselves in a year. So it makes money seem meaningless, right? But it's not meaningless. If you make US$3.7bn on gambling on the sub-prime crisis, that means you're making money on people losing their homes. If you buy a dress that costs more than GBP1000, then you are spitting in the face of people who don't know how they are going to afford to eat because inflation has forced up the price of rice.

Am I wrong about this?

Blow by blow

Isabella Blow, avante-garde dresser and English eccentric, died last week in an extraordinarily dramatic fashion: by drinking paraquat - the weedkiller beloved of garden nihilists everywhere (not least by Jim, our next door neighbour when I was a kid. Jim had his own supply and a natty little spray canister device to boot. It had its own strap which looped over the wearer's shoulder, allowing easy access to the toxic nozzle. When he got bored of walking around other people's cars kicking desultorily at the tyres, or listening to the collected works of Jim Reeves, or shouting at the neighbours' children, or eating mince and tatties in his cabbage-smelling house, or just needed a pick-me-up, he'd liberally spray paraquat hither and thither). Paraquat has a unique and quite disgusting smell - the strength of will required to drink it would be quite considerable.

She deserves to be remembered, amongst other things, for sporting a lobster hat (everyone said it wouldn't work!) and for wearing a Joan of Arc dress complete with heavy, oily chain (for that added authenticity!) which she dragged across the pristine white carpet of Jean Paul Gaultier's apartment ("Sacre bleu! C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre!", he may have cried at the sight).

True originals are doomed never to be part of the mainstream and she was reportedly disheartened by the fact that despite having brokered Alexander McQueen's highly lucrative contract with Gucci, she got "nothing but a dress" out of the deal; but she also had a particularly nasty form of cancer. She told the assembled party at her husband's country house (and you could take another fascinating detour around the family history of her husband, Detmar Blow) that she was going shopping, but instead she stayed home and drank her poison.

Luck be a lady

Imagine my surprise on receiving this in my inbox at work today from the delightfully named "Be a Lady". I am not sure what she's selling, but I just can't wait to buy it. The fact that any Hong Kong shop assistant worth her salt would be describing this unfortunate woman as "Too fat" (a common response to western women when you ask for something in your size) makes it doubly unnerving.