BRITISH FASHION AWARDS
Inside The Fashion Awards 2016: What You Didn't See
From the red carpet conversations to the most surprising celebrity appearances, Ellie Pithers gives us the inside track on the Oscars of the fashion world. That this year’s Fashion Awards (they’ve dropped the British) was of a different class became abundantly clear upon our arrival at the Royal Albert Hall. An oceanic red carpet and a glittering sun, studded with 8,000 Swarovski crystals and so enormous it would make a Pagan blush, greeted attendees as light streamed out from the Italianate columns of London’s most magnificent concert hall. Revamp? This was more a total overhaul of the British Fashion Council’s annual awards ceremony, glammed up to the nines and heaving with the A-list. Once inside the auditorium, we were greeted by a furniture village of perfectly dusty pink velvet sofas positioned around tables littered with tulips, crimson roses, sparkling Swarovski sculptures and candles giving off an orange glow. Touché, Dame Natalie Massenet, we thought: until we bumped into Derek Blasberg, resplendent in…a dusty pink velvet smoking jacket. “I’m gonna be swallowed by the sofa,” he bemoaned. “Shame Natalie has such good taste.” Despite having just flown in from Miami’s Art Basel – “where the art was really not the main event” – to spend one night in London before heading to Paris for Chanel, everyone’s favourite gold-skinned Instagram king looked immaculate. Is there any down time in the diary? “Christmas with my parents,” he smiled.
Onwards, in search of a martini, and who should prove an able guide but Marilyn Manson? “The alcohol’s over there,” the self-styled Mephistopheles of Los Angeles murmured, poking our arm and gesturing towards the impressive selection of tipples in the sunken bar of a nearby dining table. “Unfortunately I don’t have the shrapnel to help you open it.” No matter; ten minutes later we had a perfectly mixed Vesper and were clinking glasses with Anya Hindmarch, claiming to be still recovering from her annual Christmas party the night before, but looking remarkably perky all the same.
http://www.vogue.co.uk/article/what-you-didnt-hear-from-the-fashion-awards-2016
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