Best foot forward

And so to the launch of Project PEP, Jimmy Choo’s shoe collaboration with the Elton John Aids Foundation, held at Selfridges in London. The gals are revving up for the party season now like a team of F1 cars easing their way out of the pit. What a turnout! Tamara Mellon, of course; Tamara Beckwith; Guy Ritchie surrounded by blondes; and Peter Mandelson. “It’s Valentino,” purred Mellon, ravishing in red. “It’s Gucci,” said Tania Strecker in a long, plum thing, blonde curls a-bobbing gaily. Someone else was in Karen Millen (“Brilliant, isn’t it?”) and another, sickeningly, in Alaïa (“This? Oh, I got it in Paris.”). PLT didn’t know if it was the pink lighting — so clever for pre-Caribbean skin — or the faux-croc Jimmy Choo Hunter wellies and flats that invoke “the fearless spirit of a sultry pioneer”, but the event was awfully animated for a shop party. “I was going to say hello to Tamara,” said Beckwith, followed by something that sounded like, “Ra, ra, ra.” The party really started when Jo Whiley took over on the decks and busted out some hip-hop. PLT got into the mini fish’n’chip cones with Gerry DeVeaux, aka Lenny Kravitz’s cousin and friend of Naomi Campbell. “Where’ve you been working?” PLT asked Gerry. “On the plane between London and New York,” he sighed. Let the party season commence.

Causing a stink

Well, who should turn up at Le Baron de Paris nightclub in Tokyo, where Henry Holland was celebrating the Japanese launch of his new perfume, Smell, but Kanye West. West was sans girlfriend — “I’m single again” — and off the booze, and stayed until 4am. “I’m here for two weeks, being creative,” said West, before demanding that the designer make him one of his personalised, rhyming slogan T-shirts. “And it’s gotta be sexual, man!” he said. It took just a minute for quick-witted Holland to coin a slogan sexual enough to be unsuitable for quoting in a family newspaper. The awkward silence that followed was deafening.

The look: vintage fur

Now it’s getting colder, the million-dollar question is: how to keep out the chill and remain glamorous? Nothing provides warmth, while diffusing light flatteringly over the face, better than fur. But what if your conscience won’t countenance it? The answer: a bit of vintage fur. Last week, we spotted it everywhere. Margot Bowman, left, 20, picked up this old mink coat for 75 quid in a flea market. “Someone made it really well,” she says. “New fur is way too vulgar, but this is a raw material that’s been re-appropriated. Wearing vintage makes me feel special, so vintage mink makes me feel, well… do you know what I mean?”

Art attack

PLT was chatting to Jefferson Hack about art. Bearing in mind Damien Hirst’s recent return to painting, are the YBAs actually any good at it? “We did an experiment,” said Jefferson, who is selling prints by Jake and Dinos Chapman, among others, at the online version of his publication Another Magazine (shop.anothermag.com). “We asked Jake and Dinos to resit GCSE art. They did the coursework and the exams, which they took in a room with 30 school kids. And they got B+.” B+? “They coped all right.”

How to get that warm feeling inside Recently, PLT queued with several thousand other devotees at Alexandra Palace, north London, to meet Ama, the world-famous “hugging mother”. “All you need is love,” thought PLT, letting herself be enveloped by the folds of Ama’s silk sari

The new party swag bag At the Ceremony cafe in tokyo, guests were encouraged to take home potatoes

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