|
The hugely successful fashion writer
and presenter of television's The Fashion Files grips
the rostrum, leans forward and eyeballs his sell-out audience
of designers, models, media and fashion hangers-on.
"I'm always asked what supermodels
are really like," he says.
"I remember the day Claudia Schiffer
got engaged to that magician, David Copperfield. She was
walking past and I said to her, 'Congratulations, Claudia'.
"She turned round and said, 'Is
that a personal question?"'
Talking to New Zealand-born Tim Blanks,
who is back to start the slow rollout to Air New Zealand
Fashion Week 2005, is like that.
His clothes are black, his conversation
studded with the glittering people of Europe, the United
States and Canada. Mentioned in passing are Emma Soames
(granddaughter of Winston Churchill and editor of Saga
magazine), Elton John ("a wonderful, generous friend")
and his partner David Furnish, our own Pieter Stewart
("I met her in London this year"), Tom Ford
of Gucci ("I often wish they'd stop fantasising and
address realities a bit more"), supermodel Linda
Evangelista and Christian Lacroix ("the nicest man
in the world").
As he explains, when you produce 52 shows
a year, each with four segments sliced into four or five
interviews each, you meet 1000 people a year. "I've
probably interviewed Karl Lagerfeld 600 times."
Some people become friends, others acquaintances.
He's been on Valentino's yacht and visited Armani's palazzo.
Others, when you're as charming as Blanks, invite you
to their summer house in Stromboli.
Yet the thousands of shows, the decades
of passing fashions, "the shoes and the handbags
and clothes can be numbing in a way". And against
that backdrop, Blanks finds New Zealand fashion "intelligent".
"It's thoughtful," he says.
"The industry is controlled to an
enormous degree by women ... and the aesthetic here is
more sensitive to what women might want. There's more
empathy in the clothes."
Empathy? By that Blanks means local designer
clothes are less extreme, softer, more body-conscious
than much of what comes out of Paris, Milan and Japan.
And best of all, he says, "there's this little edge
of darkness - like a shadow in the sunlight".
Blanks, who arrived in Auckland on Monday,
is transfixed by the beauty of Auckland. He marvels at
the mirror-like quality of the water, which takes him
back to childhood summers on Kawau Island with his great
aunt, who ran the school in School House Bay.
"Oh my God, it was idyllic,"
he says.
"The kind of thing you spend the
rest of your life missing."
Unlike Lawrence Dallaglio at the next
table, his broken ankle awkward in a blue surgical boot,
Blanks is not booked at the Hilton where we meet.
"I'm staying with Mum in St Heliers,"
he says - attempting to make up, in a few days, for decades
spent on the other side of the world.
Although a big part of his job is fronting
The Fashion File, which is produced in Canada, Blanks
lives in Maida Vale, London.
His favourite designers are Ralph Rucci
in America and Miuccia Prada, "the most influential
designer in the world", in Europe.
Why is she so important?
Because, says Blanks, her background
includes a stint as the secretary of the Communist Party.
"I like that tension, it makes for something gutsy
and exciting. She's not scared of the vulgar."
And what will we be wearing next?
"Black is back," he says.
It will all be based on the tailored
black clothing that Miuccia Prada showed with black hats
and gloves.
"This season's iconic look is the
Hitchcock blonde."
* Air New Zealand Fashion Week, of which
the Herald is a sponsor, runs from October 18 to 21 this
year.
|
