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A day in the life of a fashionista

1st November 2011 by Helena 1 Comment  

Ever wondered what fashionistas do? Yes, me too. I spent a day as one earlier this week and have to say, it’s all rather exhausting.

First of all you have to spend hours deciding what to wear. Then you get to the event and think ‘shit, I’m over/under-dressed’. Then you have to try to work out what everyone else is wearing; High Street or designer?

I wore my one designer dress, Maria Grachvogel if you must know, I went to interview her a couple of years ago and ended up spending my monthly salary on clothes.

“Ha!” I thought. “At least they won’t be able to accuse me of being dressed head to toe in Zara, like I usually am.”

The panel event I was attending was organised by a designer clothing store called Symphony around one of the most celebrated fashionistas, or “fashion maniac” as Helmut Newton called her, of our era. She is an Italian called Anna Dello Russo, known affectionately as ADR.That’s her in the middle with the short gold dress. Picture by David Goff.

She is a wonderfully eccentric, positive, outspoken and amusing Italian lady, who apparently has an apartment next to her apartment in Milan where she keeps her clothes.

“Do you ever walk in there,” I asked her, “and say to yourself ‘I’ve got nothing to wear?'”

She looked horrified. “A woman who says that should see a psychiatrist, she is depressed.”

Then I asked her if she ever wore the same thing twice. “Never,” she said. I wanted to ask if she even changes her pyjamas on a daily basis, but would probably have been told that pyjamas are soooo last week.

We discussed a range of topics in front an audience, from what makes a successful designer to whether you should mix and match High Street with high end. Anna claims she does wear High Street, but that the one thing she will never do is wear cheap shoes. It was at that point that I realised that I had committed a fashion faux pas. My shoes are as cheap as they come, something I plan to radically overhaul. If I’m going to be a fashionista, I need the proper kit. Let’s hope Anna didn’t notice them.

Maybe if I can get people to call me HFP I have a future…?


Filed Under: Fashion, Style, blog --> Tagged With: fashionista

One thought on A day in the life of a fashionista

  • jose says:
    8th November 2011 at 1:11 pm

    I hope your audience wasn’t as bored as you all seemed to be in the photo – all that expensive water they were serving you perhaps. And those fashionistas – attractive faces but the legs?!

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Helena Frith Powell was born in Sweden to a Swedish mother and Italian father, but grew up mainly in England. She is the author of eleven books, translated into several languages including Chinese and Russian. She wrote the French Mistress column The Sunday Times about life in France for several years. She is a regular contributor to the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, The Times, Daily Telegraph, Tatler Magazine and Harper’s Bazaar.

Helena has been the editor of four magazines, including M Magazine, a supplement for the Abu Dhabi based National Newspaper and FIVE, a high-end fashion glossy, also published in Abu Dhabi. Helena was also editor in chief of 360 Life, a quarterly glossy magazine published with the Sports 360 Newspaper in Dubai, part of the Chalhoub Group.

Helena contributes regularly to UK-based newspapers and magazines and holds a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge. Helena is working on a thriller called Thin Ice that will be published in 2021 as well as a novel about the relationship between Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield called Sense of an Echo.

Her latest non-fiction work Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles came out in hardback in 2016 and in paperback in April 2018.

Helena, who was educated at Durham University, lives in the Languedoc region of France with her husband Rupert and their three children.

Bibliography

More France Please, we’re British; Gibson Square 2004

Two Lipsticks and a Lover 2005; Gibson Square (hardback)

All You Need to be Impossibly French; (US version of above) Penguin 2006

Two Lipsticks and a Lover; Arrow Books (paperback) 2007

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (hardback) 2006

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (paperback) 2007

So Chic! (French version of Two Lipsticks) Leduc Editions 2008 (also translated into Chinese, Russian and Thai)

More, More France; Gibson Square 2009

To Hell in High Heels; Arrow Books 2009 (also translated into Polish)

The Viva Mayr Diet; Harper Collins 2009

Love in a Warm Climate; Gibson Square 2011

The Ex-Factor; Gibson Square 2013

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles; Gibson Square 2016

The Arnolfini Marriage; Amazon Kindle December 2016

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles (paperback); Gibson Square spring 2018

The Longest Night; Gibson Square spring 2019

 

 

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