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Diary of A Mayfair Finance Girl

A Week in October

Written by Ms. Couldn’t-Possibly-Say

Monday

Had no idea until I joined KingFischer Asset Management that the more powerful you are, the more shoes you have piled under desk. Finance Girls arrive at Berkeley Sq. office in ON trainers — the only acceptable ones are black and never go with the outfit, but that’s kind of the point. They then walk the floor in socks (from Charvet or Falke, it’s competitive) in mornings, change into flats for meetings or lunches, have weekly shoe shine appointments in the lobby, slouch about in Loros in the afternoon and switch into heels for evening.

Desperate to play part and fit in, have become obsessed with perfecting office shoe wardrobe. Believed current rotation had me covered for literally any event until saw Laetitia-In-Legal swanning into boardroom wearing The Row’s satin slippers. They looked expensive. They looked beautiful. Ordered.

Balance: -£970.

Tuesday

Meant to be identifying undervalued assets in distressed markets. Instead spent morning identifying types of Finance Girl:

1. The twenty-something who consistently maxes out her ISA allowance and has already saved enough for house deposit.

2. The twenty-something with closet full of The Row. Renting.

3. The thirty-something Lawyer who works all the time, has terrible life, no-ceiling expense account, wedding cake home in Holland Park, incredible Italian wardrobe (i.e. Laetitia-In-Legal.)

Closely identify with #2.

Maybe should have converted to law?

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The best parties are controversial, a little outrageous and absurdly glamorous. Properly Beautiful People attend, and mingle with Properly Interesting People. The two People Types stay very late. They talk about art. They whisper secrets, and plot. They screech with laughter. They have engraved cards, which they exchange. They seem Modern. They worship their hostess. They gossip about their hostess. Their hostess is Absolutely Fine with conflicting attitudes towards her, because she’s cool with just about anything.

One such hostess, Ellie Peugeot, threw one such party this past Monday in London. Peugeot, a British-Iranian interior designer based in Paris is a petite, raven-haired female with a discerning eye and exquisite taste. She works exclusively with the one percent of the one percent with style. When she throws a party - well, it’s A Thing.

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Tommie has hooked me in again for a goss with and our old mucker (that’s Brit for BF) imminently on his You Tube - here is the link:

Tom’s on in about half an hour, I’m on from 7pm GMT.

LET ME KNOW HOW YOU ENJOY IT!

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OH AND HERE’S MY WELLIE ARTICLE TO END ALL WELLIE ARTICLES:

LOVE AND KISSES PLUM AND TOMMIE!

Unless a coffee table book is era-defining, it’s not worth its weight in paper.

You know what I’m getting at. You walk into a house and there’s some huge octagonal table in the hall arranged with skyscraper-high stacks of chunky picture books situated at perfect right angles — none of which have clearly ever been opened, and were probably ‘curated’ by a service — and the heart sinks.

Most coffee table books suck, and they suck because they don’t have a point of view. A picture book is fine. For kids. Adults need a little more with their photographs than a celebrity byline or an Instagram handle. The reality in publishing is that many glossy books are funded by the author, not the publisher, have no editorial value whatsoever and are little more than brand catalogues. That’s why I don’t have a coffee table (who does? What is that anyway?) piled with coffee table books: I favour book cases, and only the few picture books that are worthy get a spot on the tall shelves at the bottom.

When the photographer Simon Upton’s new book, A-Z Interiors, arrived a couple of weeks back I awarded it a spot instantly. It’s sublime. It’s so sublime I decided it was the Christmas gift for every mom, grandmom and design student out there and I was going to hold off writing about it and save it for my Christmas Gift Guide, a task I take incredibly seriously. But, after some time spent with this tome, which, by the way, is the perfect size for a coffee table book — not unmanageable like the titanic Helmut Newton SUMO which requires its own stand, nor so diminutive it seems hardly a coffee table book at all, like Alexa Chung’s It — I realised that the thing is likely to sell out by Crimbo, and my readers would protest in frustration were they not able to get their manicured mitts on one.

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Dearest Readers,

The overexcitement chez Sykes Towers is palpable: yesterday, Friday, a six-month-old foal arrived here. She’d left her mummie in Holland on Tuesday morning, and been travelling since then — the reason the relatively short journey to England takes so long is that when horses travel there are incredibly strict rules, as there should be — about how often the lorry must stop, how much rest the foals must get, where they will ‘overnight’ and so on. These babies are rightly treated like princesses. Her mum, whose name is Jyacinthe DVL, and her dad, Arrezzo VDL, are both Royal Dutch Sport Horses (aka KWPN) and I will be telling you more about them both later, but for now, this is all about Baby, whose name has yet to be decided.

Anyway, you should have seen her when she walked off the lorry! (which I filmed, obvs, below.)

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I am worried about Imogen. My adorable intern seems to spend more time creating fashiony spreadsheets than an LVMH graduate trainee. I have tried to explain to her that she should be out enjoying herself with her student friends rather than slaving over chic little powerpoints, but she says after a summer in the Hamptons she’s had quite enough fun for now and insisted on producing this scholarly fashion analysis for P.S.

Thank you Imogen, it’s divine. Readers, enjoy…XXX P

SHOP IMOGEN'S EARLY FALL EDIT

By Imogen Notaro

An evening’s worth of intense reverse-image-searching is socially acceptable only under very specific cirumstances: my friends completely understood, a couple of weeks back, when I excused myself early from a student party to search up the outfits of the Brits who are, in my opinion, the living embodiment of Early Fall Cool - women like Kate and Lila Moss, Edie Campbell, Sadie Frost and Jemima Kirke.

Now, although I’m nowhere near ready for the full psychological commitment of winter yet, clothes with buttons, collars and a little more structure start to appeal as the air becomes chillier. But where to start? The Brit It Girls are the linchpins of the way I want to look. Naturally, the reverse-image endeavour ended up as a slideshow: consider it my soft launch back into ‘real’ clothes, seven ways.

1. The Slouchsuit À La Jemima Kirke: I started with the travel outfit, a Suzie Kondi velour tracksuit, which I now own in navy, brown, and red. Jemima Kirke once called it ‘the tracksuit that gets you laid’. I cannot speak to that particular benefit. I dress almost exclusively for women and gay men, and this tracksuit gets the kind of compliment I value most: stylish women over forty stopping me to ask where it’s from. In terms of its effect on the spirit, this is the exact opposite of being catcalled by some creep lurking near airport security.

Conventional wisdom holds that sweatpants are slovenly, as though that level of comfort must be concealing some sort of personal failure. These are the opposite: an elevated version of the velour tracksuit, cut so the trousers actually fall the way you want them to and feel intentional rather than sloppy. Comfortable enough for the plane, but put together enough that I don’t feel I have surrendered before takeoff.

2. ‘Primrose Hill Set’ Hipster Pants: These Frost French trousers (the line was co-designed by actress Sadie Frost, who was married to Jude Law - swoon - who also dated Sienna Miller - double swoon - who all lived in Primrose Hill) are extremely flattering from behind and considerably less forgiving from the front. Mine are a hand-me-down from my mother from the early 2000s, which means they have already survived one full cycle of fashion deciding they were essential, then horrifying, and now essential again. (Here are two similar ones from Reformation and Sézane) The left image is shamelessly screenshot-ed from my own TikTok.

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Wait, I’m going to get to the perfect, £120 black sequin cocktail dress in a millisecond. But first, let me explain how this very special LBD came to my attention:

There is nothing I love more, dear reader, than an eyeful of non-ironic British frumpiness: I refer to these islands’ headmistress aesthetic: the uninspiring, deeply ‘proper’ clothes worn by middle-aged English women like Margaret Thatcher, Delia Smith and Barbara Woodhouse; the comfortable jumpers and even more comfortable knickers made famous by Bridget Jones’s Diary, the polite twinsets and sensible skirts so adored by Mary Berry. When confronted by such women and their style, one feels, well, relieved rather than threatened, and the truth is that significant elements of their wardrobes will probably have come from Marks & Spencer, the British store that no one can remember never being here (it opened in 1927), the place where most of us bought our first bra, where you can buy a nice box of plain chocolates and a decent egg mayonnaise sandwich, and which holds a dear place in the hearts of most English women, despite being the antithesis of cool.

So when I heard that ‘M&S’, as it’s fondly known, was holding its first-ever London Fashion Week show, I simply had to attend, for nostalgia’s sake.

I duly arrived at the Design Museum on Kensington High Street on Friday at midday, and found myself seated next to Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the Conservative Party. I was ridiculously excited to meet her as I’ve been following her on Instagram since she became Tory leader. I admire her because she says it how it is: when she’s on the attack in Parliament she has absolutely no problem dressing down the Prime Minister, the Chancellor, or whoever else it is who needs a reality check that day. The UK is in a troubled state right now, and Mrs. Badenoch has the air of a super-reliable Head Girl who, should she become Prime Minister, will get everyone in line and showing up for school and work bang on time and ready to concentrate.

Mrs. Badenoch, a mother of three, was super-excited to be at a fashion show, her first ever, and told me that she takes a lot of care with her clothes. She looked chic in an approachable, appropriate way: she was dressed in a dark green Reiss pantsuit, had a pale blue silk top beneath it and was carrying a scarlet bag by Aspinal of London. Her shoes, I noticed to my surprise, were sharp-toed, high-heeled stilettos that reminded me of the Manolo BB’s. But they were no such thing, she told me — ‘they’re from M&S,’ she said, and added that ‘they’re £28 a pair.’ She keeps multiple versions of these shoes on repeat, she informed me, because they are so comfortable, and has them in many colours. ‘I get through a lot of shoes in my job,’ she said wryly. When I asked her if I could take a selfie of our footwear, she gracefully agreed.

Moments later the show started and as a mannish tweed suit stalked the runway, I was a little surprised — clearly, the M&S design team hadn’t got the frump note: the forty or so looks that followed were about as sleek, pared-back and wearable as you can get right now. In particular I loved the oversized ‘sloppy’ sweaters worn with chic grey kilts for day or sleek pencil skirts for evening; the black leather coat and skirt worn by Jodie Kidd was sharp and cool; Erin O’Connor, another iconic 1990s model, showed off a truly fabulous long satin puffer coat that looked like a cross between Comme des Garçons and Rick Owens. And then there were the party dresses. When sauntered out in a strappy slip dress of black seqins, her wild red tresses sailing behind her, I thought, okay, here’s how you wear black sequins and look classy: no jewellery, no fussy evening clutches, just clear skin, barely-there makeup and plain black peep-toe shoes. (Btw I advise, if possible, to buy this dress on the UK website as the import tariffs increase the price in the US, where the clothes can be seen IRL at Nordstrom or purchased online.)

The concept was minimalist glitz for evening, and when a three-quarter-length column dress, beaded with crystals, wafted past me with a similar aesthetic, I asked the M&S publicist sitting close by about the prices. ‘Half the collection is under £60,’ he told me. ‘Really?’ I replied. He nodded and said that it was all available right now, online.

Nice. This really was a see-it-now-buy-it-now-collection, in keeping with the ethos of the ever-practical M&S. As I left the show that day, I mused to myself that it’s good to know that there’s one store out there where you can buy a pair of very comfortable white knickers at the same time as a very glamorous cocktail frock.

P.S. Black leather skirt suits for spring? Mad, yes, but officially the chicest thing at the Mulberry show, below, which is now being designed by the British designer Christopher Kane. Coming to stores as a part of the Spring 2027 collection. Note the blonde Front Row Girls, from left, Laura Bailey, Jade Parfitt and Jodie Kidd, with their vintage Mulberry bags.

P.P.S: I took this photograph, below, of the incredible British designer Dame Zandra Rhodes with the actress Dame Joan Collins, who is 93 years old, after the M&S show. They are perfect examples of British fashion in action, at any age.

Thank you darling readers for reading, I hope this post is a problem-solver when it comes to getting ahead on Holiday party dressing at a price. Let me know!

XXX Plum

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Many of you asked, after reading the Tea Party Story for Sue’s coffee cake recipe. She has obliged and the full recipe is attached here. What a doll!

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‘Madam, can I help you?’

The young lad was absurdly handsome, dressed in a plaid shirt, navy tie, tweed flat cap and a green waterproof coverall. He had a button nose, twinkling eyes: it was as though an extra from All Creatures Great and Small had entered the scene.

‘We’re here for the tea party,’ I said.

The lad looked blank.

‘The Cotswold Hunt Ladies Afternoon Tea?’ I added hopefully. ‘In the marquee?’

‘Righty-ho,’ he replied, and gestured for me and my companion, my old New York friend, Kara Baker, to follow him. It was a warm Sunday afternoon at summer’s end, and we had just parked up at the famous Cotswold Hunt Kennels which centers on a a neatly mown lawn surrounded by stables which are painted black with glossy green doors. There’s an old clock tower, several ancient stone barns, a few staff cottages and, behind all this, rows of sturdy kennels for the famous pack of foxhounds, which have been bred here since 1858. (The hounds don’t hunt foxes any more, btw, just trails.) We tramped across the yard, through a gateway and into a lush field bordered by ancient oak and beech. The lad pointed at a large canvas marquee with a couple of strings of blue and red bunting flapping in the breeze: it was a former circus tent, almost derelict in state.

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When it comes to this time of year — that sartorially confusing are-we-still-in-summer, or is-it-early-fall moment? — wardrobe panic descends. Coats loom large — a new one suddenly feels like a winter necessity. Warm smushy turtlenecks beckon. There’s a rush to grab a pair of knee-high boots that can tramp across town, invincible whether puddles or snowdrifts are the obstacle.

The problem is, it’s simply too early. I’m still hanging on to the last vestiges of summer: it’s warm and the light still lingers until half past eight in the evening in England. Mentally, I know the search for a new winter wardrobe looms, but emotionally I’m not ready to go to a store and try on heavy clothes that will only serve to remind me that the holidays are over.

No, September is too beautiful a month for such sad-making shopping, so I simply return to my Old Favourites, those sartorial Best Friends that have endured, the shapes that have stood the test of time regardless of what fashion is doing, and wear the pieces, the silhouettes and the styles again.

Forthwith, my repeatable, re-wearable, never out-of-date, no-money-required September Looks, unpacked.

1. The Jeans I Bought in 2007, still the favs, the best, the Forevers:

I spent a delicious summer in Easthampton in 2007, when we rented a Grey Gardens-esque clapboard house which was painted pale pink. It was close to the beach and my time was divided, happily, between the pool, the ocean, my new daughter Ursula who was only a year old at the time, and endless forays into town where I drifted in and out of J. Crew Beach, which sold the best ever faux-vintage tees, and the Henry Lehr store on Main Street. Henry Lehr sold the largest selection of jeans an English girl like me had ever seen, and I spent hours trying on different pairs and driving the sales assistants mad asking them which ones they thought looked the best. In the end, I settled on buying two pairs of Citizens Of Humanity cropped patch pocket jeans, one in dark denim and one in a faded wash. They were cut straight and boyish on the hip, which suits me (I hate jeans that ‘curve’ on the butt) and were made from rigid denim with absolutely no stretch. Between now and then, I have purchased squillions of pairs of jeans, and pretty much every pair that has stretch in them, or were bought online, have been discarded or sit unworn in my closet. These Citizens jeans look amazing with everything — my fall uniform of the jean, a black sweater or jacket and an animal print shoe always works. (and no, alas they do not make them anymore - I have searched high and low!) The Rothy’s flats in the picture above were sent to me by a friend in 2016. ‘I met this guy who says he’s making shoes out of plastic water bottles and he wants to send you some,’ she’d told me. I was dubious — how on earth could such a thing be aesthetically pleasing? — but when they arrived I loved them. That same pair has lasted ten years, and I still delight, if someone compliments me on them, in saying, ‘and guess what?! They’re made out of recycled plastic water bottles.’

2. The Animal Print Scarf, Five Ways

I bought this scarf in 2012 when Stefano Pilati did his last show for Yves Saint Laurent, which had been bought by Tom Ford. I think I had done a book deal, and felt a little flush, and I went to the Matches store on Ledbury Road in London, threw it on and realised it would go with everything. I felt horrible spending £650 on it then — it seemed wasteful and extravagant — but I had fallen in love with it and it was so ‘me’. Like many of the things I return to again and again, this is an immaculately made, quality piece but there is no logo, label or bling about it. No one knows it’s YSL and if it had had logos all over it I wouldn’t have wanted it. It’s a beautiful accessory that makes absolutely any outfit look incredible. I have never paid as much for a scarf since, partly because I can’t justify it and partly because I never need another scarf, ever.

3. The White-Jacket-White-Trousers Album

I bought the white Topshop jacket at the old store on London’s Oxford Street in 1999. It was made of off-white velvet, cost £25, and fit me as well as a piece of Savile Row tailoring. With a black sweater and jeans, this jacket made the ordinary look glamorous. A black jacket would have looked, well, dull. But a white jacket — it has something rock’n’roll, a bit Bianca Jagger, slightly Harry’s-Bar-in-Venice about it. It’s light. It lifts everything. The jacket is now I-know-not-where but I have kept wearing the look. Ditto tailored white pants with a black or white top. This is a combination that makes me feel casually confident but dressy enough for a dinner or drinks party.

4. The No-Brainer: A Little Black Dress.

   

The details change, but the constant is the black evening dress. The strapless Emilia Wickstead cocktail dress, made from magnificent duchesse satin, was bought in 2016. I have worn it several times a year ever since. The red Manolos, white Tom Ford clutch and my grandmother’s pearls are just one iteration of many accessory choices that work: with a black clutch, black shoes and a diamond bracelet, the dress looks completely different. Centre left, I wore this McQueen dress to the Met Ball in the mid-2000s and I was snapped chatting to the wonderful designer Donna Karan, one of my heroines. The dress had been in the runway show and I fell in love with the proportions of the oversized bow across the bust which made my waist look tiny. I felt amazing in it and begged the McQueen team to allow me to buy it, as it was a one-off that was never produced for the stores. I got a flat no, but I still remember that look as one of the most classic of my life. Centre right, I’m in an Alaïa shift, which I bought for my first book tour in 2004 and I still own to this day, again worn with pointy little Manolos. The dress on the right is McQueen, and I am with my dear sister Alice at a party in New York. The studded bag is Sonia Rykiel, an iconic piece now, and I still LOVE it and use it frequently. The party was that long ago that we still had flip phones!

5. The Safety Net: The Black Turtleneck

   

If I’m ever in any doubt about what to wear, day or evening, it’s black pants, a black wool turtleneck and a drop of gold, on belt, bangle or earrings. It doesn’t matter what else is going on in fashion, this combination always works with heels, loafers, ballet pumps or my trusty ‘Le Points’ in plain black and makes me realise, more than anything else, that what I return to is my personal style rather than any particular label. Designers come and go, but the black turtleneck endures.

And finally…

I hope you all enjoyed this piece and that you will go back to your closets for ‘new’ outfits that don’t cost a dime.

Love and kisses as evs,

Plum

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Shop The Rewear Edit

Photos in this story: Getty Images; Gigi West; Ursula Rowland, Francois Halard.

Dearest Readers,

There is nothing — I repeat, nothing — more thoughtful or generous that a hostess can do for a houseguest than leave a typed list of local flea markets on the dressing table in the spare bedroom.

When said houseguest (moi, obvs) arrived last Friday lunchtime at an exquisite, eighteenth-century former hunting lodge in the most remote and mountainous part of Provence, the Luberon, you can imagine my excitement upon finding such a list to hand. And what a list it was: it was the backstage pass, the behind-the-velvet rope of la brocante, as they say in Frogland. But I wasn’t surprised: my hostess, Lady Claudia Rothermere, a dear friend I have known since our mutual Oxford days, is considered one of the most stylish women in the world. She’s an expert in the art of having people to stay and never, ever lets the side down when it comes to the pampering of friends.

Herewith, the diary of one Very Pampered Guest:

Friday, 21st August

Took an absurdly early flight with my daughter Ursula, my friends Tree and Tosh (who I had stayed with in Antiparos two weeks before) to Marseilles and arrived at the ‘Pavillon’, as it’s known, near Gordes, in time for lunch. The butler, Céderique, whose uniform consists of sharply pressed navy Bermuda shorts and preppie white polo shirts, took my bags and led me through the main house and into a gorgeous bedroom in a separate building. The walls were of faded pink plaster and the tall French windows overlooked the most extraordinary swimming pool.

‘This is the most comfortable mattress in the house,’ noted Céderique, gesturing at the bed. ‘When Chris Martin rented the property, he insisted on this mattress being brought in.’ (Yes, darlings, Monsieur Coldplay took this house last summer and this dreamy place can be rented through Avenue Property, which has some of the best summer vacation houses in Europe.)

Told Céderique it was an honour to sleep on Chris Martin’s mattress. Post-lunch, felt obliged to try it out with a three-hour nap. Awarded mattress ten out of ten for effectiveness.

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Love and kisses,

Plum

Dearest Readers,

A lovely reader asked me where I get this wallpaper, and I wanted to make sure the info didn’t get lost in a note or an instagram post. This is my bedroom at home at my farm in the Cotswolds. The wallpaper is from a lovely chap called Nicholas Herbert, who has the MOST divine showroom on Lots Road, which is just by Chelsea Harbour in London, where all the design people are. Unlike a lot of the design people in that area, Nicholas is not outrageously expensive.

I first found the wallpaper when I was decorating a house in London in around 2008. I had a lovely house on Northumberland Place, near Notting Hill, with two tiny box bedrooms on the attic floor, and after many years spent at the Paris ready-to-wear collections staying at The Hotel Costes on the Rue St Honore, whose bedrooms were toiled and cosy beyond belief, all I wanted was a toile bedroom in London to try and recreate that feeling. However when I tried to find good toile de jouy wallpapers, they were far too expensive to contemplate, and often the designs had too many people in them for my liking! I wanted the bows and the flowers, but not the people wandering around digging gardens or millking cows, as I always found that a bit naff to be honest.

I spent many a day traipsing around Chelsea Harbour in a fruitless hunt for something similar, and one day walked past Nicholas’ storefront and couldn’t believe it when I found this paper. I loved it because it had a soft creamy background, and the ‘red’ of the design was faded not bright. The wallpaper would look like it had been there forever from day one, which is kind of my style. Nicholas himself was in the store and a more delightful man I have rarely met - he has the vibe of a jolly English uncle with the most exquisite country house style and taste. His chintzes are, well - to die for.

I used it in the London place and adored it. When I moved to the country in 2013 I only wanted one thing in my bedroom - Nicholas’ scarlet toile. Again, I installed it, this time with faded old silk curtains I’d rescued from a local manor house, and it looked divine. Another thirteen years on, I’m doing up a new flat in London. Most likely, the bedroom will be the same!

I hope you enjoyed this little post today, see you all next Thursday with my report from the chicest flea markets in the Luberon, France.

xxx Plum

Here are all the wallpaper details:

Nicholas Herbert Toile De Albert deets

P.S. I love the blue colourways:

I’m in a mini-row with my old mucker, the writer Jonathan Van Meter, he of the famed 1998 Vogue Oprah cover, for which Oprah lost an indecent amount of weight, he of the iconic ‘We don’t wake up for less than $10,000 a day’ supermodel quote, and he, most recently, of Citizen Kim, his book about the Kardashian sister most likely to run for president. (Let’s face it, one of them has to.)

When I learned in late July that my old American Vogue colleague had written the authorised biography of Kim, although I’d never finished a single episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians, I was gagging to read the book. There were two reasons for this: first, I was going on holiday at the end of August and had read the entire Patrick Radden Keefe oeuvre and so was book-less; second, ‘JonVan’ as he was nicknamed at Vogue, is the kind of journalist who has the ability to take a celebrity subject, often someone who is as glamorous as they are deliciously tabloid, and pen an intelligent, fascinating and witty study of them which doubles as a deft analysis of the zeitgeist, of American culture, and of the current state of fame.

To fill you in, I arrived at Vogue early in 1997 when JonVan was penning multiple cover stories each year. I was violently jealous of this charming man every time Anna Wintour awarded him yet another cover with Angelina, Charlize, or Nicole, while I was relegated to writing 600 words in the front of book. Still, we became friends and all I ever wanted was to write a cover story that was maybe a fraction as good as one of JonVan’s.

Fast forward to me finding out last month, via JonVan’s Instagram (Rude! I thought we were friends!) that he’d scored the scoop of the decade, wheedled his way into Kim Kardashian’s affections and brainwashed her into letting him write her biography, with full access to her, her entire family, and an adjacent cast of former nannies, high school besties, riding instructors and beauty therapists. I messaged JonVan and asked for the book. He said he’d send it. That was late July. By mid-August it still hadn’t arrived. I was forced to berate my dear friend via video message on Instagram, then with a torrent of ‘where is it?’ WhatsApps, as well as attempted phone calls, none of which he picked up. Melissa Rivers got her book before me. Kate Young got hers before me. It was humiliating. When the Advance Reader Copy finally arrived in late August, embargoed and forbidding early readers from quoting it without permission from the publisher, despite being somewhat cross with my old friend, I ate up the whole thing in twenty-four hours. I felt obliged to share my thoughts asap, despite the publisher’s warnings.

So, without further ado, (as my dear brother Tom Sykes would say), here are my immediate takeaways from a book that is as moreish as the sprinkle-topped Froyos that Kim makes using the frozen yoghurt machine that is famously hidden behind a secret door in her pantry:

1. The reflexive snobbishness of any Kim-Deniers is addressed at the top of this book. Van Meter writes, in his typically sharp prose, that “people who have viewed Kim as a talentless empty vessel—someone known for sitting around with her sisters scheming over enormous takeout salads,” can’t bear the cultural significance of a single mom who is now worth around $1.9 billion. The author tackles the love-hate relationship the world has with her: she’s beautiful, she’s tacky, she’s corny, she’s plastic, she’s authentic, she’s fake, she’s dumb, she’s passed the bar, she’s obsessed with her butt, she’s a huge business success. It’s hard to conceive of and as Van Meter writes in his introduction, ‘You can learn a lot about a person by telling them you’re writing a book about Kim Kardashian.’ He amusingly recalls that just the concept of a book - literature - about a subject as lightweight as Kim Kardashian prompts looks of ‘cognitive dissonance’ among his friends.

2. Kim Kardashian was always like this. There is nothing as revealing as one’s first forays into fashion and Van Meter writes that as an infant her mother Kris Jenner “dressed Kim in Baby Dior and a pink satin bonnet and marvelled at how beautiful she was — “stunning” to be precise…In 1991 the Kardashians’ nanny wrote in her journal: ‘Kim looks gorgeous. Even as a ten-year-old child, she is stunning.’” The Kardashians, it turns out, were no rags-to-riches tale, (until rather later after Robert and Kris divorced): while Kris was still married to Robert, she and the kids lived in a tony area of Beverly Hills, with people like Jay Leno and Bruce Springsteen as neighbours. This had a direct impact on Kim’s trajectory. As the author puts it, “Life in these kind of enclaves in Beverly Hills afforded random, effortless camaraderie with the most famous people in the world.”

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Obvs. the Meghan move to the UK has had the What’sApps flying between me and over the past 24 hours. Anyway, we got on Tom’s You Tube channel last night and had a good old catch up. (Including an off-topic segue discussing where I get my hair coloured.)

Without further ado, as Tom would say, here’s the button to link to our chat WITHOUT THE ADS:

SYKES SIBS LIVE!

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Enjoy darlings and please let us know what you think! x plum

JOIN DUDES!

X P.S.

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^{Dearest Readers,}

^{When my adorbs intern told me that she had a fashion internship this summer in London with one of the chicest fashion houses in the world, I was thrilled for her. When she told me that she knew of co-interns who dress ‘like it’s their first day on planet earth’ for such roles, and that in order to avoid such a grave error she was creating PowerPoints for her outfits for each day, I said, Sweetie! That’s a story! She wrote it up and it is the perfect guide for anyone about to launch into said sartorial territory. Imogen, thank you for such a brilliant piece. Readers, do please let Imogen know how you like her story, which is below.}

^{XO P.S.}

Dressing for an internship for a fashion house is a uniquely intimidating exercise in pretending you have not thought too hard about getting dressed. The office was in Mayfair, and before I had even started in July, I was consumed with the most important question of the internship: what was I going to wear? I wanted to look sophisticated, but not corporate, interested in fashion, but not as though I were cosplaying as an extra in The Devil Wears Prada. A disproportionate amount of effort went into this, involving countless photos, many conflicting opinions, and more deliberation than was reasonably required for getting dressed for work. My most useful hobby has finally revealed its professional application: I take photos of my own outfits whenever I especially like what I’m wearing, save references from Pinterest and Instagram, and arrange everything into a slideshow—part catalogue, part packing list—with possible outfits assembled slide by slide. I make one for almost any trip or event where I care about what I am going to wear. Is it obsessive and slightly unhinged? Yes. Is it extremely useful for planning five days’ outfits? Also yes.

I have always felt I was meant for office dressing. A ‘professional’ dress code felt less like a restriction than a long-awaited opportunity. At my New York City high school, where plenty of students arrived in pyjama bottoms and sweatshirts, I was often in a blouse and trousers. More than once, a freshman mistook me for a teacher and asked for help with his schedule or the grading policy. I was sixteen.

The real challenge was summer: hot weather is fundamentally at odds with looking chic. Each morning, I left my flat attempting to channel Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy’s particular brand of effortlessness: clean lines and smooth hair. My fear was that by the time I reached Mayfair, I would arrive red-faced, with my hair in a greasy ponytail and bearing a closer resemblance to Erling Haaland.

These are the five outfits that survived the internship, and the London heat. By the end of the week, I had it down. Forthwith: My Five Very Subjective Rules of Fashion-Internship Dressing. (If I wore any of this to a J.P. Morgan internship, I suspect I’d have had one day and one day only before I was out.)

Rule 1: Don’t Dress Like It’s Your First Day on Planet Earth

My main objective was not to look as though I had invented a new personality for the occasion or had mistaken the internship for a costume party with a business-casual theme. The safest option was to wear things I already knew I loved. I chose a black cotton-poplin button-down from Suzie Kondi, white Levi’s Ribcage jeans, and Chanel ballet flats borrowed from my mother—older than I am and still going strong after being resoled.

The shirt was easily one of my best purchases of 2025. I wear it with trousers, throw it over a bikini at the beach, and reach for it almost every week. The clothes I love are practically hermetically sealed to my body, and in less than a year, this shirt has joined their ranks. For the first day, that familiarity was useful: I already knew I liked how it looked and would not spend the morning wondering whether I had made a terrible mistake.

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Dearest Readers,

There are Rich People, and then there are Cool Rich People, and rarely the twain doth meet — especially on vacation, but even more especially during that most sacred of vacation months, August.

Holidaying is complicated for the Cool Rich set because it demands being in places that are not in danger of being polluted by Ordinary Rich People who cause aesthetic alarm by doing things like wearing diamond bracelet stacks while paddling in the ocean, swanning about on mega-yachts that are custom-painted matt black, or arriving in heels for lunch at the beach. The solution is to vacation in impossible-to-get-to spots that are too mountainous to land a jet, too windy to helicopter into and whose coves are so tiny and shallow that they can’t possibly accommodate a tech titan’s ugly boat. Anywhere with tarmac-ed roads, convenient airports, fully-equipped hospitals or deep ports — Sardinia, St. Tropez, Southampton — are not an option, obvs.

You can see where I’m going with this: where is inaccessible enough to be glamorous, but also a place one can casually run into friends? (I mean what’s the point in being in the centre of Cool Rich-Land if no one knows you are there, right?) Enter Antiparos, a very small island in the Cyclades, in the Aegean Sea off mainland Greece. The journey there is suitably arduous: there’s the flight to Mykonos, from there a taxi to the harbour, from the harbour a ferry to the island of Paros, from there a taxi across Paros to the little harbour, from the little harbour a small boat to Antiparos and from the teeny weeny harbour in Antiparos a car or a taxi to your divinely bohemian-chic, gigantic shack up in the hills. On a good day it’ll take a minimum of fourteen hours from London but there are always delays, no one gets in on time, and every trip to Antiparos becomes an ‘adventure’ with which to regale your hosts over dinner upon arrival: even the gossip among the chic-sters on the Sea Jets ferry is so good it makes the hellish journey worthwhile, I kid you not. (But more of the ferry gossip later.)

Now, I was lucky enough to get invited to Antiparos last week by dear friends Tree and Tosh. No, really, I promise you those are their names - they are Brits. (Tree is the girl one and Tosh is the boy one.) Between them they have multiple offspring from various marriages who had multiple friends who were all in the house, so I spent a week in their glorious villa on the bay side of Antiparos, usually being woken up at 4.30am every morning by the sound of several twenty-somethings dive-bombing into the pool after prowling the bar scene all night.

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Once in a lifetime you meet a pair of sunglasses and it’s love at first sight.

I wouldn’t say I’m the sort who is usually inclined to fall hard for an unsuitable block of acetate, but on this occasion I have. This whirlwind affair has been one of those that was a mystery at the beginning, but became clearer each day I spent with the sunglasses. The better I knew them, the more often I peered through their stunningly clear lenses into the honey-hued world they magicked up, the more my friends got to know them and appreciate them, the more I worshipped them.

Only a couple of weeks ago, infidelity stalked my relationships with sunglasses. I would declare undying love to a pair of face-swamping Tom Fords one minute only to callously cast them off for an Audrey Hepburn-esque pair of Kate Spades when Tom bored me. When those failed to amuse, I cheated with a pair of Oliver Goldsmiths or Chanels on the side.

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